Indian Mounds and Earthworks. 97 
Mr. Bringier, describing the Indian mounds in the region of 
the Mississippi, states, that from Red river to St. Louis, a dis- 
tance of five hundred miles, and in breadth eighty to two hun- 
dred miles, mounds constantly occur, and for the most part are 
symmetrically arranged, and contain human bones and other 
traces of man. This writer suggests, that they may be the ruins 
of ancient dwellings, constructed, on the old Mexican plan, of 
large bricks, and were covered with earth, which, mouldering 
down, left mounds in such abundance that the traveller is never 
out of sight of them. What an immense population, he ob- 
serves, must have occupied these dwellings, which cover so large 
a portion of the surface of this region.* 
That some of the earthworks in the southern part of this con- 
tinent are attributable to such an origin, appears to be the opin- 
ion of other investigators. Professor Rafinesque, on the 
of M. Rhea, states, that in an ancient walled town near Columbia, 
in Tennessee, are “the ruinsof many houses of various sizes, 
from ten to thirty feet in diameter, all of circular form.” 
The conical form is the most prevalent in Ohio. Mr. Atwater 
has described many of these, and Dr. Drake, among others, has 
given the details of four large elliptical mounds within the limits 
of the city of Cincinnati. 
It will be seen by a glance at our diagrams, that no precise po- 
sition, with regard to points of the compass, determined the con- 
struction of the Wisconsin mounds; and that in one case a single 
member of a group of animals has been placed at right angles to 
the rest. The choice, in selecting the sites of these memorials of 
ancient days, appears to have been influenced mainly by the con- 
tiguity to the lakes and principal rivers, and to those great lines 
of interior communication which from an unknown period trav- 
ersed this fine country. By this arrangement the greatest publi- 
city was given to the burial places of the distinguished dead ; to 
the simple yet permanent monuments erected to commemorate 
their fame and rank, and perhaps with the design to perpetuate 
the honor, and to flatter the vanity of some of the many tribes 
and branches into which this great Indian family appears, from 
remote as to have beat segumaeenes 
res thie Joacual, Vol. m1, p. 37. 
> Hoke XXXIV.—No. t: 13 
