Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/51

HISTORY OF GOODHUE COUNTY 23 one jusi described. It may be true that this mound represents ,i heaver emerging from a pond. The dam terminates in a mound six feet high and forty-two feet across. The best time to view these or any other mounds is in the spring before the grass and weeds get a good start. At the Adams farm, near Hager, is a group of seventy-four mounds. One of the largest is located in an adjoining cemetery and is so large that no less than twenty- three gravestones, marking intrusive burials by white people, can be counted upon it. About two miles east of Hager is a boulder outline or picto- graph representing a large bow and arrow. It is situated on the talus slope of one of the bluffs on Mr. Shaver's farm and is made up of limestones laid in such a way as to represent a bent bow with the arrow pointing towards Lake Pepin. The bow is 185 feet long and under favorable conditions can be seen at a distance of four or five miles. Near Bay City are a few more mounds. Prof. Hill and I dug trenches through some of these, but failed to find any relics. In Trenton slough there is a long bar jutting out into the water. Here a considerable number of pits dent the ground. In digging into one of these I found a tomahawk, ashes and pottery. The pits probably mark the site of dwelling places where the lodges were partially built below the surface as a protection against the cold of winter. While the prehistoric remains located at Diamond Bluff, Bay ( 'ity and at the Adams farm near Hager do not lie within Good- hue county, they cannot be omitted in this connection, because they form one harmonious whole with the mounds on the Min- nesota side of the river and help to swell the testimony that this region was long occupied by a race that lived in considerable numbers on both sides of the river and w r ere undisputed masters of the whole region. Where hostile territories in our state touched each other, there the boundary line can be roughly traced by the forts and ramparts. Forts are, however, absent in this region, except the fort at Welch. The similarity, and we may say, identity, of many articles, such as arrows and war clubs, and the similarity of decorations on pottery found at the places mentioned point to the same conclusion. Hay creek and Spring creek also furnish their contingent of 150 or more mounds, so that the total number of tumuli, earthworks, embankments, etc., that occur along the numberless water courses within eleven miles of Red Wing runs up, by actual count, close to 2,000. Such an array of earthworks may be expected to present con- siderable variety of size, shape and purpose in construction. By far the larger number are of the round kind so typical of this part of the United States. Others are oblong. A few, as already stated, are of the singular kind called effigy mounds and repre-