CONCLUDING REMARKS.

The results of our examination of the burial mounds of the northern districts may be briefly summed up as follows:

First. That different sections were occupied by different mound-building tribes, which, though belonging to much the same stage in the scale of civilization, differed in most instances in habits and customs to a sufficient extent to mark, by their modes of burial, construction of their mounds, and their works of art, the boundaries of the respective areas occupied.

Second. That each tribe adopted several different modes of burial depending, in all probability, to some extent upon the social condition, position, and occupation of the deceased.

Third. That the custom of removing the flesh before the final burial prevailed very extensively among the mound-builders of the northern sections. The bones of the common people being often gathered together and cast in promiscuous heaps, over which mounds were built.

Fourth. That usually some kind of religious or superstitious ceremony was performed at the burial, in which fire played a prominent part. That, notwithstanding the very common belief to the contrary, there is no evidence whatever that human sacrifice was practiced.

Fifth. That there is nothing found in the mode of constructing these mounds, nor in the vestiges of art they contain, to indicate that their builders had reached a higher culture-status than that attained by some of the Indian tribes found occupying the country at the time of the first arrival of Europeans.

Sixth. That the custom of erecting mounds over the dead continued to be practiced in several localities in post-Columbian times.

Seventh. That the character and condition of the ancient monuments, and the relative uniformity in the culture status of the different tribes shown by the works and the remains of art found in them, indicate that the mound-building age could not have continued in this part of the continent longer than a thousand years, and hence that its commencement probably does not antedate the fifth or sixth century.

Nothing has been found connected with them to sustain or justify the opinion, so frequently advanced, of their great antiquity. The calculations based upon the supposed age of trees found growing on some of them is fast giving way before recent investigations made in regard to the growth of forests, as it has been ascertained that the rings of trees are not a sure indication of age.

Quatrefages may not be correct in fixing the date of the appearance of the "Red skins" in the "basin of the Missouri" in the eighth or ninth century,[76] but nothing has been found in connection with the ancient works of this country, supposing the Indians to have been their authors, to prove that he has greatly erred in his calculation. Other races or peoples may have preceded the mound-builders in this region, but better proof of this is required than that based on the differences between the supposed palæolithic and neolithic implements of New Jersey and other sections, as every type discovered can be duplicated a hundred times in the surface finds from different parts of the country.

Eighth. That all the mounds which have been examined and carefully studied are to be attributed to the indigenous tribes found inhabiting this region and their ancestors.