THE QUARTERLY
of the
Oregon Historical Society
VOLUME XXIII NUMBER 2 JUNE, 1922
Copyright, 1921, by the Oregon Historical Society
The Quarterly disavows responsibility for the positions taken by contributors
to its pages.
THE ORIGIN OF THE PREHISTORIC MOUNDS OF OREGON
By GEORGE WILLIAM WRIGHT, LL.B
It is appropriate to show the probable relationship of the mound builders of Oregon to the primitively ancient people of northeastern Asia and Japan, who existed there prior to the Bronze and Iron Age. In other words, the things exhumed from the Willamette and Calipooia mounds are clearly products of the Neolithic Age; and the skulls and relics therein found indicate a relationship to a people anterior to the modern Mongolian. From Finland to Japan there stretches an almost continuous belt of prehistoric mounds that apparently have no connection with any of the races now occupying that region.
Burial mounds fairly line the way from Tashkend to Semipalatinsk along the fertile irrigated belt which borders Alatau range, and are conspicuous in Mongolia outside of the great Chinese wall not far from Kalgan. Quite similar to those in Mongolia are those south of Lake Balkash, in Turkestan, and similar mounds are to be found around Kiato, the ancient capital of Japan. In Siberia these mounds are called by the present inhabitants "chudski kurgani" or "chudish graves"; the term "chude" indicating a vanished and unknown race. A probable connection of these mounds with the men of the
