6i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



It is often stated that the Indian, when interrogated concerning 

 the mounds and earthworks of the country, shakes his head in igno- 

 rance, affirming that he knows not their origin. This fact is carried 

 further than it should be when it is invoked to prove the non-In- 

 dian origin of these mounds. Admitting, with some reservation, that 

 the Indian at i:)resent knows nothing of the origin of the mounds, still 

 it may be true that his immediate ancestors were familiar with the 

 facts of their erection. The Indian has been driven from the home 

 where he was born, and where his ancestral traditions and customs have 

 centered and exhibited their unconstrained development, and has been a 

 fugitive for several generations, from the cupidity and the bayonet of 

 the white man. When it is remembered that the erection of a mound, 

 such as are seen all over the Northwest, was not the act of a day, nor 

 of a year, but of many years, and perhaps generations, it is easy enough 

 to understand why the custom has become so nearly extinct. The 

 Indian has become greatly modified by contact with the Euro^Dean. 

 He has gradually been compelled to forsake many customs and aban- 

 don arts, which came into competition with the customs and the arts 

 of the stronger race. The semi-nomadic life which he has been com- 

 pelled to adojDt has not been favorable to the erection of mounds, 

 which requires the quiet of permanent and peaceful residence. 



We are not, moreover, without testimony to the fact that the 

 present Indian tribes did build mounds. Lewis and Clark mention 

 the custom among the Omahas, saying that " one of their great chiefs 

 was buried on a hill, and a mound twelve feet in diameter and six 

 feet in height erected over him. Bertram states that the Choctaws 

 covered the pyramid of coffins taken from the bone-house with earth, 

 thus raising a conical hill or mound. Tomochichi pointed out to Gen- 

 eral Oglethorpe a large conical mound near Savannah, in which he 

 said the Yamacraw chief was interred, who had, many years before, 

 entertained a great white man with a red beard, who entered the 

 Savannah River in a large vessel, and in his barge came up to the 

 Yamacraw bluff. Featherstonhaugh, in his " Travels," speaks of the 

 custom among the Osages, referring to a mound built over the body 

 of a chief, called Jean Defoe by the French, who unexpectedly died 

 while his warriors were absent on a hunting expedition. Upon their 

 return they heaped a mound over his remains, enlarging it at intervals 

 for a long period, until it reached its present height. Bradford says * 

 that many of the tumuli formed of earth, and occasionally of stones, 

 are of Indian origin. They are generally sepulchral mounds either 

 the general cemetery of a village or tribe, funeral monuments over 

 the graves of illustrious chiefs, or upon a battle-field, commemorating 

 the event and entombing the fallen, or the result of a custom, prevalent 

 among some of the tribes, of collecting at stated intervals the bones 



* "American Antiquities and Researches into the History of the Red Race," 1841, 

 p. 17. 



