MOUND BUILDERS AND MOUNDS. Two terms that have been inseparably con nected by investigators into the history of these early earthen pyramidal, terraced and mound structures of the North American Indians. In the broader sense, mounds, especially in their connection with mound builders, include not only pyramidal structures and mounds proper, but also walls, forts, embankments and like artificial structures especially those built of earth. Archaeological investigators also include among the mounds the accumulations of debris which grew up near ancient centres of popula tion through the gradual increase of dump heaps or other long continued deposits.
The ancient American mounds seem to have been destined for a variety of uses; some of them were burial places, others foundations for edifices, still others served as fortresses, while the most pretentious were used for sacrificial and other religious purposes. From the Cana dian border to southern Peru stretch pyramids (generally truncated), terraces and tumuli of various forms, sizes and modes of structure. That the builders of the various sections of this vast chain of artificial structures were re lated ethnologically. racially or by political con tact has never been clearly proved and may never be. At one time it was popular to main tain that the builders of the great American mounds were a people distinct from the In dians inhabiting the United States territory at the time of the first contact of the Europeans and the aboriginal Americans. Bryant sang of the myterious lost race, and romances and sober scientific works were written about them. Now scientific criticism has swung to the op posite direction and not only is the existence of such a race denied but it is claimed that an cestors of the modern American Indian were the mysterious mound builders. But the last word has by no means been said upon the sub ject. The fact that Indian chiefs were found with their dwellings erected upon the summits of mounds is no proof that they built the mounds. Even if they did build small mounds as bases for their dwellings or as burial places for their dead, this again is no proof that their ancestors built vast structures like Cahokia, whose very existence presupposes politically organized society and the command of vast supplies of labor for long periods of time. As the Indian races of the North Ameri
can continent seem to have been, for ages, given to migrations, the chances are rather against than for the modern theory that the ancestors of the modern United States Indians built the older and more monumental of the great mound structures, which must have served a race much further advanced in political and social organization than those to whom their construction has been attributed by those who hold the modern origin theory.
Shapes and Sizes.— The mounds are gen erally conical, hill-like structures, though some of them approach more or less closely to the true truncated pyramidal form and these vary, in the United States, from a few feet in height to over 100; and southward, throughout Mexico, Central and South America, very formally con structed pyramidal mounds exist that are over 100 feet in height and of vast proportions. The mounds of the United States which stretch from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, down the Mississippi Valley and far across the plains on either side present a wide variety of forms. Conical, square-based, octagonal and other shapes add variety to the construction of the mounds proper; and forms of serpents and other reptiles, mammals and birds of gigantic size add to the impression of the civic culture of the races who conceived and constructed them. There can be little doubt that the more snectacular of these vast earthen structures were intimately connected with the religious beliefs of their builders. Eagles, panthers, serpents and other animal forms from 500 to 1,000 feet in length are among these mound structures, which include representations of many animals later known to have been totem signs among the American Indians over a very wide extent of territory. For this reason the theory has been advanced that these animal mounds were representations of tribal totems; and as such, probably served as emblems worshiped as protecting tribal deities.