January, 1900. Doerflinger and Brown— Effigy Mounds. 
19 
about. It would seem that with them the various animals had 
each its especial rank and place in the religious firmament. 
To them the panther with his wonderful strength and agility 
of body and limb, his courage and ferocity when angered, and his 
cunning in ambushing his prey, were the embodiment of kingliness 
and Godship. 
The others typifying the minor gods, each possessing its own 
peculiar virtues and religious significance, were the minor divinities- 
properly in attendance upon the greater. 
In this case the panther is used simply as an illustration, the 
eagle or any other of the larger animals may have been equally 
highly reverenced by the aboriginal worshipers. 
Neither is it altogether probable that the physical traits of the 
animal alone had to do with its preferment over all others. 
Let us ask ourselves next what evidence have we that the 
Teller mounds may not have enclosed a mound builder village at 
one time ? 
Just previous to the occupation of this land by the white set- 
tlers and at the time when the United States government pur- 
chased this territory from the Indian tribes which inhabited it, the 
Menomonee Indians occupied the land along the east side of the 
Milwaukee River and the land on the west side was equally shared 
by the Pottawattomies, Sacs and Foxes. The country at the 
mouth of the river had been up to that time occupied in turn by 
these and other tribes of Indians. 
It frequently happened that their villages were situated on the 
very sites upon which stood mounds of a prehistoric race. 
Dr. I. A. Lapham has likewise informed us that the ancient 
earthworks in this state are Usually situated in the very places 
selected more recently by the Indians for their villages. 
Such was the similarity in their wants and habits. Howard 
Louis Conrad, in his ''History of Milwaukee," says : ''The rivers 
which now unite at the mouth of the Milwaukee, the deep bay into 
which they empty and the marshes surrounding their mouths, 
furnished the means of gratifying their tastes for hunting and 
fishing, and the neighborhood was well known to large numbers 
of them, before a white man knew of its existence." 
Dr. Lapham had drawn our attention to the fact "that much 
time and labor were undoubtedly required for the completion of 
such large structures, and it would be necessary to accumulate the 
means of subsistence." "This would require more than a tem- 
porary residence," says Dr. S. D. Peet, "especially if we admit 
that the mounds were built with a view to their utility." The 
main source of identification of the villages of these emblematic 
mound builders, lies clearly in their situation. 
