MONUMENTS OF THE SOUTHERN S T AXES. [23 



placed upon one side or the other. On the other hand, we never see the square 

 terraces accompanying the high mounds of East Florida." 



From the above quotations it appears that, less than one century ago, a portion 

 of the monuments of the South were in actual use by the Indians. It will be 

 observed, however, that our authority ascribes their construction to an anterior 

 race and assigns to them a high antiquity. In his Travels he remarks that the 

 region in which they are most abundant, lying between the Savannah and Ock- 

 raulgee rivers on the east and west, and between the sea-coast on the south and 

 the Apalachian mountains on the north, was occupied subsequently to the arrival 

 ot Europeans, by the Cherokees, who were afterwards dispossessed by the 

 Creeks; that "all this country was probably, many ages preceding the Cherokee 

 invasion, inhabited by a single nation or confederacy governed by common laws, 

 possessing like customs, and speaking the same language, but so ancient that 

 neither the Creeks nor the Cherokees, nor the nations they conquered, could 

 render any account by whom or for what purposes these monuments were erected." 

 He nevertheless inclines to the belief, and not without reason, that the uses to 

 which these structures were appropriated, by the existing Indian tribes, were not 

 widely ditferent from those for which they were originally constructed. Upon this 

 point he adds : " The mounds and large areas adjoining them seem to have been 

 raised in part for ornament and recreation, and likewise to serve some other public 

 purpose, since they are always so situated as to command the most extensive pro- 

 spect over the country adjacent. Tlie square terraces may have served as the 

 foundations of fortresses ; and perhaps the great pyramidal mounds answered the 

 purpose of look-outs, or were high places for sacrifice. "* 



Whatever date or origin we may ascribe to these monuments, we c'annot over- 

 look the singular attachment to the square and the circle exhibited by the Creeks 

 in the public edifices known to have been constructed by themselves. That these 

 forms had some significance at the outset can hardly be doubted, although their 

 perpetuation may have depended upon custom. The circumstance that the eternal 

 fire was only maintained in the circular structure, designated by Bartram as the 

 " Rotunda, " goes far to support the conclusion that its form was symbolical, and 

 referred to the sun. That these tribes were sun worshippers is well known : the 

 inferences drawn from analogy are therefore sustained by collateral facts. In their 

 less imposing structures, may we not discern the type of the great circles and 

 squares of Ohio, — the traces of a system of idolatry which has dotted the vallevs 

 of the West with giant temples, symbolizing in their form the nature of the worship 

 to which they were dedicated ? 



* Travels in North America, p. 5 IS. 



