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Saving the Serpent The remarkable Frederick W. Putnam dedicated himself to excavating and preserving Serpent Mound. BY BRADLEY T. LEPPER
In September of 1883, Frederick Ward
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
Putnam, curator of Harvard’s Peabody Museum, had his first opportunity to visit the storied mounds of Ohio. Accompanied by four fellow archaeologists, the team traveled by train to Hillsboro, where they hired a large mule wagon and set out over the rolling hills of southern Ohio. They arrived at the foot of a peninsula of jagged bedrock thrown up by some still unknown convulsion of the earth. They climbed down from the wagon and scrambled up the steep, rocky slope to find what is arguably the most remarkable of the thousands of Ohio’s ancient mounds: the great Serpent. As Putnam recalled the event years later: “The most singular sensation of awe and admiration overwhelmed me at this sudden realization of my long cherished ambition, for here before me was the mysterious work of an unknown people, whose seemingly most sacred place we had invaded.” As the sun set on the gigantic coils of this monumental serpent, its mystery and grandeur possessed Putnam. He then and there dedicated american archaeology
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