On the Mounds of the West. 237 
Arr. XX VI.— Observations on the uses of the Mounds of the 
West, with an attempt at their Classification ; by E.G. eee, 
: Chillicothe, Ohio. 
T'He monuments. of ave Mississippi valley, are divisible into 
two grand classes, viz.. the Enclosures, familiarly known. as 
‘Forts,’ and the see 18 or Mounds ;* together they constitute a 
swale system of remains, and are the work of the same people. 
The enclosures, from their magnitude and other obvious rea- 
sons, have attracted, by far, the largest share of attention; and 
the character of some of them, with their walls and ditches and 
guarded ways, is manifest, and may be regarded as settled. Of 
the mounds, however, little has been. hitherto said. or known.— 
The popular opinion, based, in a great degree, upon the well as- 
certained purposes of the barrows and tumuli occurring in cer- 
tain parts of Europe and Asia, is, that they are simple monu- 
ments, marking the last resting place of some great chief or dis- 
tinguished individual, among the tribes of the builders. Some 
have supposed them to be the cemeteries, in which were save 
ited the dead of a tribe or a village, for a certain peri 
that the size of the mound is an indication of the cmahende in- 
humed! Others that they mark the sites of great battles, and 
contain the bones of the slain. On all hands the opinion has 
been entertained, that they were devoted to sepulture alone. 
This received orien is not, however, sustained by the investiga- 
tions set on foot by the writer and his associate, Dr. E. vis, 
of Chillicothe, Ohio. Nearly one hundred and fifty mounds, em- 
racing those. of every size and description, within enclosures 
and out of them, in groups and isolated, have been carefully exca- 
vated under their personal supervision, and every fact of import- 
ance respecting them carefully noted. The conclusion, to which 
these observations have led, is, that the mounds were construct- 
ed for several grand and dissimilar purposes, or rather, that they 
are of different classes ;—the conditions upon which the classifi- 
a is founded being t three in number cones ppombions 
structt 
ose which stand ist Phos or in oot A more or less re- 
mote from the enclosures, W which are not stratified, which con- 
tain human remains, and wash} were the burial places and mon- 
uments of the dead. 
e' term Mound is , in this paper, ina puree el sense as synonymous 
with tumulus and in Res to embankment, ra 
