DIVERSE OPINIONS. 31 



Society, and published a few years later in one of its volumes. The other, Rev. 

 Thaddeus Mason Harris, of Massachusetts, was disposed to agree with the prevailing 

 opinion, that they must have been places of defence. 



It appeared to Bishop Madison that such remains were too numerous, too various 

 in form and dimensions, and often too unfavorably situated to be regarded as for- 

 tresses ; while certain striking features, in which they all agreed, indicated one 

 common origin and destination. The lowness of the walls, the fact that the ditch 

 was generally within, the whole being usually commanded by natural or artificial 

 elevations without, were circumstances that, in his judgment, pointed to some very 

 different design. The mounds he considered as burial-places, raised by the gradual 

 accumulation of deposits. He does not allude to the conjecture which had been 

 ventured by some, that the supposed forts were sacred inclosures, and the elevated 

 squares areas of temples, or places of sacrifice. 



Mr. Harris, on the other hand, adopting from Clavigero his account of the emi- 

 gration of the Toltecs from the North, ascribed to them the construction of the 

 " fenced cities," whose walls of earth he imagined to have been surmounted by 

 palisades, and to have been intended for protection in the gradual progress of that 

 people through the territories of less civilized tribes. 1 



These gentlemen are often cited as pioneers in this field of investigation. They 

 are among the first who, uniting opportunities of personal observation to, the ad- 

 vantages of scientific culture, imparted to the public their impressions of western 

 antiquities. They represent the two classes of observers whose opposite views still 

 divide the sentiment of the country; one class seeing no evidences of art beyond 

 what might be expected of existing tribes, with the simple difference of a more 

 numerous population, and consequently better defined and more permanent 

 habitations ; the other finding proofs of skill and refinement, to be explained, as 

 they believe, only on the supposition that a superior native race, or more probably 

 a people of foreign and higher civilization, once occupied the soil. 



The official expedition of Capts. Lewis and Clark to the sources of the Missouri, 

 in the years 1804, 1805, and 1806; and that of Lieut. Pike to the sources of the 

 Mississippi, and through the western parts of Louisiana in the years 1805, 1806, 

 and 1807, were productive of very little increase to the stock of archosological 

 information ; although Allen's narrative of the former contains a drawing of earth- 

 works observed on the Missouri, near Bon Homme Island. 



Robin, a French naturalist, who was in Louisiana in 1805, described the re- 

 markable tumuli near the junction of the Washita and Tcensa rivers. 2 The account 

 of these in the memoir of Messrs. Squier and Davis, is derived from Major Stoddard's 

 " Sketches of Louisiana," published in 1812. In his brief chapter on the remains 

 of antiquity at the West, that author expresses the opinion that " Till we are better 

 informed, it seems fair to attribute them to the Welsh." 3 



1 "Journal of a Tour in the Territory Northwest of the Alleghany Mountains in 1803, &c." 

 Rev. Dr. Harris was subsequently an active and distinguished officer of the American Antiquarian 

 Society, and contributed to that institution many valuable relics, and some MS. notes of observations. 

 3 "Voyage dans Louisiane, &c, par C. C. Robin, Taris, 1801." 

 3 Stoddard's Sketches, p. 34T. 



