SOURCE OF ST. PETER's RIVER. 47 



vanced in the arts. The existence of native copper strewed 

 upon the surface of the ground in many places, will easily 

 account for the circumstance of its being used by the na- 

 tives as an ornament, in the same manner that the Copper 

 Indians of the north have been known, from the earliest 

 days of their discovery by the whites, to adorn their per- 

 sons with it, but we cannot account for the discovery of 

 ornaments of brass, unless we admit an intercourse with na- 

 tions that had advanced in civilization. The existence 

 therefore of fragments of this alloy in mounds, appears to 

 us doubtful ; for if true, the Indians who constructed them 

 must have been much more refined than we can suppose 

 they were ; or they must have had intercourse with civil- 

 ized nations. The erection of these mounds, which ap- 

 pear to be in a great measure contemporary, was cer- 

 tainly much anterior to the discovery of this continent in 

 the fifteenth century ; and therefore it is not from Europeans 

 that these pieces of brass were obtained ; if again, we re- 

 peat it, they have been found interred in these worics. 



Besides this mound, there are many others in the imme- 

 diate vicinity of Irville, some of which have very great di- 

 mensions ; we observed one, near the road, which had been 

 but recently excavated at its summit ; it was perhaps about 

 thirty-five or forty feet high. These mounds were for the 

 most part overgrown with bushes ; we could discover no 

 order or plan in their relative positions, and from the scat- 

 tered and irregular manner in which they lie, it does 

 not appear that they were intended to be connected 

 xvith any work of defence ; it is more probable, that they 

 were erected as mausoleums over the remains of the dead, 

 and that the difference in their size was intended to convey 

 an idea of difference in the relative importance of those, 

 whose bones they covered. We were informed that this 

 valley and the neighbouring hills abound in excava- 



