172 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY - [bull. 76 



It is now generally conceded that the wall or embankment at 

 Aztalan, Wisconsin, concerning which so many wild theories have 

 been promulgated, was simply a series of such house sites connected 

 by a low ridge. The evidences of mysterious sacrificial altars seem 

 to be due only to the destruction of such houses by fire. 



In Wisconsin, also, and in Minnesota, are many small mounds ap- 

 parently of this character which are due to an extinct tribe known 

 to the Sioux and Chippewas as " The Ground House Indians." 



In 1887 I became acquainted, at Munising, Michigan, with Mr. 

 William Cameron. He was of the Scotch clan of Camerons, a 

 nephew of a former Governor of Canada. Educated for a profes- 

 sion, he made a visit to relatives in Canada in early manhood, and 

 the attractions of the wilderness proved so great that he never 

 returned to his home. At the time I met him he was 84 years of 

 age, in full possession of his mental faculties. For more than 60 

 years he had traversed the Lake region, his fur trading and trapping 

 expeditions having carried him over all the country from Montreal 

 to the mouth of the Mackenzie River. Much of his life had been 

 spent among the Indians, especially the Sioux and Chippewas. He 

 learned from them all they could tell him of their tribal history and 

 former methods of living. The Chippewas told him that when they 

 first came into the country they found the Sioux in possession, but 

 finally, obtaining arms from the French, they drove the Sioux west- 

 ward. 



The " old men " of the Sioux corroborated this tradition and told 

 Cameron that as they went westward they came to a race of peo- 

 ple who lived in mounds which they piled up. These people were 

 large and strong, but cowardly. "If they had been as brave as they 

 were big," said the Sioux, " between them and the Chippewas we 

 would have been destroyed; but they were great cowards and we 

 easily drove them away." 



Mr. B. G. Armstrong, of Ashland, Wisconsin, told me that he 

 had taken great pains to investigate this tradition. From all that 

 he could gather by much inquiry among the Indians and from his 

 own observations, he was satisfied of its correctness. These people. 

 Avhom the Sioux called Ground House Indians, built houses of logs 

 and posts, over and around which they piled earth until it formed 

 a conical mass several feet thick above the roof. Their territory ex- 

 tended from Lake Eau Claire, about 30 miles south of Lake Superior, 

 to the Wisconsin River near Wausau or Stevens Point; down the 

 Wisconsin a short distance ; thence west into Minnesota, but how far 

 he could not say ; then around north of Yellow Lake back to the Eau 

 Claire region. The Sioux exterminated the tribe, the last survivors 

 being an old man and a woman Avho had married a Sioux. They 

 were taken to the present site of Superior, near Duluth, and " died 



