350 A Pre-Historic Indian Village — Pcttigrciv. 



side to the river, evidently made by the faithful women and slaves 

 carrying wood and water to their lodges on the hill. 



THE VILLAGE. 



To obtain a correct diagram of the village, [consult again 

 figure I, PL vii.] I divided the land into squares of one hundred 

 feet and by measurement was able correctly to place the hut rings 

 and mounds upon the plat. There are seventy-six of these circles 

 and twenty-seven mounds. The circles are made of stones vary- 

 ing in size from one foot to two feet in diameter, and were placed 

 around the outside of their houses to hold the skins in place. This 

 was a permanent village and contained many i>eople. The houses 

 were built with a view to a winter as well as a summer residence 

 the doorways facing uniformly to the southeast ; the stones form- 

 ing the rings are now half buried, the soil having accumulated 

 about them to the depth of eight inches. There seems to have been 

 no great degree of regularity in laying out the village. The 

 smaller circles would indicate the lodges, while the four oblong- 

 circles, the council chambers, and places for holding winter sports. 



THE MOUND BUILDERS. 



Who were the mound builders is a question that has been 

 often asked. It is generally conceded that they were a race who 

 once inhabited the United States but were supplanted by the pres- 

 ent race of American Indians, who now know nothing of them. 

 Recent investigations, however, are convincing, and the best in- 

 formed now^ believe that they were but the forefathers of present 

 races, and that by changes in mortuary customs, and moving 

 about from place to place, they are unable even to maintain tradi- 

 tions of their ancestors. The mounds were but the burial places 

 of the dead, the largest ones not necessarily indicating a great 

 chief, for more than one skeleton is often found in the same 

 mound. There is a tradition among the Omahas, Ponkas, Osages 

 and Kansas, that many hundred years ago, their tribes and several 

 other cognate tribes traveled down the Ohio river to its mouth and 

 separated on reaching the IMississippi, and that some went up the 

 river and some went down. The above named tribes were the ones 

 that w^ent up the Mississippi. At the mouth of the Osage river, 

 the Kansas separated, and the Omahas, Ponkas and lowas pro- 

 ceeded by degrees through Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota till they 

 reached the neighborhood of the Red Pipestone quarry ; thence 



