(;04 ' MOl.'ND EXPLORATION'S. 



accompany, to a greater or less exteut, almost every village site 

 throngbout the vast area embraced. 



A third serious hindrance to legitimate progress is found in the uo- 

 nieiiclature which has cdine into use, a number of the terms commonly 

 employed being nothing more nor less than theories crystallized into 

 names; such, forexami)lc, as " Sacred Enclosures," " Temple Mounds," 

 "Altar Mounds," " Sacrificial Mounds," etc. So deeply have these 

 become embedded in the minds of most writers on American arche- 

 ology, that in alluding to our ancient earthworks they are used as 

 though no question could arise as to their correctness. In fact, many 

 writers on this subject seem to proceed upon the theory that the mound- 

 builders devoted most of their time to religious ceremonies. A charred 

 bone or an ash bed in a tunuilus suggests to them sacrifice, a mound- 

 covered stone heap or hard mass of clay is at once construed into a 

 sacrificial altar, and in every truncated mound they behold the site of 

 a temi^le, where the people, led by their priests, assembled to perform 

 their religious rites and ceremonies. Even the plates of mica, found 

 so frequently in these structures, are supposed by some to have been 

 used by the priests as reflectors to concentrate the rays of the sun for 

 the purpose of igniting tiie fuel on the altar, thus causing the people 

 to believe they had called down sacred fire from the sun, their supreme 

 divinity. 



Take, for example, the expression of a no less able and conscientious 

 writer than Dr. Lapham. Speaking of tlie masses of burnt clay and 

 other evidences of fire found in the walls of the earthworks at Azta- 

 lan, Wisconsin, he remarks: " From all the facts observed it is likely 

 that the clay was mixed with the straw and made into some coarse 

 kind of envelope or covering for sacrifices about to be consumed. The 

 whole was probably then placed on the wall of earth, mixed with the 

 requisite fuel, and burned. The promiscuous mixture of charcoal, 

 burned clay, charred bones, Ijlackened pottery, etc., can only in this 

 way be accounted for." ' 



Examining the facts as given in his most excellent work on the 

 Anti(]uities of Wisconsin, we are astonished to find how small a basis 

 he had upon which to build such a theory. 



The Aztalan remains consist in part of surrounding walls, which 

 have mound like enlargements: 



Whether these walls are only a feries of orilinary mounds, such as are t'ouud all 

 over the western country, ilitierinu- only in being united to one another, it may, per- 

 haps, be difficult to decide. Tliey may, possibly, have been designed for the same 

 and for other purposes. On opening the walls near the top it is ociasionally fiiunil 

 that the earth has been burned. Irregular masses of hard, rc-ddish clay, full of cav- 

 ities, bear distinct impressions of straw, or rather wild liay, with which they liiid 

 been mixed before burning. These places are of no very considerable e.Ktent, nor 

 are they more than 6 inches in depth. Fragments of the same kind are found scat- 

 tered about, and they have been observed in other localities at a great distance 



'Antiquities of Wisconsin, p. 44. 



