I hope someone brighter than I will elucidate, but my puny memory has it that the powers of government are enumerated in the body of the Constitution, while the rights of the individual citizens were outlined in the Amendments because it was deemed that they were not adequately protected in the Constitution.
Correct. Some states refused to ratify the U.S. Constitution without a Bill of Rights, though it was argued that one wasn't necessary -- ie., if the federal government wasn't given the power, for example, to regulate speech, then they couldn't regulate speech.
But the Bill of Rights only applied to the federal government, meaning Congress couldn't pass legislation infringing on the rights outlined in amendments 1-8. States were free to do so, provided their state constitutions allowed it.
That all changed 150 years later.