CHAPTER X. 



REMAINS OF ART FOUND IN THE MOUNDS. 



The condition of the ordinary arts of life amongst a people capable of con- 

 structing the singular and imposing monuments which we have been contemplating, 

 furnishes a prominent and interesting subject of inquiry. The vast amount of labor 

 expended upon these works, and the regularity and design which they exhibit, taken 

 in connection with the circumstances under wliich they are found, denote a people 

 advanced from the nomadic or radically savage state, — in short, a numerous 

 agricultural people, spread at one time, or slowly migrating, over a vast extent of 

 country, and having established habits, customs, and modes of life. How far this 

 conclusion, for the present hypothetically advanced, is sustained by the character 

 of the minor vestiges of art, of which we shall now speak, remains to be seen. 



It has already been remarked, that the mounds are the principal depositories of 

 ancient art, and that in them we must seek for the only authentic remains of the 

 builders. In the observance of a practice almost universal among barbarous or 

 semi-civilized nations, the mound-builders deposited various articles of use and 

 ornament with their dead. They also, under the prescriptions of their religion, 

 or in accordance with customs unknown to us, and to which perhaps no dirtict 

 analogy is afforded by those of any other people, placed upon their altars nume- 

 rous ornaments and implements, — probably those most valued by their possessors, — 

 which remain there to this day, attesting at once the religious zeal of the depositors, 

 and their skill in the simpler arts. From these original sources, the illustrations 

 which follow have been chiefly derived. 



The necessity of a careful discrimination between the various remains found 

 in the mounds, resulting from the fact that the races succeeding the builders in 

 the occupation of the country often buried their dead in them, has probably been 

 dwelt upon with sufficient force, in another connection. Attention to the con- 

 ditions under which they are discovered, and to the simple rules which seem to 

 have governed the mound-builders in making their deposits, can hardly fail to fix 

 with great certainty their date and origin. 



Thus in the case of the stratified mounds, we well know, if the strata are entire, 

 that whatever deposits are found beneath them were placed there at the period of 

 the construction of the mounds themselves. On the other hand, if they are 

 broken up, it follows with equal certainty that the mound in which the disturbance 

 is observed, has been invaded since its erection. 



It will therefore be seen that we have some certain means of determining, aside 

 from tiic distinctive features of the iirtirles themselves, which of the relics disco- 



