108 APPENDIX. 



documents accompanying the President's message for 1806, of a " mound of con- 

 siderable size," erected by the Natchez Indians, near Nachitoches, when they 

 were expelled from Louisiana, in 1728. They are also said to have fortified them- 

 selves near this place. Mr. Catlin observed a conical mound, ten feet in height, 

 at the celebrated pipe-stone quarries of the Coieau des Prairies, which had been 

 erected over the body of a young chief of the Sioux tribe, who had been acci- 

 dentally killed on the spot. — (iV. A. Indimis, Vol. II., p. 170.) James also presents, 

 upon what he deems good authority, an account of the discovery, by a hunting 

 party, in 1816, on the banks of the La Mine River, in Missouri, of a newly made 

 mound ; which, when opened, disclosed the body of a white officer, clothed in 

 regimentals, placed in a sitting posture on a mat, and surrounded by a rude enclo- 

 sure of logs, twelve feet long, three wide, and four high. He had evidently met a 

 violent death, and had been scalped. — {Narrative, Vol. I., p. 84.) To what nation 

 he belonged, and by whom the mound was erected, is unknown. The Mandans 

 sometimes constructed little mounds of earth, not however for burial. They 

 were connected, in some mysterious way, with their ceremonies for the dead. 

 " Their dead," says Catlin, " are placed, closely enveloped in skins, upon scaffold- 

 ings, above the reach of wild animals. When the scaffolds decay and fall to the 

 ground, the nearest relatives bury all the bones excepting the skull. The skulls 

 are arranged in circles of a hundred or more, on the prairies, with their faces all 

 looking to the centre. In the centre of each ring is erected a little mound, three 

 feet high, on which are placed two buffalo skulls, a male and female ; and in the 

 centre is reared a medicine pole, supporting many curious articles of mystery and 

 superstition, which they suppose to have the power of guarding and protecting 

 this sacred arrangement. Here the relatives of the dead resort to hold converse 

 with them, bringing a dish of food, which is set before the skull at night and taken 

 away in the morning. Under each skull is constantly kept a bunch of fresh wild 

 sage." — (iV. A. Indians, Vol. I., p. 90.) 



The Indians, it is well known, often heaped a pile of stones over the graves of 

 such of their tribe as met their death by accident, or in the manner of whose death 

 there was something sufficiently peculiar to excite their superstition. Such was 

 the case, in one instance, in Scoharie county, on the Cherry Valley trail. But the 

 construction of mounds, whether for purposes of burial or as monuments, except 

 perhaps among some of the Southern tribes, was far from common, and cannot be 

 regarded as a custom of general acceptance. The few which they built were 

 clearly, in most instances, the result of caprice or of circumstances ; and we are 

 not justified in ascribing to them more than a very trifling proportion of the nume- 

 rous tumuli which dot the plains and valleys of the West, and which, in their 

 numbers and uniformity of structure and contents, give conclusive evidence that 

 they were constructed for specific purposes, in accordance with a well recognised 

 design, and an established and prevailing custom. 



The practice of depositing the property of the dead in the tomb with them 

 (almost universal among the American Indians) is of the highest antiquity, and 

 was widely diffused amongst all primitive nations. " In all early ages," remarks 

 an erudite writer, " wheii the disengaged activity of man ever carries a keen and 



