By Cyrus Thomas, Ph.D....

All the works of the mound-builders of our country are exceedingly interesting to the antiquarian and are valuable as illustrating the habits, customs, and condition of the people by whom they were formed, but the sepulchral tumuli surpass all others in importance in this respect. Although usually simple in form and conveying thereby no indications of the characteristics of the people by whom they were erected, yet when explored they reveal to us, by their internal structure and contents, more i

Following the order of the geographical districts heretofore given, we commence with the Wisconsin section, or region of the effigy mounds. As a general rule the burial mounds in this area are comparatively small, seldom exceeding 10 feet in height and generally ranging from 3 to 6 feet. In all cases these belong to that class of works usually denominated "simple conical tumuli." Of the methods of construction and modes of burial there appear to be some two or three types, though not so differen

This district, as heretofore stated, includes eastern Iowa, northeastern Missouri, and northern and central Illinois as far south as the mouth of the Illinois River. Although we are justified in concluding that this area was occupied during the mound-building age by tribes different from those residing in the Wisconsin district, yet the distinguishing characteristics are more apparent in the forms of the works than in the modes of burial and internal construction of the burial mounds. We shall s

This, as before stated, includes Ohio, a portion of eastern Indiana, and the western part of West Virginia. As only very limited explorations have been made in the Ohio portion of this district by the Bureau of Ethnology, I will content myself with a brief allusion to the observations of others. The descriptions given by Squier and Davis of the few burial mounds they explored are too well known to require repeating here. Their conclusion in regard to them, which has already been alluded to, is s

This district, as already defined, includes East Tennessee, western North Carolina, southwestern Virginia, and the southeastern part of Kentucky. It is probable that northeastern Georgia and the northwestern part of South Carolina should be included, but the investigations in most of the sections named have not been sufficiently thorough to enable us to fix with any degree of certainty the boundaries of the district. Although there is uncertainty in reference to the area occupied by the people w

In 1876, Prof. Lucien Carr, assistant curator of the Peabody Museum, opened a mound in Lee County, Virginia, in which he made certain discoveries which, with the form of the mound and the historical data, led him to the conclusion that it was the work of the Cherokees. This monument, as he informs us, was a truncated oval, the level space on the top measuring 40 feet in length by 15 in width. At the distance of 8 feet from the brow of the mound, on the slope, there were found buried in the earth

The results of our examination of the burial mounds of the northern districts may be briefly summed up as follows: First. That different sections were occupied by different mound-building tribes, which, though belonging to much the same stage in the scale of civilization, differed in most instances in habits and customs to a sufficient extent to mark, by their modes of burial, construction of their mounds, and their works of art, the boundaries of the respective areas occupied. Second. That each

BURIAL CEREMONIES OF THE HURONS. [78] Our savages are not savages as regards the duties which nature herself requires us to render to the dead. They do not yield in this respect to several nations much more civilized. You would say that all their labor and efforts were for scarcely anything but to amass means of honoring the dead. They have nothing too valuable for this purpose; they devote to this use the robes, the hatchets, and the shell beads in such quantities, that you would think to see t