Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/52

 24 H1ST0EY OF GOODHUE COUNTY sent wild animals. In height the mounds usually vary from a swell of land to four feet. Some are considerably higher. On the terrace opposite the mouth of Belle creek is a mound sixty- five feet long, thirty feet wide and three feet high. Another mound in the same group is eighty-six feet long, fifty feet wide from base to base across the top, and six feet high at one end. One of the mounds on the brow of Diamond bluff was originally twelve feet high. This mound was selected by four of us as a favorable specimen for exploration. We were, however, ill repaid for our labor as far as finding any relics was concerned. The round-topped mounds measure from ten to forty feet or more in diameter. Their circumference is usually circular. Departures from this shape are due to weather erosion, or to some other degrading agency. Occasionally walls of earth many feet in length but low in elevation are found. A portion of such a wall was removed in grading a street on the fair grounds at Red Whig, and thirteen skeletons were brought to light. It would seem as though these earthenwork walls were formed by burying a large number of dead in a row. The burials may have occurred at different intervals, and in course of time a long earthwork was the result. The arrangement of mounds in the various groups does not seem to depend on any definite rule of order, but seems to result from a process of mound building extending over a considerable period of time, each site for a mound being selected by the builders according to the space, material or topography of the locality. Undoubtedly each mound was placed for some definite purpose in the spot where it is found today, but what the purpose of any mound was may be difficult to say. The spade often partially tells us what we want to know, but sometimes it leaves us as much as ever in the dark. When the interior of a mound reveals human bones, then the inference is that the mound served as a tomb, but intrusive burials may, of course, complicate the problem. But when a mound can be opened without revealing any trace of human remains or of artificial articles, it seems safe to conclude that not all the mounds were built for burial purposes. The erection of such a large number of mounds must have required an enormous expenditure of time and energy. If all the mounds in Goodhue county were placed in a row they would form a line of earth- works many miles in length. The tools with which all the work was done were probably wooden spades, stone hoes and similar implements that indicate a low degree of culture. Where the whole village population turned out for a holiday or a funeral a large mound could be built in a much shorter time than if the work was performed by only a few individuals. The surface of the land adjoining the mound frequently shows plain evidences