806 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Arts, and Letters. 



a people more patient of labor, and, in some respects, superior to 

 the nomadic tribes which, within the memory of the whites, clung 

 around and devoted to secondary uses these long deserted monu- 

 ments. There is not a considerable stream within the limits of 

 Georgia in whose valleys tumuli of this sort are not to be found. 

 They appear in Florida and are frequent in Alabama, where 

 truncated pyramids are even more abundant. Tennessee, South 

 Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana are dotted with interesting 

 monuments of this class. The occupation of this region by the 

 Mound Builders was by no means inconsiderable. It is in fertile 

 valleys and upon alluvial river-flats, whose soil afforded ample 

 scope for agricultural pursuits, that these tumuli are mainly seen. 

 There are many works which show the cultus and the social 

 status of the Mound Bailders, and these all indicate that the 

 mode of life prevalent among them was entirely different from 

 that which we know to have existed among the ordinary tribes of 

 Indians. The complicated and elaborate system of earth- walls 

 which surround the so- called military, sacred and village en- 

 closures, the various excavations which formed the moats which 

 protected their villages, or ponds for the preservation of fish, 

 the many graded ways which formed the entrances to enclosures, 

 and the many platforms and other structures which were discov- 

 ered in those enclosures, all show that the society among the 

 Mound Builders had reached a stage where all the varied offices 

 known to civilized life were already common, and where a com- 

 plete organization had begun to appear. The evidences are, that 

 the Mound Builders were agricultural, and having passed beyond 

 the unsettled condition of the savage races, occupied a position 

 intermediate between the hunter races of the east and the Paebloes 

 of the west, and were also in that social state which, formed a 

 connecting link between the two. The term Village Indian has 

 been applied to them, but we maintain that while village life evi- 

 dently prevailed among them, it was not their distinctive pecul- 

 iarity. A residence in collected bodies was common throughout 

 all the grades and states. This was owing partly to the com- 

 munistic state and the tribal organization ; but the term Tillage 

 Indians does not express their status. They were not in that 



