very large quantities, and is generally sold fresh. There may be other kinds of fish, but those named are the chief, and the most valuable. Very few white fish are taken in Lake Erie, and we believe no trout. Pike, pickerel, and bass, are caught in abundance about the islands in the upper part of the lake, and in the Maumee bay and river. These are salted in considerable quantities. In Detroit river the same kinds are found as in Lake Erie, and white fish are caught to some extent. formed with the Indians a formidable party, that sta- | muscalonge is not, in Lake Erie at least, caught in tioned themselves at the present site of Memphis, on the Mississippi. Here all the boats passing were stopped and plundered at pleasure. These attacks compelled the river navigation to unite and arm themselves against the robbers. To add to the calamities usually brought on any country by civil war, a dreadful murrain broke out among the cattle; and very generally killed the stock which the Indians had left behind. Ten or fifteen a day, of a hundred head, would be carried off, after a few hours' sickness, This fatal disease together with the injury done by the enemy to the corn crop in the summer, reduced the country to the brink of starvation, by the first of September. Nor yet were these the only misfortunes of the country; the Spanish officers, urged, it is said, by M'Intosh, loaded the people with various exactions and oppressions. This course of things on the part of the government, as usual drove the Holstons, father and sons, (from the frontier of whom the river Holston, in Tennessee, is said to have derived its name,) together with three men of the name of Smith, into the woods, where they set the provincial government at defiance. Indians would not attack their companions and friends; and white men could not find them. So for fear of the party uniting itself to the predatory gangs on the river, which infested the navigation, the government invited the malcontents back to their homes in peace. But the Spaniards now found out, that Colonel Anthony Hutchins had taken an active part in the late insurrection. Immediate means of severity were adopted against him and his estate; they compelled him to flee, and after many difficulties, in evading Indians, he got to Georgia and thence to England. Colonel Hutchins afterward returned and raised a worthy and esteemed family in the neighbourhood of Natchez, the seat of his persecution, where they still reside, THE LAKE FISHERIES. FEW persons except those engaged in or connected with the business, are aware of the extent and value of the Lake fisheries. They are a source of production which ought not to be overlooked, in estimating the resources of the country bordering upon the lakes. There are no published statisticks of this trade, so far as we know, nor any records, from which the quantities of fish put up for market can be accurately estimated. Estimates only can be given, and these may be more or less correct, according to the accuracy of the information on which they are based. In Lakes Huron and Michigan, and the straits of Mackinaw, trout, white fish, and other kinds are caught in abundance. The Thunder Bay islands, a group near Thunder bay, in Lake Huron, the Beaver, Fox, and Manitou islands, near the fort of Lake Michigan, and Twin rivers, on the western shore, are the principal fisheries of those two lakes. Fish are caught, however, at other places in the lakes. They are also caught in the vicinity of Mackinaw in abundance; about the small islands in the straits, and at Point St. Ignace. It is supposed that these fish might be taken in Green bay. A year or two since, some persons caught a very large quantity of trout at Sturgeon bay in winter, fishing with a hook through the ice. They piled up their fish, intending to carry them, frozen, to Navarino, to be salted; but a sudden thaw spoiled the speculation. Immense quantities have been taken upon Lake Superiour for two or three years past; it is said that these are mostly caught about the group of islands known as the "Twelve Apostles," near the head of the lake. But little is known about this, however, as the trade of Superiour is, in fact, monopolized by the American Fur Company. There is no mode of going up this lake except in vessels of one of these. companies; and the American Fur Company does not permit adventurers a passage in its vessels. Two schooners have been heretofore employed upon Lake Superiour; one belonging to each of these companies. A new one was built the last spring by the American Fur Company, so that there are now three. When the canal around the Sault de St. Marie shall be finished, it is likely there will be a rush of competition for the business of Lake Superiour. Whether the expectation of those who are sanguine will be realized, as to the extent and value of the trade thus to be opened, time will determine. Furs are growing scarce upon the shore, it is said; fish are abundant, and whether there are minerals upon the shore worth digging for, is disputed. But when that ship canal is completed, Lake Superiour and the country around it, will be minutely explored, and its resources, whatever they may be, ascertained. But to return to fish; a gentleman, who has good means of judging, estimates the quantity put up for market upon the lake in 1837 at 12,000 barrels, and of these he judges 7000 barrels were brought from Lake Superiour. At nine dollars the barrel, which may be taken as a fair price, the whole would amount to $108,000. Lake fisheries form a staple article of provisions at all the lake ports. The principal kinds are White fish and Mackinaw trout. The latter, a delicious fish, resembles the Salmon trout, and are possibly the same, They vary in size, from five pounds or under, to fifty or sixty pounds in weight. Besides these, are pike, pickerel, and different kinds of bass, the cisquet or cisquevet of Lake Superiour, a fine fish, like the mackerel in appearance and flavour, but larger; and the muscalonge, also a delicious fish, weigh ing sometimes fifty or sixty pounds. The cisquet is scarcely known in market, as they are caught only in Lake Superiour, and few have been put up. The to give, If any cotemporary upon the Lake has the means, we shall be glad to see a fuller and more minute ac count of the fisheries than this-which is such as our imperfect information on the subject enables us Cleveland Herald and Gazette, For the Family Magazine. which, it is reasonable to suppose, were cultivated. Among every such group may be observed from one ANTIQUITIES OF THE WEST.-NO. II. to three more prominent than the rest, which seem It has been, and still is, with perhaps a majority to be in succession, the largest nearest the most of those who give themselves the trouble to think on prominent, and the smallest more remote. In the this matter, generally believed that the mounds and largest the bones are more firm and the teeth more embankments found in the West were the works of worn than in the others. In the smallest the bones a people entirely distinct from the present race of are soft and less perfect, and the teeth either wanting Indians. But let us endeavor to inquire into the or such as are to be expected in the head of infants; probabilities on the affirmative and negative of this sometimes the mere enamel of the first set on the question. The people who made these mounds and tops of the second. In these groups we seldom find embankments, or forts, followed the examples of more than one skeleton to each mound, and the size their ancestors, in the countries from whence they of each mound may be supposed according to the came. The mound was a very ancient mode of numbers of those who held the deceased in estimaburial. The Israelites raised a great heap of stones tion. The earth too, in almost every instance, eleover the body of Achan, whom they had stoned to vated a foot or more before laying on the corpse, death. This they did probably to express their con- which seems always to have been laid straight and tempt and detestation; and they thought the mound horizontal, without regard to direction, accompanied most expressive and durable, as well as contemptu- with his or her arms, implements, and treasures; ous, because it was the mode of burial of the sur- such as flints which may have answered for knives, rounding heathen. The mounds are found through-arrow-heads and spears; stone axes; pots of pecuout all Tartary, even to Kamschatka; and southward liar manufacture, of blackish clay and pounded shells through all northern and southern Europe. They of the snail and the fresh-water clam (muscles, so were once numerous in Britain and Ireland. Nor called here), unburned, except the bottoms, which was the practice laid entirely aside until within the became red by use in their culinary operations. All last century. A person was found dead on the way- these pots are of one form, that of our iron bellied side or contiguous to it, in a certain part of Ireland, dinner-pot, but without feet, and with ears resemabout ninety years ago. He was buried near the spot bling those of our earthen porringers. The outsides, where found, and a heap of stones raised over him, whether for ornament not known, appear to have which accumulated in the course of years to a great been scraped over with some instrument like a comb, pile; for the ignorant people considered it an act of perhaps the back-bone of a fish, and under the outdevotion, which would insure them good luck, to ward brim an ornament somewhat various but always cast a stone upon the stranger's grave; and it is of similar character, thus, 1 (the double doubtless true that many of the mounds of the West were enlarged by repeated additions. A small one, or thus, not more than eighteen inches high, though six or lines parallel), which, some have thought, show that eight feet in diameter, was bisected by some digging, they were acquainted with the rope and the chain. and disclosed the bones of an infant, together with Lumps of the galenic ore of lead, bright stones, such repeated additions marked by lines of black soil, no as crystalized quartz and mica (isinglass), and sundoubt the work of the yearning mother, still doting dry play-things, hereafter to be described, were pro on her lost babe. Mr. Clark, before quoted, speaks bably their precious treasures, and are found with of hundreds along the banks of the Don, around the them. In some, however, no vestige of either arms, Palus Mæotis, or sea of Azoph, and in the Crimea. ornaments, or domestic implements are to be found. Among the rest, the tomb of Mithridates, yet known One group examined by the writer contained, in the among the people there by a name designating it the largest, a male skeleton, with teeth much worn, and tumulus of Mithridates. He describes it as an im- in two others of the same group, nearly as large, mense mound of earth and loose stones; and the each a female skeleton of considerable age, but one, inhabitants have a superstitious notion concerning, as from the teeth, considerably older than the other. well as veneration for it. They said it could not be This description of tumuli were the family burying penetrated; that lives had been lost in attempting it: grounds, the depositories of such as had died at for it would always cave in upon them. The locality home, and the few immediate relatives had been unof these tumuli, so exactly resembling those of the able to raise a mound of but a few feet (few of them eastern continent, is not confined to the West, for at this day exceed three or four feet). Mr. Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, has described several on the eastern declivity of the Alleghany ridge, and some are spoken of even as far east as Massachusetts. They are sometimes of stone, but chiefly of earth, according to the contiguity of materials. A little heap of mould'ring earth Denotes the tomb of him whose worth The second class of tumuli to be mentioned are the sepulchres of persons of note, public characters. These are always regular in form, and in size proportioned either to the number of persons who felt interested in paying the last honors to their beloved chief, or the degree of estimation in which he was held. A few of them are a little conical, others of less height than hemispheres, but most of them are nearly hemispherical. Sometimes two or three of such are found contiguous, but they are most commonly solitary. These seldom, it is believed, con 86 It is not improbable that the aggregations of bones, above mentioned, were the bones of those who had died abroad, in their excursions of hunting and fishing, as they could not well bring with them the boThe occasions of the several dies on their return. A fourth description of mound is also solitary, but tain more than one skeleton each, and that a male. [ But the writer of this has twice seen two; in both always in the midst of, or very contiguous to, the instances one of the skeletons was smaller than the place of the ancient settlement. They may be called other: One of these he had some opportunity of the aggregate mound, exactly answering the descripexamining more particularly. The tumulus or mound tion of that mentioned by Mr. Jefferson. They was less than a hemisphere, of clay, but of such contain, in promiscuous aggregation, the bones of the dimension as that the bricks for a two story house of male and the female, the aged and the young, probaIt bly the warrior and the sage, all blended in the most four rooms were made of about one-third of it. contained the skeleton of a man and of a woman. promiscuous confusion, in repeated parcels, streaks From the external maleolus or ankle-bone, to the of earth being between them, and without order, extreme indentation made by the crown of his head which generally gives to the mound an irregular apThey are sometimes oblong, with the in the clay, measured five feet ten inches, so that he pearance. must have been a man of about six feet, and the appearance, from a distance, of an elliptical solid, but skull of the woman who lay on his left side appeared never very regular. It has been said above, that the patrician mound to have lain under his arm; she must have been tive Over the face of the man, and contains only one male skeleton, which is generally feet, or a little more. perhaps the woman too, had been laid a covering of true; as also, that a regular skeleton is seldom found pieces of isinglass, which had been fastened toge- in the aggregate mound, last described; but there are ther, as each piece had two or more holes in it. exceptions. Many of our modern Indian chiefs have, Both these species of mounds are found sometimes in conformity to their own previous injunctions, been of stone, where such materials are plenty. On the buried in the sides of large mounds; and, it is presuridges contiguous to Harrison, Hamilton county, mable, that the ancient savage was not less fanciful. Ohio, have been several of stone. The external ap- Accordingly, we find whole skeletons in the sides of pearance is that of a promiscuous heap of stones; various mounds, as if they desired to participate in but in the bottom is discovered a rude sarcophagus, the posthumous fame and honors of their ancestors. about the size internally of a common coffin, built of stone, laid very awkwardly, scarcely a joint broken or a corner bound. In this the corpse was laid and One of these, on removing covered with flat stones. the small rough stone on the surface, was found to be formed of large flat stones, leaning on their edges depositions of bones must have been observed as After solemn festivals; for no one of them could have been against the pile, like a shingled roof inverted. these had been removed for the purpose of building, the work of only a few persons; the bones were so We need then be at no loss to decide a small square enclosure or box, composed of six numerous, as often to indicate many skeletons deporough flat stones, was discovered, and within were sited at once. the bones of a human being, which had there been on their itinerant character. Like the present Indians, burned, as appeared from the marks of fire upon the they had their homes, but periodically wandered surface. All these patrician mounds, or by far the abroad in search of game. Scarcely any of these angreatest number of them, are placed in situations cient settlements were without one of these aggregate commanding pleasant and extensive views of the rich mounds; and, in fact, wherever we discover one of bottoms below. They, too, contain, besides the them, we behold a body of rich land contiguous. It arms, &c., sometimes, but not constantly, a mark of is not extravagant either to suppose that they believed authority, the conch, or the winkle shell, which, on in a future state, as some of the Asiatics do; that the north-west coast, is fixed on a reed, and used to their parents, after death, watch over their actions; this day as the clarion of war, by the chieftain, or for all, or nearly all the mounds here described, exsome one of his appointment. Some bits of copper, cept the military, or mound of victory, are situated seldom exceeding a square inch, with holes rudely on commanding eminences, from which are seen the Another, and the last to be mentioned, is also a punched through them, and beads of the same mate- dwellings and the corn-fields of the living. rial, of as rude manufacture, are often found in the solitary mound, in which neither bones, implements, patrician mound, and probably in none other. A third description of mounds are to be found, al-nor ornaments are found. These are generally very ways solitary, and more or less remote from the cul- large, and, on removing a part of the earth of one of tivable districts. These often contain several skele- them, in the centre of the base was observed ashes tons, laid parallel on a heap of earth, and then cover- and cinders. These may specially be denominated Some of these are of consi- the historical mound. Here had been kindled the ed in the usual manner. derable size, and seldom, if ever, contain any of the council-fire, the treaty concluded, and a mound valuables before enumerated. Several of the skeletons raised over the place after patriarchal form; and in one of them appeared to have been mutilated by having no stones to set up, they raised a mound of violence. The skulls of some; the ribs, the spines, earth, saying, "Let this be for a remembrance heand the bones of the limbs of others, were fractured, tween you and us," &c. (See Gen. 31.) But the as would appear, before death. On these, too, were present race of Indians do not use this ancient mode the evidences of fire; and it is no stretch of imagina- of sepulture, and they cannot, therefore, be the same tion to suppose them the dead of the victors, slain on the field of battle, and there buried with the honors of war; and the conquest having been incomplete, they were burned to preserve their flesh from the teeth of their cannibal enemies, who, it was suspected, might return. people. But, though mankind are prone to preserve the customs and traditions of their ancestors, all his tory declares that all nations have changed their manners and customs with the circumstances under which *Notes on Virginia, pp. 143–4, rating facts. Alexander sacrificed on the tomb of α α B they lived. The ancient dwellings of those ancient people were excavations in the earth-the earth thrown out forming an embankment or walls, and the roof, most probably, of skins. The same mode of habitation still obtains among the Samoied Tartars, and the Indians high up the Missouri; which mode, in both cases, was indicated by lack of timber. But, in process of time, (after many generations had passed in this manner,) the timber covered most of the land; fuel became abundant, and even the bark of the trees was sufficient to shelter them, with good fires. But it is said the forms of the skulls differ exceedingly from the present race of Indians. Nothing can be more fallacious; for whatever difference, there is no uniformity. Of six skulls examined here, (at Harrison,) no two of them agreed in section; but a seventh did very well agree with one of them, taken from the same group, which may be easily accounted for, on the probability that they had, in life, been related. It is well known, too, that in Turkey, where pains are early taken to give the head a conical form, great difference in the form is observable. Nor is the case at all different among the Flat-head Indians of Columbia river. Our Indians possess great variety of form in the head, as well as we of European descent. But in two particulars they all nearly agreed; in remarkably broad chins and high cheek bones, which is no less characteristic of the Asiatic fig. A, are sometimes Tartar; so that none, except those predisposed to not much larger than embrace error, (and so are all our wonder-hunters,) the figure, and were, can discover among the skulls any evidence of the probably, used for killost nation, though many may have practised binding ling birds, or other boards upon the frontal bone of the infant head, as the small game; but the Columbia Indians do still. One peculiarity, how- warrior's arrow-head was two or three inches in ever, must be acknowledged. Many of the frontal length, fastened into a shaft which was cleft in the and occipital bones were of extraordinary thickness. end, and the stone fastened by a thong tied through the One occiput, in its thickest part, measured of an notches, a, a. Some were six inches or more in inch, and even a parietal bone, near the junction of length, and no doubt used for spears, javelins, and oththe lambdoidal and temporal sutures, The er uses. Mungo Park tells us that he saw the Negro most we can say, however, is that we found a large digging drills with his spear, while his women and portion of the skull-bones to be of extraordinary children were planting the seeds; and such may have thickness, but they were by no means uniform even been the custom here. Fig. B represents an instrument in this, and several female skulls were very thin, and of flint, or other very hard stone, with similar ragged exhibited much beauty of proportion-large and sui- edges as the arrow; sometimes flat, but often with four tably projecting foreheads, with large and arching edges, which probably was used as a perforator, or sort orbits. Some, who have made observations on the of gimlet. They are often delicately slender. Some mounds in Tennessee, Alabama, &c., have advanced long cones of hard stone, flattened at the larger end, the opinion that they have been constructed for pro- were no doubt perforators. An oblong stone, of from tection against the floods; but this is not consistent two to ten pounds or more in weight, having one with the indolence of savages. We might rather end worked to a blunt edge, and around the other a suppose them abandoning such a settlement, and smooth half-round groove, as if to be held by a withe taking refuge on higher grounds, instead of encoun- handle. Those of them, not too heavy, may be sup tering the labor of raising mounds. A hemisphere posed to have been used as battle-axes, and any of of 40 feet in diameter, contains 16,755 cubic feet, them may have been used as wedges, in cleaving which would require the labor of one man, at four wood; but, for hewing, they are totally unadapted. cubic yards per day, about six months. And four These are formed of almost every kind of rock, but yards is as much as he would do, at digging and car- the arrow-head and the perforator are generally of rying, with the miserable tools they must then have flint or other hard stone, not found in the western had, and, when accomplished, could only afford room parts of Ohio. But Mr. Featherstonehangh discovered for a small cabin. Robinson, in his History of Mex-between the Arkansas and Red rivers, a place where ico, speaks of temples as being mounds of earth, they had been manufactured in vast quantities. Now with steps ascending. Hence some have conjectured let it be remembered that such articles, exactly of the that some, or all of these mounds were for religious shapes of all these, were found in the eastern states. purposes. Some ancient historians mention corrobo- We have noticed the pot before, but though they are alleged to be always of one form, they are sometimes 35 *The ancient mode of burial most probably was discontinued of different proportion; and a part of the brim of one on account of the inconvenience occasioned by the roots of trees, lately picked up, is ornamented thus ☺☺☺. Some are deeper than others, but they have all the same and the lack of tools. globular bottom and out-turned brim. Such pots and in largest diameter, of a translucent semi-transparent dishes, made according to direction given by white stone, believed to be chalcedony, evidently turned, women, were, not many years since, obtained from but not in a lathe; most probably by boring it in a women of the Cherokee and the Choctaw nations, hole in another stone. It is perforated longitudinally, and brought by families who moved from thence, to the bore about inch diameter, and resembles the Hamilton county, Ohio. old-fashioned pendants, (pendrals, so called,) worn by ladies, (not larger.) A circular stone, generally about inch thick, and two or three in diameter, concave on each side, with In a small, or one of the least elevated mounds, a hole in the centre half an inch or more in diameter, near Harrison, there was ploughed up a very small is also among those relics. Such an article, the above axe, of soft argillaceous stone, having as good a polIndians, as well as those of Arkansas and Red rivers, ish as that kind of stone would receive, 1 inch use in playing certain games, which, it is not impro- long, near wide, and, at the eye, half an inch bable, they derived a knowledge of from the ancients, thick, with an oblong imperfectly square perforation by continued tradition. A stone, nearly resembling for the eye, and shaped exactly like a stone-cutter's in shape the melt of a deer, or some other gramini- axe. From the same was also obtained a flat piece verous quadruped, five or six inches in length, plano- of hard blackish stone, oval at one end, a ridge on convex, (i. e.) flat on one side and rounding on the each side opposite each other, and running longitudiother, and oval at the ends, having one or two holes, nally. These are ground away on each side with a according to the length. This was an ornament, or curvilinear concave, terminating in a plane on each some badge of office; for they have several times edge or side of the plate. There is a longitudinal been found lying on the breast of the skeleton, as if perforation between these ridges, through the centre they had been hung about the neck of the deceased. of the stone, and it is probably the remains of a An oblong spheroidical bead 1inch long, and pipe. This drawing is tolerable, but not perfect. The angles b b should be well-defined; c should be a little curved inward. The bottom d, e, is flat, so that the bowl will stand upright on a table. It is polished, but not highly so. It is of a red, not scarlet, amorphous very fine stone, supposed to be serpentine, and, in fact, the same stone obtained by the Indians of the Mississippi, from the Pipe mountain, near the heads of the St. Peter river. The flat bottom seems peculiar to most of the calumets found. It should be remarked, that though this pipe would seem to have been turned, yet it is not, for the creases are not parallel. It may not be of great antiquity, for at least the last owner may have been a Catholic convert, there being a cross on the flat part of the bottom, between d and e. Pipes are of all manner of form. One worked a piece of slate, or other soft stone, into the shape of a frog, just ready to jump, or perhaps swimming, scooped a bowl in the back, and perforated from the hinder parts a place for the stem, and thus he had smoked. Another formed a bowl of a lump of indurated clay, |