Portsmouth Ohio's and Avebury England Henge Decoded - Druid's Water and Solar Cult

  Let us consider the water cult.  It seems to have existed in the Ohio Valley but was closely connected with the solar cult, the ceremonies of that cult requiring the presence of water to make it complete. The water cult we recognize between some of the earthworks in Southern Ohio are identical to those in Great Britain.
  The first group of works that be shall cite is the one at Portsmouth.  The chief evidence is given by the avenues or the covered ways, which seem to have connected the enclosures on different sides of the river.  These, by the aid of the ferry across the river, must have been the scene of an extensive religious procession, which can be compared to nothing better than the mysterious procession of Druid priests, which once characterized the sacrifices to the sun among the ancient works of Great Britain.
   It is in the middle group that we discover the phallic symbol, the fire cult, the crescent of the moon and the sun circle. In the works of the west bank of the Scioto we find the effigy enclosed in a circle as a sign of animal worship, and in the concentric circles with the enclosed conical mound, on the Kentucky side, we find the symbols of sun worship.

The water cult was combined with the solar cult at the great works at Avebury, England; the avenues passed over Kennet Creek before they reached the circle at Beckhampton; the same is true at Stanton Druew and at Mount murray, in the Isle of Man.  In each of these places were coverede avenues reaching across the marshy ground toward the circles.
   At the circles were alters, whereon human sacrifice may have been offered to the sun; but the avenues mark the place through which procession passed in making their sacrifices, - a passage over water being essential to the ceremony.
   This is significant in connection with the works at Portsmouth.  here the avenues approach the river in such a way as to show that a canoe ferry was used to cross the river, the ceremony being made more significant by those means.

As additional evidence that the works at Portsmouth were devoted to the water cult and were similar to those at Avebury in Great Britain, we would again refer to the character of the works at either end of the avenues. It can be proven that the most striking features at Avebury are duplicated here; the sun symbol being embodied in the concentric circles upon the Kentucky side; the phallic symbol in the horseshoe mounds upon the Ohio side and the avenues of standing stones correspond to the covered ways which connected the enclosures on the Kentucky side with that of the Ohio side.

We have dwelt upon these peculiarities of the works at Portsmouth for the very reason that they seem to prove the existence of a water cult, and because it so closely resembles those in which the water cult has been recognized in Great Britain. We maintain, however, that it was as cult which was associated with sun worship and that the phallic symbol was embodied here. We maintain that sacrifices were offered to the sun, and that the human victims were kept in the corral one one side of the river; that they were transported across the water and carried up to the third terrrace, and immolated near the horseshoe, and that afterward the procession passed down the terrace, through the avenue, across the river, a second times, and mounted the spiral pathway to the summit of the terraced mound situated at the end of the avenue.

 Did the Adena Giant Mound Builders Construct a Bridge Over the  Ohio River?

At the Portsmouth, Ohio mound and sacred via complex, the parallel walls extend to the Ohio River and continue on the other bank.  This would imply that a bridge continued the sacred via across the river?  The following account given by the Iroquois Indians about the giants being bridge builders may confirm a little talked about a hypothesis.

Iroquois Legend
   In Iroquois hydrography, Ohio—the great river of the ancient Alligewi (Adena) domain—is the central stream to which all the rivers of the mighty West converge. This stream the emigrants now attempted to cross. They found, according to the native annalist, a rude bridge in a huge grape-vine which trailed its length across the stream. Over this, a part of the company passed, and then, unfortunately, the vine broke. The residue, unable to cross, remained on the hither side, and became afterward the enemies of those who had passed over. Cusick anticipates that his story of the grape-vine may seem to some incredible; but he asks, with amusing simplicity, "why more so than that the Israelites should cross the Red Sea on dry land?" That the precise incident, thus frankly admitted to be of a miraculous character, really took place, we are not required to believe. But that emigrants of the Huron-Iroquois stock penetrated southward along the Allegheny range, and that some of them remained near the river of that name, is an undoubted fact. Those who thus remained were known by various names, mostly derived from one root—Andastes, Andastogues, Conestogas, and the like—and bore a somewhat memorable part in Iroquois and Pennsylvanian history. Those who continued their course beyond the river found no place sufficiently inviting to arrest their march until they arrived at the fertile vales which spread, intersected by many lucid streams, between the Roanoke and the Neuse rivers. Here they fixed their abode and became the ancestors of the powerful Tuscarora nation. In the early part of the eighteenth century, just before its disastrous war with the colonies, this nation, according to the Carolina surveyor, Lawson, numbered fifteen towns, and could set in the field a force of twelve hundred warriors.

Larger Horseshoe Shaped Earthwork Diagramed at Portsmouth, Ohio "The Door of Life"

Larger Horseshoe Shaped Earthwork Diagramed at Portsmouth, Ohio  "The Door of Life"

   The horseshoe symbol was used as an ancient religious symbol in Assyrian and Egyptian hieroglyphs meant to signify the enigmatic “door of life”. 

Late 1800s Scioto County, map depicts a third horseshoe-shaped earthwork to the south as large as the two above it to the north.  

Map drawn by Squire and Davis in  1846 for "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley" shows the earthwork's opening facing the northwest and much smaller.

Abraham Lincoln's Ohio Mound Tour

Abraham Lincoln's Ohio Mound Tour

    In December of 1848, Abraham Lincoln returned to Washington D.C. from Springfield. He took a boat to the Cahokia Mounds and then to Portsmouth, Ohio where he arranged to stay with an abolitionist family in Sargents Station, north of Portsmouth. Earlier that year Squire and Davis had published," Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," that was distributed to members of Congress. 
   Abraham Lincoln visited the Portsmouth Earthwork Complex, probably stopping at the Tremper Effigy Mound and the Seal Township earthworks that were located in front of the house of the Barnes family in Sargents Station. 

In 1848 the axis-mundi of the sacred vias was still visible with a large burial mound to the west of the horseshoe-shaped works.  It is not known of Lincoln ferried across the Ohio River to Kentucky to examine the mound surrounded by circular earthworks and large square earthwork with to parallel earthworks extending from it.

The Sacred Vias extended across the Ohio River to the square earthwork that was 800 feet in length per side.  The Sacred Vias were both 2100 feet in length.

The Seal Township earthwork incorporated the same dimension as the Kentucky square earthwork of 800 feet per side.  The diameter of the Seal Township circle was 1050 feet which are half of the Kentucky Square's Sacred Vias.

   Native Americans had no system of measure of linking space and time, distance and direction. A measure of a hand or a days walk was about as precise as they needed. This is just one piece of evidence that these earthworks were not constructed by Native Americans.

Evidence of Human Sacrifice at the Portsmouth, Ohio Earthworks

The Children's Home was constructed in 1876 and is now part of "Mounds Park."

Prehistoric America, 1905

   Mr. T. W.Kinney says the mound, which was a natural elevation, was selected as the site for a children's house. In excavating the cellar there was discovered a circular altar composed of stones which were standing close together and showed evidence of heat.  This altar was four feet below the surface. leading from the altar was a channel about eighteen inches wide, composed of clay, which was designed to "Carry off the blood," giving the idea that human sacrifices were offered here, as upon the alters of Avebury, England

The site of the Children's Home where the stone altar was located is to the west of the "road" and north of the cemetery.

Avebury, England, and Portsmouth, Ohio Sister Druid Earthworks

Avebury, England, and Portsmouth, Ohio Sister Druid Earthworks

The similarities between the Avebury Serpentine work and Portsmouth are striking. Grand avenues that are draped over a solar symbol representing the rejuvenation of the solar deity. 


    In Wiltshire, England, are prehistoric remains of great extent supposed to be the work of the Druids.
    The so-called " Temple of Abury consisted originally of a grand circumvallation of earth 1,250 feet in diameter, enclosing an area of upwards of twenty-two acres.  It has an inner ditch, and the height of the embankment, measuring from the bottom of the ditch, is seventeen feet. It is quite regular, though not an exact circle in form, and has four entrances placed at unequal distances apart, though nearly at right angles to each other. Within this grand circle were originally two double or concentric circles, composed of massive upright stones; a row of large stones, one hundred in number, was placed upon the inner brow of the ditch. Extending upon either hand from this grand central structure, were parallel lines of huge upright stones, constituting upon each side, avenues upwards of a mile in length. These formed the body of the serpent. Each avenue consisted of two hundred stones. The head of the serpent was represented by an oval structure, consisting of two concentric lines of upright stones; the outer line containing forty, the inner eighteen stones. This head rests on an eminence * * * from which is commanded a view of the entire structure, winding back for more than two miles to the point of the tail. * * * About midway, in a right line between the extremities of the avenues, is placed a huge mound of earth, known as Silbury Hill, [which] is supposed by some, Dr. Stukely among the number, to be a monumental structure erected over the bones of a King or Arch-Druid." — Squier, 234. " The circumference of the [above] hill, as near the base as possible, measured two thousand and twenty-seven feet, the diameter at top one hundred and twenty feet, the sloping height three hundred and sixteen feet, and the perpendicular height one hundred and seventy feet." It contains over 13,500.000 cubic feet. — Hoare,

Stone Altar for Human Sacrifice Discovered at the Portsmouth Ancient Ceremonial Earthen Temple

Stone Altar for Human Sacrifice Discovered at the Portsmouth Ancient Ceremonial Earthen Temple

Photo shows the Children's home in the background with the horseshoe-shaped work in the foreground.

Prehistoric America, 1905
Mr. T. W.Kinney says the mound, which was a natural elevation, was selected as the site for a children's house. In excavating the cellar there was discovered a circular altar composed of stones which were standing close together, and showed evidence of heat.  This altar was four feet below the surface. leading from the altar was a channel about eighteen inches wide, composed of clay, which was designed to "Carry off the blood,' giving the idea that human sacrifices were offered here, as upon the altars of Avebury, England.

The Children's home and the site of the altar for human sacrifice was within the circular earthwork to the north of the horseshoe-shaped earthworks.

Iroquois Legend of a Bridge Spanning the Ohio River Constructed by the Adena. Portsmouth?

Iroquois Legend of a Bridge Spanning the Ohio River Constructed by the Adena. Portsmouth?

Iroquois Book of Rites, 1883
    "In Iroquois hydrography, the Ohio--the great river of the ancient Alligewi domain--is the central stream to which all the rivers of the mighty West converge. This stream the emigrants now attempted to cross. They found, according to the native annalist, a rude bridge in a huge grape-vine which trailed its length across the stream. Over this a part of the company passed, and then, unfortunately, the vine broke. The residue, unable to cross, remained on the hither side, and became afterwards the enemies of those who had passed over."