THE MOUNDS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 567 
of works, and here again we have several traditions as to their origin. 
One of these, handed down among the Lenni Lenape—an Algonquin 
tribe—is to the effect that when they had reached the Mississippi in 
their migration eastward, they found the country east of that river in- 
habited by a powerful nation, called the Allegewi, who had many large 
towns built on the great rivers flowing through their land. At first 
they gave the Lenni Lenape, or Delawares, as we call them, leave to 
pass through their country, and seek a settlement farther to the east; 
but for some reason they attacked them whilst crossing the river, and 
inflicted great loss upon them. The Lenni Lenape then formed an alli- 
ance with the Mengwe or Iroquois, who were also on their way to the 
east in search of a home, and together they made war upon the Alle- 
gewi, stormed their towns and fortifications, and finally expelled them 
from the country. Heckewelder,* to whom we are indebted for the story, 
Says that he had seen many of their fortifications, one of which, situ- 
ated on the Huron River, east of the Sandusky, about 6 or 8 miles from 
Lake Erie, he describes as consisting of ‘walls or banks of earth reg- 
warly thrown up, with a deep ditch on the outside. - - - Outside 
of the gateway were a number of large flat mounds, in which, the Indian 
pilot said, were buried hundreds of the slain Allegewi.” In another 
account} we are told that it was a tradition of the Kaskaskias, Pianke- 
Shaws, and other tribes, that these ‘fortified towns,” ‘entrenched en- 
campments,” or “ garrisoned forts, many of them with towers of earth 
of considerable height to defend the walls with arrows and other missile 
Weapons, - - - were the works of their forefathers,” who were as 
numerous as the treesin the wood; but that, having affronted the Great 
Spirit, he made them kill one another. 
Speaking of the collection of mounds in the river bottom opposite St. 
Louis, just below the old French viliage of Cahokia, one of the largest 
mound centers in the United States, Baptist Ducoign, a Kaskaskia 
chief, told Gen. Geo. Rogers Clark that it was ‘“‘ the palaace of his fore- 
fathers, when they covered the whole (country) and had large towns; 
that all those works we saw there were the fortifications round the 
town, which must have been very considerable; that the smaller works 
we (saw) so far within the larger, comprehended the real palaace; that 
the little mountain we there saw flung up with a basin on top, was a 
* Historical account of the Indian Nations, pp. 29 et seq.: Philadelphia, 1819. See 
also that curious mixture of fact and fable, Cusick’s History of the Six Nations. John 
Norton, a Mohawk chief (in vol. 11 of Life of Joseph Brant, note onp.486: Albany, 
1865), says, ‘There was a tradition in his tribe that they were constructed by a 
people who, in ancient times, occupied a great extent of country, but who had been 
extirpated; that there had been long and bloody wars between this people and the 
Five Nations, in which the latter had been finally victorious.” 
t+MSS. of Gen. George Rogers Clark in vol. 1v of Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, pp. 134 
and135. See also Notes on the Iroquois, p. 162, and Brackenridge, Views of Louisiana, 
p. 185: Pittsburg, 1814. 
