6i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of a great victory won there over the Winnebagoes many generations 

 ago. The same old chief, when shown a clay pipe taken from the 

 Lanesboro mounds, said it was like those made by the Sioux, and, 

 pointing to an earthen spittoon for illustration, said the Sioux made 

 many like it. In the " Proceedings of the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science," for 1875, Dr. Sternberg, of the United 

 States Army, critically analyzes the contents of certain mounds near 

 Pensacola, Florida, and concludes that they were built by different 

 but contemporaneous tribes of Indians, one being probably the Natchez. 

 In these mounds were found pottery, red hematite for pigment, flint 

 weapons, and shell ornaments in the shape of beads and perforated 

 disks, in conjunction with blue-glass beads and fragments of iron. 

 The latter show that these mounds were still used, or in process of 

 erection, later than the advent of Europeans. 



Mr. E. G. Squier, in the second volume of the " Smithsonian Con- 

 tributions to Knowledge," has described in detail many mounds and 

 earthworks of western and central New York, remarking that they 

 extend down the Susquehanna as far as the valley of the Wyoming, 

 northward into Canada, along the upper tributaries of the Ohio, and 

 westward along the shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario. These mounds 

 and earthworks are said generally to be smaller than those in the Ohio 

 Valley. They were found to contain ornamented jDottery, j^ipes of 

 clay regularly and often fancifully molded, or bearing the forms of 

 animals, stone axes and hammers, stone disks and implements which 

 the author remarks are almost identical in shape and material with 

 some described by him from the mounds of the Ohio Yalley, and spear- 

 points and bodkins of bone. In connection with these are described 

 articles of European manufacture, such as cast copper and iron axes, 

 and kettles of copper, iron, and brass. Although Mr. Squier had pre- 

 viously expressed the opinion that the earthworks of western New 

 York were of like nature and origin with those of the Ohio Valley, 

 when confronted with the fact of articles of European manufacture 

 commingled with aboriginal, discovered by his own investigations, 

 he was forced to assign the New York mounds to the Iroquois. It 

 seems not unreasonable to assume that the New York series of 

 mounds will be found undistinguishable from those of northern Ohio 

 and eastern Michigan, which have unquestioningly been regarded as 

 of the same age as those of the Ohio Valley, as well as synchronous 

 with those of Wisconsin, which, Avhile possessing all the essential 

 characters of the Ohio Valley mounds, have been assigned as unhesi- 

 tatingly to the existing races of Indians by the late J. A. Lapham, 

 of Milwaukee. 



It hence seems demonstrable, as well as admitted by some of the 

 best American ethnologists, that the existing Indian races formerly 

 carried on extensively and methodically the practice of mound-build- 

 ing. The mounds of sepulture are often referred to by historians and 



