1 882.] Mound Pipes. 277 



It is not within the province of this paper to discuss the ques- 

 tion of the contemporaneousness of man and the mastodon in 

 the western hemisphere. The existence of an artificial mound in 

 Wisconsin, 135 feet in length, in the form of an elephant? adds 

 much to the probability of the genuineness of the pipes above 

 described. It is worthy of note, however, that no representations 

 of the male elephant have as yet been found amongst the remains 

 of man in North America. It is, to say the least, a singular fact 

 that the most characteristic features of this pachyderm, the promi- 

 nent tusks, should have been omitted both in the pipe sculptures 

 and the " big elephant mound," if the ancient Americans were 

 acquainted with the model. The long, slender, curved tusks, 

 however, would be difficult to imitate either in the miniature 

 stone sculptures or the embankments of earth, and might have 

 been purposely ignored. These likenesses of fossil mammals 

 acquire an additional interest, however, when we read the remark- 

 able accounts of the discoveries in the State of Missouri and else- 

 where, of deposits of bones of the mastodon in association with 

 flint arrow-heads and fragments of pottery. 2 " Such contiguity 

 of the works of man with those extinct diluvial giants," observes 

 Dr. Wilson, " warns us at least to be on our guard against any 

 supercilious rejection of indications of man's ancient presence in 

 the New World as well as the Old. * * * * Whether or not 

 those huge mammals had been known to man, during his occu- 

 pation of the American continent, as his living contemporaries, 

 their remains were objects of sufficiently striking magnitude to 

 awaken the curiosity even of the unimpressible Indian ; and tra- 

 ditions were common among the aborigines of the forest relative 

 to the existence and destruction of the strange monster, whose 

 bones lie scattered over the continent from Canada to the Gulf of 

 Mexico. * * * * In all that relates to the history of man 

 in the new world, we have ever to reserve ourselves for further 

 truths." 3 



Pipes of the platform type are confined almost exclusively to 

 the section north of the Ohio and Missouri rivers, or to the 

 States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa. A few specimens of 

 the curved- base form have been picked up in other localities, but 



1 Vide Smith. Report, 1872, p. 416. The Big Elephant Mound in Grant county, 

 'See Foster's Prehistoric; Races of the U. S., p. 63. 



