556 THE MOUNDS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 
with them may have been the sites of rade mud temples, there is not a 
particle of evidence to show that they had anything to do with any re- 
ligious rite or custom whatsoever. Indeed, if it be admitted that the 
mound-builder belonged to a race separate and distinct from the In- 
dian, it can not be conclusively shown that he had any religion at all. 
What little evidence there is bearing upon the point is drawn from 
analogy, and singularly enough is based upon the fact that the Indians 
of the Southern States, from Florida to Missouri, erected just such 
mounds as sites for their temples.* Unfortunately however for the 
analogy, these same Indians were in the habit of placing the cabins of 
their chiefs upon precisely similar mounds, which were also built espe- 
cially for the purpose.t This fact alone is sufficient to invalidate any 
conclusion as to the religious character of these structures; and of 
course any inference as to the object or purpose of the inelosures in 
which they are sometimes found, based upon this conclusion, must fall 
with it. But even if these works were all that is claimed for them, it 
is difficult to understand how this fact could be construed into an argu- 
ment in favor of the theory that these truncated mounds, which are 
everywhere identical in form and in the probable uses for which they 
were intended, could have been the work of two different peoples, or 
of the same people in different stages of civilization, though its im- 
portance as a link in the chain of evidence that points to the identity 
of the Southern Indians with the mound-builders is at once apparent. 
Returning from this long digression, and bearing in mind the caution 
as to the misleading character of the terms used in these investigations, 
let us resume the thread of our inquiry, and divesting these remains of 
the glamour that attaches to them as the work of an extinct people, let 
us endeavor to see them as they are, and to interpret as far as may be 
the story they have to tell. y 
‘ Speaking in a general way, the Mississippi Valley system of earth- 
works may be said to embrace all that region that lies between the 
Great Lakes on the north and the Gulf of Mexico on the south, and to 
be bounded on the west by the tier of States that lines the western 
bank of the Mississippi, and on the east by a line drawn through the 
middle of the States of New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and 
extending southwardly so as to include the greater part of the two 
Carolinas and the whole of Georgia and Florida. It is true that simi- 
lar works are found outside of these limits, but for my present purposes 
it will not be necessary, except in one or two instances, to travel beyond 
the bounds here prescribed. Throughout the whole of this region these 
remains are more or less abundant, though different forms of mounds 
*See ante, note § on p. 540. 
tBiedma and Knight of Elvas, in Hist. Coll. of Louisiana, part 1, pp. 105 and 123: 
La Vega, Conquéte de la Floride, pp. 136 and 294: A la Haye, 1735. Herrera, vol. v1, 
pp. 5 and 6: London, 1740. La Harpe and Le Petit, in Hist. Coll. of Louisiana, part 
II, pp. 106 and note to p. 142. Du Pratz, History of Louiciana, vol. li, p. 188: Lon- 
don, 1763. 
