Pg 588

         ANTIQUITIES. The pre-historic inhabitants of Louisa County have left traces that are worthy of more than a passing mention. It is to be regretted some of them have been almost, if not entirely, obliterated, and there has even been no care taken to preserve by sketches or otherwise the outline of those of most interest. The “old fort” at Toolsboro stood on ground now enclosed in a field that has been in cultivation fifty years, and the embankment is now completely leveled. The sketch given herewith is made from memory, more than forty years after having traced the outline of the embankment. The village of Toolsboro stands on the summit of a high bluff, which at this place makes an obtuse angle, on the east overlooking the Iowa River, which runs near the base of the bluff, and on the north overlooking the Mississippi, which is distant about one and three-quarters miles, the interval being low bottom land, most of which was originally covered with a dense growth of large timber.

From near the angle of the bluff running northwest is a range of mounds, nine in number, and near the last was the northeast entrance to the “fort.” This embankment, of which scarcely a trace remains, was in the form of an octagon with incurved sides, and when first seen by white men was easily traced, its full circumference being in places nearly level with the surrounding surface, and in others at least five feet in height, with a ditch on the outside. It was about or a little more than a quarter of a mile in diameter, and had two entrances, the one on the south was protected by a mound in front of the opening. This mound was long ago entirely leveled, as it stood in the public road. From this entrance a path led southward to a spring. The entrance on the north also opened into a path which led to a spring on the side of the bluff. This path seemed to have been a deep “covered way.”

Around this embankment and in many places in the neighborhood were found fragments of ancient pottery of a very peculiar make, always thin, very dark in color, thickly interspersed with fine particles of shell, and nearly always ornamented with geometric designs. Flint arrowheads, stone axes and similar relics have been frequently found. In the mounds have been found skeletons, arrowhead and pipes of many forms, some of the latter showing much artistic skill, among them fair carvings in stone of various birds and animals.

There are other mounds along the bluff southward, and in the northeastern part of the county, north of Grand View, along the margin of the bluff or near it, are found a number of small mounds, from one of which was exhumed the “elephant pipe,” which has been the subject of controversy between the savants of the Smithsonian Institute and the Davenport Academy of Science, the former claiming the pipe to be bogus, and the latter as strongly insisting on its being a bona fide piece of antiquity.

Pg 589

There is no doubt but that the pipe was found as represented, and that it is the work of some race that occupied the land before the Indians. This pipe is found figured in Eugene Donelly’s work “Atlantis,” and is there referred to as a proof that the original occupants of this country had “seen the elephant,” and that consequently there had at some time existed a land communication across the Atlantic between the two continents. Taking into consideration the fact that at a moderate depth below the surface at Wapello and other parts of the county, teeth, tusks and other portions of large animals, very much resembling the modern elephant, but exceeding him in size, have been frequently found, it is hardly necessary to imagine a connection with the Eastern Continent to account for the acquaintance of these “oldest inhabitants with elephantine forms.”