566 THE MOUNDS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 
tradition says “these works were raised, and this battle was fought 
betwixt the Senecas and Western Indians. - - - Inthis great battle 
the Senecas affirmed that their ancestors won the victory. Some say 
theirancestors had told them there were 800 of their enemies slain; others 
include the killed on both sides in that number. Be this as it may, all 
their historians agree that the battle was fought where this heap of 
slain are buried, before the arrival of the Huropeans, some say three, 
some four, others five lives or ages, reckoning a life or age one hundred 
winters or colds.”* Another tradition represents that these works were 
erected by the ancestors of the Iroquois in their wars with other tribes tf 
and with the French.t Assuming that these two traditions refer to dif- 
ferent periods in the national life of the Six Nations, they do not conflict. 
In fact, they fit in together very closely, and as Mr. Squier has shown 
that these remains are but the abandoned village sites of the recent 
Indians,§ they may be said to be sustained by the traditions of the 
Jroquois as to their expulsion from the region near Montreal, and their 
seizure and occupation of central and western New York.|| 
Proceeding towards the southwest, we come next to the Ohio system 
*MSS. of Rey. Mr. Kirkland, /. ¢., p. 39. It will be seen that this account leaves 
it uncertain whether these works were erected by the Senecas or the Western Indians. 
So far as my purpose is concerned, it is immaterial which of these tribes built them. 
The following extract from Governor DeWitt Clinton will, however, clear up the diffi- 
culty: ‘‘Some of the Senecas told Mr. Kirkland, the missionary, that those in their 
territory were raised by their ancestors in their wars with the Western Indians.” 
Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc., vol. 11, p. 92. Compare Cusick’s History of the Ivoquois, part 
11, published in Schooleraft’s Indian Tribes, vol. V, pp. 632 et seq. 
t Notes on the Iroquois, p. 442. 
{Farmers Brother told Dr. King that the mounds were thrown up against the in- 
eursions of the French. This was about 1810, at which time he was 94 years old: 
Drake’s Indians of North America, fifteenth edition, p. 604. There is another tra- 
dition given by Governor De Witt Clinton in the Collections of the N. Y. Hist., Soc., vol. 
II, p. 92, to the effect that ‘these works were thrown up by an army of Spaniards,” 
etc. Ido not think it necessary to give it in the text, as itis probable that the 
tradition is as false as the event to which it relates is improbable. However, it 
may be well to add that Brant, the famous Mohawk chief, in vol. u, p. 484, of his 
life, speaks of a tradltion that ‘prevailed among the different nations of Indians 
throughout that whole extensive range of country, and had been handed down time 
immemorial, that in an age long gone by there came white men from a foreign 
country, and, by consent of the Indians, established trading houses and settlements 
where these tumuli are found. A friendly intercourse was continued for several 
years; many of the white men brought their wives and had children born to them 
- - - These circumstances at length gave rise to jealousies,” and the colony was 
ultimately destroyed. Brant expressed no opinion as to the truth of the tale, but 
added: ‘that from the vessels and tools which had been dug up in those mounds, or 
found in their vicinity, it was evident that the people who had used them were 
French. 
§ Aboriginal Monuments of New York, in Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, 
vol. 11, chap. vi. 
| Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 5. Bartram (John) Observations, ete., p. 23; 
London, 1751. Colden, Five Nations, p. 23. De Witt Clinton, 1. c., p. 92. Relation 
en U’ année 1660, p. 6. 
