MOUNDS AND OTHEK ANCIENT EARTHWORKS OF THE 

 UNITED STATES ^ 



By David I. Bushnell, Jr. 



[With 12 plates] 



So familiar are we with the present condition of our country, with 

 its great cities and towns and the network of highways extending 

 from ocean to ocean that it is difficult to picture the same region as 

 a wilderness occupied by savage tribes, whose scattered villages were 

 reached by narrow trails through the virgin forests. But such it 

 was, and less than a century has passed since the greater part became 

 definitely known, the courses of the rivers correctly mapped, the 

 mountain ranges discovered and accurately located, and many native 

 tribes visited and identified. Great changes have taken place in 

 recent years ; towns have nmltiplied and expanded ; and as one result 

 of the destruction of the forests and cultivation of the soil, especially 

 in the region eastward from the Mississippi, traces of the native 

 villages are rapidly disappearing and the works erected by the people 

 who occupied the sites generations ago are being leveled by the plow 

 and thus obliterated. 



The present sketch has been prepared for the purpose of showing 

 the many types of mounds and strange and curious earthworks 

 erected by the native tribes of this part of America, but let us first 

 consider the great wilderness and the widely dispersed groups of 

 settlements encountered by the early explorers and missionaries. 



Early in the sixteenth century ships manned by the hardy sea- 

 men of England, France, and Spain reached the coasts of the newly 

 discovered continent, and within a generation more pretentious 

 expeditions wefe fitted out to explore the interior in the endeavor to 

 find gold and treasure and to reach the western ocean. Thus before 

 the middle of the century the Spaniards had traversed the southern 

 lands from Florida to the Mississippi and beyond, while others com- 

 ing from Mexico had reached the prairies bordering the Missouri. 

 Vessels from France had sailed up the St. Lawrence, and in 1535 

 the French discovered Hochelaga, a great Iroquoian palisaded town 



1 Published through the courtesy of the National Geographic Society, who released the 

 manuscript and illustrations for use in the Smithsonian Report. 



663 



