ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT. XLVII 



curved, to buiy tlie remains iii the earthen floors, burn the 

 liouses, and heap mounds over the sites while the embers yet 

 smoldered. These residences appear to have been constructed 

 by setting upright sticks in the ground and wattling them by 

 interweaving canes or twigs, then plastering these rude walls 

 with clay and thatching the roofs exactly as descriljed liy the 

 early French explorers of the region. 



6. The contents of the mounds examined reveal in the 

 builders a people who had attained about the same status in 

 warfare, domestic customs, social conditions, and arts, as the 

 Indians of the same neighborhood when first visited by white 

 men. 



7. The construction of similar mounds over the dead has 

 been practiced extensively in many localities since the com- 

 ing of Europeans, as is demonstrated by the finding of silver 

 and iron implements and religious emblems among the bones 

 and ashes of the 'abandoned hearths. 



8. The explorations of the Bureau exliibit the fact that the 

 mounds of the eastern portion of the United States can not be 

 distinguished from those of the western portion as belonging 

 to a higher grade of culture, while there is abundant evidence 

 that the western mounds have in part been erected and used 

 by the Indians in historic times. The present Director has him- 

 self seen two burial mounds in process of construction — one in 

 Utah, on the banks of the Santa Clara, near the town of St. 

 Greorge, constructed by a tribe of the Shoshonean famil}^; the 

 other built by the Wintun Indians in the valley of Pitt river, 

 near the fish-hatching station on that stream. The evidence 

 in favor of the Indian origin of the western structures has 

 been so great and the facts have been so well known that 

 writers have rarely attributed them to prehistoric peoples. 



S. The explorations of the Bureau herein recorded justify 

 the conclusion that works of certain kinds and localities are 

 attributable to specific tribes known to history. This makes 

 it possible for the archeologist to determine, to a limited 

 extent, certain lines of migration. For example, it seems to be 

 proved that the Cherokees were mound-builders, and that they 

 built most of the mounds of eastern Tennessee and western 



