Part 41

They are lathed with cane and plastered with mud from bottom to top, within and without, with a good covering of straw.

This seems to mean that the entire building was plastered with mud, and then covered with grass to shed the rainfall.

In a mound in Arkansas County, Arkansas (Twelfth Ann. Rept. Bur. Ethn., p. 231)--

About 2 feet under the surface was a thick layer of burnt clay, which probably formed the roof. In tracing out the circumference a hard clay floor was found beneath, and between the two several inches of ashes, but no skeletons. There were a great many pieces of broken dishes so situated as to lead one to believe they were on top of the house at the time it was burned.

The fact that no skeletons or utensils were discovered on the floor finds its most reasonable explanation in the supposition that the inmates, finding their abode to be unsafe, moved out and took their possessions with them. This would account, also, for the absence of such remains in similar mounds farther north. The abundance of pottery fragments found in this case, and in many others, may mean only that these were worked in as a part of the clay roofing. They would be of some service in holding the clay in place in wet weather.

It is quite probable that the continuous, though fragmentary, layer of burned clay on the floor so often noted is due in part at least to the material forming the roof. The walls would be more apt to fall outward than inward, and would be more liable to crumble than to fall as an intact mass. In fact, this is clearly shown by the statement (p. 229) that in certain house sites in St. Francis County, Arkansas,

The edges are all higher and have a thicker layer of this [burned] material than the inner areas.

Further, in describing explorations of certain "hut rings" at "Beckwith's Fort" in Mississippi County, Missouri (p. 187), the report states that they are

from 30 to 50 feet in diameter, measuring to the tops of their rims, which are raised slightly above the natural level. The depth of the depression at the center is from 2 to 3 feet. Near the center, somewhat covered with earth, are usually found the baked earth, charcoal, and ashes of ancient fires, and around these and beneath the rims [that is, the surrounding ring or embankment] split bones and fresh-water shells. Often mingled with this refuse material are rude stone implements and fragments of pottery.

Note is made of

the similarity in the size, form, and general appearance of these depressions and earthen rings to those of the earth lodges of the abandoned Mandan towns along the Missouri River.

It appears, too, that certain sites were occupied for long periods, new houses being constructed when necessary. In describing mounds in Poinsett County, Arkansas, the same writer says (p. 205) that

The positions and relations of these beds * * * make it evident that upon the site of one burned dwelling another was usually constructed, not infrequently a third, and sometimes even a fourth, the remains of each being underlaid and usually overlaid in part by very dark, adhesive clay or muck. * * *

The peculiar black color of these beds is chiefly in consequence of the large proportion of charcoal with which they are mixed, some of it doubtless the fine particles of burned grass and reed matting with which the cabins appear to have been thatched.

These layers of "very dark" material undoubtedly are remains of mud from the adjacent swamps, which was mixed with or plastered over the grass roofs. It is difficult to understand how they could have become mixed after the burning.

As showing the extent to which this prolonged occupancy was carried, we are informed (p. 254) that in Coahoma County, Mississippi, a mound was--

oval and rounded on top, 210 feet long, 150 broad at the base, and 16 feet high. This mound and several smaller ones near it are so nearly masses of fire beds, burnt clay, fragments of stone and pottery, together with more or less charcoal and ashes, as to indicate clearly that they are the sites of ancient dwellings thus elevated by accumulation of material during long continued occupancy.

In still other portions of the country besides those already mentioned are evidences of similar houses whose sites are now marked by mounds. In southern Ohio, especially, records of excavations contain numerous references to post holes under mounds both large and small. In the case of the former, so far as we may judge from the reports, the houses were destroyed before the mounds were built, and it does not appear that they were ever covered with earth. In the small, low, flat mounds, under which such holes existed, no thought was taken that these may mark the position of posts used to support a roof; all mounds were explored with the idea that they were for burial purposes, consequently no attention was paid to these features.

The Mandan houses, as described by Lewis and Clark, Catlin, and others, when fallen into ruins would leave exactly such mounds or hut rings as those found in Missouri and Arkansas.

It is now generally conceded that the wall or embankment at Aztalan, Wisconsin, concerning which so many wild theories have been promulgated, was simply a series of such house sites connected by a low ridge. The evidences of mysterious sacrificial altars seem to be due only to the destruction of such houses by fire.

In Wisconsin, also, and in Minnesota, are many small mounds apparently of this character which are due to an extinct tribe known to the Sioux and Chippewas as "The Ground House Indians."

In 1887 I became acquainted, at Munising, Michigan, with Mr. William Cameron. He was of the Scotch clan of Camerons, a nephew of a former Governor of Canada. Educated for a profession, he made a visit to relatives in Canada in early manhood, and the attractions of the wilderness proved so great that he never returned to his home. At the time I met him he was 84 years of age, in full possession of his mental faculties. For more than 60 years he had traversed the Lake region, his fur trading and trapping expeditions having carried him over all the country from Montreal to the mouth of the Mackenzie River. Much of his life had been spent among the Indians, especially the Sioux and Chippewas. He learned from them all they could tell him of their tribal history and former methods of living. The Chippewas told him that when they first came into the country they found the Sioux in possession, but finally, obtaining arms from the French, they drove the Sioux westward.

The "old men" of the Sioux corroborated this tradition and told Cameron that as they went westward they came to a race of people who lived in mounds which they piled up. These people were large and strong, but cowardly. "If they had been as brave as they were big," said the Sioux, "between them and the Chippewas we would have been destroyed; but they were great cowards and we easily drove them away."

Mr. B.G. Armstrong, of Ashland, Wisconsin, told me that he had taken great pains to investigate this tradition. From all that he could gather by much inquiry among the Indians and from his own observations, he was satisfied of its correctness. These people, whom the Sioux called Ground House Indians, built houses of logs and posts, over and around which they piled earth until it formed a conical mass several feet thick above the roof. Their territory extended from Lake Eau Claire, about 30 miles south of Lake Superior, to the Wisconsin River near Wausau or Stevens Point; down the Wisconsin a short distance; thence west into Minnesota, but how far he could not say; then around north of Yellow Lake back to the Eau Claire region. The Sioux exterminated the tribe, the last survivors being an old man and a woman who had married a Sioux. They were taken to the present site of Superior, near Duluth, and "died about 200 years ago"--that is, in the last quarter of the seventeenth century.

Gordon, an intelligent Indian living at the town of the same name, a short distance south of Superior, was familiar with this tradition, as were other Indians with whom I talked, and who accepted it as a well-known fact. Gordon related that he had heard "the old men" say these Indians erected their houses of wood and piled several feet of dirt over them; and they buried their dead in little mounds out in front of their houses and a few hundred feet away. He told of a mound that was opened near Yellow Lake in which the position and condition of the skeletons, two or three of children being among them, showed "as plainly as anything could" that they had been sitting or lounging around the fire, when the roof fell in and crushed them.

There is a "Ground House River" in eastern Minnesota, which probably derives its name from this people.

FOOTNOTES:

V. ARCHEOLOGICAL WORK IN HAWAII