OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 29
less remote from the enclosures, which are not stratified, which contain human remains, and which were the burial- places and monuments of the dead.
8d. Those which contain neither altars nor human remains, and which were places of observation, or the sites of structures.
These classes are broadly marked in the aggregate ; but, in some instances, they seem to run into each other. Mounds of this mixed character, as well as those which, under our present condition of knowledge respecting them, do not seem to indicate any clear purpose, have been de- nominated anomalous. Of one hundred mounds excavated, sixty were altar or sacrificial mounds, twenty sepulchral, and twenty either places of observation or anomalous in their character. Such, however, is not the proportion in which they occur. From the fact that the mounds of sacrifice are most interesting and most productive in relics, the largest number excavated has been of that class. In the Scioto valley the mounds are distributed between the three classes specified, in very nearly equal proportions; the mounds of observation and the anomalous mounds consti- tuting together about one third of the whole number.
Mounds of Sacrifice-—-The general characteristics of this class of mounds are:
Ist. That they occur only within, or in the immediate vicinity of enclosures or sacred places.*
2d. That they are stratified. ‘
3d. That they contain symmetrical altars of burned clay or stone, on which are deposited various remains, which, in ail cases, have been more or less subjected to the action of fire.
Of the whole number of mounds of this class which
- Jt is not assumed to say that all the mounds occurring within enclosures
are altar or sacrificial mounds. On the contrary, some are found which, to say the least, are anomalous, while others were clearly the sites of structures.
