e he landed
(supposed to be Tampa Bay) they observed that the house of the chief
"stood near the shore, upon a very high mound, made by hand for
strength."

Garcilasso tells us "the town and the house of the Cacique (chief)
Ossachile are like those of the other caciques in Florida.... The
Indians try to place their villages on elevated sites, but, inasmuch
as in Florida there are not many sites of this kind where they can
conveniently build, they erect elevations themselves, in the following
manner: They select the spot, and carry there a quantity of earth, which
they form into a kind of platform, two or three pikes in height, the
summit of which is large enough to give room for twelve, fifteen, or
twenty houses, to lodge the cacique and his attendants. At the foot of
this elevation they mark out a square place, according to the size of
the village, around which the leading men have their houses. To ascend
the elevation they have a straight passage-way from bottom to top,
fifteen or twenty feet wide. Here steps are made by massive beams, and
others are planted firmly in the ground to serve as walls. On all other
sides of the platform the sides are cut steep."<27>

Biedman, the remaining historian, says of the country in what is now
(probably) Arkansas. "The caciques of this country make a custom of
raising, near their dwellings, very high hills, on which they sometimes
build their huts."<28> Twenty-five years later the French sent an
expedition to the east coast of Florida. The accounts of this expedition
are very meager, but they confirm what the other writers have stated as
to the erection of platform mounds with graded ways.<29> Le Moyne, the
artist of this expedition, has left us a cut of a mound erected over a
deceased chief. It was, however, but a small one.<30>

La Harpe, writing in 1720, says of tribes on the lower Mississippi:
"Their cabins... are dispersed over the country upon mounds of earth
made with their own hands." As to the construction of these houses, we
learn that their cabins were "round and vaulted," being lathed with cane
and plastered with mud from bottom to top, within and without. In other
cases they were square, with the roof dome-shaped, the walls plastered
with mud to the height of twelve feet.<31> It is interesting to
observe how closely what little we do know about Mound Builders' houses
coincides with the above.

Recent investigations by the Bureau of Ethnology have brought to
light