ANTIQUITIES.—BOOK II. 
is.: 
use of fortifications amongst the Indians, when we consider the 
incredible diminution of their numbers, and the little use of 
their iorts against the whites; yet in the two last sieges of mons. 
Perier, in the war of the Natchez (1729), that unfortunate peo¬ 
ple, were able to withstand the approaches and cannon of the 
enemy for nearly two months. Imlay, in his fanciful description 
of Kentucky, asserts, that the Indians were not acquainted with 
the use of fortifications. Carver is the first who notices these 
fortifications, and considers them as beyond the ingenuity of the 
Indians. The French writers, who most probably observed them, 
do not speak of them, a proof that they had no doubt as to their 
origin, nor thought of attributing them to any others than the 
natives of the country. On my voyage up the Missouri, I ob¬ 
served the ruins of several villages which had been abandoned 
twenty or thirty years, and which, in every respect resembled 
the vestiges on the Ohio and Mississippi. On my arrival at the 
Arikara and Mandan villages, I found them surrounded by pa¬ 
lisades. I have supposed these vestiges to be nothing more than 
the sites of pallisadoed towns or villages, and not mere forti¬ 
fications. This custom of pallisadoing, appears to have been ge¬ 
neral among the northern tribes; it is mentioned by the earliest 
travellers. In the library of New Orleans, I found two works at 
present out of print, which contributed in removing all doubt 
from my mind; the one is by Lupiteau, a learned Jesuit, and 
which is sometimes quoted by Dr. Robertson, the other is a sin- 
gular mixture of fable and fact, by one La Hojkon, published 
1678, before the discovery of the Mississippi in its full extent. 
This writer pretends to have travelled on the part which is a- 
bove the Missouri. Roth these works contain a number of cu¬ 
rious engravings, in which, amongst other things, the fortified 
towns are represented. 
That no Welsh nation exists at present on this continent, is, 
beyond a doubt. Dr. Barton has taken great pains to ascertain 
the languages spoken by those tribes, east of the Mississippi, 
and the Welsh finds no place amongst them; since the cession 
of Louisiana, the tribes west of the Mississippi have been suffi¬ 
ciently known; we have had intercourse with them all, but no 
Welsh are yet found. In the year 1798, a young Welshman of 
