84 Mound Builders in Northeastern Minnesota — Stuntz. 



I conclude that this semi-civilized people cultivated the soil; 

 they planted and cultivated certain forest and fruit trees; they ul- 

 tivated the wild rice; they understood pisciculture and stocked the 

 interior lakes and lived largely on a fish diet; they improved the 

 navigation of rivers leaving lasting monuments of their engineer- 

 ing skill, and they worked the mines for ochers or paints, for the 

 precious metals and for copper. 



America has ruins; America has a history; but it must be 

 read in the footprints of this ancient pt^ople. 

 December 2, 1884. 



[Paper L.^ 



THE MOUND BUILDERS IN NORTHEASTERN MINNESOTA; THEIR OCCU- 

 PATIONS AND ROUTES OF TRAVEL.— (r^O. R. Stuutz . 



The ''Mound Builders" who have left such abundant proofs of 

 a comparatively dense population in the Mississippi valley and 

 along its tributary streams have left traces of their occupancy of 

 the country to and beyond the northern boundary of this state. In 

 Town 58 north. Range 16 west, a circular mound 20 feet in diame- 

 ter and seven feet high, is located at the south side of Esquegamo 

 lake in a very pleasing and beautiful locality, commanding an ex- 

 tensive view of the Mesabi mountains and in common with this 

 class of mounds, so situated as to command a view of the earliest 

 rays of the rising sun. This mound is built from the sand and 

 alluvial soil of the neighborhood. The chain of lakes to the north, 

 extending up the valley of theEmbarras river to and through the 

 Mesabi mountains, cannot be surpassed in the beauty of its Alpine- 

 like scenery. 



The Embarras river route was the gr^at thoroughfare through 

 which this people reached the mining regions of Vermillion lake^ 

 from their settlements on the Mississippi river and their mining 

 towns on Lake Superior. From the Mississippi the route lay 

 through Sandy lake, across the divide to the east Savanna river, a 

 tributary to the great St. Lawrence drainage system. Following this 

 stream down and the St. Louis up, Embarras river is reached and 

 ascended through the chain of lakes before spoken of, to the height 



