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CLASSIFICATION OF MOUNDS.

writers, who soon evolved a great empire, densely populated, highly civilized, dominating the entire country from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains, from Canada to Mexico, with a fully organized system of religion and government, and subject to one central authority whose .seat was, presumably, in the Scioto Valley. This view, stimulating to imagination, met with general approbation; but there were always some who could present cogent reasons for dissenting from it. Within the past quarter century methodical investigation has shown such marked variation in size, design, outward appearance, interior arrangement, and contents, of structures in different sections, as to compel the disruption of this mythical nation into many unconnected tribes whose relationship to one another, if indeed there be any, is very doubtful and obscure. Works of distinctive character are mostly confined to somewhat limited areas; typical forms are rarely found more than about a hundred miles from where they are most common. other words, a district of about two hundred miles across will, as a rule, contain earthworks much resembling one another but quite different from those of any other district of equal size; though in a few instances a single structure or a small group occurs in a locality quite distant from others of its kind. Conversely, mounds near together may be so unlike as to make the conclusion un

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avoidable that they pertain to alien tribes. Small mounds of earth, or stone, or both combined, intended merely for a covering over the dead, are outwardly so much the same that it would be quite natural to consider them the work of one people; but the great diversity in character and arrangement of their contents shows that resemblance is not intentional but due to material and methods of utilizing it. The same is also true of many large mounds.

Mound Builders' works may be considered under two general headsmounds and enclosures.

Mounds.

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The most satisfactory basis for classifying mounds is their form. There are three principal types: (1) Conical. These rise in gradual and quite uniform curve from a circular base to a central summit. Dome-shaped would be a better term. They range from less than two feet to nearly seventy feet in elevation. The diameter, where undisturbed by cultivation, is never less than four and from that to ten times the height. Nearly all are built of earth, though a few are entirely of stone, while some are composed of both materials. Along the southern Atlantic and Gulf coasts many are built of shells. North of the Potomac and east of the Alleghanies scarcely any are found; in Virginia they reach well toward tide-water, and thence extend to and throughout all the States as far as

Minnesota and Louisiana, rapidly diminishing in size beyond the Mississippi. Sometimes the base is elongate, making the mass halfellipsoidal or half-ovoid. Conical mounds almost invariably contain human remains. Usually bodies were placed directly on the natural surface; sometimes a grave was dug. Burials also took place as the work progressed. The volume of earth has no relation to the number of interments; one of the larger mounds of Ohio covered a single skeleton, while in Virginia nearly 400 skulls were found in a very small one. A few of A few of the largest conical mounds have truncated summits.

(2) Pyramidal.- These are mostly quadrilateral (the opposite sides not always even approximately equal), though a few are pentagonal or hexagonal is outline. The sides are commonly as steep as earth will stand and in most of the larger ones the top, always truncated and practically level, is reached along a gentle slope starting at some distance from the base. Dimensions vary greatly; some are not more than six feet high and 50 or 60 feet across, while the great Cahokia Mound at East St. Louis is nearly 100 feet in height and covers about 16 acres. Many have a terrace or platform on one or more sides; where more than one terrace, they are generally at different levels. Each terrace possibly represents a plane at which construction ceased for a time and was renewed on a smaller scale.

North of the Ohio River this form is found only at Marietta, O.; Evansville, Ind.; and in the vicinity of St. Louis. The few others in northern States are low, small, and have no approach. With these exceptions the type is confined to the region from eastern Tennessee to southern Missouri and south to the Gulf. Their purpose, in part at least, was to provide an elevated place for an important building; protection from floods; perhaps a refuge from foes. A few skeletons and relics are reported in some, nothing in others; a small one at Etowah, Georgia, seems intended for a tumulus.

(3) Effigy. These, almost invariably of earth, crudely resemble the outlines of various animals; the species can seldom be determined. Some so-called "human " figures are probably attempts to portray flying birds. They exist by thousands in the territory for fifty miles around the mouth of the Wisconsin River, beyond which limit they rarely occur; the most notable exceptions are the Serpent and the Opossum of Ohio, and the Eagle of Georgia, the latter entirely of stone. Associated with the Wisconsin effigies are straight embankments from 50 to nearly 1,000 feet in length and three to five feet high; also long rows of small conical mounds sometimes joined together by low ridges. No hint of their purpose has resulted from explorations in the effigies.

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VARIETIES OF ENCLOSURES.

Shell heaps are numerous from the head of Chesapeake Bay around the coast to the west part of the Gulf, also along some of the interior rivers where mussels abound. Most of them are "kitchen refuse," extending extending sometimes for miles; others are mounds similar in construction and use to those of earth.

The Garden Beds " of southern Michigan are narrow raised ridges from one to three feet high, separated by passageways, and forming plats usually rectangular but sometimes circular. Occasionally they include a hundred acres, though generally much smaller. Their apparent use is to prevent flooding of crops. They have no resemblance to low mounds abundant from Missouri to Texas, to which some writers have assigned a similar use.

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rhomboidal; confined to to

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southern

Ohio, and adjacent parts of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Indiana; always on fertile, level land, accompanied by mounds and village-sites. The walls are sometimes ten feet high, with with a corresponding ditch. Incorrect statements early led to a belief in the mathematical accuracy of their lines and angles. Careful surveys have failed to reveal one thus constructed, though in some cases the departure is very slight; the diameters of one square vary only 2 feet in 850; and one circle with a radius of 950 feet diverges only four feet from a true line. In other cases, however, the error is 10 per cent or even greater. Many theories have been advanced to explain these works; all meet with objections.

(b) Small; similar in form to the above, but of wider distribution; seldom as much as 250 feet across from outside to outside; always with the ditch interior when there is one; often with a mound on the included level

area; with one opening, usually toward the east, sometimes to north or south, seldom west; located from low bottoms to highest uplands; in groups, or singly miles from any other works. They no doubt mark the sites of communal dwellings. council houses, or lodges, according to size and situation.

(2) Hill-top Forts.- This division includes, here, only the great structures of southern Ohio, situated on high isolated peaks, or precipitous

ridges; usually having an interior ditch. They seem to be in some way connected with the large enclosures, though often many miles from the nearest group. Some are altogether of stone; typical is that in Ross county, enclosing 140 acres. Others are mostly or entirely of earth, as Fort Ancient, whose walls are more than three and a half miles long and in some parts 19 feet high.

(3) Irregular Defensive. These embrace all protective works, from a straight wall across a high promontory or a bend in a stream to combinations of rudely elliptical or circular enclosures with wing walls and supplementary banks or ditches covering many acres. Topographical features largely determine their form and extent; main embankments commonly follow contour lines, extensions go where needed. They abound from Canada to the Gulf, from New England to the middle Missouri River, though of course unequally apportioned. Clearly intended for safeguarding villages within or them, their moderate height denotes the use of palisades as among Iroquois and other modern tribes.

Prehistoric Copper Mines.

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Among recent discoveries was that of a prehistoric copper mine on the Isle Royale in the northern part of Lake Superior. These mines were worked many years before Columbus was born, by the prehistoric races. who procured from them metal for

their implements and ornaments. The copper occurs there in masses of the pure or "native" metal, embedded in the volcanic rocks, and the primitive miners were accustomed to dig it out with no better tools than stone sledges. Although the island is not adapted for human habitation, tribes from all the surrounding country gathered there in ancient times for the purpose of obtaining the precious material. In order to find it a great deal of" prospecting had to be done, and thus the surface of the hills to-day are everywhere found covered with old pits and trenches, partly filled up and overgrown with pine forests. In these ancient holes are discovered numerous stone implements which bear the marks of use as mining tools. So thickly are such rude tools scattered about that not less than 50,000 of them are to be seen on the surface of the ground, affording an illustration of the extensive character of the work that was carried on. The copper was sometimes found in masses so big that they could not be removed, and many such gigantic nuggets of pure metal have since furnished bonanzas to the whites, who for years made a business of exploring the old workings in search of them. One nugget weighed 12,000 pounds, and because it was not practicable to cut it up or blast it into pieces it had to be conveyed bodily to the lake shore. and carried away in a vessel, requiring much ingenuity and the best mod

FLINT QUARRIES; GRAVE CREEK MOUND.

ern appliances for the successful accomplishment of the task. When the natives came across such a mass of copper, the best they could do was to break off a few projecting pieces of it. The business of prospecting for such abandoned nuggets was finally given up by the whites, because they ceased to find enough of them to pay, although more than 1,000 pits remain untouched by them. After the miners of antiquity had got the copper, they hammered it into tools and ornaments, which were carried to all parts of North America and distributed by trade. Such articles, for which the material was originally obtained from Isle Royale, are found to-day in mounds and graves throughout this country and not infrequently as far away as Central America.

Flint Quarries.

In Arkansas is a prehistoric quarry where flint for making into tools and weapons was procured on so extensive a scale that in places the hills and mountains have been actually remodeled by the pittings and trenchings. From one hillside it is estimated that upward of 150,000 cubic yards of flint have been removed and worked. Another locality explored in Indian Territory yielded for the purposes of the aborigines a chalky kind of flint, which was procured in enormous quantities for making large implements, such as hoes and other agricultural tools, and also knives. that were very long, slender and thin.

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It was useful to select pieces of best quality for the manufacture of knives, just as nowadays the finest steel is employed for cutlery. A third great quarry in Ohio, near Newark, worked on a very extensive scale, supplied a beautiful flint of fine grain for arrowpoints and spear-heads. It furnished with these articles an extent of territory equal to a half dozen States, and they are found to this day as far south as Tennessee and as far east as New York.

The Grave Creek Mound.

One of the most interesting mounds of North America is that known as the Grave Creek Mound, located twelve miles below Wheeling, W. Va., on the left bank of the Ohio River, near Moundsville. The mound is situated on an elevated table-land, and is an artificial truncated mound, some 70 feet high and 900 feet in circumference at its base. The mound was built by a race superior and previous to Indians, and is the most notable mound in the Ohio Valley. Its cubic contents are equal to the third pyramid of Mycerinus, but was heaped up by a people destitute of the knowledge of iron, and who had no domestic animals or machinery to aid them. They were evidently people like the Egyptians, ruled by some one monarch, who was able to combine vast numbers in the erection of one structure, and, at the same time, able to provide them with food in abundance. The mound builders cul

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