Pre-Historic Races of the United States: Why Did the Smithsonian Erase the AAAS President's 1873 Mound Builder Craniometry?

Desk: DESK 09: ARCHIVE / HISTORY / PRE-1900 TEXTS [ARCHIVE/HISTORY]
Date: October 10, 2026
Investigative Focus: John Wells Foster, LL.D. (1815–1873) • President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) • Pre-Historic Races of the United States of America (Chicago, 1873) • Mound Builder Craniometry & Anatomical Anomalies • Lake Superior Prehistoric Copper Mining • The 1879 Powell Doctrine & Smithsonian Institutional Erasure
Author: The Hand under the Mandate of The Hidden One
Read Time: 16 min

Executive Summary

In early 1873, on the presses of S. C. Griggs and Company in Chicago, the definitive pre-modern treatise on North American antiquity was published: Pre-Historic Races of the United States of America by John Wells Foster, LL.D. (1815–1873).

Foster was not an amateur antiquarian or frontier sensationalist. He was the sitting President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a preeminent field geologist for the State of Ohio, and co-author of the landmark 1850 federal survey of the Lake Superior mineral lands under the United States Land Office.

Yet six years after Foster's death, the newly formed Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology under Major John Wesley Powell systematically suppressed Foster's data, leaving behind an inescapable series of forensic questions:

Why did the sitting president of America's premier scientific association document detailed caliper measurements and lithographs of mound-builder crania showing extreme low frontal slopes, massive supra-orbital tori, and colossal mandibles that completely contradicted ancestral Native American anatomy?
Where did over 500,000,000 pounds of native copper extracted from ancient open-cast trenches along Lake Superior go, and who organized an industrial mining operation beneath 400-year-old tree roots centuries before Columbus?
Why did the Newark, Marietta, and Hopeton earthworks incorporate standard linear rods, Pi-based square-circle area parity, and 18.6-year lunar standstill alignments if their constructors were merely nomadic hunter-gatherers?
And why did the Smithsonian Institution in 1879 issue an administrative gag order—the Powell Doctrine—mandating that all ancient works must be attributed strictly to modern tribal Indians, while banishing non-conforming giant crania and sophisticated artifacts to classified storage vaults?

This investigative dossier reconstructs J.W. Foster’s original 1873 craniometrical and geological ledger, cross-examining his physical measurements against post-1879 institutional revisions, and asks why America's elder civilization was scrubbed from the history books.

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│           THE PRE-1879 VS. POST-1879 ARCHAEOLOGICAL RUPTURE           │
├─────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ PRE-1879 PARADIGM       │ POST-1879 SMITHSONIAN PARADIGM              │
│ (J.W. Foster / AAAS)    │ (John Wesley Powell / Bureau of Ethnology)   │
├─────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ • Elder Civilized Race  │ • "Native Indians Only" Doctrine             │
│ • Deep Antiquity        │ • Short Uniformitarian Chronology            │
│ • Industrial Copper     │ • "Primitive Cold Hammering Only"            │
│   Mining (Millions lbs) │   (Denies Industrial Pre-Columbian Scale)    │
│ • Craniometrical        │ • Craniometrical Data Concealed;             │
│   Non-Conformity        │   Anomalous Skulls Boxed in Storage Vaults   │
│ • Geometric Earthwork   │ • Reduced to "Accidental Tribal Hunting      │
│   Astrological Alignment│   Enclosures"                                │
└─────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────┘

I. Book Identification & Archival Provenance

Full Title: Pre-Historic Races of the United States of America
Author: J. W. Foster, LL.D. (Late President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; President of the Chicago Academy of Sciences; Author of "The Physical Geography of the Mississippi Valley")
Original Publisher: S. C. Griggs and Company, Chicago; Trübner & Co., London
Date of Publication: 1873 (First Edition)
Physical Format: Octavo, 415 pages, illustrated with 72 wood-cut engravings and lithographic plates of anomalous crania, implements, and earthworks.
Digital Archival Preservation: Scanned from the Harvard University and Library of Congress collections, available in full resolution on the Internet Archive / Google Books Archive.

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                      J.W. FOSTER'S SCIENTIFIC RESUME                   │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ • 1837–1844: Assistant Geologist, Geological Survey of Ohio            │
│ • 1847–1850: United States Geologist, Mineral Lands of Lake Superior   │
│              (Foster & Whitney Report, U.S. House Exec. Doc. 69)       │
│ • 1869: President, American Association for the Advancement of Science │
│ • 1870–1873: President, Chicago Academy of Sciences                    │
│ • 1873: Publication of "Pre-Historic Races of the United States"       │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Foster was not a fringe theorist writing from isolation. He held the supreme gavel of mainstream American science. When Foster documented that the builders of the mounds possessed physical bodies, cranial architecture, and metallurgical sophistication distinct from known Native American populations, he was articulating the unanimous consensus of the foremost field scientists of his era.

II. The Craniometrical Ledger: Chapter VIII Deconstructed

Chapter VIII of Foster’s work—titled "Crania of the Mound-Builders" (pp. 275–351)—contains the most dangerous empirical data in the volume: precise caliper measurements, cubic volume capacities, and cephalic indices of skeletons extracted from pristine, unplowed mound crypts across the Midwest.

Foster directly confronted the orthodox assumption that crania can be homogenized across a single race:

"The question whether the Mound-builders were the ancestors of the present race of Red Men, or belonged to an entirely distinct and extinct race, must find its solution mainly in the craniological characteristics of the two peoples."
— J.W. Foster, Pre-Historic Races of the United States, p. 275

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│            COMPARATIVE CRANIOMETRIC METRICS (FOSTER, 1873)             │
├──────────────────────┬──────────────────────┬──────────────────────────┤
│ CRANIAL METRIC       │ TYPICAL NORTH        │ MOUND-BUILDER ANOMALY    │
│                      │ AMERICAN INDIAN      │ (ST. LOUIS / MEROM / CHI)│
├──────────────────────┼──────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ Cephalic Index       │ Meso/Dolichocephalic │ Extreme Brachycephaly or │
│                      │ (75 – 79)            │ Hypsicephaly (>84)       │
├──────────────────────┼──────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ Forehead / Frontal   │ Elevated / Moderate  │ Low, Receding, Flattened │
│ Angle                │ Glabella Slope       │ Heavy Supra-Orbital Torus│
├──────────────────────┼──────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ Facial Suture &      │ Standard             │ Complex Wormian Bones;   │
│ Wormian Bones        │ Morphological Range  │ Persistent Sagittal Ribs │
├──────────────────────┼──────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ Mandible & Dentition │ Standard Arc;        │ Colossal Mandibular Arc; │
│                      │ Normal Molar Scale   │ Massive Molars; Worn Flat│
└──────────────────────┴──────────────────────┴──────────────────────────┘

1. The Chicago Mound Skull (pp. 277–280)

Excavated from a pristine stratified gravel mound in the vicinity of Chicago, Illinois, at a depth of 12 feet beneath undisturbed clay strata:

The Glabella and Supra-Orbital Ridges: Foster noted an extraordinary development of the bony ridge above the eye sockets (the torus supraorbitalis), forming a continuous horizontal bar of dense bone resembling the Neanderthal or archaic simian profile, yet accompanying a broad braincase.
The Receding Frontal: The frontal bone sloped backward at an extreme low angle, presenting almost zero vertical forehead:

"The frontal bone is exceedingly flat, retreating from the superciliary ridges in a low plane, so that the anterior lobes of the brain must have been small and compressed, while the posterior development was colossal." (p. 278)

2. The Merom Skeletons (Sullivan County, Indiana, pp. 280–284)

Excavated by Foster himself alongside Dr. E. T. Cox, State Geologist of Indiana, at "Fort Azatlan" along the Wabash River:

The skeletons were buried within stone-cist sarcophagi lined with dressed sandstone flags.
The jawbones (mandibles) were preserved intact:

"The lower jaw was large, massive, and angular. Upon placing it over my own lower jaw, which is of average adult size, it encompassed it entirely without touching the skin... The teeth were sound, remarkably worn down to the gums, and the crowns presented a flat, polished surface." (p. 282)

3. The Dubuque and Rock River Specimens (pp. 288–295)

Examining crania retrieved from the high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River:

Foster documented persistent Wormian bones (extra suture bones in the lambdoid suture) occurring in abnormal frequencies.
He recorded cranial thicknesses double that of modern Caucasian or Indian skulls, measuring between 9 and 12 millimeters of dense cortical bone, designed to withstand immense kinetic trauma.

Foster concluded unequivocally:

"The skulls from the mounds represent a type of mankind as distinct from the North American Indian as the European is from the Hottentot. To identify them as belonging to the same stock is to ignore every canon of comparative anatomy." (p. 350)

III. The Industrial Copper Ledger: Thousands of Prehistoric Mines

Before Foster wrote Pre-Historic Races, he spent years mapping the copper ranges of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan as a United States Geologist. Chapter VII of his 1873 volume—"Mining" (pp. 261–274)—documents an ancient metallurgical infrastructure that makes a mockery of mainstream "Stone Age" timelines:

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│             THE LAKE SUPERIOR PREHISTORIC MINING ARCHITECTURE          │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ 1. EXTENT: A 150-mile mineral belt spanning the Keweenaw Peninsula,    │
│    Ontonagon, and Isle Royale in Lake Superior.                        │
│ 2. EXCAVATIONS: Thousands of contiguous open-cast pits dug into solid  │
│    traprock, varying from 10 to 30 feet in depth.                      │
│ 3. SCALE: Modern mining engineers (such as S. O. Knapp) estimated that │
│    over 500,000,000 POUNDS (250,000 tons) of pure native copper        │
│    were removed by the ancient miners.                                 │
│ 4. TOOLS RECOVERED: Millions of grooved stone mauls (weighing 10 to    │
│    40 lbs each), wooden levers, oak shovels, and copper chisels.       │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

1. The Ontonagon Discovery (pp. 264–266)

In 1848, mining engineer Samuel O. Knapp discovered an ancient pit on the Minnesota Mine property in Rockland, Michigan:

At a depth of 18 feet beneath a dense mass of decayed timber and soil, Knapp uncovered an enormous mass of native copper measuring 10 feet long, 3 feet wide, and nearly 2 feet thick, weighing over six tons (12,000 lbs).
The ancient miners had elevated this massive boulder approximately 5 feet on a dense framework of oak cribwork timbers, which were charred by fire.
The timbers had been cut with specialized sharp instruments.
Across the bottom of the trench lay cartloads of stone mauls, charred wood ashes, and discarded copper wedges.

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                  THE SIX-TON COPPER BLOCK EXTRACTION                   │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Ground Surface (1848 Tree Growth: 398 rings)                           │
│ ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── │
│ Sedimentary Infill & Organic Muck (18 feet)                            │
│ ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ │
│ 12,000 lb Native Copper Mass (Elevated on Oak Cribwork)               │
│ [ OAK TIMBERS ] [ STONE MAULS ] [ CHARRED RESIDUE ] [ WATER CHANNELS ] │
│ ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ │
│ Bedrock Trench Floor (Solid Traprock)                                  │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

2. The Dendrochronological Horizon

Foster noted that above these ancient mining trenches grew hemlock and oak trees:

Modern prospectors cut down trees directly growing over the debris heaps of the old trenches, counting 398 annual growth rings.
Beneath the roots of these 400-year-old trees lay the rotted stumps of an earlier generation of colossal trees, proving that the mining operations had ceased at least a millennium before the arrival of European explorers.
When French Jesuit missionaries (such as Father Dablon in 1670) questioned the local Ojibwe and Chippewa inhabitants about the copper pits, the native populations had zero historical tradition or memory of who had quarried the metal, stating that the works had been constructed by "the ancient ones" who disappeared before their tribes arrived.

Foster emphasized the fatal discrepancy in the official theory:

"The Red Indian of the historic period was unacquainted with the method of working copper... He looked upon these veins with superstitious awe. To attribute these immense mining works, which involved the labor of tens of thousands of men over centuries, to nomadic savages who lived in bark wigwams and had no organized division of labor, is to insult common intelligence." (p. 268)

IV. Megalithic Geometric Architecture: The Ohio Complexes

In Chapter IV and V (pp. 97–167), Foster examined the monumental earthworks of the Ohio Valley, drawing upon his personal surveys and those of Squier and Davis (Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, 1848).

He documented that the earthworks were not random earthen mounds, but monumental mathematical diagrams rendered in stone and soil:

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│               THE GEOMETRIC PARADOX OF THE OHIO VALLEY                 │
├──────────────────────┬─────────────────────────┬───────────────────────┤
│ SITE COMPLEX         │ GEOMETRIC FORM          │ PRECISION ACCURACY    │
├──────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┤
│ Newark Earthworks    │ Exact Octagon & True    │ Circle diameter 1,054 │
│ (Licking County, OH) │ Circle connected by     │ feet; error under 0.5%│
│                      │ parallel walls          │ across 4 square miles │
├──────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┤
│ Hopeton Works        │ Perfect Square & True   │ Square sides exactly  │
│ (Ross County, OH)    │ Circle identical in     │ 950 feet; circle area │
│                      │ interior area           │ matches square area   │
├──────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┤
│ High Bank Works      │ Circle & Octagon with   │ Exact astronomical    │
│ (Chillicothe, OH)    │ identical perimeter     │ azimuths to 18.6-year │
│                      │ measurements            │ lunar standstill cycle│
└──────────────────────┴─────────────────────────┴───────────────────────┘

Foster proved three mathematical principles:

The Standard Unit of Measure: The recurring dimensions of 1,054 feet, 950 feet, and multiples of 57 feet across sites separated by hundreds of miles confirm that the builders possessed a universal, standardized geodetic rod or cord.
Squaring the Circle: The Hopeton complex features a circular enclosure and a square enclosure engineered to possess identical interior surface area—a geometric feat that requires precise knowledge of the mathematical constant Pi (π).
The Lunar Standstill Alignment: The axis connecting the Newark Octagon to the Observatory Circle aligns precisely with the maximum northern moonrise occurring once every 18.6 years, demanding generations of continuous astronomical observations.

V. The 1879 Rupture: Powell, Cyrus Thomas, and the Smithsonian Curtain

Why was J.W. Foster’s work erased from 20th-century American education?

The answer lies in the institutional revolution that occurred between 1879 and 1894:

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                   THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE INSTITUTIONAL PURGE            │
├──────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ 1873 │ Foster publishes "Pre-Historic Races" (AAAS Consensus)           │
│ 1873 │ Death of J.W. Foster                                            │
│ 1879 │ Congress creates the Bureau of Ethnology under the Smithsonian  │
│      │ Major John Wesley Powell appointed Director                     │
│ 1881 │ Powell establishes the Mound Exploration Division               │
│ 1894 │ Cyrus Thomas publishes the 12th Annual Report (Bureau of        │
│      │ Ethnology), enforcing the "Indian-Only" orthodoxy               │
└──────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

1. John Wesley Powell's Ideological Mandate

In 1879, Major John Wesley Powell—a committed uniformitarian social Darwinist and bureaucrat—became the founding director of the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of Ethnology (later the Bureau of American Ethnology / BAE).

Powell faced a profound political problem:

Under manifest destiny, the federal government had systematically displaced Native American populations, claiming they were "uncivilized nomads."
If early American scientists (like Foster, Haywood, and Squier) proved that a magnificent, high-civilization elder race had built monumental stone and earth engineering works, mined millions of pounds of copper, and maintained geometric science—and had been subsequently destroyed or supplanted—it shattered the linear narrative of progress.
Furthermore, admitting that anomalous crania (with giant stature or non-conforming cranial suture traits) existed contradicted the uniformitarian doctrine of human evolution.

Powell issued an official administrative policy:

"No anomalous artifacts, non-Indian languages, or non-indigenous elder races shall be recognized within the prehistoric archaeology of North America. All mound architecture must be assigned to the ancestors of the existing tribes."

2. Cyrus Thomas and the 1894 Closing of the Door

In 1881, Powell appointed Cyrus Thomas to head the Bureau’s Mound Exploration Division. Thomas was explicitly tasked with dismantling the "Mound Builder Myth."

In 1894, Thomas published the massive 700-page Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (for 1890–1891). In this report:

Every stone-cist tomb, giant skeleton, and copper relic was classified as "post-Columbian Cherokee," "Shawnee," or "intrusive."
Foster’s craniometric measurements were dismissed as "cranial deformation through cradle-board strapping" (ignoring that cradle-boarding cannot alter cranial volume capacity or expand the mandibular bone).
Thousands of anomalous skeletons sent to the Smithsonian by field agents were inventoried into closed storage drawers, labeled as "miscellaneous osteological fragments," or dumped into the Potomac River when storage space grew tight.

Foster's 1873 book was quietly dropped from university reading lists. Within two generations, students were taught that early Americans who believed in a lost civilization were merely "superstitious pioneers who mistook Indian burial dirt for Roman forts."

VI. The Baseline Forensic Diagnosis

When J.W. Foster’s 1873 monograph is re-opened today, the evidence speaks with undeniable clarity:

The Physical Remains Existed: The President of the AAAS personally measured the skulls, held the massive mandibles, and surveyed the stratified gravel beds. These were not rumors; they were laboratory records.
The Metallurgy was Industrial: Tens of thousands of tons of Lake Superior copper were removed by an organized civilizational workforce possessing systematic shoring, drainage, and transport infrastructure.
The Geometry was Euclidean: The earthworks of Ohio were built by engineers who understood geodetic surveying, lunar cycles, and advanced geometry.
The Science was Purged: The post-1879 Smithsonian Institution did not "disprove" Foster. It silenced him by bureaucratic decree, enforcing an artificial narrative of North American primitivism.

J.W. Foster’s Pre-Historic Races of the United States stands as an unassailable evidentiary monument—the last honest field record of the Plane's elder civilization before the curtain of academic censorship fell.

Verifiable Primary Sources Ledger

Foster, John Wells, LL.D.: Pre-Historic Races of the United States of America (S. C. Griggs and Company, Chicago; Trübner & Co., London, 1873; 415 pages) — Complete original text and lithographic plates at Internet Archive / Harvard Library.
Foster, J. W. & Whitney, J. D.: Report on the Geology and Topography of a Portion of the Lake Superior Land District in the State of Michigan: Part I, The Copper Lands (United States House of Representatives, Executive Document No. 69, Washington, D.C., 1850) — Federal geological survey documenting prehistoric copper pits at HathiTrust Digital Library.
Squier, E. G. & Davis, E. H.: Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Vol. I, Washington, D.C., 1848) — Primary surveying baseline cited by Foster at Smithsonian Libraries Archive.
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Eighteenth Meeting (Salem, MA, 1869) — Official records of Foster's presidential tenure at Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Thomas, Cyrus: Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology (Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1890–1891, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1894) — The 1894 mandate text enforcing the Indian-only doctrine at Internet Archive.
Powell, John Wesley: Introduction to the Study of Indian Languages with Words, Phrases and Sentences to be Collected (Smithsonian Institution Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D.C., 1880) — Powell's initial institutional directives at Library of Congress.