The Wisconsin Archaeological
Society. 337
PROFESSOR H. B. LATHROP'S ADDRESS.
The mound of earth at our feet is the
work of hands long quiet,
a memorial the meaning of which by the
time our race came to this
region had been forgotten by the very
aborigines themselves whose
ancestors, it is believed, here built
it. On some summer's day, how
many ages ago we know not, there labored
here a band of dark-skinned
men and women, bearing with them in
sacks and baskets the earth,
toilsomely scooped up with blade-bones,
shells, and bits of wood, of
which this figure is composed. It is not
difficult to imagine the scene
about them as it must have appeared on
that day. The soft homelike
contours of the hills enclosing the lake
below us cannot have greatly
changed; some then as now were darkly
hooded with a close growth of
trees, but on most of them the oaks
stood wide apart in the midst of
an undergrowth of brambles and other
rough bushes, or cast their
shadows in park-like groves on grassy
slopes. The brush was thick, no
doubt, and sheltered bears and deer. The
flocks of water birds on the
lakes in spring and autumn were vast and
noisy. There were no neatly
painted houses ranged in order along
straight white streets, and hollow
trails led from one group to another of
skin tepees near the lake shores,
with great solitudes between them.
In the level meadow below us, and a few
hundred yards to the
southeast, on what was then the edge of
the rushy lake, was one group
of such tents, the village of the
builders of this mound. The oaks still
standing in the park sheltered the
village in its later days. The ground
beneath is full of the signs of the life
of the inhabitants: flint imple-
ments and flakes and potsherds, the
homely and pitiful wealth of the
villagers. Between the two oaks at the
end of the little grove on the
west may yet be found the remnants of
ancient hearthstones, cracked by
fire. The lake near by provided the
inhabitants with the fish and turtles
which formed so large a part of their
food and were so important in
their agriculture. Their corn-field and
their burial ground have not
been discovered, but must have been not
distant. These people must
have led a tolerably settled life; the
region about them was rich in
all the elements of savage prosperity,
and vigorous enemies pressed at
no great distance upon their borders.
Why should they roam far from
so fair a home? On this earth, then grew
the holy sentiments possible
only where mankind have settled
habitations. Here were homes and
love, affection for the lake, the trees,
the hills, for the graves of
ancestors, devotion to the commonweal -
sacred feelings, however crudely
or dimly manifested, however mingled
with savage folly and savage
cruelty.
Dr. Samuel Johnson says, in words which
as Matthew Arnold de-
clares, should be written in letters of
gold over every schoolhouse
Vol. XIX. -22.