Portage County Race of Gigantic Beings
Race of Gigantic Beings
These mysterious dwellers of a long-forgotten age, called Mound-Builders, in lieu of a more accurate designation, evidently possessed a civilization distinctive of themselves, and that they used a written language appears entirely probable, from some peculiar hieroglyphic characters discovered upon their pottery ware and stone implements. But, beyond their almost imperishable monuments, the archaeologist seeks in vain for a further solution of the grand problem of the coming, the life, and the exodus or decay of this mysterious race. On opening a mound, he finds only moldering skeletons, scattered and shattered remnants of vessels of earthenware, rude weapons of warfare, axes of stone, flint drills, spear-heads, and bottles of irregular, yet finished workmanship, cut and polished from extremely hard stone, never, or rarely, indigenous to the spot where found, showing the owners of them to have been an essentially migratory people, or a conquering nation, shifting about from place to place, yet leaving monuments behind them whose imperishability is not inferior to that of Cheops.
They usually contain the bones of one or more skeletons, accompanied by ornaments and implements of stone, mica, slate, shell or obsidian, besides pottery, whole and fragmentary, bone and copper beads, and the bones of animals.
There are few traces left of the Mound-Builders in Portage County, although at an early day in the settlement of this section, many small tumuli were observed, which the plow has long since almost entirely obliterated. Still, there are eminences in various sections in the northern and southeastern portions of the county which seemingly owe their origin more to the labors of man than nature.
These Bones and they are are usually large wherever found indicate that the Mound-Builders were a gigantic race of Beings, fully according in size with the collossal remains that they left behind them.
Less than one hundred years ago there was not a single white inhabitant a permanent settler throughout the length and breadth of the State of Ohio; less than eighty-seven years ago there was not a single white person in Portage County. Could those who only see this country as it now is, borrow the eyes of those who helped make the transformation, their amazement could not be depicted by words. In place of the now smiling fields and comfortable homes, naught but a vast wilderness of forest would greet the sight. The true story of the first settlement of Portage County has never been told. Those early pioneers were not seeking fortunes, nor fame; they were intent only on making a home for their children, and from that laudable impelling motive has arisen the splendid structure of Western civilization we see all around us. It is astonishing how rapidly accurate and reliable information concerning the pioneer days is perishing.
- History of Portage County, Ohio. Chicago Warner, Beers & Company 1885) Transcribed by: Richard Ramos
- History of Portage County, Ohio 1885. “A Gigantic Race of Beings.” Encyclopaedia of Ancient Giants. p395