662 MOUND EXPLORATIONS. 



fouud many of tliese hut rings or lodge sites during liis explorations in 

 Tennessee. He writes as follows concerning them : 



.Scattered irregularly within the inelosure [the earthen wall which incloseil the 

 area] are nearly one hiiniUed mure or less ileliued circular ridges of earth which are 

 from a tew inches to a little over three feet in height, and of diameters varying from ten 

 totiftyfeet. * * * Au examination of those numerous low mounds or rather earth 

 rings, as there eould generally be traced a central depression, soon convinced me that 

 I had before me the remains of the dwellings of the people who had erected the large 

 mound, made the earthen embankment, buried their dead in the stone graves, and 

 lived in this fortified town, as I now feel I have a riglit to designate it.' 



The force of this conviction can be felt only by those who carefully 

 examine these ancient works in ]ierson ; words can not convey the im- 

 pression, in this respect, that is carried to the mind through the eye. 



Further testimony as to the meaning of the circular remains of this 

 kind is found in the fact that they are seldom, if ever, met with except 

 on the site of an ancient village, and often one that was defended by 

 an inelosure. For examples of this class the reader is referred to the 

 illustrations and descriptions given in the previous part of this volume of 

 works in Tennessee, southern Illinois, and southeastern Missouri. For 

 proof that these are similar to Indian villages at the time the latter 

 were tirst known to the whites, see the preceding historical evidence. 

 iSome of the villages described by the early travelers and explorers would 

 have left precisely such remains as some of those herein described and 

 figured. The want of regularity in the arrangement of these hut-rings, 

 their size and circular form; the central lire, and the perishable mate- 

 rials of which they were made furni.sh evidences of customs and modes 

 of life too strongly resembling those of the Indians in the earlier his- 

 torical days to be overlooked. 



But the testimony in regard to the dwellings of the mound-builders 

 is not yet exhausted, meager as it has generally been supposed to be. 



Daring the progress of explorations by assistants of the Bureau of 

 Ethnology in southeast Missouri, Arkansas, and Mississippi, especially 

 in Arkansas, in numerous instances, probably hundreds, beds of hard- 

 burned clay, containing impressions of grass and cane, were obser\ed. 

 These were generally found 1 or 2 feet below the surface of low flat 

 mounds, from 1 to .5 feet high, and from 15 to 50 feet in diameter, 

 though by no means confined to tumuli of this character, as they were 

 also observed near the surface of the large flat-topped and conical 

 mounds. iSo common were these burnt clay beds in the low flat mounds 

 and so evidently the remains of former houses that the explorers gen- 

 erally speak of theui in their reports as "house sites." 



As a general rule, in opening them, the strata are found to occur in 

 this order: first, a top layer of soil frotn 1 to 2 feet thi<k; then a htyer 

 of burnt clay from 4 inches to a foot tiiick (though usually varying ft'om 

 4 to 8 inches) which formed the plastering of the walls. This was 



' Eleventh Kept. Peabody Mus., vol. 2, pp. 347-.348. 



