CONCLUSION. 157 



attributed their freedom from the plague, which had prevailed in other places, to 

 this custom. (Mass. Hist. Col., 2d series, vol. IX. p. 94.) 



The later aborigines have not unfrequentl y erected mounds and other earthworks. 

 Those formed by collecting the bones of ancestors at certain periods have been in 

 some instances traced to modern tribes. (Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia," pp. 139— 

 43.) A mound was erected over the body of a chief of the Omahas on the Missouri, 

 who died of smallpox in 1800. (Lewis and Clarke, Exp., I. p. 43.) Another was 

 raised, about twenty years since, at Coteau des Prairies, in honor of a young Sioux 

 chief who perished while attempting an exploit of much daring. (Catlin's N. A. 

 Indians, II. p. 170.) In Beck's Gazetteer of Missouri, a large mound is described 

 as having been formed by the Osages within the last half century. It is said to 

 have been gradually enlarged at intervals. (Appendix to Squier's Ab. Mon. of 

 N. Y., p. 107.) The Natchez Indians, after they were driven from their original 

 seats, built a large mound near Nachitoches. (Ibid., p. 108.) 



It is among these retreating tribes that we might expect to find the last traces of 

 hereditary customs. Lewis and Clarke mention seeing repeatedly, on the upper 

 waters of the Missouri, villages either occupied at the time, or recently deserted, 

 that were surrounded by earthen embankments, sometimes in the form of a circle. 

 (Exp., I. pp. 54, 92, 94, 97, 112; II. 380, &c.) 



Brackenridge, while travelling in the same region, "observed the ruins of several 

 villages which had been abandoned twenty or thirty years, and which, in every 

 respect, resembled the vestiges on the Ohio and Mississippi." (Views of Louisiana, 

 p. 183.) All the numerous and extensive earthworks of New York have been 

 decided by Mr. Squier to be due to the Iroquois. The process of erecting the 

 mounds and enclosures at the South, and the uses to which they were applied, are 

 fully described in the narratives of the early adventurers into that region. The 

 places constructed for the performance of games, or used for such purposes, though 

 the work of earlier generations, are noticed as among the features characteristic of 

 modern habits and practices; and processions, and other public ceremonies, are 

 described as occurring on a scale hardly less imposing than such as we may imagine 

 to have filled the stately avenues and sacred enclosures of the Scioto Valley. (Du 

 Pratz, Hist, of Louisiana, and Bartram's travels in E. and W. Florida.) 



We may narrow the circle of unexplained antiquities by tracing the cordon of 

 less mysterious vestiges surrounding that great centre of ancient habitation which 

 is composed of States bordering on the Ohio. 



East of the Alleghanies, from the Carolinas to New York, the country is nearly 

 destitute of such remains. In New York they assume a character so nearly resem- 

 bling those on the Ohio as to have been classed with them, until Mr. Squier decided 

 by exploration that both relics of art and traces of occupancy were " absolutely iden- 

 tical with those which mark the sites of towns and forts known to have been occu- 

 pied by the Indians within the historical period." The earthworks of northern 

 Ohio are described by the same writer as corresponding with those of New York. 

 No higher claim can be asserted for the remains north of the same line (omitting 

 for the present the emblematic mounds of Wisconsin) and east of the Mississippi. 

 Beyond the Mississippi the works on the Missouri, the Platte, and the Kansas, 



