Indian Mounds and Earthworks. 97 



Mr. Bringier, describing the Indian mounds in the region of 

 the Mississippi, states, that from Red river to St, Louis, a dis- 

 tance of five hundred miles, and in breadth eighty to two hun- 

 dred miles, mounds constantly occur, and for the most part are 

 symmetrically arranged, and contain human bones and other 

 traces of man. This writer suggests, that they may be the ruins 

 of ancient dwellings, constructed, on the old Mexican plan, of 

 large bricks, and were covered with earth, which, mouldering 

 down, left mounds in such abundance that the traveller is never 

 out of sight of them. What an immense population, he ob- 

 serves, must have occupied these dwellings, which cover so large 

 a portion of the surface of this region.* 



That some of the earthworks in the southern part of this con- 

 tinent are attributable to such an origin, appears to be the opin- 

 ion of other investigators. Professor Rafinesque, on the authority 

 of M. Rhea, states, that in an ancient walled town near Columbia, 

 in Tennessee, are " the ruins of many houses of various sizes, 

 from ten to thirty feet in diameter, all of circular form." 



The conical form is the most prevalent in Ohio. Mr. Atwater 

 has described many of these, and Dr. Drake, among others, has 

 given the details of four large elliptical mounds within the limits 

 of the city of Cincinnati. 



It will be seen by a glance at our diagrams, that no precise po- 

 sition, with regard to points of the compass, determined the con- 

 struction of the Wisconsin mounds ; and that in one case a single 

 member of a group of animals has been placed at right angles to 

 the rest. The choice, in selecting the sites of these memorials of 

 ancient days, appears to have been influenced mainly by the con- 

 tiguity to the lakes and principal rivers, and to those great lines 

 of interior communication which from an unknown period trav- 

 ersed this fine country. By this arrangement the greatest publi- 

 city was given to the burial places of the distinguished dead ; to 

 the simple yet permanent monuments erected to commemorate 

 their fame and rank, and perhaps with the design to perpetuate 

 the honor, and to flatter the vanity of some of the many tribes 

 and branches into which this great Indian family appears, from 

 remote times, to have been subdivided. 



* See this Journal, Vol. iii, p. 37. 



Vol. XXXIV.— No. 1. 13 



