200 - NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. 



writer has met with them in many places, in a small compass 

 within forty or fifty miles of the Missisippi. Their perfect 

 regularity of shape, size and direction, forbid the idea of a 

 natural formation. It is said the present inhabitants know 

 nothinii of them, and have no traditions, and therefore the 

 inference is drawn that they w^ere the works of another race, 

 who had become extinct before the tribes now there possessed 

 the country. To my mind, however, the inference is not a 

 legitimate one. The Indian traditions are of the creation, 

 the deluge, the first appearance of man and woman upon the 

 earth, great eras connected with the formation and peopling 

 of the earth, and kindred to them. But of the extinction of 

 tribes or nations by war and pestilence, and the inhumation 

 of heaps slain by disease or battle, they pass down, I believe, 

 no story. If these were constructed but a few centuries 

 ago, the living descendants of the people who reared them 

 might be now uninformed of their date or object. 



Mr. Locke has given an account of some very singular 

 works of this kind in the likeness of quadrupeds, which has 

 been printed in the Appendix to the Report on the geology 

 of the mineral district, by David Dale Owen. Mr. Locke's 

 account is subjoined, as a part of the Appendix to these notes. 



