MODERN INDIAN MOUND BUILDERS.
By Editor
THE following from the Popular Science Monthly is of more than usual interest. If indeed the Indian tribes are the "Mound builders" it clears up that which has been a great mystery, and robs the learned theorists of some of their most splendid speculations. These speculations are too often passed off for facts, but actual facts are proving fatal to many of them.—ED. SIGNS. We are not without testimony to the fact that the present Indian tribes did build mounds. Lewis and Clark mention the custom among the Omahas, saying that "one of their great chiefs was buried on a hill, and a mound 12 feet in diameter and 6 feet in height erected over him." Betram states that the Choctaws covered the pyramid of coffins taken from the bone-house with earth, thus raising a conical hill or mound. Tomochichi pointed out to Gen Oglethorpe a large conical mound near Savannah, in which he said the Yamacraw chief was interred, who had many years before entertained a great white man with a red beard, who entered the Savannah river in a large vessel, and his barge came up to the Yamacraw bluff. Featherstonhaugh, in his "Travels" speaks of the custom among the Osages, referring to a mound built over the body of a chief, called Jean Defoe by the French, who unexpectedly died while his warriors were absent on a hunting expedition. Upon their return they heaped a mound over his remains, enlarging it at intervals for a long period, until it reached its present height. Bradford says that many of the tumuli formed of earth, and occasionally of stones, are of Indian origin. They are generally sepulchral mounds—either the general cemetery of a village or tribe, funeral monuments over the graves of illustrious chiefs, or upon a battlefield, commemorating the event and entombing the fallen, or the result of a custom, prevalent among some of the tribes, of collecting at stated intervals the bones of the dead, and interring them in a common repository. A mound of the latter description was formerly situated on the low grounds of the Rivanna river, in Virginia, opposite the site of an old Indian village (Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia," pp. 100-103). It was 40 feet in diameter and 12 feet in height, of a spheroidal form, surrounded by a trench, whence the earth employed in its erection had been excavated. The circumstances attending the custom alluded to were, the great number of skeletons, their confused position, their situation in distinct strata, exhibiting different stages of decomposition, and the appearance of bones of infants. A mound of similar character, and constructed in layers or strata at successive periods, existed near the south branch of the Shenandoah, in the same State. A tumulus of stones in New York State is said to have marked the grave of a distinguished warrior. "McCauley's History of New York," vol. ii, p 239. "Bock's Gazetteer" (p 308) states that "a mound of the largest dimensions has been thrown up within a few days in Illinois, over the remains of an eminent chief."