ANCIENT CQPPER-MINES OF ISLE ROY ALE. 619 



travelers. They were built by slow accretions. Not to mention the 

 veneration which impelled the untutored savage to cast a handful of 

 earth on a mound every time that he passed it, in testimony of his 

 remembrance of the departed, it may be well to refer to what has been 

 known as the feast of the dead. This is asserted to have been com- 

 mon to many tribes, although conducted with some variation of details. 

 Gathering the bones of the dead from their temporary resting-places, 

 the tribe assembled at a chosen spot, and with solemn ceremonies per- 

 formed the last rites of sepulture. Sometimes they were placed in 

 coffins separately, and buried within a pit over which was erected a 

 mound of earth, and sometimes they were arranged serially, and sim- 

 ply buried under a mound. More frequently the bones were burned, 

 the cremation being accompanied with lamentation and followed by 

 feasting. The ashes and the unconsumed fragments were then cov- 

 ered with earth. For many generations this feast of the dead, which 

 occurred sometimes every eight years, or every ten, or when the accu- 

 mulated bones made it necessary, was doubtless performed on the 

 same spot ; and in course of time a mound of considerable dimension 

 was the result, which, while containing human bones, or fragments of 

 them, and much evidence of fire in the form of ashes and charcoal, 

 and reddened stones, yet discloses, on exhumation, no perfect skele- 

 tons. 



As further testimony to the erection of mounds by the present Ind- 

 ians, the statements and opinions of a few who have investigated the 

 subject, or have dwelt long with them, may be referred to. 



Mr. Jones, in his review of the " Antiquities of the Southern Ind- 

 ians," remarks : "During the progress of this investigation it will be 

 perceived that mound-building, which seems to have fallen into disuse 

 prior to the dawn of the historic j^eriod, was entirely abandoned very 

 shortly after intercourse was established between Europeans and the 

 red-men." Again, in summing up the evidence, Mr. Jones says, in 

 conclusion, " In a word, we do not concur in the opinion, so often 

 expressed, that the mound-builders were a race distinct from and su- 

 perior in art, government, and religion, to the Southern Indians of the 

 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries." Bradford, in " American Antiqui- 

 ties and Researches," affirms that " from very respectable authority it 

 appears that many tribes still continue to this day to raise a tumulus 

 over the grave, the magnitude of which is proportioned to the rank 

 and celebrity of the deceased." 



From the foregoing it appears that every known trait of the 

 mound-builder was possessed also by the Indian at the time of the dis- 

 covery of America. It hence becomes imnecessary to appeal to any 

 other agency than the Indian. It is poor philosophy and poor science 

 that resorts to hypothetical causes when those already known are suffi- 

 cient to produce the known effects. The Indian is a known adequate 

 cause. The assignment of the mounds to any other dynasty was born 



