The name is not a distinguishing one in every sense, since mankind, the world over, have been mound and pyramid builders. The pyramids of Egypt and the mound-dotted surface of Europe and Asia bear testimony to this saying, yet nowhere else in the world are they more plainly divided into classes, or marked with design than here. In some places fortified hills and eminences suggest the citadel of a tribe or people. Again, embankments of earth, mostly circular or square, separate and in combination, generally inclosing one or more mounds, excite our curiosity, but fail to satisfy it. Are these fading embankments the boundaries of sacred inclosures, or the fortification of a camp, or the foundations on which to build communal houses? Here graded ways, there parallel embankments raise questions, but suggest no positive answer. We are equally in doubt as to the purposes for which many of the mounds were built. Some seem to have been used as places of sepulcher, some for religious rites, and others as foundation site of buildings. Some may have been used as signal mounds, from which warning columns of smoke, or flaming fires, gave notice of an enemy’s approach.
Before coming to details let us, at a glance, examine the picture as a whole. This country of ours, with its wide plains, its flowing rivers and great lakes, is said by scholars to have been the home of a people well advanced in the arts of barbarian life. What connection, if any, existed between them and the Indians, is yet unsettled. We are certain that many years before the Spanish discovery of America they made their settlements here, developed their religious ideas, and erected their singular monuments. That they were not unacquainted with war, is shown by their numerous fortified inclosures. They possessed the elements of agriculture, and we doubt not were happy and contented in their homes. We are certain they held possession of the fairer portions of this country for many years.
We must now seek to gather more particular knowledge of them, and of the remains of their industry. We must not forget that these are the antiquities of our own country; that the broken archæological fragments we pick up will, when put together, give us a knowledge of tribes that lived here when civilization was struggling into being in the East. It should be to us far more interesting than the history of the land of the Pharaohs, or of storied Greece. Yet, strange to say, the facts we have just mentioned are unknown to the mass of our people. Accustomed to regard this as the New World, they have turned their attention to Europe and the East when they would learn of prehistoric times. In a general way, we have regarded the Indians as a late arrival from Asia, and cared but little for their early history. It is only recently that we have become convinced of an extended, past in the history of this country, and it is only of late that able writers have brought to our attention the wonders of an ancient culture, and shown us the footprints of a vanished people.