322 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
may furnish the clew by which the effigies themselves may be 
better understood. 
One may examine the valuable hooks which were published 
years ago, among the Smithsonian contributions and find that 
the effigies of Wisconsin were tolerably well described; but the 
geometrical figures of Ohio were also described and the two sys¬ 
tems were shown to be very different. 
Is it not probable that there were two systems or possibly 
more, among the tribes of the east, as there were among the 
tribes of America? 
As works of art they were very attractive, for they seemed 
to represent attitudes which were not often taken by the animals,, 
and yet the animal life was brought out very clearly. 
It has occurred to the writer that it was not more difficult for 
the partriarch Jacob to take a view of the land, with which he 
had become so familiar and where his twelve sons had dwelt be¬ 
fore they removed to Egypt, than it was for these wild tribes to 
indicate the animal life which prevailed in this region. 
The Ethnological Bureau under Maj. Powel, sent Dr. C. T. 
Thomas to examine the work of plotting the effigies which had 
been done by two or three young men. 
The writer accompanied Dr. Thomas on a trip to Prairie du 
Chien and the region where Jefferson Davis at one time had 
dwelt. 
On the high ridges between the Kickapoo Piver and the 
Mississippi ther were many groups and game drives with effi¬ 
gies of the buffalo and bear mingled with them. 
It was an easy matter to trace out the habits of the animals 
amid those groups, and to the writer it became pain that it was 
the habitat of a particular clan whose totem or clan emblem was 
placed near the game drives. 
There were, however, no such circles and squares as have been 
found in Ohio, and which marked the villages of that region. 
The grades of society and the stages of progress became very 
apparent from the comparison which was easily drawn be¬ 
tween the results of early explorations in the state of Ohio and 
those of succeeding explorations in the state of Wisconsin. 
