66 A Brief Chapter on Sacrificial Mounds. 



Representatives of the second class are equally common among the 

 mounds of the United States. A similar modification of the means 

 Uf ed, however, in accomplishing the ascent, is to be observed in the 

 spiral pathway leading to a truncated summit. An illustration of this 

 is observable in the Portsmouth group of works, in a mound of this 

 descriiition, surrounded by numerous parallel walls or embankments. 

 Examples also occur in Kentucky, Tennessee, and other Southern 

 States. A group described by Bartram, deserves especial note in this 

 connection, situated on the Savannah river, about five miles above 

 Fort James (Dartmouth), and consisting of " conical mounts of earth 

 and four square terraces." Of the principal mound, he says: 



"The great mound is in the form of a cone, about forty or fifty feet 

 high, and the circumference of its base 200 or 300 yards, entirely 

 composed of the rich, loamy earth of the low grounds. The toj) or 

 apex is flat ; a spiral path leading from the ground up to the top is 

 still visible, where now grows a beautiful, spreading, red cedar; there 

 appear four niches excavated out of the .sides of this hill, at diflerent 

 heights from the base, fronting the four cardinal points; these niches 

 or sentry boxes are entered into from the winding path, and seem tQ 

 have been meant for resting places or lookouts." 



Similar niches were observed in some of the Teocallis of Mexico. 



The uses to which these mounds were put were undoubtedly 

 identical, both in the United States and Mexico, and indicate a simi- 

 larity in modes of worship and customs pertaining to the religious 

 ceremonial, which leaves little doubt astothesubstantialidentiiy of the 

 two races, at a period far anterior to the Aztec supremacy. In the 

 vague and often incomplete accounts of works of this kind in the 

 United States, we are uninformed whether there existed, at the time 

 of their discovery, any traces of the altars which in Mexico were found 

 upon the level summits of the Teocallis, and upon which the barbar- 

 ous Aztec priest was wont to stretch the quivering form of his victim, 

 in the bloody and revolting sacrifices of his worship. It would seem 

 that, in some cases at least, temples crowned their summits, of which 

 no remains have survived the ravages of time. In a forest-bearing 

 country like the fertile valleys of the Mississippi, it is altogether 

 probable that the abundance of wood led to its almost exclusive use as 

 a material for the erection of such structures upon the mounds, which 

 in a few years decayed and left no trace ; and we are therefore left to 

 infer their former existence solely from the design apparent in the 

 erection of elevated foundations, and from the more enduring 

 evidences remaining on similar elevations in tropical America. What 

 remains of these monuments, taken as a whole, corresponds exactly 



