BURIAL MOUNDS OF THE NORTHERN SECTIONS OF 
THE UNITED STATES. 
By Cyrus THOMAS, PH. D. 
INTRODUCTORY. 
All the works of the mound-builders of our country are exceedingly 
interesting to the antiquarian and are valuable as illustrating the hab- 
its, customs, and condition of the people by whom they were formed, but 
the sepulechral tumuli surpass all others in- importance in this respect. 
Although usually simple in form and conveying thereby no indications 
of the characteristics of the people by whom they were erected, yet 
when explored they reveal to us, by their internal structure and contents, 
more in regard to the habits, beliefs, and art of their authors than can 
be learned from all their other works combined. From them we are en- 
abled to learn some traits of ethnical character. The gifts to, or prop- 
erty of, their dead deposited in these sepulchers illustrate their arts and 
customs and cast some rays of light into their homes and daily life, and 
the regard for their dead indicated by the remaining evidences of their 
modes of burial and sepulchral rites affords some glimpses of their re- 
ligious beliefs and superstitions. The larger and more imposing works, 
as the pyramidal mounds, the enclosures, canals, ete., furnish indications 
of their character, condition, strength, and culture-status as a people 
or tribe, but the burial mounds and their contents, besides the evidences 
they furnish in regard to the religious belief and art of the builders, 
tell us something of individual traits, something of their social life, 
their tastes, their personal regard for each other, and even something of 
the diseases to which they were subject. What is still more important, 
the modes of burial and vestiges of art found with the dead furnish us 
undoubted evidences of tribal distinctions among the authors of these 
works, and, together with the differences in external form, enable us to 
determine in a general way the respective areas occupied by the differ- 
ent tribes or peoples during the mound-building age. 
Judging by all the data so far obtained relating to the form, internal 
structure, and contents of these works, much of which has not yet been 
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