GIGANTIC EARTHWORKS. 229 



by four hundred and forty feet in circumference at the base, 

 with a level area at the summit of one hundred and fifty feet 

 in circumference ; the still greater mound on the Etowah 

 river, also in Alabama, which has a height of more than 

 seventy-five feet, with a circumference of twelve hundred 

 feet at the base, and one hundred and forty at the summit ; 

 the embankments at the mouth of the Scioto river, which are 

 estimated to be twenty miles in length ; the great mound at 

 Selserstown, Mississippi, which covers six acres of ground ; 

 and the truncated pyramid at Cahokia, to which we have 

 already alluded ; these works, and many others which might 

 have been quoted, indicate a population both large and 

 stationary ; for which hunting cannot have supplied enough 

 food, as it has been estimated that in a forest country each 

 hunter requires an area of not less than 50,000 acres for his 

 support ; and which must, therefore, have derived its sup- 

 port in a great measure from agriculture. " There is not/' 

 say Messrs. Squier and Davis, " and there was not in the 

 sixteenth century, a single tribe of Indians (north of the 

 semi-civilised nations) between the Atlantic and the Pacific, 

 which had means of subsistence sufficient to enable them to 

 apply, for such purposes, the unproductive labor necessary 

 for the work ; nor was there any in such a social state as to 

 compel the labor of the people to be thus applied." We 

 know also that many, if not most of the Indian tribes r at 

 that time still cultivated the ground to a certain extent, and 

 there is some evidence that even within historic times this 

 was more the case than at present. Thus De Konville 

 estimates the amount of Indian corn destroyed by him in 

 four Seneca villages at 1,200,000 quarters. 



Mr. Lapham* has brought forward some ingenious reasons 

 for thinking that the forests of Wisconsin were at no very 

 distant period much less general than at present. In the 



* U. p. 90. 



