280 EVIDENCE OF ANCIENT POPULATION. 



in Alabama, which is forty-five feet in height by four hundred 

 and forty feet in circumference at the base, with a level area 

 at the summit of one hundred and fifty feet in circumference; 

 the still greater mound on the Etowah river, also in Alabama, 

 which has a height of more than seventy- five feet, with a 

 circumference of twelve hundred feet at the base, and one 

 hundred and forty at the summit ; the embankments at the 

 mouth of the Scioto river, which are estimated to be twenty 

 miles in length ; the great mound at Selserstown, Mississippi, 

 which covers six acres of ground ; and the truncated pyramid 

 at Cahokia, to which we have already alluded ; these works, 

 and many others which might have been quoted, indicate a 

 population both large and stationary ; for which hunting 

 cannot have supplied enough food, as it has been estimated 

 that in a forest country each hunter requires an area of not 

 less than 50,000 acres for his support; and which must, there- 

 fore, have derived its support, in a great measure, from agri- 

 culture. " There is not," say Messrs. Squier and Davis, " and 

 there was not in the sixteenth century, a single tribe of Indians 

 (north of the semi-civilized nations) between the Atlantic and 

 the Pacific, which had means of subsistence sufficient to enable 

 them to apply, for such purposes, the unproductive labour 

 necessary for the work ; nor was there any in such a social 

 state as to compel the labour of the people to be thus applied." 

 We know also that many, if not most of the Indian tribes, at 

 that time still cultivated the ground to a certain extent, and 

 there is some evidence that, even within historic times, this 

 was more the case than at present. Thus De Nonville esti- 

 mates the amount of Indian corn destroyed by him in four 

 Seneca villages at 1,200,000 quarters. 



Mr. Lapham* has brought forward some ingenious reasons 

 for thinking that the forests of Wisconsin were at no very 

 distant period much less general than at present. In the first 



* 1. c. p. 90. 



