264 SACRED ENCLOSURES. 



ing mark between military and religious works. But Catlin 

 expressly tells us that in a Mandan village, which he describes, 

 the ditch was on the inner side of the embankment, and the 

 warriors were thus sheltered while they shot their arrows 

 through the stockade. We see, therefore, that in America, 

 at least, this is no reliable guide. 



While, however, the defensive earthworks occupy hill tops 

 and other situations most easy to defend, the so-called sacred 

 enclosures are generally found on " the broad and level river 

 bottoms, seldom occurring upon the table-lands or where the 

 surface of the ground is undulating or broken." They are 

 usually square or circular in form ; a circular enclosure being 

 often combined with one or two squares. Occasionally they 

 are isolated, but more frequently in groups. The greater 

 number of the circles are of small size, with a nearly uniform 

 diameter of two hundred and fifty or three hundred feet, 

 and the ditch is invariably inside the wall. Some of the 

 circles, however, are much larger, enclosing fifty acres or more. 

 The squares or other rectangular works never have a ditch, 

 and the earth of which they are composed appears to have 

 been taken up evenly from the surface, or from large pits in 

 the neighbourhood. They vary much in size ; five or six of 

 them, however, are " exact squares, each side measuring one 

 thousand and eighty feet a coincidence which could not pos- 

 sibly be accidental, and which must possess some significance." 

 The circles also, in spite of their great size, are so nearly 

 round, that the American archseologists consider themselves 

 justified in concluding that the mound-builders must have 

 had some standard of measurement, and some means of de- 

 termining angles. 



The most remarkable group is that near Newark, in the 

 Scioto Valley, which covers an area of four square miles ! A 

 plan of these gigantic works is given by Messrs. Squier and 

 Davis, and another, from a later survey, by Mr. Wilson. 



