CERTAIN ABORIGINAL MOUNDS, COAST OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 161 



lodges of the Cenis,' he says, ' often contained eight or ten families. They were 

 made by firmly planting in a circle, tall, straight, young trees, such as grew in the 

 swamps. The tops were then bent inward, and lashed together, and the frame thus 

 constructed was thickly covered with thatch, a hole being left at the top for the 

 escape of the smoke. The inmates were ranged around the circumference of the 

 structure, each family in a kind of stall, open in front, but separated from those 

 adjoining by partitions of mats. Here they placed their beds of cane, their painted 

 robes of buffalo and deer skin, their cooking utensils of pottery, and other house- 

 hold goods, and here, too, the head of the family hung his bow, quiver, lance, and 

 shield. There was nothing in common but the fire, which burned in the middle of 

 the lodge, and was never suffered to go out.' 1 



"In Iberville's Journal, it is stated that the cabins of the Bayogoulas, a tribe 

 of Louisiana, were circular in form, about thirty feet in diameter, and plastered with 

 clay to the height of a man. 2 Adair says, the winter cabins, or hot houses of the 

 Cherokees, and several other tribes, were circular, and covered six or seven inches 

 thick with tough clay, mixed with grass. Father Gravier, speaking of the Tounicas 

 of Arkansas, says, ' Their cabins were round and vaulted. They were lathed with 

 cane, and plastered with mud from bottom to top, within and without, with a good 

 covering of straw.' 3 Tonti, who accompanied La Salle, in 1682, describes his visit 

 to the town of Taensas on the Lower Mississippi. He says the natives had ' large 

 square dwellings, built of sun-baked mud, mixed with straw, arched over with a dome- 

 shaped roof of canes and placed in regular order around an open area. Two of 

 them were larger and better than the rest. One was the lodge of the chief, the 

 other was the temple or house of the sun. The house of the chief was about forty 

 feet square, with no opening but the door. The temple ' where they kept the bones 

 of their departed chiefs,' in construction, was much like the chief's house ; a strong 

 mud wall planted with stakes surrounded it. In the middle of the temple was a 

 kind of an altar, before which a ' perpetual fire,' composed of large logs, was burning, 

 and was watched by two old men devoted to their office. 4 



" Colonel Morris, an agent of the Bureau of Ethnology, some time since ex- 

 plored a group of earth-works in Butler county, Missouri, consisting of ' an inclosing 

 wall and ditch, two large outer excavations, and four inside mounds.' The largest 

 mound had an average diameter of about one hundred and thirty-five feet, and was 

 twenty feet high. Deeply imbedded within the central portions of the mound were 

 found two large upright charred posts, near the charred and decaying remains of 

 horizontal or cross timbers, and in connection with burned clay, ashes, charcoal, and 

 charred bones, indicating almost certainly the remains of a large house structure, 

 built upon or in connection with this mound, or upon the smaller mound, upon which 

 the main mound appears to have been subsequently erected. Within the different 

 strata or layers of the mound were the remains of nine large fire-beds, indicating 



1 La Salle (Parkman), page 417. 



3 Professor Cyrus Thomas, Magazine of American History, February, 1884. 

 i Farly French Voyages (Shea), page 135. 

 La Salle (Parkman), page 281. 



21 JOURN. A. N. S. PHILA., VOL. XI. 



