560 THE MOUNDS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 
thought to resemble animals, birds, and even human beings, though it 
is admitted that this resemblance is often imaginary, and that there is 
no evidence that the builders of these works intended to copy any such 
forms. Indeed, Lapham,* to whom we are indebted for the most satis- 
factory account of these mounds that we possess, finds it necessary, on 
more than one occasion, to caution his readers against blindly accept- 
ing these resemblances, and frankly says that in some cases appella- 
tions, like that of ‘Lizard Mound,” were given for the sake of con- 
venience, and without pretending that they were actually intended to 
represent that animal.+ According to the same author, as summarized 
by Bancroft, these mounds vary in height from 1 to 6 feet, and their 
dimensions on the ground are quite large. Thus ‘rude effigies of 
human form are in some instances over 100 feet long; quadrupeds have 
bodies and tails each from 50 to 200 feet long; birds have wings of a 
hundred feet; lizard mounds are 200 and even 400 feet inlength; straight 
and curved lines of embankments reach over a thousand feet, and ser- 
pents are equally extensive.” Mounds of this class are common in 
Wisconsin, and are also found in Ohio and Georgia. They are not 
burial mounds, though they are not unfrequently grouped with conical 
mounds that inclose human remains, as they are also with embank- 
ments and inclosures,—the grouping being always without any apparent 
order. They are usually constructed of earth, stones being but rarely 
used, except perhaps in Georgia, where the two bird-shaped mounds 
described by Col. C. C. Jones are built entirely of that material.t 
Third. The third and last class of mounds consists of the simple coni- 
cal tumuli that are seattered about over this whole area and are far 
more numerous than all the others combined. So far as outward ap- 
pearance is concerned they are generally round or oval, though other 
forms are not unfrequent. They vary in height from a few inches to 70 
feet,§ and in diameter from 3 or 4 feet to 300. It is probable however 
that a height of from 3 to 30 feet and a diameter ranging at the 
base from 15 to 50 feet would include a large proportion of them. 
Although so alike in form, these mounds differ widely in location, 
and, as we shall see later on, in their contents. They are found on the 
tops of the highest hills and in the lowest river valleys; they stand 
alone or in groups, or in connection with hill-forts or fortified villages, 
of which they evidently formed component parts. In the material of 
which they are built, as well as in the manner of their construction, 
they do not differ from the embankments and from other mounds. A 
* Antiquities of Wisconsin, in vol. vit of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowl- 
edge, pp. 14, 24,130, ete. See also Anc. Mon. of the Mississippi Valley, p. 130, in 
which Mr, Squier speaks of a mound that ‘‘may have been intended to represent a 
bird, a bow and arrow, or the human figure.” 
tl. ¢., note to p. 9. 
} Smithsonian Report for 1877, p. 278. 
§ Ane. Mon. Miss. Valley, pp. 5 and 168. 
