wooded glens and gorges; and the bottoms, gently declining from the hills for half their width, are smooth as lawns, and now converted into the finest farms in the State, then reaching a lower level as they near the rivers, become heavily timbered and interspersed with numerous lakes and sloughs. Nature was here lavish in its supplies of fish, game, and wild fruits, and every condition necessary for the subsistence and endurance of a large population was present. This beautiful and fertile region, it is evident, was occupied by successive tribes from the earliest times before our history began down to the peaceable expulsion of the last of its dusky tenants, the Sacs and Foxes, during the administration of General Jackson. In testimony of this fact we have the relics of their remains, arts, and methods of life, which time has been powerless to destroy, in great profusion and full of fascinating interest. Of these silent records of a rapidly vanishing race the most important as well as the most legible are the earthen mounds which cover the bones and dust of their dead. They crown all the peaks and ridges of our bluffs, a few rising to considerable proportions, but the greater number are mere swellings of the surface not readily recognized as being of artificial origin. Every gradation of mound structure is here present, from the stately tumulus 30 feet in height to the broad, flat sepulchres so slightly elevated as to be scarcely noticed.
It would be useless labor and waste of time to attempt to locate on a map the situation of each mound or group of mounds in Cass County, and a tedious and unprofitable repetition to detail minutely the examination of each separate mound. For brevity of description they can readily be grouped in two or three classes, and the description of one will answer generally for all of its particular class. While in all of them, so far explored, the inclosed bodies of the dead were deposited on the surface of the ground, we find in some the position and arrangement of the remains to have been different from that found in others; from which we must infer that at times changes and innovations in mortuary customs were introduced, perhaps by different tribes who succeeded each other in occupancy of the country.
Of the first class of mounds, and by far the largest, and no doubt the most ancient, but one has yet been opened, and, unfortunately, no one versed or interested in ethnological study was present at the time to collect and preserve the relics it disclosed, or make any record of them. This mound, which I have before had occasion to mention,[1] formerly stood immediately upon the bank of the Illinois River, within the present limits of the city of Beardstown, 6 miles below the mouth of the Saugamoo. This locality is slightly more elevated than the surrounding river bottoms on either side, and was anciently an island surrounded on one side partly by the Illinois and on the other by a slough through which the river had once passed and yet discharged its surplus water. The island, on account of its peculiarly favorable position, had been for
- ↑ Smithsonian Annual Report for 1876, p. 438.
