sketches will begin with the Mississippi
Valley and the regions connected with it.

THE MOUND-BUILDERS--THEIR WORKS.

An ancient and unknown people left remains of settled life, and of a
certain degree of civilization, in the valleys of the Mississippi and
its tributaries. We have no authentic name for them either as a nation
or a race; therefore they are called "Mound-Builders," this name
having been suggested by an important class of their works.

[Illustration: Fig. 2.--The Great Mound, near Miamisburg.]

Prominent among the remains by which we know that such a people once
inhabited that region are artificial mounds constructed with
intelligence and great labor. Most of them are terraced and truncated
pyramids. In shape they are usually square or rectangular, but sometimes
hexagonal or octagonal, and the higher mounds appear to have been
constructed with winding stairways on the outside leading to their
summits. Many of these structures have a close resemblance to the
_teocallis_ of Mexico. They differ considerably in size. The great mound
at Grave Creek, West Virginia, is 70 feet high and 1000 feet in
circumference at the base. A mound in Miamisburg, Ohio, is 68 feet high
and 852 feet in circumference. The great truncated pyramid at Cahokia,
Illinois, is 700 feet long, 500 wide, and 90 in height. Generally,
however, these mounds range from 6 to 30 feet high. In the lower valley
of the Mississippi they are usually larger in horizontal extent, with
less elevation.

Figure 2 represents the great mound near Miamisburg, Ohio, which may be
compared with a similar structure at Mayapan, Yucatan (Fig. 34). Figure
3 shows a square mound near Marietta, Ohio.

[Illustration: Fig. 3.--Square Mound, near Marietta.]

There have been a great many conjectures in regard to the purposes for
which these mounds were built, some of them rather fanciful. I find it
most reasonable to believe that the mounds in this part of the continent
were used precisely as similar structures were used in Mexico and
Central America. The lower mounds, or most of them, must have been
constructed as foundations of the more important edifices of the
mound-building people. Many of the great buildings erected on such
pyramidal foundations, at Palenque, Uxmal, and elsewhere in that region,
have not disappeared, because they were built of hewn stone laid in
mortar. For reasons not difficult to understand, the Mound-Builders,
beginning their works on th