seum at Cincinnati, had
three small knobs at the bottom on which it stood, and I was credibly
informed that a dissenting clergyman, through the _esprit de metier_,
undertook to prove from the circumstance, that the people who raised these
mounds and fortifications must have been acquainted with the doctrine of
the Trinity. How far the reverend gentleman is correct in his inference, I
leave for theologians to decide.

The Indians do not claim the mounds as depositories for _their_ dead, but
are well aware of their containing human bones. They frequently encamp
near them, and visit them on their journeys, but more as land marks than
on any other account. They approach them with reverence, as they do all
burial places, no matter of what people or nation. The Quapaws have a
tradition, that they were raised "many hundred snows" ago, by a people
that no longer exists; they say, that in those days game was so plenty
that very little exertion was necessary to procure a subsistence, and
there were then no wars--these happy people having then no employment,
collected, merely for sport, these heaps of earth, which have ever since
remained, and have subsequently been used by another people, who succeeded
them, as depositories of their dead. Another tradition is, that they were
erected by the Indians to protect them from the mammoths, until the Great
Spirit took pity on his red children, and annihilated these enormous
elephants. Most of the Indian nations concur in their having been the work
of a people which had ceased to exist before the red men possessed those
hunting grounds.

The numerous mounds, fortifications, and burial caverns, and the skeletons
and mummies, that have been discovered in these catacombs, sufficiently
establish the fact, that a people altogether different from the present
aborigines once inhabited these regions. At what period this by-gone
people flourished still remains a matter of mere conjecture, for to the
present time no discovery has been made that could lead to any plausible
supposition.

De Witt Clinton having paid more attention to the antiquities of America
than any other person of whom I am aware, I shall here insert his
description of the forts. He says, "These forts were, generally speaking,
erected on the most commanding ground. The walls, or breastworks, were
earthen. The ditches were on the exterior of the works. On some of the
parapets, oak trees were to be seen, which, from the number of c