NORTH AMERICAN ARCHEOLOGY. 
11 
one to ninety-five feet apart, the mean distance being eighty-two feet. 
Near the south-west angle are two outworks, constructed in the same 
way as the main embankment. 
In many places the earth forming the walls appears to have been 
burnt. “ Irregular masses of hard reddish clay, full of cavities, bear 
“ distinct impressions of straw, or rather wild hay, with which they 
“ had been mixed before burning.” “ This is the only foundation for 
“ calling these ‘ brick walls.’ The ‘ bricks’ were never made into any 
“ regular form, and it is even doubtful whether the burning did not 
“ take place in the wall after it was built.” Some of the mounds, or 
buttresses, though forming part of an enclosure, were also used for 
sepulchral purposes, as was proved by their containing skeletons in a 
sitting posture, with fragments of pottery. The highest point inside 
the enclosure is at the south-west corner, and is “ occupied by a 
“ square truncated mound, which .... presents the appearance of a 
“ pyramid, rising by successive steps like the gigantic structures of 
“ Mexico.” “ At the north-west angle of the inclosure is another 
“ rectangular, truncated, pyramidal elevation, of sixty-five feet level 
“ area at the top, with remains of its graded way, or sloping ascent, 
“ at the south-west corner, leading also towards a ridge that extends 
“ in the direction of the river.” 
Within the enclosure are some ridges about two feet high, and 
connected with them are several rings, or circles, which are supposed 
to be the remains of mud houses. “ Nearly the whole interior of the 
“ inclosure appears to have been either excavated or thrown up into 
" mounds and ridges ; the pits and irregular excavations being quite 
“ numerous over much of the space not occupied by mounds.” In 
these excavations and ridges, also, we should be inclined to see the. 
ruins of houses. Some years ago a skeleton was found in one of the 
mounds, wrapped apparently in cloth of open texture, “ like the 
coarsest linen fabricbut the threads were so entirely rotten, as 
to make it quite uncertain of what material they were made. 
The last Indian occupants of this interesting locality had no tra¬ 
dition as to the history or the purpose of these Earthworks. 
Among the Northern tribes of existing Indians there do not ap¬ 
pear to be any earthworks corresponding to these so-called Sacred 
Enclosures. “No sooner, however, do we pass to the southward, 
“ and arrive among the Creeks, Natchez, and affiliated Eloridian tribes, 
“ than we discover traces of structures which, if they do not entirely 
“ correspond with the regular earthworks of the West, nevertheless 
“ seem to be somewhat analogous to them.”* These tribes, indeed, 
appear to have been more civilized than those to the North, since they 
were agricultural in their habits, lived in considerable towns, and had 
a systematized religion, so that, in fact, they must have occupied a posi¬ 
tion, as well economically as geographically, intermediate between 
the powerful monarchies of Central America and the hunting tribes 
* Squier, 1. c. p. 136. 
