1896.] ^^^ [Gushing. 



supports the evidence just adduced as afforded by the correspondence of 

 these potteries and other art remains from mounds in the North, to tlie art 

 types of the keys in the South. No other theory of the origin of mound 

 building in general, thus far advanced, especially of mound building 

 as it was practiced in the Mississippi and Ohio regions and all through 

 the Southern States, accounts, it seems to me, so satisfactorily or so 

 directly and simply, for the origin of this remarkable practice. We 

 have seen how, for many reasons, it was necessary for the kej' dwellers to 

 build their niouud-like homes or islands, out in the seas. Thus were they 

 near their chief source of food supply ; thus were they freed from the 

 almost insupportable pest of mosquitoes and other insects of the sub- 

 tropic marshy mainland ;* thus were safe from any human enemies they 

 might chance to have ; and building as they did, special mounds upon 

 these shell islands of theirs for the foundation of special kinds of struc- 

 tures — temples, storehouses or public buildings, places of resort in dan- 

 ger — they were not only protected from the terrific hurricanes and tidal 

 waves that sometimes swept the Gulf seas, but also, I conceive, they de- 

 veloped the habit of erecting great mounds for special structures of this 

 kind to such extent, that it became fixed ; so customary traditionally, that 

 whithersoever they or rather their descendants went thereafter, they con- 

 tinued the practice as an essential tribal regulation. At least we find evi- 

 dence enough in nearly all the old historic records from the Sixteenth to 

 the Eighteenth century, that generally the Southern Indians (especially 

 the Maskokean Indians and Nachez) Avere still building mounds of pre- 

 cisely this kind, that is, for the temples of their Priests and for the 

 dwellings and assembly places of their Mikos, "Suns" or King-like 

 Chieftains. Again, along with the development of key and mound 

 building for the living, in the sea, and later in tide marshes or lowlands, 

 we have seen that there was also developed, through ancestralism, the 

 habit of building somewhat similar places for the tribal dead. This 

 also was practiced in the interior, as shown by prehistoric monuments ; 

 by the early tribes of the Southern States, as equally indicated bj' 



* Soon after my return from Florida, last spring. Dr. O. T. Mason, of the United States 

 National Museum, kindly called my attention to the following passage, on page 291 of 

 The History of the Cnribby Islands, rendered into English by John Davides, in 1666, from 

 an earlier work by Rochefort. I quote it here in full, as it so unexpectedly confirmed 

 my previous inference relative to the only really important influence of the mosquito as 

 a factor in human progress, that I have ever learned of. Speaking of the Caribbeans, he 

 says : 



" Their habitations are somewhat near one to another, and disposed at certain dis- 

 tances, after the manner of a village ; and for the most part they plant themselves upon 

 some little ascent, that so they may have better air and secure themselves against those 

 pestilent flies which we have elsewhere called Mesqidlos and Maringoins, which are 

 extremely troublesome, and whereof the stinging is dangerous in those parts where 

 there is but little wind stirring. The same reason it is that obliges the Floridians, 

 beyond the Bay of Carlos and Tortugnes, to lodge themselves for the most part at the 

 entrance of the sea, in huts built on piles or pillars." 



I would add that the last clause is especially significant in connection with our dis- 

 coveries in the "Courts of theJPile Dwellers."— F. H. C. 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXXV. 153. 2 Y. PRINTED AUGUST 9, 1897. 



