38 Description of Artificial Mounds in Louisiana. 
ArT. IV.—Description of some Artificial Mounds on Prairie 
Jefferson, Louisiana; in a letter to the Editors, dated Trinity, 
La., January 19th, 1845, from Prof. C. G. Forsuey. 
In a letter I addressed you some months since,* I made some 
mention of many systems of large mounds found throughout 
this region of country, promising from time to time to give such 
descriptions as may prove interesting to the antiquarian, of any 
of these unrecorded monuments of departed races. Jn executing 
this promise, it will not be in my power to proceed with them 
in the order of their importance, but in such order as they may 
fallin my way, when I have leisure to make accurate surveys. 
Such accounts only are to be relied upon. Many are found in 
the fastnesses of forests rarely penetrated by those who write of 
these things, and are vaguely described from hearsay, or second- 
hand evidence. 
Though we frequently find isolated mounds, they are com- 
monly found in groups, and occasionally constructed with such 
reference to each other as to indicate design. Not that the spe- 
cific object is ever very manifest; but that their conformation 
indicates arrangement in a particular order. Probably no ques- 
tion has more successfully baffled inquiry among antiquarians, 
than the specific object of these extensive works, and I have no 
solution to offer, deeming it, as Ido, much more important to 
give a faithful detail of their present appearance. 
In this immediate vicinity there are extensive works, which I 
have frequently visited, but having made no accurate survey I 
forbear giving them more than a passing notice, until I shall have 
given them a careful survey, such as has enabled me to present 
you with the map and detailed account of the mounds in Prairie 
Jefferson. 'The Ouachita river and its western tributaries abound 
in similar monuments, all of inferior magnitude, however, to 
those in this vicinity. These have been described, yet imper- 
* An abstract of this letter may be seen in the close of this number.— Eds. 
t The distinction of mounds into classes should not be forgotten. The tens of 
thousands of small, hemi-spheroidal tumuli noticed in my first letter, are rarely 
disposed with any reference to each other; whereas the angular, larger mounds, 
evidently of more recent construction, are much rarer, and generally arranged in 
groups, and sometimes with much system. 
