Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 77 



ments of New York, and other writers, say the Natchez 

 also threw up mounds here. But neither Du Pratz, 

 Charlevoix, Bossu, nor Dumont, make any such state- 

 ment, and I have not access to any other cotemporary 

 authority. Monette asserts that the works near Trinity 

 were then constructed by the Natchez. But works of 

 such magnitude could not have been constructed by the 

 Natchez in the short time they were in this, their last 

 fastness. 



The Natchez claimed that in former days they had 

 five hundred villages, and their borders stretched to the 

 Ohio. But that wars and a devastating pestilence that 

 broke out in old times, when a drowsy guardian suffered 

 the holy fire to go out, had reduced them. To these 

 causes Du Pratz added their custom of killing the at- 

 tendants of a chief upon the chief's death. It is quite 

 possible that the Natchez were a remnant of the race 

 that constructed the mounds. If not, they must have 

 been long in contact with that race. 



Of the works on the upper Missouri, except the one 

 described by Lewis and Clark, I have met no account, 

 except the concise statement of Mr. Barrandt of his 

 observations in 1869 and 1870. From the fact that he 

 cut down a tree six hundred years old, growing on one 

 of them, it is reasonable to suppose they were about 

 cotemporaneous with the works in Ohio. A specula- 

 tion, but a mere speculation, may be ventured as to the 

 disappearance of their builders. 



Lewis and Clark, and afterward Catlin, found on the 

 upper Missouri three small neighboring tribes, who 

 lived in towns of tolerably substantial and quite com- 

 modious mud houses, forming villages fortified with 



