Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/56

 28 HISTORY OF GOODHUE COUNTY on the shore of the chain of lakes that occurs there. The absence of mounds in this locality is probably due to the fact that this is a morainic country made rough and hilly by the ice lobe which stood there in times long ago. A few such mounds are also found in the toAvn of Warsaw. Goodhue county. They occur in lowland tributary to the Stanton flats. The peculiar problem presented by these mounds is this : No positive evidence has been found by digging into them or by searching the surface of adjacent fields that would establish the origin of the mounds as being Indian mounds. Hence the question arises: What reasons have we to think that these mounds were built by man, and that by the prehistoric inhabitants, the Indians? "The mounds are either artificial or else they are not artifi- cial. If natural forces made them, then geologists ought to explain them, since the mounds are an interesting feature in the topography of the country. If these mounds are of a natural origin, then many other tumuli jotted down as mounds may be called in question. However, geology and physical geography fail to account for them. The only forces which one might con- cieve of as able to make some of the mounds in the location under consideration would be springs, the wind, and floods, but a knowledge of the distribution of these mounds sets these agencies aside as inadequate to form all these mounds in all the places where they occur. There are innumerable places where mounds ought to have been formed just as easily by nature, but no mounds are to be found. "The mounds are invariably round; they measure from twenty to forty feet across, and are from half a foot to three feet high. Occasional specimens may be higher, hence they may form very conspicuous objects in the landscape; for example, in the spring when the grass has been burned off. "People living near the mounds often have various ideas as to the origin of the mounds. Some think they are the remains of hay stacks ; others think they are gopher hills or ant hills. However, hay, when rotting, does not leave a residue of soil, sand and stones. The mounds occur in places where no hay ever was stacked, for example, in woods, or where water stands the year round, making the place wet and soggy. Gophers are occa- sionally found burrowing in the mounds, but gophers do not live in woods nor in marshes, and where they are found burrow- ing in mounds on high land they usually spoil the smooth convex outline of the mound with little dirt heaps, giving the mound a warty appearance. If gophers build mounds, why did not the legions of gophers in Goodhue county build mounds of all sizes up to forty feet across and up to four feet high in other parts