Page 228 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961

221 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS.
The age in which these builders lived, or the distance of
time from the present, is inferred from the age of trees found
growing in the mounds, some of which, from their annual
rings, are supposed to be four hundred years old. But who
were the builders, whence t,hey came, whither they went, or by
what means they became extinct, lies in the impenetrable dark-
ness of the past, and is not likely to be known in time. But
there is an interest excited in the mind, on seeing these ancient
works, a written history of which nould highly gratify, if it
were authentic, or believed so to be. This interest in us,
shows the duty to the future, to record what we know of the
past or present, for its edification, as we would that others
should have done unto us, even so we should do to those who
are to follow us.
As the matter, relative to these mounds, now stands, conjec-
ture alone can answer the inquiries of the antiquarian, which
in most cases, is as unsatisfactory as the total darkness in
which the history of those times is now enveloped. some
have thought that these mounds were thrown up as monuments
over the distinguished dead; and have inferred this from the
fact that in some of them, relics have been found. But as the
most and the largest of them, on examination, are found to
contain no such rematns, the 'inference is not well founded.
That human bones and Indian relics have been found in some
of them, of late years, is no proof that they were erected for
places of interment; for since the whites have been in the
country, our modern Indians have been in the habit, more
or less, of burying their dead in them, and frequently guns,
axes, kettles, kc., have been found with the bones,-and
sometimes without them-which shows that the interment took
place since the whites came to the continent, and the fact that
such metallic substances have been found without the bones,
shows that if men were buried there at first, their bones could
not have continued in a state of preservation until this time.
It is worthy of remark, that while in Ohio the most promi-
nent of these tumuli were forts or fortifications, in Wisconsin.