Some Considerations on the Alound Builders. 53 



mounds about four feet high about the Minnesota 

 river, have been determined to be mere ruins of the 

 earth-covered huts of the Iowas, who formerly lived 

 there. Excavation has found the charred remains of 

 the tent-poles, remnants of utensils, and sometimes hu- 

 man bones. The Choctaws used to preserve the skel- 

 etons of the dead, until they became numerous, and 

 then lay them in a heap on the ground, and cover them 

 with earth, making a small mound. The numerous 

 small mounds in Oregon are similar in appearance, and 

 probably in character. The Sioux sometimes burv a 

 body on a plain, heap billets of wood over the place; 

 and the dust of the prairies, mingling with the decaying 

 wood, makes a small hillock, which is increased by the 

 growth of rank vegetation. In special cases mounds 

 twelve feet high have been erected over noteworthy 

 graves, as over the grave of Blackbird, the Maha chief, 

 —as related by Lewis and Clark ; and one over a young 

 brave, near the red pipe-stone quarry, described by Cat- 

 lin. The recently deserted villages of the Ricarees and 

 Mandans, on the Missouri, were described by Lewis 

 and Clark as being distinguishable, at some little dis- 

 tance, by the encircling embankment, which had been 

 the base of their stockade defense. The earthworks in 

 Central and Western New York, which were at first at- 

 tributed by Squire to the Mound Builders, have been 

 ascertained by his subsequent careful examination to be 

 partly remains of the stockaded forts used by the Iro- 

 quois last century and the present century. And those 

 that are shown to be older, by the heavy forest growths 

 on them, are identical in structure and size. 



The small earthworks along the southern shore of 



