40 ANTIQUITY OF THE OHIO MOUNDS. chap. in. 



look or defence, and others for sepulture. The unknown 

 people by whom they were constructed, judging by the form 

 of several skulls dug out of the burial-places, were of the 

 Mexican or Toltecan race. Some of the earthworks are on 

 so grand a scale as to embrace areas of fifty or a hundred 

 acres within a simple enclosure, and the solid contents of 

 one mound are estimated at twenty millions of cubic feet, so 

 that four of them would be more than equal in bulk to the 

 Great Pyramid of Egypt, which comprises seventy-five 

 millions. From several of these repositories pottery and 

 ornamental sculpture have been taken, and various articles in 

 silver and copper, also stone weapons, some composed of 

 hornstone unpolished, and much resembling in shape some 

 ancient flint implements found near Amiens and other places 

 in Europe, to be alluded to in the sequel. 



It is clear that the Ohio mound-builders had commercial 

 intercourse with the natives of distant regions, for among 

 the buried articles some are made of native copper from Lake 

 Superior, and there are also found mica from the Alleghanies, 

 sea-shells from the Gulf of Mexico, and obsidian from the 

 Mexican mountains. 



The extraordinary ni;mbcr of the mounds implies a long 

 period, during which a settled agricultural population had 

 made considerable progress in civilization, so as to require large 

 temples for their religious rites, and extensive fortifications to 

 protect them from their enemies. The mounds were almost all 

 confined to fertile valleys or alluvial plains, and some at least 

 are so ancient, that rivers have had time since their con- 

 struction to encroach on the lower terraces which support 

 them, and again to recede for the distance of nearly a mile, 

 after having undermined and destroyed a part of the works. 

 When the first European settlers entered the valley of the 

 Ohio, they found the whole region covered with an uninter- 

 rupted forest, and .tenanted by the Eed Indian hunter, who 



