The reader anticipates the object for which these works were undertaken—the purposes of war and the purposes of religion. This is the most general way of stating it; those for the latter purposes falling in the divisions of sepulchral and sacrificial.
Besides the usual human remains which are found in the sepulchral mounds, works in stone, earthenware, and metal are frequent; relics which, taken along with the vast and numerous works which contain them, give us the elements of the ante-historical civilization of the northern section of the North American Indians.
The prevalence of works of a certain type varies with the area. The animal bas-reliefs are chiefly characteristic of Wisconsin, the truncated pyramids of the southern States, the simple mound and enclosure of Ohio, and the midland parts.
It should now be added, that where a square is attempted, it is truly rectangular, and that the circles are generally perfect; also that, in several cases, either the sides or the entrances accurately coincide with the east, west, north, and south points of the compass.
Other customs, such as the Indian council of war, the Indian calumet of peace, the stoic fortitude of the Indian warrior, the patient bearing of the Indian squaw, their scalpings during war, their probationary tortures during peace, preeminently interesting objects of description, have a subordinate value in ethnology. Value, however, they have. The list of them is a long one, and out of it may be selected numerous characteristics of a twofold import.
1. American, or general characteristics, viz.: those which (without being universal) are general in the new world, whilst (without being absolutely non-existent) they are rare in the old.
2. Sectional characteristics, or those which distinguish one American tribe from another.
Of the first series, there are two divisions, the positive and the negative. In respect to the positively characteristic practices of America, the use of the scalping-knife is, perhaps, the most typical. Horrible modes of mutilation are common in Asia and Africa (in Africa most especially); but the exact method in question I have not found except in America. Next to this, the habit of artificially flattening the head deserves notice. It is not, however, wholly unknown in the old world; since in Arakan we find traces of it.
The negative characteristics are, perhaps, more important than the positive ones—preeminent amongst these being the utter absence (with the exception of a partial approach to it in the care bestowed by the Peruvians upon the llama and vicugna) of the true pastoral state throughout the whole length and breadth of America. Agriculture there is, and hunting there is,—the former developing an approach to an industrial development, and the latter determining a semi-nomadic form of life—but the absence of a true pastoral state wherein horses are used for riding, oxen for draught, and cows, ewes, or mares, for milking, is a remarkable negative characteristic which distinguishes the aboriginal American from the Arctic Sea to Cape Horn.