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54 Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 



Lake Erie, all having a military character, were first ob- 

 served by Colonel Whittlesey to differ from the impor- 

 tant works in Southern Ohio, in being smaller, simpler, 

 and having less elevation. The embankment is so 

 slight that it would be useless as a defense, and could 

 have been useful only as the base of a stockade. These 

 might have been small frontier outposts of the mound 

 builders, or might have been the stronghold of some 

 Indian tribe, like the Eries, who lived there till they 

 were exterminated, about 1650, by the Iroquois. The 

 small mounds in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, that are 

 found to be full of human bones, might possibly be the 

 work of Indian tribes, who buried their dead in the 

 manner of the Choctaws. 



Discarding these, the territory occupied by works 

 which could not have been built bv Indian tribes, such. 

 as we know, is well defined. At the south they begin 

 in Eastern Texas, and extend eastward to the Atlantic. 

 Between the western border of the Mississippi and the 

 Alleghanies they extend northward to the Ohio Valley, 

 north of the river, and up into Wisconsin; and, 

 sparsely, across the Mississippi into Minnesota. They 

 are found, also, on the upper Missouri. 



Lewis and Clark describe an important work on the 

 bank of the Missouri, where the northern boundary of 

 Nebraska now lies ; and A. Barrand, in a paper in the 

 Smithsonian octavo for 1870, describes many in Dakota 

 Territory on the right bank of the Missouri, and the 

 streams flowing into it, up to the Yellowstone. The 

 main locality is, therefore, between the western borders 

 of the Mississippi river and the Alleghany Mountains. 

 The works are not of uniform character throughout 



