Identifier: popularhistoryof00brya (find matches)
Title: A popular history of the United States : from the first discovery of the western hemisphere by the Northmen, to the end of the first century of the union of the states ; preceded by a sketch of the prehistoric period and the age of the mound builders
Year: 1876 (1870s)
Authors: Bryant, William Cullen, 1794-1878 Gay, Sydney Howard, 1814-1888
Subjects:
Publisher: New York : Scribner, Armstrong, and Company
Contributing Library: Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection
Digitizing Sponsor: The Institute of Museum and Library Services through an Indiana State Library LSTA Grant

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loped a degree of civil, andperhaps religious culture, altogether above anything that the red manhas ever been known to possess, or that belongs to any merely barbar-ous race. Their works of circumvallation, other than those meantmerely for defence, were singular in design and, in some respects, re-markable in construction. They are usually upon the table-lands, andoften in groups extending for several miles, but connected with eachother directly, or showing a relation by propinquity, — the groupsmade up of squares, circles, and other mathematical figures, rangingfrom two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet in diameter to a milein circuit. Near these enclosures, or within them, are mounds, some large, somesmall, some pyramids, others parallelograms, generally truncated, some-times terraced, or their summits approached by inclined planes. Ave-nues of imposing width, between embankments several feet in height,often connect these enclosed areas, extending, in one instance, in obvi-
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o< HW 2 Pi< QO DIMENSIONS OF MOUNDS. 25 ous connection from both banks of the Ohio River for a total lengthof sixteen miles. Other graded roads lead from terrace to ^ - , ., Mathemati- terrace, apparently to secure access to the streams; while cai correct- I16SS others still, so far as can now be discerned, lead from nothingto nowhere, the significance of the avenue being apparently in itsexistence, and not in its direction. The squares in these works areperfect squares; the circles, perfect circles; and as some of these area mile in circuit, there must have been brought to their constructionmuch engineering skill and knowledge, and the use of instruments.They bear, moreover, such relations to each other as to show unmis-takably some fixed and general design; and similarity of proportionsin places sixty or seventy miles apart seem to indicate the applicationof some common geometrical rule to their construction. Thus in Ohiois often found a combined work of a square with two circ

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