MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 569 



wooded jilens and gorges ; aud the bottoms, geutly declining from the 

 hiUs for half their width, are smooth as lawns, and now converted into 

 the finest farms in the State, then reaching a lower level as they near 

 the rivers, become heavily timbered and interspersed with numerous 

 lakes and sloughs. Nature was here lavish in its suj^plies of lish, game, 

 aud wild fruits, and every condition necessary for the subsistence and 

 endurance of a large population was present. This beautiful aud fer- 

 tile region, it is evident, was occupied by successive tribes from the ear- 

 liest times before our history began down to the peaceable expulsion of 

 the last of its dusky tenants, the Sacs and Foxes, during the adminis- 

 tration of General Jackson. In testimony of this fact we have the 

 relics of their remains, arts, and methods of life, which time has been 

 l)Gwerless to destroy, in great profusion and full of fascinating inter- 

 est. Of these silent records of a rapidly vanishing race the most im- 

 portant as well as the most legible are the earthen mounds which cover 

 the bones aud dust of their dead. They crown all the peaks and 

 ridges of our bluffs, a few rising to considerable proportions, but the 

 greater number are mere swellings of the surface not readily recog- 

 nized as being of artificial origin. Every gradation of mound struct- 

 ure is here present, from the stately tumulus 30 feet in height to the 

 broad, flat sepulchres so slightly elevated as to be scarcely noticed. 



It would be useless labor and waste of time to attempt to locate on 

 a map the situation of each mound or group of mounds in Cass 

 County, and a tedious aud unprofitable repetition to detail minutely 

 the examination of each separate mound. For brevity of description 

 they can readily be grouped in two or three classes, and the descrip- 

 tion of one will answer generally for all of its particular class. While 

 in all of them, so far explored, the inclosed bodies of the dead were 

 deposited on the surface of the ground, we find in some the posi- 

 tion and arrangement of the remains to have been different from that 

 found in others; from which we must infer that at times changes aud 

 innovations in mortuary customs were introduced, perhaps by different 

 tribes who succeeded each other in occu2)ancy of the country. 



Of the first class of mounds, and by far the largest, and no doubt the 

 most ancient, but one has yet been opened, and, unfortunately, no one 

 versed or interested in ethnological study was present at the time to 

 collect and preserve the relics it disclosed, or make any record of them. 

 This mound, which I have before had occasion to mention,* formerly 

 stood immediately upon the bank of the Illinois Kiver, within the pres- 

 ent limits of the city of Beardstown, 6 miles below the mouth of the San- 

 gamon. This locality is slightly more elevated than the surrounding 

 river bottoms on either side, and was anciently an island surrounded 

 on one side partly by the Illinois an<l on the other by a slough through 

 which the river had once passed and yet discharged its sur])lus water. 

 The island, on account of its peculiarly favorable position, had been for 



*Smirhsn>uiau Annual Report for 1876, p. i-iti. 



