RICE COUNTY. 73 



Artificial mounds. J 



but several varieties of logs are cut into common lumber of all dimensions. Other steam lumber 

 mills, less extensive, are found in the same part of the county. 



Artificial mounds. At one half mile north of the old Wheatland post-office, S. W. .', sec. 16, 

 Wheatland, several artificial mounds appear. They lie along a small lake which is on the west 

 side of the north -and -south road. They are rather small, not exceeding two feet in hight. Five 

 or six are visible from the road. There are probably others. 



In Webster township, sec. 17, an eighth of a mile north of Edward McFadden's, on the 

 highest land, but yet surrounding a marsh, may be seen a number of mounds rising two and a 

 half or three feet. 



There was an " Indian mound" on sec. 2, Shieldsville, on the south side of the outlet of the 

 middle lake. According to Mr. 1'atrick McKenna, one of the early settlers of Shieldsville, the 

 Sioux Indians used to fix their camp at this place. They had a scaffolding upon it where they 

 placed their dead, and afterward buried the bones in the mound. This mound was from ten to 

 twelve feet high. It was removed by the owner of the land that the surface might be tilled. 

 Flint arrow-points have been found in that neighborhood, but they are not known elsewhere in 

 the vicinity. 



Besides the mounds mentioned in Waseca county, on page 414, others are in the vicinity of 

 Woortville. According to Mr. J. F. Murphy there are 21 mounds, from four to five feet in 

 hight, near the center of section 3, between \Vatkins and Rice lakes, some of them thirty feet in 

 diameter. 



In Fillmore county several large mounds are to be seen on the tops of the bluffs near Rush- 

 ford; and at the junction of the north branch of Root river with the main river, two miles below 

 Lanesboro, area great many mounds, probably forty in number. Several years since, on the dis- 

 covery of human bones in plowing the fields in which they lie, about twenty of these mounds were 

 examined by some citizens of Laneeboro. The human relics discovered on excavating consist 

 of large human bones, several stone hammers, a copper spear-head, several clay pipes and beads, 

 as well as a small clay image of the human face and head, the latter with a circlet of radiating 

 feathers passing over the top.* Other earthworks are near Houston in the Yucatan valley. 



Some of yiesc specimens have boon placed in the Renernl museum of the University. l>y the courtesy of Mr. B. A 

 Man. Fora representation of the imasje of the human face found in the Lanesboro mound, ee I'opitlar Science Monthly, 

 XIX, 009. 



43 



