Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 75 



cushions, with officers and attendants ranged about, and 

 with a colored shield held aloft by one to screen him 

 from the sun. Some tribes, the Natchez and Tensas, 

 preserved till 1730 their temples with the holy perpetual 

 fire. In De Soto's time chiefs commonly had their 

 dwellings on the summit of the terraced mounds; and 

 later several tribes used the rectangular inclosures, like 

 the one that used to stand about where Eighth Street 

 Park now is, in Cincinnati, as ground for playing the 

 game chungke, with just such discoid stones as are tound 

 among the relics of the Mound Builders. 



These remaining traces of the former population in- 

 dicate that in the Southern States they were not abso- 

 lutely exterminated, and swept off, leaving a void to be 

 filled by a new unmingled race; but that rather, in the 

 interminable wars and restless emigrations of the more 

 recent Indians, the less warlike Mound Builders grad- 

 ually dwindled, and became absorbed in their conquerors. 

 The Iroquois, pushing their conquering expeditions to 

 Montreal and Mackinac, to North Carolina and the 

 Mississippi, received and adopted many individuals 

 from tribes they overcame, and remnants of tribes they 

 had substantially exterminated. The Creeks, moving 

 from their original home in the far West, came upon 

 the Alibamas ; drove them in a pursuit, which lasted 

 many years, to the Mississippi, across it, and finally into 

 Alabama, when the chase ended, and the subdued rem- 

 nant of the Alibamas was received into the Creek na- 

 tion. The Natchez, after receiving remnants of several 

 nearly extinct tribes, were so nearly exterminated by the 

 French that the few remaining families fled to the Chick- 

 asaws and were absorbed. So the Mandans, the most 



