Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/387

 GENERAL

OBSERVATIONS

��O N T H E

��NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.

��IN the following pages, the reader will find as great a variety of enter tainment, as can well be expected in defcribing a rude and uncivilized people. The Indians having for a long time no intercourfe with the reft of the world, and feldom one nation of them with another, their rites and cuftoms are in feveral refpe&s different. But as they agree in efientials through the whole extent of the American world, fuch agreement is ap parently owing to tradition, and the ufage of their anceftors, ^before they were fubdivided as at prefent. Uniformity cannot be attributed to chance.

Through the whole continent, and in the remoteft woods, are traces of their ancient warlike difpofition. We frequently met with great mounds of earth, either of a circular, or oblong form, having a ftrong breaft-work at a diftance around them, made of the clay which had been dug up in forming the ditch, on the inner fide of the inclofed ground, and thefe were their forts of fecurity againft an enemy. Three or four of them, are in fome places raifed fo near to each other, as evidently for the garrifon to take any enemy that patted between them. They were moftly built in low lands ;

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