FOWKE] ARCHEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS 173 



about 200 years ago "—that is, in the last quarter of the seventeenth 

 century. 



Gordon, an intelligent Indian living at the town of the same name, 

 a short distance south of Superior, was familiar with this tradition, 

 as were other Indians with whom I talked, and who accepted it as a 

 well-known fact. Gordon related that he had heard " the old men " 

 say these Indians erected their houses of wood and piled several feet 

 of dirt over them ; and they buried their dead in little mounds out 

 in front of their houses and a few hundred feet away. He told of 

 a mound that was opened near Yellow Lake in which the position 

 and condition of the skeletons, two or three of children being among 

 them, showed "as plainly as anything could" that they had been 

 sitting or lounging around the fire, when the roof fell in and 

 crushed them. 



There is a " Ground House River " in eastern Minnesota, which 

 probably derives its name from this people. 



