Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/237

 DELABARRE AND WILDER] INDIAN CORN-HILLS 22$

intervals between them from eight to twelve inches in the best preserved examples, and thence down now to a mere trace in cases where destructive influences have affected them. Sometimes, however, a number of them are joined together into a continuous mound ; and apparently Lapham observed a type where entire rows formed continuous ridges without individual hills, though his description is not definite enough to make this sure.

As to their distance apart, there was evidently much difference in practice among Indians of different localities, though perhaps a considerable uniformity in any one locality, unless conditions varied, as for instance in the use of land newly cleared of trees as against that which had always or long been clear. At one extreme are the hills that Lapham describes as scattered over the surface with the greatest irregularity. The closest regular spacing seems to have been that of the Hurons, two feet or less. A third method of spacing was that of Lapham 's parallel ridges about four feet apart, apparently without individual hills. Most of the other quoted authorities give the interspaces as three to five feet, without men- tion of whether they were irregularly placed or formed definite rows, and in the rows continuous ridges or separated hills, yet almost certainly the latter except in newly cleared land. Where definite rows of individual hills were formed, they were sometimes aligned in one direction only and no attention was paid as to whether or not they formed straight lines with one another in the direction at right angles to that; but sometimes great care was used to arrange them straight and true in both main directions and thus also in both diagonals. At Northampton there are regularly parallel, though not necessarily entirely straight rows a little over three feet apart, singly aligned because within the rows the spacing of the hills was irregular. Finally, most definite and orderly of all, on Assonet neck the rows run everywhere perfectly straight (unless rocks or other obstacles interfere), doubly aligned, with an almost constant distance between hills of a little more than four feet in both directions.

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