180 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Arts, and Letters. 



ficed human victims to the sun, like the Mound Builders of Daven- 

 port. In fact they were Mound Builders themselves. 



The Smithsonian Eeports state that at the bottom of a mound, 

 near Savannah, an iron sword was found with an oak handle, in- 

 dicating communication with white men. 



Bartram (Antiq. Southr. Indians, p. 181), sajs that in his day 

 the Choctaws erected mounds over the collected bones of their 

 dead, and that the chief, To-mo-chi-chi, pointed out the large 

 mound in which were the bones of a chief who had entertained 

 a great white man with a red beard, who came into Savannah river 

 in a ship. 



It is well proved that the southern Indians, like the Mound 

 Builders, possessed the art of weaving cloth, which Foster erro- 

 neously attributes to the Mound Builders alone. 



I have just received a letter from the Rev. A. L. Riggs, a mis- 

 sionary among the oSTebraska Indians, respecting the use of earth- 

 works among the western tribes. He says : 



" Along the Missouri river, at least from Sioux City to its head, 

 are many remains of villages and fortifications. They are all 

 traceable to tribes now in existence, chiefly to Poncas, Rees, and 

 Mandans, and were built within two hundred and fifty years. The 

 large circular dirt houses still to be seen at Fort Berthold, among 

 the Mandans and Gros- ventres, were once built by the Poncas, also. 



" I remember the site of an old fort on the Minnesota river, near 

 the Yellow Medicine. It was on the edge of the western bluffs. 

 Three sides had been protected by a ditch, and probably by palis- 

 ades. It enclosed, as I remember, an acre. This fort was said to 

 have been built by the Pawnees, or else the Omahas. This was 

 before the Dakotas occupied the country." 



It appears, therefore, that a considerable number of tribes still 

 exist, and some of them are now well civilized, who were Mound 

 Builders when the white men first met them. These facts may 

 destroy some of the poetry of the mounds, but we must look 

 at things as they are. The theories of ethnology have grown too 

 much under blue glass, swelling to an unhealthy size, which can- 

 not be maintained under white sunlight. We shall get on faster, 

 if we move slower. 



