446 Proceedings of Societies. . duly, 
carefully some practices and usages of the aborigines which were general 
among them over wide areas. We find that in all parts of America 
they usually constructed what may be called joint-tenement houses. We 
find these houses occupied by a number of related families. They prac- 
ticed communism in living. The marriage relation was simply pairing. 
They also followed certain customs, which may be designated as the law 
of hospitality. The land was owned in common by families and house- 
holds. Those that had fully reached this method of living have been 
called Village Indians. Mr. Morgan thinks that the Mound Builders 
were probably Village Indians from New Mexico. Their arts as shown 
by their implements, their copper tools, their textile and fictile fabrics, 
were in advance of the Indian tribes found east of the Mississippi. 
We find in Yucatan and Chiapas the highest type of Village Indian 
life. It declines as we advance northward to Mexico and New Mexico. 
It was best adapted to a warm climate. The attempt to transplant this 
mode of life from the Rio Grande or the San Juan, first to the Gulf of 
Mexico and then northward to the Ohio, must have been a doubtful 
experiment from the start. Nevertheless, the structures left by the 
Mound Builders indicate such an attempt; their earthworks may be 
regarded as the dwelling sites of Village Indians. It is certain that if a 
sensible use for these embankments can be discovered, the mystery about 
them will be dispelled. The theory that they were built for religious 
purposes is exceedingly improbable; the magnitude of the works, con- 
sidering their grade in civilization, indicates that these Indians werè 
laboring for themselves, not for their gods. If a tribe of Village Indians, 
with their acquired habits of living, emigrated to the valley of the Ohio, 
they would find it impossible to construct adobe houses. Some moai- 
cation of the plan and character of the house would be necessary, be- 
cause of the difference of climate. They might have used stone, but 
they did not; no stone houses had been built by these tribes. They 
might have made a house of inferior character upon the level ground, 
like the timber-framed houses of the Minnitarees. Lastly, they might 
have raised embankments of earth and built houses on their summits ; 
and this, it is respectfully submitted, is what they did. 
The elevated platform is a feature of the adobe houses of New Mes- 
ico ; it appears also in the Yucatan dwellings. Let us regard the 6 
bank-works on the Scioto River as a pueblo. It is an octagonal 1m 
closure of nine hundred feet square, with an opening at each angle 
in the centre of each side. The embankments are now fifty feet thick at 
the base, and ten or eleven feet high. If reformed with their own matè- — 
rials, they would produce embankments like a railway grade, thirty-seve? 
feet wide at the base, ten feet high, and with summit platforms twenty- 
two feet wide. These, then, were the sites of their houses. There are 
six of these embankments, each four hundred and fifty feet long, and on? 
of nine hundred feet. On the inside, before each opening, there ® . 3 
as Ee eee nF EE ORE Te n a ee OTE TOO States eee e Sei A 
