6o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



coverics of Dr. Koch in Missouri, and by the "elci^hant-pipe " lately 

 brought to light in Louisa County, Iowa.* 



Some of these characteristics it is only necessary to name, to en- 

 able any one to recognize also their belonging to the red-men who 

 were here when Columbus discovered America, and who j^robably are 

 identical with the SkrelUngs seen by the Norse adventurer, Thorwald 

 Ericson, in 1002, described as having sallow-colored, ill-looking faces, 

 ugly heads of hair, large eyes, and broad cheeks, coming to his ship 

 in canoes for purposes of trade, but becoming hostile and treacherous. 

 The various tribes into which the red-men were, and still are, divided, 

 extended over the whole territory that is known to have been occupied 

 by the mound-builders. 



That they were an agricultural people, although given to warlike 

 expeditions, and to long journeys for the purpose of trade and for 

 rice-gathering and hunting, is also abundantly attested by the journals 

 of the earliest explorers. Of these it is only necessary to refer to 

 those of Hudson and Juet in the Half -Moon, who mention in several 

 places the existence of extensive cultivated fields along the banks of 

 the Hudson, and to the historians of De Soto's expedition, who speak 

 frequently of Indian villages containing from fifty to six hundred 

 dwellings, substantially constructed of wood, in which must have 

 dwelt upward of two thousand j^ersons. They frequently mention, 

 also, extensive fields of corn, beans, pumpkins, and other vegetables. 

 In one instance De Soto's army traveled two leagues through fields of 

 corn, and sometimes large quantities of corn and of meal were obtained 

 from the houses (vide Irving's " Conquest of Florida "). 



The fact that the aborigines worked stone, using stone axes, arrow- 

 heads, disks, wedges, hammers, pestles, and scrapers, is authenticated 

 not only by the testimony of early writers, but also by the continuance 

 of the same custom nearly if not quite up to the present time among 

 some of the most inaccessible tribes of North America, though they 

 have almost wholly ceased to be used, in consequence of the metallic 

 implements furnished them by the whites. 



The manner of making pottery among the Mandan Indians is de- 

 scribed in detail by Catlin, who states that " earthen dishes are made 

 by the Mandan women in great quantities, and modeled in a thousand 

 forms and tastes," and that they are nearly equal in hardness to our 

 own manufactured pottery, though they knew not the art of glazing. 

 Fragments of pottery, evidently made by these Indians, are found 

 about Bismarck, in Dakota, and on the Heart River, and in various parts 

 of northern Minnesota, where it was doubtless made by the Chip- 

 pewas ; and they greatly resemble the pottery taken from the mounds, 

 being unglazed, gray, slightly baked or unbaked, and somewhat orna- 

 mented by lines and figures. 



The articles of cloth that have been found in the mounds are made 



# John T. Short, " The North Americans of Antiquitr," p. 530. 



