416 ETHNOLOGY. 



they were immediately on the bank of the river. But while it is, no doubt, 

 true that the river once washed the base of the promontory on which 

 Sugar Loaf Mound now stands, it was doubtless long anterior to the 

 time when that great mound was erected. The small mounds in the 

 city-limits stand on land that, according to that theory, must have 

 been under water when the great mound was being erected, but which is 

 now above overflow. Either this view is incorrect, or the city-mounds 

 were built long after the large mounds were, and by a different race of 

 people. It is claimed by some ethnologists that the mounds erected on 

 low and overflowed lands were built by a race of people called fishermen, 

 who inhabited this country about eight hundred years ago. But the 

 data upon which these theories are based are of so doubtful a character 

 and so defective that it will require other discoveries and more accurate 

 investigations to solve these great questions. It is for the solution of 

 problems like these and others of still greater importance to ethnologi- 

 cal science that earnest and faithful inquiries after truth will follow the 

 pick and shovel in excavating the works of these mysterious people. 

 It is no idle or unmeaning curiosity, or love of sordid gain, or desire for 

 a little notoriety, that prompts investigations like these, but a refined 

 and sacred love of truth and a noble desire to add to the great treasury 

 of useful knowledge and to aid in perfecting sciences that are now in 

 their infancy and struggling for existence. Some strictly practical men 

 may claim that such investigations are useless, and time not well spent; 

 but they forget that all truth is divine, and that many seemingly unim- 

 portant facts are necessary to establish a principle, and that principles 

 make up great systems, and that systems make worlds, and worlds a 

 universe which is presided over by one Allwise Being, and that all 

 truth and the world's activities are emanations from God; and as we 

 learn more of nature's great laws and solve problems in ethnological or 

 any other science, we learn more of our Creator and his laws. It is very 

 true that the few simple isolated facts that may be gathered by local 

 ethnological observers would be of but very little value if viewed sep- 

 arately; but when they are combined and properly arranged with other 

 discoveries and developments that are being made all over this country 

 and Europe, great problems may be solved, important principles un- 

 folded, and the science perfected. 



As these city-mounds are erected on land that is above overflow, and 

 as but few of them present any evidence of their being burial-mounds, 

 it may be supposed that they were erected by the same race and for the 

 saime purposes as were the large mounds on the hills; and all are, no 

 doubt, ancient mounds in the strictest sense of that term ; and although 

 scarcely anything has been found in any of them to indicate their 

 nature or origin, yet they are not the less interesting to the student of 

 ethnology. 



