Читать книгу The Mythology of Cherokee, Iroquois, Navajo, Siouan and Zuñi - James Mooney - Страница 26

The question of the antiquity of the Red Race in North America is bound up with an archæological problem which bristles with difficulties, but is quite as replete with interest. In the Mississippi basin and the Gulf States, chiefly from La Crosse, Wisconsin, to Natchez, Miss., and in the central and southern districts of Ohio, and in the adjoining portion of Indiana and South Wisconsin, are found great earthen mounds, the typical form of which is pyramidal. Some, however, are circular, and a few pentagonal. Others are terraced, extending outward from one or two sides, while some have roadways leading up to the level surface on the summit. These are not mere accumulations of débris, but works constructed on a definite plan, and obviously requiring a considerable amount of skill and labour for their accomplishment. "The form, except where worn down by the plough, is usually that of a low, broad, round-topped cone, varying in size from a scarcely perceptible swell in the ground to elevations of eighty or even a hundred feet, and from six to three hundred feet in diameter."5