18 Bulletin of Wisconsin Natural History Society. Vol. 1, No. 1. 
exactly the same general attitude, although the size varies con- 
siderably. 
This' is the most common attitude of the panther. 
It has been argued that the prevalence of this type of effigy 
may indicate the abundance of the panther or mountain lion in this 
locality during prehistoric times, for though this animal is now 
rarely or never met with in Wisconsin, it is highly probable that 
it was once common here. Yet while the abundance of the type 
may indirectly indicate this, we can scarcely assign it as the only 
reason for their abundance. 
Totemism has both its religious and its social aspect. Some- 
times one survives the other. 
Hence the religion of some tribes still shows lingering, traces 
of a social system based on totemism, long after its disappearance, 
and on the other hand the social system often survives the other. 
Clan totems have their limitation, being generally restricted to 
a certain fixed number. 
The Seneca branch of the Iroquois tribe was divided into two 
phratries, each of which included four clans, viz., the bear, wolf, 
beaver and turtle, forming one phratry, and the deer, snipe, heron 
and hawk, the other. — (Morgan, p. 90.) 
The Mohegans knew subdivision into the wolf phratry with 
clans, wolf, bear dog and opossum, and the turtle phratry, with 
clans little turtle, mud turtle, great turtle and yellow eel, and the 
turkey phratry with clans turkey, crane and chicken. — (Morgan, 
Among the mound builders nearly every living class of animals 
was imitated, the birds of the air, the fishes in the streams and 
lakes, the beasts of the prairie and wood. The variety of the ani- 
mals represented is too great for them to have been exclusively 
tribal signs. Let us then merely glance at the other side, that of 
the religious character and significance of the emblematic mounds. 
These ancient peoples, like many other barbarous tribes and 
peoples the world over, were true nature and animal worshipers 
Animal and nature worship being but the earlier stages of idol- 
atry. 
What would be more likely or natural than that they, desirous 
of being ever under the power and protection of their divinities, 
should imitate them in connection with their villages, fortifica- 
tions, game drives, places of council and burial, and along their 
trails, watercourses and other routes of travel. 
It was this same oervading superstition that led them in manv 
cases to erect their effigies upon the most prominent points of land, 
where they could lend their divine power to the entire countr}r 
