56 Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 



race mounds, defensive works are not uncommon. One 

 of them at Savannah, on the Tennessee river, is so pe- 

 culiar that I shall speak of it separately at the close of 

 this paper. In Kentucky, fortifications mingle with the 

 simple mounds. In Central and Southern Ohio every 

 description of work is found, some of them peculiar to 

 this section. In Indiana and Illinois the remains are 

 not so numerous, but the one at Cahokia, Illinois, is the 

 giant of mounds. In Wisconsin there are no fortifica- 

 tions ; the inclosed work at Aztalan is not of a mili- 

 tary character. Conical mounds are found ; but the dis- 

 tinctive feature is the effigy mounds which dot the sur- 

 face of the State, as if the ancient race had used this 

 region, when it was a prairie, as a vast parchment 

 whereon, by the picture-writing of these effigies, they 

 inscribed their history. On the upper Missouri are 

 found conical mounds and fortifications. 



The northern portion of the region inhabited by the 

 Mound Builders is, therefore, the fortified region. The 

 works of defense are found in Tennessee, Kentucky, 

 Ohio, along the upper Missouri, and on the frontier 

 between the Allecrhanies and the ocean. 



o 

 WHEN DID THEY LIVE? 



As to the time when the Mound Builders lived, there 

 has been much discussion. From the fact that in the 

 Ohio Valley these works are not observed in the lowest 

 or last-formed river-bottoms, but qrily on the second 

 and higher lands, the deduction has been drawn that 

 they lived before the rivers had cut their present chan- 

 nels — before the lowest alluvium was formed. But in 

 one case, at least — in the works at Portsmouth — the 



