Some Considerations on the Mound Builders. 79 



it was played a hundred and fifty years ago in the South, 

 and called it by the same name. Ever since they were 

 first known, they have been wasting away under the re- 

 lentless hostility of the Sioux, and are now almost 

 wholly extinct, though the ruins of their former vil- 

 lages can be seen for many miles along the river. 



It is stated by Catlin, as a fact, acknowledged by ail 

 three of these little tribes, that the Rickarees and Min- 

 netarees merely adopted the habits of the Mandans 

 after settling in their neighborhood. But no explana- 

 tion has been given of the source whence the Mandans 

 acquired their mode of life, so exceptional in that re- 

 gion. 



Catlin suggests that they are descendants of the 

 Mound Builders driven from Ohio. But there is noth- 

 ing to warrant that ; and they have no tradition of having 

 come from any remote country. If we must make them 

 descendants of Mound Builders, we need not go away 

 from the valley of the upper Missouri for an ancestry. 

 All that can be said, and that is mere speculation, is, it is 

 possible that the Mandans are a lingering remnant of 

 the ancient race that constructed the works on the upper 

 Missouri, or of a tribe that by contact with that race 

 imbibed some of its modes of life. 



SOME WORKS IN TENNESSEE. 



Before closing I desire to sav a few words about some 

 works near Savannah, Tenn., described in the Smith- 

 sonian octavo for 1871, by J. Parish Stelle. On the 

 river bluff, about two miles below Savannah, is a group 

 of mounds of the ordinary type ; but at the foot of 

 the bluff, in the swampy land between it and the river, 



