40 



mounds. The earthworks are all on the open prairie and arrest 

 the attention of the most unobservant. It will be noticed that 

 these fortifications are, so far as observed on the south side of 

 the South Antler, just in the direction from which an enemy 

 would have come and by the route of attack he would most like- 

 ly have chosen. The mounds found, whatever other purpose 

 they may have served, were plainly for observation. It has 

 been suggested that these earthworks may have been used for 

 impounding the buffalo, when at times the herd was driven in 

 by riders, and thus many slaughtered, but the arrangement 

 of the embankments does not suggest this object. 



This district about the Antlers has however long been cele- 

 brated as a 



GREAT MOUND REGION. 



It is interesting to know that Prof. Hind in 1858, on a point 

 between a stream and the Souris river, near the 49th parallel 

 "found a number of conical mounds and the remains of an in- 

 trenchment." An excavation was made in one of the mounds, 

 but the explorer found nothing. The mounds and embankments 

 which have been now described, are those examined by Hind. 

 He even calls what we now know as the South Antler, by the 

 name "Mandan Creek," believing the mounds to have been 

 former Mandan dwellings. This,' indeed, was the half-breed 

 tradition on Red river as well as in other parts of the North- 

 west. The late expedition, however, within an area of four 

 miles square in the townships named, surveyed no less than 

 twenty-one mounds, and from accounts of other explorers the 

 mounds continue westward as the ascent of the Antlers is made. 

 The mounds vary from twenty feet in diameter to fifty or sixty 

 and are at the highest point from four to seven feet high, being 

 almost all flattened cones. They are very much less in size than 

 the mounds opened two years ago on Rainy River, which lie 

 three or four hundred miles to east of these. The party opened 

 four mounds, and thanks are especially due for assistance ren- 

 dered, to Messrs. Gould, Elliott and Sheriff, of Sourisford, 

 while Dr. Thornton and Mr. Shepard, of Deloraine, and Mr. 

 Cooper, of Brandon, entered with much enthusiasm into the 

 explorations. The settlers had previously opened two mounds 

 about May, and had been rewarded by finding several very in- 

 teresting articles. 



THE EXCAVATIONS. 



The theory of the writer that the mounds, so far as dis- 

 covered in the Northwest, have all been for observation, as well 



