68 Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 



opened, the rude stone hammers they used, blocks of 

 copper they separated from the mass but found too 

 heavy to be removed, remain witnessess of their toil. 

 But the shores of Lake Superior were not inhabited. 

 Hence the residents of Ohio must have made summer 

 expeditions even to the north shore of the lake; and to 

 make a summer expedition productive, they must have 

 gone in working parties of some size. Possibly the 

 earthworks along the southern shore of Lake Erie were 

 fortified camps of these parties. That the crude native 

 copper was brought to Ohio, and then hammered into 

 implements, appears from the fact that lumps of it are 

 found in mounds and under the soil. The implements 

 so made found their way to distant points. They are 

 occasionally found in Southern mounds. 



At the same time, bits of obsidian, very few, indeed, 

 but which must have come from Mexico, have been 

 found in Ohio. And some of the pipes found by 

 Squire and Davis indicate that they were made at a dis- 

 tance, or else by persons who had traveled : for one 

 represents a seal ; another a manito, which inhabits on the 

 coast of Florida; and one represents a toucan feeding 

 from a hand, and the toucan was mentioned by the early 

 Spanish discoverers as the only bird tamed by the In- 

 dians. 



In fine, the Mound Builders appear to have been an 

 agricultural people, as well as hunters, capable of patient 

 toil, living under a strongly centralized or despotic gov- 

 ernment, and were somewhat more advanced than the 

 Indians, who succeeded them, in the rudiments of civil- 

 ization. They were perhaps on a level with the Zuni 

 or Pueblo Indians of Arizona. 



