Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/53

 HISTORY OF GOODHUE COUNTY 25 of where the material was obtained for the construction of the mound. All in all, the regularity, symmetry and even mathe- matical exactness with which the mounds are built show con- siderable skill and taste. The reader can picture to himself the funeral scenes, the wailing of the sorrowing survivors and the (lames of funeral pyres which were sometimes built. Another interesting class of aboriginal remains in Goodhue county are the so-called "stone cairns" found, with few excep- tions, on the bluffs between Hay creek and Spring creek. A baker's dozen of these have been located. They are conical piles of stones, now much mutilated, measuring up to twelve feet in diameter at the base. They are about as unique archaeological structures as any found in the state, because no others are found, if memory serves me right, nearer than in Illinois and Kansas. There is little reason to doubt that they are old stone graves, so old that all positive traces of human bodies buried in them have been obliterated. Therefore they are hundreds of years old, and may have been built by a tribe of Indians who lived here before the Sioux arrived. If they were built by the Sioux, then it is strange that the number of cairns is so small and confined to such a limited area. In regard to the origin of the mounds it may be said in brief that they are of Indian origin. The idea of a prehistoric race of mound builders distinct from the Indian has been exploded by archaeological research, but it is very common to find this idea expressed in books of the last generation and in the minds of those who in early childhood had the "mound builder" theory instilled into them. The real mound builder was a genuine Indian and not a member of some other race. The evidences of this are many. Indians are known to have built mounds. The articles found in the mounds are the same in kind and make as those found on the nearby village site. Invariably a large mound group has a village site close by. The articles found on the sites and in the mounds are such as the Indians used. Space forbids a discussion of this subject, but here is a partial list of the objects that have been found in .Goodhue county: Arrows, of various sizes and shapes, made of chert, quartz, quartzite, gunflint and other varieties of rock; spearheads, knives, awls, needles, hammerstones, millstones, clubs, sinkers, bone implements, fragments of pipes, scrapers in profusion, ice-axes, spuds, chungee stones, paint pots, paint cups, hammers of hematite and other kinds of rocks, fleshers, polishing stones, drills, hairpins, a decorated buffalo-rib knife, mauls, stone balls, flakes, chisels, lances, mullers, mortars, whetstones, deco- rated pieces of clam shells, also vast numbers of spalls, chips, rejects and fragmentary implements in various stages of com-