106 ANDREW JACKSON HOWE. 



make good places in which to stand a siege. Those 

 in Wisconsin mostly take the form of alligators, birds, 

 and other animals, and are not sot certainly erected 

 along large streams, though an abundance of water is 

 never far away. These earth mounds are the most 

 frequently met in Ohio, and are the thickest in the 

 more fertile regions a fact which indicates that the 

 people who built them were of an agricultural turn. 

 Where the soil is poor the mounds are small and 

 scattered. If the builders of these monuments had 

 lived chiefly by fishing and hunting, they would have 

 erected the greater number by the ocean and lakes, 

 and little attention would have been paid to the fer- 

 tility of soils. A few mounds have been met in New 

 York and Pennsylvania, and occasionally in Canada. 

 The North-western States embrace several, and the 

 Southern States as many. The mound building race 

 can be traced from Labrador through the United 

 States and Mexico, and even into the interior of South 

 America. 



Whether the " Mound Builders," as they are 

 called, were radically different from the Indians who 

 succeeded them, and from savages inhabiting other 

 parts of the earth, is a question not yet settled. 

 Their implements were mostly made of stone, and 

 fashioned much as are the utensils which characterize 

 what has been denominated the " Stone Age " in 

 Europe. Copper axes, bracelets, and amulets are not 

 unfrequently found in graves and mounds, but as the 

 native ore in its purity existed in various parts of the 

 country, especially in the region of Lake Superior, 

 the working of copper did not indicate a higher de- 

 velopment of art than in the modeling of stone ; 

 therefore the Mound Builders could not be said to 



