THE MISSOURI RIVER MOUNDS. 291 
deep recesses of the past, but they alone can tell us, not by words or writing, 
but by their work and by their sepulchres, which have kindly preserved their 
remains from the ravages of time for our instruction. 
Our structures and monuments upon the earth's surface are not confined to 
the loess deposits and terrace steps, but are spread alike, indifferently, over all 
the geological formations. The modern Indian erects his wigwam upon the 
recent alluvium, and the valleys and plains, wrought out by all the ages, with 
•equal indifference, showing no preference, whatever, for the loess bluffs, or the 
terrace tables. Not so with the extinct race of mound-builders of the Missouri 
River. They chose the summits of the loess hills, or the terrace plains, only, for 
an abiding place. Why this preference ? It could hardly be that any peculiarity 
of the soil or the formation itself influenced them, and we must look to extrinsic 
■conditions to explain their choice. 
It is a fact not disputed by geologists, that the loess deposit was made in 
lakes of still water, and that terraces were formed by shore-washings, and exposed 
by subsequent elevations of the land or subsidence of the water. May we not 
look, then, to these lakes for an explanation of the manifest and invariable 
preference shown ? Mav we not regard the Missouri River mound-builders as a 
race of lake-shore dwellers, made so from considerations of a food supply ? 
Many facts point to this conclusion, besides the persistent association of the 
-mounds with the geological formations before named, e. g.: the black vegetable 
mold is as thick on the mounds as over the adjacent lands. The trees growing 
on them are as large and as old as those of the surrounding forests. But all this 
might be covered by a period of five hundred years, and would not, necessarily, 
extend back to the lake era. But other facts, which may be superadded, are 
more conclusive. Stone implements have been frequently found in the loess 
from three to thirty feet below the suface, under conditions which leave but little 
doubt of their having been lost in the lakes of the Champlain era, and covered 
in where found, by the super-accumulation of their deposits. Human bones 
were found in Kansas City in a loess hill-side, not remote from the summit, 
eighteen feet beneath the surface, and within ten feet above the base of the 
deposit, under conditions that lead to the belief that they were engulfed and sub- 
sequently buried in the same way. 
The bones, teeth, and tusks, of extinct mammals, and three or four varieties 
of Helix, identical with living species, are often encountered at depths varying 
from five to more than a hundred feet below the surface. 
A vase of antique pottery was found at White Cloud, Kansas, in a loess hill, 
near its summit, fifteen feet below the surface, in clay which had every indica- 
tion of having remained undisturbed from the time of its primary deposit. An- 
other vase, precisely similar in every respect, was found in an artificial mound, 
standing on the summit of the bluff overlooking that place and the Missouri River, 
about one-half mile distant from where the first named vase was found, but at a 
much greater elevation of the bluff. Another vase, of the same antique work, 
was found, in sinking a well, on a broad, low terrace, at Manhattan, Kansas, at 
