ANIMAL MOUNDS. 



As having, for the purposes of the present paper, a close connection 

 with the animal carvings, another class of remains left by the Mound- 

 Builders — the animal mounds — may next engage attention. As in the 

 case of the carvings, the resemblance of particular mounds to the ani- 

 mals vrhose names they bear is a matter of considerable interest on ac- 

 count of the theories to which they have given rise. 



The conclusion reached with respect to the carvings that it is safe to 

 rely upon their identification only in the case of animals possessed of 

 striking and unique characters or presenting unusual forms and propor- 

 tions, apjilies with far greater force to the animal mounds. Perhaps in 

 none of the latter can specific resemblances be found sufficient for their 

 prex;ise determination. So general are the resemblances of one class 

 that it has been an open question among archeologists whether they 

 were intended to represent the bodies and arms of men, or the bodies 

 and wings of birds. Other forms are sufficiently defined to admit of 

 the statement that they are doubtless intended for animals, but without 

 enabling so much as a reasonable guess to be made as to the kind. Of 

 others again it can be asserted that whatever significance they may 

 have had to the race that built them, to the uninstructed eyes of mod- 

 ern investigators they are meaningless and are as likely to have been 

 intended for inanimate as animate objects. 



There are many examples among the animal shapes that possess 

 peculiarities affording no hint of animals living or extinct, but which 

 are strongly suggestive of the play of mythologic fancy or of conven- 

 tional methods of representing totemic ideas. As in the case of the 

 animal carvings, the latter suggestion is perhaps the one that best cor- 

 responds with their general character. 



THE 



By far the most important of the animal mounds, from the nature of 

 the deductions it has given rise to, is the so-called " Elephant Mound," 

 of Wisconsin. 



By its discovery and description the interesting question was raised 

 as to the contemporaneousness of the Mound-Builder and the mastodon, 

 an interest which is likely to be further enhanced by the more recent 

 bringing to light in Iowa of two pipes carved in the semblance of the 

 same animal, as well as a tablet showing two figures asserted by some 

 archteologists to have been intended for the same animal. 

 152 



