534 THE MOUNDS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 
have prevailed among them, and that which is assumed to have existed 
among the mound-builders, as would warrant the inference that they 
could not have erected these works. On the part of those who hold that 
there were such fundamental differences, it is contended that there are 
certain types of earth-works that were evidently designed for a reli- 
gious purpose. They are variously termed “temple” mounds and ‘sa- 
cred inclosures,”* are found sometimes singly and sometimes united in 
a more or less complicated system, and are supposed to indicate that 
the people who built them were devoted to the worship of the sun.f It 
is also asserted that the erection of these works involved a species 
and an amount of labor to which the Indian would not have submitted,{ 
and that hence he did not build them. 
This is believed to be a fair statement of the argument, which upon 
examination will be found to be fatally defective in so far as it as- 
sumes the very point in dispute. To assert that the Indian would not 
have submitted to the labor requisite for the construction of these 
mounds is virtually to beg the whole question. So far is this from 
being true, that there is probably no fact in American archeology 
better authenticated than that the red Indian has, within the historic 
epoch, voluntarily built both mounds and earth-works. This of itself 
is a sufficient answer to the statement as to what he would or would 
not have submitted to in the way of work, and, at the same time, it 
effectually disposes of the theory that only despotic governments could 
have controlled the amount of labor necessary to the erection of these 
works, since the form of government existing everywhere throughout 
the valley of the Mississippi at the date of the arrival of the whites, 
except, perhaps, among the Natchez Indians,§ was as far removed as 
possible from anything that savored of despotism. Of course it is not 
“Squier, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, chapters iii and vii: Wash- 
ington, 1848. 
tFoster, Prehistoric Races of the United States, p. 182: Chicago, 1873. Short, North 
Americans of Antiquity, p. 100: New York, 1880. Conant, Footprints of Vanished 
Races, pp. 38 and 60: St. Louis, 1879. MeLean, The Mound-Builders, p. 126: Cincin- 
nati, 1879. Squier, /. ¢.,p.49. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States, vol. v. 
pp. 29 and 61. C. C. Jones, Antiquities of the Southern Indians, p. 22: New York, 1873. 
tFoster, Prehistoric Races of the United States, p. 349: Chicago, 1873. 
§ In the early accounts, the Bashaba of New England, the Werowance of Virginia, 
the Paraconssi of Florida, not less than the Great Sun of the Natchez, are all rep- 
resented as absolute rulers, though, to anyone who will take the trouble to read 
between the lines, it is evident that these were simply other names for the office of 
chief or sachem, and that the authority of these rulers did not extend any farther 
than their power to persuade. Even Du Pratz (whose account of the civil polity of 
the Natchez is most highly colored) virtually admits, vol. 11, book rv, section 7, 
that the war-making power in that nation was vested in a council of old men, and 
that when war was once declared, the war chief and not the Great Sun led the 
party, which was composed entirely of volunteers. Under different names we have 
here the Micco and Tus-tun-nug-ul-gee of the Creeks and the sachem and war chief 
of the Iroquois, with no more despotism or monarchy in one case than in either of 
the others. 
