164 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bult.. 76 



acres is occupied by such piles of earth, promiscuously distributed. 

 This implies more hunters than animals. 



For a long time it Avas supposed that they were burial mounds, like 

 so many such structures found over the country; but this idea has 

 been dispelled by the failure to discover in them any evidences of 

 such purpose ; no human bones nor any of the artificial objects com- 

 monly placed with the dead have ever been found in them unless 

 under such conditions as to show their presence was accidental. 



Two very plausible theories have found general acceptance : That 

 they were the sites of dwellings, placed on them to be out of the 

 mud in wet weather; and that they were in the nature of garden 

 beds, thus elevated for growing any food products which needed a 

 comparatively dry soil, or might be injured by temporary accumu- 

 lation of water from excessive rainfall. 



But they were not " residence mounds " or " house sites " in the 

 sense that they furnished a base or foundation for structures which 

 were used as dwellings ; for there has never been found on their sur- 

 face or in the earth immediately around them any of the debris 

 invariably accompanying Indian huts or houses, such as fireplaces, 

 ash beds, burned rocks, broken implements, or fragments of bones and 

 pottery. These considerations also interfere with a full acceptance 

 of the hypothesis that they are remains of houses built of wood and 

 covered with earth. It is true that such evidence is very frequently 

 found in other localities; but to establish the fact that they were 

 residence sites, refuse of this kind should be found wherever the 

 mounds occur. 



J. B. Thoburn arrived at this conclusion from the resemblance of 

 some of them in their outlines to the grass-covered houses of the 

 Pawnees ; and it is believed that this tribe in its migration from the 

 south followed approximately the route along which these small ele- 

 vations are found. When the Pawnees — assuming they were the 

 builders — passed on westward they could not procure timbers of 

 sufficient strength to hold up the earth, so they used light frames 

 and covered them with grass. 



Bushnell arrived earlier at the same conclusion. He says, concern- 

 ing a few mounds of this character in Forest Park, St. Louis : "In 

 the case of the seven mounds on the elevated grounds, the finding of 

 potsherds, pieces of chipped chert, and the indication of fire, all on 

 what appeared to have been the original surface, would point strongly 

 to their having been the remains or ruins of earth-covered lodges." 

 He gives citations from early explorers in support of this theory, and 

 adds, " But in other mounds these indications did not occur." ^ 



3 Papers Peabody Museum, vol. iii, no. 1, p. 16. 



