nes in various parts of the country, were no doubt
places of inhumation.[11]--Many have been opened, and found to contain
human bones promiscuously thrown together. Mr. Jefferson supposed the
one examined by him, (the diameter of whose base was only forty feet
and height twelve) to contain the bones of perhaps a thousand human
beings, of each sex and of every age. Others have been examined, in
which were the skeletons of men of much greater stature, than that of
any of the Indians in America, at the time of its discovery, or of
those with whom we have since become acquainted.

It is a well known fact, that since the whites became settled in the
country, the Indians were in the habit of collecting the bones of
their dead and of depositing them in one general cemetery; but the
earth and stone used by them, were taken from the adjacent land. This
was not invariably the case, with those ancient heaps of earth found
in the west. In regard to many of them, this singular circumstance is
said to be a fact, that the earth, of which they are composed, is of
an altogether different nature, from that around them; and must, in
some instances, have been carried a considerable distance. The
tellurine structures at Circleville are of this sort; and the material
of which they were constructed, is said to be distinctly different,
from the earth any where near to them.

The immensity of the size of these and many others, would induce the
supposition that they could not have been raised by a race of people
as indolent as the Indians have been, ever since a knowledge was had
of them. Works, the construction of which would now require the
concentrated exertions of at least one thousand men, aided by the
mechanical inventions of later days, for several months, could hardly
have been erected by persons, so subject to lassitude under labor as
they are: unless indeed their population was infinitely greater than
we now conceive it to have been. Admitting however, this density of
population to have existed, other circumstances would corroborate the
belief, that the country once had other inhabitants, than the
progenitors of those who have been called, the aborigines of America:
one of these circumstances is the uncommon size of many of the
skeletons found in the smaller mounds upon the hills.

If the fact be, as it is represented, that the larger skeletons are
invariably found on elevated situations, remote from the larger water
courses, it wou