NORTH AMEEICAN AECEL^OLOGY. 333 



very mucli more densely populated tlian they were when first discovered by 

 Europeans. The immense number of small earthworks, and the mounds, "which 

 may be counted by thousands and tens of thousands," might indeed be supposed 

 to indicate either a long time or a great population ; but in other cases we have 

 no such alternative. The Newark constructions ; the mound near Florence, in 

 Alabama, which is foiiy-five feet in height by four hundred and forty feet in 

 circi;mference at the base, with a level area at the summit of one hundred and 

 fifty feet in circumference ; the still greater mound on the Etowah river, also in 

 Alabama, which has a height of more than seventy-five feet, with a circumfer- 

 ence of twelve hundred feet at the base, and one hundred and forty at the sum- 

 mit; the embankments at the mouth of the Scioto river, which are estimated to 

 be twenty miles iu length ; the great mound at Selsertown, Mississippi, which 

 covers six acres of ground ; and the truncated pyramid at Cahokia, to which we 

 have already alluded ; these works, and many others which might have been 

 quoted, indicate, we think, a population large and stationary, for which hunting 

 cannot have supplied enough food, and which must, therefore, have relied in a 

 great measure upon agriculture for its support. "There is not," says Messrs. 

 Squier and Davis, "and there was not in the sixteenth century, a single tribe of 

 Indians (north of the semi-civilized nations) between the Atlantic and the Pacific, 

 which had means of subsistence sufiicient to enable them to apply, for such pur- 

 pases, the unproductive labor necessary for the work ; nor was there any in such 

 a social state as to compel the labor of the people to be thus applied." We know 

 also that many, if not most of the Indian tribes, still cultivated the ground to a 

 certain extent, and there is some evidence that even within historic times this 

 was more the case than at present. Thus De Nonville estimates the amount of 

 Indian corn destroyed by him in four Seneca villages at 1,200,000 quarters. 



Mr. Lapham* has brought forward some ingenious arguments for thinking that 

 the forests of Wisconsin were at no very distant period much less general than 

 at present. In the first place, the largest trees are probably not more than five 

 hundred years old; and large tracts are now covered with "young trees, where 

 there are no traces of antecedent growth." 



Again, every year many trees are blown down, and frequent storms pass 

 through the forest, throwing down nearly eveiything before them. Mr. Laphara 

 gives a map of these windfalls in one district ; they are very conspicuous, firstly, 

 because the trees, having a certain quantity of earth entangled among their roots, 

 continue to vegetate for several years ; and, secondly, because even Avheu the 

 trees themselves have died and rotted away, the earth so torn up forms little 

 mounds, Avhich are often mistaken by the inexperienced for Indian graves. 

 "From the paucity of these little 'tree-mounds,' we infer that no very great 

 antiquity can be assigned to the dense forests of Wisconsin, for during a long 

 period of time, with no material change of climate, we would expect to find great 

 numbers of these little monuments of ancient storms scattered everywhere over 

 the ground." 



But there is other more direct evidence of ancient agi-icultm-e. In many places 

 the ground is covered with small mammillary elevations, which are known as 

 Indian corn-hills. "They are without order of arrangement, being scattered 

 over the ground with the greatest irregularity. That these hillocks were formed 

 in the manner indicated by their name is inferred from the present custom of 

 the Indians. The corn is planted in the same spot each successive year, and 

 the soil is gradually brought up to the size of a little hill by the annual addi- 

 tions." t But Mr. Lapham has also found traces of an earlier and more systematic 

 cultivation. These consist " of low, parallel ridges, as if corn had been planted 

 in drills. They average four feet in width, twenty-five of them having been 

 counted in the space of a hundred feet ; and the depth of the walk between them 



*» L. c, p. 90. t Lapham, 1. c, p. 19. 



