364 KAJVSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



The points on which he rested his argument for the affinity of the American 

 mounds and earthworks, and, necessarily, the customs with which they were 

 connected, with those of Great Britain and a large number of similar works in 

 France, Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, Persia and China, were, in the first instance, 

 the existence of relationship to each other, always in the vicinity of rivers, of 

 mounds representing animal forms, and- — with some special exceptions — the close 

 proximity of vast works of camps for defense, huge enclosures or oppida for civil 

 occupation, and other evidently sacred enclosures for solemn rites, worship and 

 sepulture. In America these evidences went no further, but in the vicinity of 

 the mounds he had traced in Western and Eastern Europe, and in Asia Minor, 

 and still further East, not only were all these features attendant but the localities 

 also abounded with mythological and traditionary legends, and the retention of 

 strange and weird ceremonies to the present day. 



He selected as illustrations of the American mounds, those in the forms of 

 serpents, the alligator (or mythical dragon), and the human form. The serpent 

 was shown, by the late Mr. Squire, to have been executed in two ways, viz: — by 

 the solid continuous serpentine form, and by a series of symmetrical mounds uni- 

 formly placed in curves. The reader gave examples of each of these, on dia- 

 grams, and explained that they existed in large numbers in Great Britain, similar 

 in proportions and construction to those of the American mounds, which were 

 kindred in form, and accompanying these were, he stated, in every case, exten- 

 sive areas occupied by similar camps and enclosures for civil occupation, or op- 

 pida, and also separate enclosures for worship and sepulture. The characteristic 

 physical, natural and art features were also curiously persistent in each case, a 

 triple imagery having been in very many instances studiously represented, both 

 by places of selection, as the vicinity of triple peaked mountains, and in con- 

 struction, by triangular chambers and triangular enclosures in or about the head 

 of the animal forms, as well in the American as in other similar mounds. Since 

 his arrival at Montreal he had heard of indications of this having been an Indian 

 burying ground. They appeared often to have selected places of previous occu- 

 pation, as in the mounds; and the triple hill and triangular piece of land at its 

 base were significant. The works in Great Britain, Spain, France, etc., were 

 found to contain chambers filled with cremative matter, and had studied arrange- 

 ments for preserving the outlines of the animal forms, as shown in the diagrams, 

 and were generally surrounded with vast lithic arrangements, and each, as a rule, 

 was in the centre of an extensive necropolis of the primitive inhabitants The 

 legends and traditions clustering about these places were always of the same 

 class in the other continents, and alrriost always had reference to man as the 

 possessor and the serpent or dragon as the persecutor or destroyer, and this 

 whether the tradition was one of uncultured and primitive existence, or of the 

 highest classical art ages and localities ; and though such traditions did not exist 

 in America, yet not only did their huge mounds simulate these forms, but there 

 had been dug up from their mounds rude sculptured figures of the human form 

 and also of entwined or coiled serpents, showing that in their construction the 



