22 
BE VIEWS. 
indeed be supposed to indicate either a long time or a great popula¬ 
tion ; but in other cases we have no such alternative. The Newark 
constructions ; the mound near Florence in Alabama, which is forty- 
five feet in height by four hundred and forty feet in circumference at 
the base, with a level area at the summit of one hundred and fifty 
feet in circumference ; the still greater mound on the Etowah Fiver 
also in Alabama, which has a height of more than seventy-five feet, 
with a circumference of twelve hundred feet at the base, and one 
hundred and forty at the summit; the embankments at the mouth of 
the Scioto Fiver, which are estimated to be twenty miles in length ; 
the great mound at Selserstown, Mississippi, which covers six acres 
of ground ; and the truncated pyramid at Cahokia, to which we have 
already alluded; these works, and many others which might have 
been quoted, indicate, we think, a population large and stationary; for 
which hunting cannot have supplied enough food; and which must, 
therefore, have relied in a great measure upon agriculture for its sup¬ 
port. “ There is not,” say Messrs. Squier and Davis, “ and there was 
“ not in the sixteenth century, a single tribe of Indians (north of the 
“ semi-civilized nations) between the Atlantic and the Pacific, which 
“ had means of subsistence sufficient to enable them to apply, for 
“ such purposes, the unproductive labour necessary for the work; 
“ nor was there any in such a social state as to compel the labour of 
“ the people to be thus applied.” We know also that many, if not 
most of the Indian tribes, still cultivated the ground to a certain 
extent, and there is some evidence that even within historic times 
this was more the case than at present. Thus De Nonville estimates 
the amount of Indian corn destroyed by him in four Seneca villages 
at 1,200,000 quarters. 
Mr. Lapham* has brought forward some ingenious arguments for 
thinking that the forests of Wisconsin were at no very distant period 
much less general than at present. In the first place, the largest 
trees are probably not more than five hundred years old ; and large 
tracts are now covered with “ young trees, wffiere there are no traces 
“ of antecedent growth.” 
Again, every year many trees are blown down, and frequent 
storms pass through the forest, throwing down nearly everything 
before them. Mr. Lapham gives a map of these windfalls in one 
district; they are very conspicuous, firstly, because the trees, having 
a certain quantity of earth entangled among their roots, continue to 
vegetate for several years ; and, secondly, because even when the 
trees themselves have died and rotted away, the earth so torn up 
forms little mounds, which are often mistaken by the inexperienced 
for Indian graves. “ From the paucity of these little ‘ tree-mounds,’ 
“ we infer that no very great antiquity can be assigned to the dense 
“ forests of Wisconsin, for during a long period of time, with no ma- 
e ‘ terial change of climate, we would expect to find great numbers of 
* L. c. p. 90. 
