154 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 



ANCIENT VILLAGES AMONG EMBLEMATIC 

 MOUNDS. 



Eev. S. D. Peet, Clinton, Wis. 



The subject which the author has set before himself in the 

 heading of this paper, is an important one and yet one 

 which is attended with peculiar difficulties. It is not an 

 easy task to take the silent monuments of the dead and to 

 people them with a living race. Even historic scenes when 

 once deserted and left in silent ruin are diflScult to rehabili- 

 tate, but prehistoric scenes much more. Of all the prehis- 

 toric works none are more mysterious and difficult to explain 

 than are the emblematic mounds. There is an obscurity 

 about them which almost baffles investigation. The people 

 who built them are shadowy and unfamiliar as ghosts. For 

 one to enter into the study of their habits and ways and to 

 describe their modes of life is almost presumptuous. The 

 tokens are, however, before us. Other explorers have studied 

 monuments and from them given descriptions of unknown 

 people. 



The villages of the emblematic mound-builders may, in- 

 deed, be different from the buried cities of the east and their 

 village life may contrast with the civilized state; yet this is 

 in accord with what is known concerning the mysterious 

 people. We are not to consider them as a civilized race, but 

 rather as a rude and almst savage people. Their villages 

 are merely the habitations of a rude people and are to be 

 studied as much in their connection with their surroundings, 

 as in the works which are found upon their village sites. 

 This point will be considered by the reader as he follows the 

 line of thought, for there are many elements brought into 

 the account and they are all to be as exponents of the one 

 surrounding system. The treatment of the subject is mainly 

 from an archaeological standpoint. The only object of com- 

 parison is the villages of the later Indians. These, however, 

 differ so much in their tokens from the villages of the earlier 

 race, that they become sources of confusion and close anal- 



