NO. 10 NEBRASKA ARCHEOLOGY STRONG 211 



evidence of such a state of affairs. Lacking any direct evidence of 

 human agency in their construction, I am inclined to beHeve that the 

 bones and artifacts therein encountered were intrusive in natural 

 hillocks rather than that the latter were erected for burial purposes. 

 Here is a question, it seems to me, that the surface and soil geologist 

 can help answer. If such mounds or hillocks cannot be accounted for 

 by any natural agency known to have acted on the local topography, 

 then, since they contain human material, they are probably the work 

 of man. If natural agencies could have caused them, then I am in- 

 clined to regard their human contents as intrusive. On the other hand, 

 such a site as mound 2 on Weeping Water Creek, which gives certain 

 definite internal evidences of human construction, is in my opinion 

 an artificial mound. Similarly, if the bare statements made by Gilder 

 concerning numerous mounds near Omaha can be corroborated, these 

 must also be included in the same category. 



The problem of distinguishing intrusive burials in natural eleva- 

 tions from artificially erected burial mounds has, of course, a wider 

 significance than merely its Nebraska aspect. Nebraska, like its neigh- 

 boring States on both the north and the south, is peripheral to the great 

 central mound areas of the Mississippi Valley, and such puzzling oc- 

 currences are expectable in border regions. Mound building was an 

 activity indulged in by a great number of American Indian tribes 

 over a great extent of time, and its various manifestations are com- 

 plex. It is therefore important to understand clearly the mound- 

 building activity on the borders of its distribution, where it occurs 

 in its simpler and perhaps more rudimentary forms. Moreover, since 

 there seems to have been a general exodus from the great mound areas 

 of the east-central United States region at or just before the first 

 period of white contact, it may be possible to trace the movements 

 of such tribes up the great river valleys of the west. It has often 

 been suggested that certain of the Siouan tribes were formerly located 

 farther to the east and were responsible for many of the mounds of 

 the Ohio region and elsewhere. This is not the place to consider 

 such hypotheses, but it is not beside the point to recall that certain 

 tribes of the Siouan group, notably the Oto, Omaha, and Ponca, 

 came from the east into Nebraska about the time of the earliest white 

 explorers and that others had probably preceded them in the region. 

 Careful excavation of both true mounds and natural mounds used 

 for burial purposes will undoubtedly establish a correlation between 

 these and certain of the historic tribes already mentioned. As yet, 

 however, I am not aware of one mound in Nebraska that has been 

 entirely and painstakingly excavated in such a manner as to clearly 

 set forth its details of construction and its cultural significance. 



