112 DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 



rately round, but somewhat heart-shaped? It is evident that all are 

 not "tent anchors." 



A missionary of the American Sunday-school Union tells me that 

 stone mauls are yet common among the Dakotas, who use them in pre- 

 paring food. Choke -cherries are gathered, pounded to a pulp with 

 these mauls, kneaded into cakes, and dried. Also, a peculiar tuber, 

 with a structure somewhat like an onion, is gathered. The outer skin 

 is husked off, and the rest pounded into a meal, which is mixed with 

 water, moulded into cakes, and cooked. These are not the only func- 

 tions of such "mauls." Indian implements are remarkable for their 

 manifold uses. 



The state of the bones, the condition of the wampum, the preserva- 

 tion of the buckskin, the occurrence of iron, the presence of the skel- 

 eton of a horse, all go to show that there is no great antiquity for these 

 remains. The story told is of a Dakota village, populous and active; 

 tents of skins, anchored by boulder-stones; arts of pottery making, 

 stone polishing, and flint chipping, fairly developed; trade carried on 

 with the whites to the east; the dead buried in mounds on the out- 

 skirts of the town ; date, fifty to one hundred years ago. 



