Karl {I Man in Northea^teni Minnemta — Stnnlz. 77 



Some months since the liev. Dr. J. H. Tuttle oi' your city, 

 gave us in Duliith a very interesting lecture in which, mixed up with 

 incidents of travel, he gave us stereoptican views of ruins, some of 

 which have a record of over forty centuries. And in that connect- 

 ion, he remarked, that America had no ruins unless the mounds 

 and tumuli of the Mississippi valley could give us a clue to its for- 

 mer inhabitants. 



That these earth vvorks have a history and one of a very inter- 

 esting character and that a race of people occupied the country in 

 a very remote age and that their colonies penetrated the regions in 

 the northeastern portions, not only of this state but of Canada, 

 we have plenty of evidence. In the north, mounds do not occur 

 so frequently but always occupy a sightly position near some nat- 

 ural highway of travel, or on some locality near a lake having the 

 best food supply the country afforded. 



They did not live entirely by the chase but cultivated the land. 

 They introduced and cultivated certain fruits. They planted and 

 protected certain forest trees such as the oak, the sugar maple and 

 the linden in regions far beyond where they are indigenous. These 

 forest trees growing as they do in isolated orchards in the extreme 

 northeastern portion of the state, a mountainous, rocky region, 

 stripped of alluvial soil by the stupendous glaciers of two glacial 

 periods, the mountains crumbled to fragments, a debris scattered 

 for hundreds of miles to the south and west, forming the drift 

 hills and alluvial or partially alluvial jack pine sandy plains of 

 Wisconsin and Minnesota, could hardly have had their seeds scat- 

 tered to the north by any ocean currents, or up stream against the 

 currents of rivers. It hardly seems possible that the seeds of these 

 trees could have been brought from the north and survived the 

 terrible abrasion of centuries of glacial action. 



They are all esential for the wants of a half civilized people — 

 the acorns for food, the sugar for diet in connection with the rice 

 and corn they cultivated and the bark of the linden for cordage 

 and twine and in the manufacture of nets and mats. 



The alluvial lands in the Mississippi valley, as evidenced by 

 the extensive mounds and numerous tumuli supported a large popu- 

 lation. These people penetrated the north and in the ascent of riv- 

 ers, obstructed by rapids of bowlders and by broad shallow channels, 

 they began to leave monuments of their skill as engineers. 

 Nearly or quite all the streams leading from the Mississippi and 



