"Plan of the Ancient Works at Marietta, Ohio," by Charles Whittlesey, 1837

Reproduction number: A111 (color slide)
The multitalented Ephraim George Squier (1821-1888) had an unusual and varied career as journalist, diplomat, and archaeologist. Relatively early in life and in collaboration with Edwin Hamilton Davis (1811-1888), he studied the remains of the mid-western mound-builders. His research resulted in the 1847 report Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, the first scientific study published by the Smithsonian Institution. Because most of the mounds have since given way to farms and buildings, Squier's detailed study has enduring value. Concluding that the mounds were of greater antiquity than previously believed and that the mound-builders were indigenous to America, Squier stoked nationalistic feeling and strongly influenced American anthropologists of the so-called "American School." Squier continued his investigations and in 1851 published the Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York. The Dictionary of American Biography concluded that Squier's "two studies were marked by observation and description so accurate and thorough that they became authoritative in their fields." The plan shown here of the ancient works at Marietta, Ohio, was drawn in 1837 by Charles Whittlesey (1808-1886), an Ohio state engineer, who assisted Davis, Squier's collaborator, in surveying Indian mounds and earthworks throughout Ohio. In his preface to Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, Squier noted that he and Davis incorporated many plans, research notes, and observations generously supplied to them by Whittlesey.