of the present Laplanders. As they must evidently have had some protection from the weather, it is most probable that they lived in tents made of skins. The total absence of metal indicates that they had not yet any weapons except those made of wood, stone, horn, and bone. Their principal food must have consisted of shell fish, but they were able to catch fish, and often varied their diet by game caught in hunting. It is, perhaps, not uncharitable to conclude that, when their hunters were unusually successful, the whole community gorged itself with food, as is the case with many savage races at the present time. It is evident that marrow was considered a great delicacy, for every single bone which contained any was split open in the manner best adapted to extract the precious morsel. As to the date, however, of this remote savage life, it is as yet impossible to speak with confidence, except to say that it was, in all probability, thousands of years earlier than any historic record.
Our knowledge of North American archæology is derived mainly from the researches of Messrs. Atwater, Squier, Davis, Lapham, and Haven. These remains differ less in kind than in degree from others concerning which history has not been entirely silent. They are more numerous, more concentrated, and in some particulars on a larger scale of labor, than the works which approach them on their several borders, and with whose various characters they are blended. Their great numbers may be the result of frequent changes of residence by a comparatively limited population, in accordance with a superstitious trait of the Indian nature, leading to the abandonment of places where any great calamity has been suffered. The contents of the Indian mounds are very various and interesting. They show that the art of pottery had been brought to a considerable degree of perfection. Various ornamental articles abound in the tumuli, such as beads, shells, necklaces, bracelets, etc. Earthworks for defence are also numerous, especially in the central parts of the States, and the remains of ancient mud huts have occasionally been found.
The so called "Sacrificial Mounds" are a class of ancient monuments altogether peculiar to the New World, and highly illustrative of the rites and customs of the ancient races of the mounds. These remarkable mounds have been very carefully explored. Their most noticeable characteristics are, their almost invariable occurrence within enclosures; their regular construction in uniform layers of gravel, earth, and sand, disposed alternately in strata, conformable to the shape of the mound; and their covering, a symmetrical altar of burnt clay or stone, on which are deposited numerous relics, in all instances exhibiting traces, more or less abundant, of their having been exposed to the action of fire. The so called "altar" is a basin, or table of burnt clay, carefully moulded into a symmetrical form, but varying much both in shape and size. Some are round, some elliptical, and others squares or parallelograms, while in size they vary from 2 feet to
