The Book of the Damned (20 page)

Data of more than the thrice-accursed:

Tablets of stone, with the Ten Commandments engraved upon them, in Hebrew, said to have been found in mounds in the United States;

Masonic emblems said to have been found in mounds in the United States.

We’re upon the borderline of our acceptances, and we’re amorphous in the uncertainties and mergings of our outline. Conventionally, or, with no real reason for so doing, we exclude these things, and then, as grossly and arbitrarily and irrationally—though our attempt is always to approximate away from these negative states—as ever a Kepler, Newton, or Darwin made his selections, without which he could not have seemed to be, at all, because every one of them is now seen to be an illusion, we accept that other lettered things have been found in mounds in the United States. Of course we do what we can to make the selection seem not gross and arbitrary and irrational. Then, if we accept that inscribed things of ancient origin have been found in the United States; that cannot be attributed to any race indigenous to the western hemisphere; that are not in any language ever heard of in the eastern hemisphere—there’s nothing to it but to turn non-Euclidian and try to conceive of a third “hemisphere,” or to accept that there has been intercourse between the western hemisphere and some other world.

But there is a peculiarity to these inscribed objects. They remind me of the records left, by Sir John Franklin, in the Arctic; but, also, of attempts made by relief expeditions to communicate with the Franklin expedition. The lost explorers cached their records—or concealed them conspicuously in mounds. The relief expeditions sent up balloons, from which messages were dropped broadcast. Our data are of things that have been cached, and of things that seem to have been dropped—

Or a Lost Expedition from—Somewhere.

Explorers from somewhere, and their inability to return—then, a long, sentimental, persistent attempt, in the spirit of our own Arctic relief-expeditions—at least to establish communication—

What if it may have succeeded?

We think of India—the millions of natives who are ruled by a small band of esoterics—only because they receive support and direction from—somewhere else—or from England.

In 1838, Mr. A.B. Tomlinson, owner of the great mound at Grave Creek, West Virginia, excavated the mound. He said that, in the presence of witnesses, he had found a small, flat, oval stone—or disk—upon which were engraved alphabetic characters.

Col. Whittelsey, an expert in these matters, says that the stone is now “universally regarded by archaeologists as a fraud”: that, in his opinion, Mr. Tomlinson had been imposed upon.

Avebury,
Prehistoric Times,
p. 271:

“I mention it because it has been the subject of much discussion, but it is now generally admitted to be a fraud. It is inscribed with Hebrew characters, but the forger has copied the modern instead of the ancient form of the letters.”

As I have said, we’re as irritable here, under the oppressions of the anthropologists as ever were slaves in the south toward superiorities from “poor white trash.” When we finally reverse our relative positions we shall give lowest place to the anthropologists. A Dr. Gray does at least look at a fish before he conceives of a miraculous origin for it. We shall have to submerge Lord Avebury far below him—if we accept that the stone from Grave Creek is generally regarded as a fraud by eminent authorities who did not know it from some other object—or, in general, that so decided an opinion must be the product of either deliberate disregard or ignorance or fatigue. The stone belongs to a class of phenomena that is repulsive to the System. It will not assimilate with the System. Let such an object be heard of by such a systematist as Avebury, and the mere mention of it is as nearly certainly the stimulus to a conventional reaction as is a charged body to an electroscope or a glass of beer to a prohibitionist. It is of the ideals of Science to know one object from another before expressing an opinion upon a thing, but that is not the spirit of universal mechanics:

A thing. It is attractive or repulsive. Its conventional reaction follows.

Because it is not the stone from Grave Creek that is in Hebrew characters, either ancient or modern: it is a stone from Newark, Ohio, of which the story is told that a forger made this mistake of using modern instead of ancient Hebrew characters. We shall see that the inscription upon the Grave Creek stone is not in Hebrew.

Or all things are presumed to be innocent, but are supposed to be guilty—unless they assimilate.

Col. Whittelsey
(Western Reserve Historical Tracts, No.
33) says that the Grave Creek stone was considered a fraud by Wilson, Squires, and Davis. Then he comes to the Congress of Archaeologists at Nancy, France, 1875. It is hard for Col. Whittelsey to admit that, at this meeting, which sounds important, the stone was endorsed. He reminds us of Mr. Symons, and “the man” who “considered” that he saw something. Col. Whittelsey’s somewhat tortuous expression is that the finder of the stone “so imposed his views” upon the congress that it pronounced the stone genuine.

Also the stone was examined by Schoolcraft. He gave his opinion for genuineness.

Or there’s only one process, and “see-saw” is one of its aspects. Three or four fat experts on the side against us. We find four or five plump ones on our side. Or all that we call logic and reasoning ends up as sheer preponderance of avoirdupois.

Then several philologists came out in favor of genuineness. Some of them translated the inscription. Of course, as we have said, it is our method—or the method of orthodoxy—way in which all conclusions are reached—to have some awfully eminent, or preponderantly plump, authorities with us whenever we can—in this case, however, we feel just a little apprehensive in being caught in such excellently obese, but somewhat negativized, company:

Translation by M. Jombard:

“Thy orders are laws: thou shinest in impetuous élan and rapid chamois.”

M. Maurice Schwab:

“The chief of Emigration who reached these places (or this island) has fixed these characters forever.”

M. Oppert:

“The grave of one who was assassinated here. May God, to revenge him, strike his murderer, cutting off the hand of his existence.”

I like the first one best. I have such a vivid impression from it of someone polishing up brass or something, and in an awful hurry. Of course the third is more dramatic—still they’re all very good. They are perturbations of one another, I suppose.

In Tract 44, Col. Whittelsey returns to the subject. He gives the conclusion of Major De Helward, at the Congress of Luxembourg, 1877:

“If Prof. Read and myself are right in the conclusion that the figures are neither of the Runic, Phoenician, Canaanite, Hebrew, Lybian, Celtic, or any other alphabet-language, its importance has been greatly overrated.”

Obvious to a child; obvious to any mentality not helplessly subjected to a system:

That just therein lies the importance of this object.

It is said that an ideal of science is to find out the new—but, unless a thing be of the old, it is “unimportant.”

“It is not worthwhile.” (Hovey.)

Then the inscribed ax, or wedge, which, according to Dr. John C. Evans, in a communication to the American Ethnological Society, was plowed up, near Pemberton, N.J., 1859. The characters upon this ax, or wedge, are strikingly similar to the characters on the Grave Creek stone. Also, with a little disregard here and a little more there, they look like tracks in the snow by someone who’s been out celebrating, or like your handwriting, or mine, when we think there’s a certain distinction in illegibility. Method of disregard: any thing’s anything.

Dr. Abbott describes this object in the
Report of the Smithsonian Institution,
1875-260.

He says he has no faith in it.

All progress is from the outrageous to the commonplace. Or quasi-existence proceeds from rape to the crooning of lullabies. It’s been interesting to me to go over various long-established periodicals and note controversies between attempting positivists and then intermediatistic issues. Bold, bad intruders of theories; ruffians with dishonorable intentions—the alarms of Science; her attempts to preserve that which is dearer than life itself—submission—then a fidelity like Mrs. Micawber’s. So many of these ruffians, or wandering comedians that were hated, or scorned, pitied, embraced, conventionalized. There’s not a notion in this book that has a more frightful, or ridiculous, mien than had the notion of human footprints in rocks, when that now respectabilized ruffian, or clown, was first heard from. It seems bewildering to one whose interests are not scientific that such rows should be raised over such trifles: but the feeling of a systematist toward such an intruder is just about what anyone’s would be if a tramp from the street should come in, sit at one’s dinner table, and say he belonged there. We know what hypnosis can do: let him insist with all his might that he does belong there, and one begins to suspect that he may be right; that he may have higher perceptions of what’s right. The prohibitionists had this worked out very skillfully.

So the row that was raised over the stone from Grave Creek—but time and cumulativeness, and the very factor we make so much of—or the power of massed data. There were other reports of inscribed stones, and then, half a century later, some mounds—or caches, as we call them—were opened by the Rev. Mr. Gass, near the city of Davenport.
(American Antiquarian,
15-73.) Several stone tablets were found. Upon one of them, the letters “TFTOWNS” may easily be made out. In this instance we hear nothing of fraudulency—time, cumulativeness, the power of massed data. The attempt to assimilate this datum is:

That the tablet was probably of Mormon origin.

Why?

Because, at Mendon, Ill., was found a brass plate, upon which were similar characters.

Why that?

Because that was found “near a house once occupied by a Mormon.”

In a real existence, a real meteorologist, suspecting that cinders had come from a fire engine—would have asked a fireman.

Tablets of Davenport—there’s not a record findable that it ever occurred to any antiquarian—to ask a Mormon.

Other tablets were found. Upon one of them are two “F’s” and two “8’s.” Also a large tablet, twelve inches by eight to ten inches “with Roman numerals and Arabic.” It is said that the figure “8” occurs three times, and the figure or letter “O” seven times. “With these familiar characters are others that resemble ancient alphabets, either Phoenician or Hebrew.”

It may be that the discovery of Australia, for instance, will turn out to be less important than the discovery and the meaning of these tablets—

But where will you read of them in anything subsequently published; what antiquarian has ever since tried to understand them, and their presence, and indications of antiquity, in a land that we’re told was inhabited only by unlettered savages?

These things that are exhumed only to be buried in some other way.

Another tablet was found, at Davenport, by Mr. Charles Harrison, president of the American Antiquarian Society. “. . . 8 and other hieroglyphics are upon this tablet.” This time, also, fraud is not mentioned. My own notion is that it is very unsportsman-like ever to mention fraud. Accept anything. Then explain it your way. Anything that assimilates with one explanation, must have assimilable relations, to some degree, with all other explanations, if all explanations are somewhere continuous. Mormons are lugged in again, but the attempt is faint and helpless—“because general circumstances make it difficult to explain the presence of these tablets.”

Altogether our phantom resistance is mere attribution to the Mormons, without the slightest attempt to find base for the attribution. We think of messages that were showered upon this earth, and of messages that were cached in mounds upon this earth. The similarity to the Franklin situation is striking. Conceivably centuries from now, objects dropped from relief expedition balloons may be found in the Arctic, and conceivably there are still undiscovered caches left by Franklin, in the hope that relief expeditions would find them. It would be as incongruous to attribute these things to the Eskimos as to attribute tablets and lettered stones to the aborigines of America. Some time I shall take up an expression that the queer-shaped mounds upon this earth were built by explorers from Somewhere, unable to get back, designed to attract attention from some other world, and that a vast sword-shaped mound has been discovered upon the moon—Just now we think of lettered things and their two possible significances.

A bizarre little lost soul, rescued from one of the morgues of the
American Journal of Science:

An account, sent by a correspondent, to Prof. Silliman, of something that was found in a block of marble, taken November, 1829, from a quarry, near Philadelphia
(Am. J. Sci.,
1-19-361). The block was cut into slabs. By this process, it is said, was exposed an indentation in the stone, about one and a half inches by five-eighths of an inch. A geometric indentation: in it were two definite-looking raised letters, like “I U”: only difference is that the corners of the “U” are not rounded, but are right angles. We are told that this block of stone came from a depth of seventy or eighty feet—or that, if acceptable, this lettering was done long, long ago. To some persons, not sated with the commonness of the incredible that has to be accepted, it may seem grotesque to think that an indentation in sand could have tons of other sand piled upon it and hardening into stone, without being pressed out—but the famous Nicaraguan footprints were found in a quarry under eleven strata of solid rock. There was no discussion of this datum. We only take it out for an airing.

As to lettered stones that may once upon a time have been showered upon Europe, if we cannot accept that the stones were inscribed by indigenous inhabitants of Europe, many have been found in caves—whence they were carried as curiosities by prehistoric men, or as ornaments, I suppose. About the size and shape of the Grave Creek stone, or disk: “flat and oval and about two inches wide.” (Sollas.) Characters painted upon them: found first by M. Piette, in the cave of Mas d’Azil, Ariége. According to Sollas, they are marked in various directions with red and black lines. “But on not a few of them, more complex characters occur, which in a few instances simulate some of the capital letters of the Roman alphabet.” In one instance the letters “F E I” accompanied by no other markings to modify them, are as plain as they could be. According to Sollas
(Ancient Hunters,
p. 95) M. Cartailhac has confirmed, the observations of Piette, and M. Boule has found additional examples. “They offer one of the darkest problems of prehistoric times.” (Sollas.)