A tumulus of the gigantic proportions of the Grave Creek Mound serves emphatically to impress the mind with the conviction that such structures, even when of smaller dimensions, were no accompaniments of common sepulture, but the special memorials of distinguished chiefs; or, it may be, at times, of venerated priests. Of the busy population that once thronged the valleys of the West we have no other memorials than those which commemorate the toil of many to give a deathless name to one now as nameless as themselves. The investigators of their works, after describing in detail the monumental mounds, remark: “The graves of the great mass of the ancient people who thronged our valleys, and the silent monuments of whose toil are seen on every hand, were not thus signalised. We scarcely know where to find them. Every day the plough uncovers crumbling remains, but they elicit no remark; are passed by, and forgotten. The wasting banks of our rivers occasionally display extensive cemeteries; but sufficient attention has never been bestowed upon them to enable us to speak with any degree of certainty of their date, or to distinguish whether they belonged to the Mound-Builders or a subsequent race. These cemeteries are often of such extent as to give a name to the locality in which they occur. Thus we hear, on the Wabash, of the ‘Big Bone Bank’ and the ‘Little Bone Bank,’ from which, it is represented, the river annually washes many human skeletons, accompanied by numerous and singular remains of art, among which are more particularly mentioned vases and other vessels of pottery, of remarkable and often fantastic form.”[87] I have been fortunate enough to obtain an interesting example of the latter class of pottery, from Big Bone Bank, figured on a subsequent page, which is specially valuable from the striking analogy it suggests to familiar forms of Peruvian pottery. The Ohio and Erie canal traverses the river-terrace of the Scioto Valley in the vicinity of Chillicothe, where the ancient works of the Mound-Builders are more abundant than in any other area of equal limits hitherto explored. In some cases the canal has been cut through them, and it can scarcely admit of doubt that many interesting traces of the arts and habits of the remarkable people who once filled the long-deserted scene, must have been disclosed to heedless eyes. Here and there, doubtless, a stray relic was picked up, wondered at, and forgotten; but no note was taken of the circumstances under which it was found, and no record made of the discovery. And so must it ever be. The pioneers of civilisation in the uncleared wilds of the West are too entirely preoccupied with the present, to spare a thought for long forgotten centuries. Happily, however, this state of things is passing away, and every year shows increasing evidence of intelligent zeal in the recovery and preservation of whatever is calculated to throw light on the prehistoric ages of America.