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The valley of the Miami River was equally well provided with signal
mounds. This great mound, at Miamisburg, Ohio, rising to the height of
sixty-eight feet, was one of the chain by which signals were transmitted
along the valley. Not only was each river valley thus provided, but
there is evidence that communication was established between different
river systems, so we can easily see how quickly the invasion of their
country by an enemy from any quarter would become known in widely
scattered sections. Immediately across the river from Chillicothe, Ohio,
on a hill nearly six hundred feet high, was located a signal mound. A
fire built upon it would be visible twenty miles up the valley, and an
equal distance down. It would be also visible far down the valley
of Paint Creek. Some think that such a system of lofty observatories
extended across the whole State of Ohio, of Indiana, and Illinois, the
Grave Creek mound, on the east, the great mound at Cahokia, on the west,
and the works in Ohio filling up the line. We do not believe, however,
it is safe to draw such conclusions. It is doubtful whether there was
any very close connection between the tribes in these several sections.

In the State of Wisconsin are found some of the most interesting remains
of the Mound Builders. They are so different from the ordinary remains
found elsewhere that we must admit that the people who built them
differed greatly from the tribes who built the great temple mounds
of the South, or the earthworks of Ohio. The remains in Wisconsin are
distinguished not by their great size or height, but by their singular
forms. Here the mound building instincts of the people were expressed by
heaping up the earth in the shape of animals. What strange fancy it was
that led them to mould the figures on the bluffy banks of the rivers and
the high lands about the lakes of their country, we shall perhaps never
know. That they had some design in this matter is, of course, evident,
and if we would try and learn their secret, we must address ourselves to
a study of the remains.

Effigy mounds are almost exclusively confined to the State of Wisconsin.
We, indeed, find effigy mounds in other sections, but they are of rare
occurrence.<43> They, however, show that the same reasons, religious, or
otherwise, exists in other localities, while in the area covered by
the southern portion of the State of Wisconsin it found its greatest
expression. This cut afford