Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/55

HISTORY OF GOODHUE COUNTY 27 elevated terraces, knolls and bluffs, there is another type of mound found in Goodhue county, which differs in several impor- tant respects from the former. The first group of mounds may he named highland mounds and the others lowland mounds. Lowland mounds occur in the town of Stanton, Warsaw and Kenyon. They are far more numerous in Dakota and Rice counties, where, in the summer of 1907, I located some 1,700. For some reason these mounds have hitherto escaped observa- tion. Possibly the mound hunter, accustomed to look for mounds on highlands, would not expect to find mounds in such localities where the lowland mounds occur. The following is a brief resume of a paper read before the Minnesota State Historical Society at the December meeting in 1908. The subject of the paper, Lowland Mounds in Dakota, Rice and Goodhue Counties," reveals where these mounds are found and implies that they all belong to the same class and are related to each other : "In the southern part of Dakota county, particularly in the town of Greenvale and the western part of Waterford, is found a large number of mounds which, to all outward appearance, are Indian mounds. They differ, however, from the well known Indian mounds that abound in the Mississippi valley and interior parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota in this respect, that they are usually situated on low, level, and often wet ground. Mounds are usually situated on land that is rather high relative to the surrounding topography. For example, the mounds in the vicinity of Red Wing, Cannon -Junction, Welch and Diamond bluff are, as a rule, situated on terraces that skirt the river, or on the brows of prominent bluffs. The mounds found near our inland lakes are almost invariably placed well beyond the reach of water. The mounds under consideration are located on low, often marshy ground. For this reason a person accustomed to mound hunting along the Mississippi would easily pass by these lowland mounds without paying much attention to them. He might think they were curious freaks, chance formations of nature. Mounds of this type are also found south of Northfield, Rice county; also near Dunclas and south of there along the east side of Cannon river. Near Dennison is a large number, par- ticularly about one mile west of the town along Prairie creek. All these locations are immature water courses that lie on glacial ■outwash plains or along the Cannon river. The Stanton flats contain hundreds of these mounds. On the flats near Farming- ton and Castle Rock are found numbers of mounds in similar locations. The total number observed and recorded is over 1,500. The western part of Dakota and Rice counties is strik- ingly poor in mounds. One might expect to find a large number