THE MOUNDS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. _ 519: 
seen “a mound of a conical form of 10 feet height,” which had been 
thrown up over the body of a distinguished young Sioux, who had 
been accidentally killed whilst on a visit to that famous spot. * 
Crossing the Mississippi, we are told that the Chippewas, an Algon- 
quin tribe, having been successful in a battle with the Sioux, their 
women and children “in celebrating the achievement, erected a mound 
from the adjacent surface, about 5 feet in height, and in diameter 8 or 
10 feet, upon the summit of which a pole 10 or 12 feet in length was 
planted, and to this pole tufts of grass, indicating the number of scalps 
and other trophies achieved, were tied; around this mound the warriors, 
with their usual ceremonies, indulged in mirth and exultations over the 
scalps of their fallen foes.”+ This, it will be noted, is not a burial 
mound, but seems to have been thrown up to commemorate a victory, 
and I mention it particularly, as it may serve to shed some light upon 
the object or purpose for which the so-called anomalous mounds of Mr. 
Squier were constructed. That some of the Algonquin tribes were 
however in the habit of erecting mounds over their dead does not ad- 
mit of a doubt. De Vries (1642— Voyages, p, 163: New York, 1853) 
tells us that the Indians about Fort Amsterdam (New York) ‘form the 
grave, 7 or 5 feet, in the shape of a sugar loaf, and place palisades 
around it;” and in the Jesuit Relations for the year 1611, it is said that 
the tribes in Maine and farther to the eastward “build a sort of pyra- 
mid” over their distinguished dead. According to McKenney, a former 
superintendent of Indian affairs, the two mounds on Lake Winnebago, 
Wisconsin, known as Le Grand and Le Petit Butte des Morts, were 
erected over the bodies of a number of Fox warriors who had been killed 
in a battle that took place near that spot between that tribe and the 
Troquois.£ Van der Donck, too, as we have seen, is equally positive as 
work for an account of how the mound was built. In Science for March 16, 1883, 
Mr. Frank La Fléche, in a letter to Mr. Putnam, of the Peabody Museum, says: ‘‘I 
made inquiries about the mound made by the Omahas, in which Big Elk was buried, 
and was told that if was about as high as the shoulders of a tall man standing up, 
and that he was buried with great ceremonies. His favorite horse was strangled to 
death by his grave, and most of his horses and household goods were given to the 
poor.” This was about 1825-30. 
* North American Indians, vol. 11, p. 170: London, 1876. He adds that the story 
was related to him by the father of the young man, a Souix chief, who was “ visit- 
ing the Red Pipe Stone Quarry, with thirty others of his tribe, when we were there, 
and cried over the grave as he related the story.” 
tS. Taylor, in Amer. Jour. of Science, vol. XLt1v, p. 22. 
{From aged Indians ‘TI learned that a long time ago a battle was fought, first 
upon the spot upon which is Le Petit Butte des Morts, and the grounds adjacent, and 
continued upon that and the surrounding country, upon which is found Le Grand 
Butte des Morts, between the Iroquois and Fox Indians, in which the Iroquois were 
victorious, killing an immense number of the Foxes at Le Petit Butte des Morts; 
when, being beaten, the Foxes retreated, but rallied at Le Grand Butte des Morts, and 
fought until they were nearly all slain. - - - In those two mounds, it is said, re- 
pose the remains of those slain at those two battles:” McKenney, Vemvirs, etc., p. 84: 
