Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/70

 10 HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST MISSOURI is just as difficult to explain the motive of their construction, if we assume them to have been reared by the Mound Builders, as it is if' we ascribe them to the Indians. To imagine another race of people does not lessen the dif- ficulty of explaining the reason for their con- struction. It is not, however, imijossible to give a rea- sonable explanation of the existence of these mound.s on the theorj' that they were the work of the Indians. When the ancient Assyrians began to rear buildings, they put them on mounds of earth and constructed them of sun- dried brick, and this, in spite of the fact that their country contained many hills suitable for building purposes and plenty of wood and stone which might have been utilized for building. The explanation of these remark- able facts is found when we remember that they were imitating the work of an older civilized people, the Babylonians. These Babylonians had neither hills as sites, nor wood or stone as building materials. They found substitutes for them. The Assyrians, who began later, simply copied what they had seen others do. It is higlilj' probable that the Indians who build mounds were simply imitat- ing a form of village arrangement with which they had become familiar elsewhere. Per- haps in the southwest, where the Pueblo In- dians idaced their dwellings on the top of cliffs and utilized the tall rocks for lookout stations, there was formed the notion that the suitable place for a dwelling was on an eleva- tion. The Indians who went out from there carried this idea into places where no natural elevation was to be found. In lieu of this they reared artificial mounds. In time it came to be accepted that a mound of earth was the proper place for the location of the house or temple. This idea, in turn, was car- ried from the alluvial plains where it was formed into the hills where again mounds were reared. In considering this, which is advanced simply as a theory which may explain the building of mounds, it should be remembered that mounds are not found in all parts of the country. A careful investigation may dis- close the fact that they are found in those parts of the country where the inhabitants had some connections with the south and southwest. What seems the best and most reasonable explanation of the existence of the mounds is this. The Indians selected as a site for their village the vicinity of some stream or lake. They then erected mounds. One was for the house of the chief; another, sometimes pyr- amidal in shape for the temple ; another was for the burial of the dead ; still another formed a station for the priests and orators of the tribe, and one was for the purpose of a lookout from which to observe the approach of enemies. The size of the mounds depended in part upon the number of Indians in the village and in part upon their inclination and indiTstry. In the course of years the dwel- lings and temples, of frail constriiction as they were, disappeared, leaving only a heap of earth to puzzle those who found them. The contents of these mounds, as we have said, are interesting as being the record of the degree of civilization of the people who built them. Many of the mounds have yielded interesting and curious returns to the spade of the investigator. Hundreds of mounds have been explored more or less completely. The relics taken from them have been carried to museums and the collections of private indi- viduals in many parts of the country. There