SOURCE OF ST. PETER's RIVER. 121 



a considerable degree of native modesty. In this they 

 generally excel the white men who live with them ; and 

 it is a fact, well attested by the experience of all who 

 have spent any time among them, that they are seldom or 

 never observed in an obscene or indecorous attitude. 



Metea was asked, whether he had ever heard of any tra- 

 dition accounting for the formation of those artificial 

 mounds, which are found scattered over the whole country ; 

 when he immediately replied, that they had been constructed 

 by the Indians as fortifications, before white men had come 

 among them. " After men had been made," said he, " they 

 scattered themselves over the surface of the earth, and lost 

 all knowledge of each other. When they afterwards met, 

 it was with fear and caution ; they were engaged in wars, 

 during which they erected these works, which served for 

 defence, until treaties and alliances were made between 

 them." He has always heard this origin ascribed to them, 

 and has known three of those constructions which are 

 supposed to have been made by his nation. One is at the 

 fork of the Kankakee and the Des Plaines rivers, a second 

 on the Ohio, which, from his description, was supposed to 

 be at the mouth of the Muskingum ; he visited it, but could 

 not describe the spot very accurately; and a third, which 

 he had also seen, he states to be on the head waters of the 

 St. Joseph of Lake Michigan. This latter is at about 

 forty miles north-west of Fort Wayne, and five or six 

 miles distant from an Indian village called Mangokwa, 

 on a small stream which empties into the St, Joseph ; it is 

 a round hill about as large as Fort Wayne. Major Long, 

 whj has seen those on the St. Joseph and at the mouth of 

 the Kankakee, on a former visit to this country, considers 

 them^ as natural, and not artificial elevations. One of the 

 Miami chiefs whom the traders have named Legros, once 

 told Barron that he had heard that his father had fought 



Vol. L 16 



