It was not necessary for the fanciful interpreter to resort to remote Kamschatka for the model of his dog-drawn sledge, for such are common enough among the Indians of the North-west. But a general survey of the earthworks of Wisconsin in no degree tends to confirm this interpretation, unless in so far as such animal-mounds may have been monumental memorials, and trophies of achievements in wars and the chase. As such they are executed on a scale which gives evidence of the systematic expenditure of an enormous amount of labour; and as the opinion has latterly found favour with some that the great mounds are simply the result of many successive interments; and the marks of regular stratification in some of them have been adduced in confirmation of this idea: the corresponding proportions of the animal-mounds are significant. In them at least a preconceived design has guided the builders from the outset; and some adequate idea of the magnitude of the Dade County group will be formed from a correct estimate of the proportions of the supposed charioteer. He is figured, as is usual in similar mounds, with his limbs extended, and with arms of disproportionate length; possibly owing to the design originally representing some implement in each hand. From head to foot he measures one hundred and twenty-five feet, and one hundred and forty feet from the extremity of one arm to that of the other. The head alone is a mound twenty-five feet in diameter, and nearly six feet in highest elevation from the surrounding soil. Measuring the whole by this scale, it is abundantly apparent that a group, including altogether fifteen mound-figures, must have been a work of immense time and labour, and doubtless owed its origin to some motive or purpose of corresponding magnitude in the estimation of its constructors.
Mr. Schoolcraft attempted to solve the mystery of the emblematic mounds by assuming them to be the Totems, or heraldic symbols, in use among the Indian tribes, thus reproduced in earthworks on a gigantic scale. The fox, the bear, the eagle, turtle, or other animal, is selected among them as the sign of the tribe or family. This usage prevailed among the Iroquois, Hurons, Algonquins, Cherokees, and other nations occupying very extensive areas; and, accordingly, guided by the superficial resemblance of the Animal Mounds to such totemic signs, Mr. Schoolcraft says: “A tribe could leave no more permanent trace of an esteemed sachem, or honoured individual, than by the erection of one of these monuments. They are clearly sepulchral, and have no other object but to preserve the names of distinguished actors in their history.”[90] But exploration seems to prove that the emblematical mounds of Wisconsin are not sepulchral; while any correspondence that may be traced between them and the totemic symbols of tribes once so widely spread as the Algonquins, Iroquois, and Cherokees, only increases the mystery of symbols constructed on this colossal scale, and confined to a territory so limited. So far indeed is a careful survey from confirming any such convenient and summary fancy, that Mr. Lapham states, as the result of elaborate explorations, that he conceives four epochs are traceable in the history of the locality, two of which at least preceded the era of occupation by the Indian tribes. The period of the animal-mound builders strikingly contrasts with that of the earthworks previously described, in the rarity of enclosed works of art. But the few implements discovered are full of interest from their obvious resemblance to those of the Mound-Builders. Several of the large hornstone discs which I have seen are of the same type as those found in immense numbers in the Ohio Mounds; and Mr. Albert H. Hoy of Racine, Wisconsin, describes in a letter to me the discovery of about thirty of the same relics, in that vicinity, under circumstances suggestive of great antiquity. They lay at a depth of eight feet in undisturbed soil, under a thin bed of peat, in what appeared to have been the ancient bed of the Rock River.