THE MOUNDS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 569 
where they sat down (as they term it) or established themselves after 
their emigration from the West, beyond the Mississippi, their original 
native country. On this long journey they suffered great and innu- 
merable difficulties, encountering and vanquishing numerous and val- 
iant tribes of Indians, who opposed and retarded their march. Having 
crossed the river, still pushing eastward, they were obliged to make a 
stand and fortify themselves in this place as their only remaining hope, 
being to the last degree persecuted and weakened by their surrounding 
foes. Having formed for themselves this retreat, and driven off the in- 
habitants by degrees, they recovered their spirits, and again faced their 
enemies, when they came off victorious in a memorable and decisive 
battle. They afterwards gradually subdued their surrounding enemies, 
strengthening themselves by taking into confederacy the vanquished 
tribes.”* These are a few of the traditions that have come down to us 
as to the origin of these works, and although, when considered by 
themselves, they are not perhaps of much historical importanee, yet, 
inasmuch as the question is not as to their truth, but as to their exist- 
ence, they answer my purpose as well as if each one of them were 
founded on fact, and had been handed down from generation to gener- 
ation without a break or a blemish. 
In regard to the credibility of these different accounts, a few words 
may not be out of place. As has been said before, they can not all be 
true, though there is no reason why some of them may not rest upon a 
basis of fact. Take for instance the tradition, found in some shape 
among almost all tribes, that these works were built by their ancestors, 
and test it as we may, it will be seen that so far from being impossible, it 
is rendered more than probable by the fact that some of the most elabor- 
ate of these remains can be shown to have been erected since the arrival 
of the whites. The evidence of this is furnished by the mounds them- 
selves, or rather by their contents, and consists of articles of Kuropean 
manufacture that were buried with the body over which the mound was 
originally erected. As an instance of this, take the series of works at 
Circleville, Ohio, to which a reference has been made on a preceding 
_page.t Itis composed of a circle, square, and mounds, all of which are 
rivers ‘‘ was last possessed by the Cherokees, since the arrival of the Europeans, but 
they were afterwards dispossessed by the Muscogulges; and all that country was, 
probably, many ages preceding the Cherokee invasion, inhabited by one nation or 
confederacy, who were ruled by the same system of laws, customs, and language; but 
so ancient that the Cherokees, Creeks, or the nation they conquered, could render no 
account for what purpose these monuments were raised.” On p. 456 the same state- 
ment is made in regard to a post or column of pine, 40 feet high, that stood in the 
town of Autassee, ‘‘on a low, circular, artificial hill,” and as this pole could not have 
been standing for very many generations, it is evident that the Indian’s account of 
what his ancestors did or did not know must be taken with a great deal of allowance. 
t See ante, foot-note + on page 557. 
