The Great War to Exterminate the Ancient Giants in the Ohio Valley

History of Marietta and Washington County, Ohio 1902

     

    The history of this West is a long history of war, from the earliest days even to our own century. This territory between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi is one of the greatest battlefields in the world. It is certainly the oldest and most renowned in our America. The first of our race to enter it looked ‘with wondering eyes upon the monstrous earthen forts of a prehistoric race whom we have named from the relics they left behind the Mound Builders.” Of this race the Indians knew nothing, save what the legends handed down by their fathers told of a race of giants which was driven out of the Central West, and sent flying down the Ohio and Mississippi to reappear no more in human history. Antiquarians find that these forts and mausoleums reveal little in addition to the bloody story told by crude implements of war, of old, unhappy, far off things And battles long ago. In certain instances, great piles of human bones are found at strategic revetment angles where the heaviest attack was made and stoutest resistance encountered. Here bones are sometimes found pierced by death-dealing arrowheads. What power hurled the flints of these warriors of prehistoric days? The Indian legend, that they were giants in strength, is easily believed. Nowhere else on the continent are found such forts as were ‘built by these ancient defenders of the Central West.