22 BURIAL MOUNDS OF THE NORTHERN SECTIONS. 
again meet with in the adjoining district, may be the work of different 
tribes from those which constructed the small unstratified tumuli, but 
the distinctions between the two classes are not such as to justify the 
belief that they are to be attributed to a different race or to a people 
occupying a higher or widely different culture-status. 
Having reached this conclusion it is impossible for us to halt here ; 
we are compelled to take one step farther in the same direction and 
ascribe the singular structures known as “ effigy mounds” to the same 
people. The two classes of work are too intimately connected to admit 
of the supposition that the effigy mounds were built by one race or peo- 
ple, and the conical tumuli by another. We might as well assume that 
the enclosures of Ohio were the work of one people, but the mounds 
accompanying them of another. 
That works of different tribes or nations may frequently be found in- 
termingled on areas over which successive waves of population have 
passed is admitted, but that one part of what is clearly a system is to 
be attributed to one people and the other part to another people is a 
hypothesis unworthy of serious consideration, The only possible expla- 
nations of the origin, object, or meaning of these singular structures 
are based, whether confessedly so or not, on the theory that they are 
of Indian origin. Remove the Indian element from the problem ana 
we are left without even the shadow of an hypothesis. 
The fact that the effigy mounds were not used as places of sepulture, 
and that no cemeteries save the burial mounds are found in connection 
with them, is almost conclusive preof that the two, as a rule, must be at- 
tributed to the same people, that they belong to one system. If this’ 
conclusion is considered legitimate, it will lend much aid to the study 
of these works. It is true it is not new, but it has been generally ig- 
nored, and hence could not aid in working out results. ; 
The following extract from Dr. Lapham’s “Antiquities of Wisconsin ” 
will not be considered inappropriate at this point:! 
The ancient works in Wisconsin are mostly at the very places selected by the pres- 
ent Indians for their abodes, thus indicating that the habits, wants, modes of sub- 
sistence, &c., of their builders were essentially the same. 
If the present tribes have no traditions running back as far as the time of Allouez 
and Marquette, or even to the more recent time of Jonathan Carver, it is not strange 
that none should exist in regard to the mounds, which must be of much earlier date, 
It is by considerations of this nature that we are led to the conclusion that the 
mound-builders of Wisconsin were none others than the ancestors of the present tribes 
of Indians. : - 
There is some evidence of a greater prevalence than at present of prairie or culti- 
vated land in this State at no very remote age. The largest trees are probably not 
more than five hundred years old, and large tracts of land are now covered with for- 
ests of young trees where there are no traces of an antecedent growth. Every year 
the high winds prostrate great numbers of trees and frequent storms pass through the 
forest, throwing down nearly everything before them. Trees are left with a portion 
of the roots still in the ground, so as to keep them alive for several years after their 



1 Pp. 90-92. 

