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Show FLOODS AND THE MOUND BUILDERS The Mississippi foods have stimulated stimu-lated the imagination of the archeol-ogists, archeol-ogists, to the production of a new and interesting theory about the Indian In-dian mounds that thickly sprinkle the valley of the great river. According to this explanation, the mounds, tho they may have had in later times some religious significance to the natives, na-tives, were probably built originally as places of refuge from the frequent fre-quent inundations, which in prehistoric prehis-toric days spread far and wide over the land, unconfined by the works of man. There was undoubtedly a considerable Indian population along the Mississippi and in case of flood I these people had no housetops on ; which to take refuge, an insufficient j supply of canoes in which to seek j safety, and nobody to come with j steamboats and other craft to rescue ' them. They had to make their own 1 hills of help, which they did with ' commendable industry. It is not un-i un-i reasonable, say the men of science, : that such places, the resort of men and animals in time of peril, shoud have come to have a religious meaning mean-ing to those whose lives were preserved pre-served bv them. I We do not know how much support j there is for this interesting story. Some of the most famous Indian mounds, if we are not mistaken, are not in regions where floods are greatly to be dreaded. But many of them are; those at Cahokia, near St. Louis, occur to us as very possibly useful to aboriginal dwellers on the rich bottom lands when the waters were abroad. More than one of these ancient heaps of earth still fartther south did good service during the recent re-cent flood as temporary refuges for people who had been driven from their homes. We saw pictures of them taken from the air; the refugees hunddled under their tents or bough shelters, and their domestic animals grouped disconsolately about them. It is interesting to think of these mounds still occasionally serving the purpose for which they were heaped up centuries ago by a now vanished race and to picture in imagination the scenes that were presented in j those distant years. The river fow-! fow-! ed then through a savage wilderness far different from the filled country of today, and the Indians could have had no cattle with which to share their misery. But perhaps the wild animals with which the country anciently an-ciently abounded crept up timidly upon up-on the mound and ventured in the general calamity to trust to the charity chari-ty of their human enemy, now as miserable as they. For days, weeks, perhaps, even months these little is- lands of refuge among the waters may have supported their copper-colored copper-colored population. We hope the new explanation of their existance is a true one. It adds a pleasing warmth of human interest to these mysterious mysteri-ous monuments of the past. Youth's Companion:. |