One of the most extensive groups of these defensive village sites is that known as the Newark group, in Ohio.[309] Here are circles, squares, and straight-line mounds, all connected, covering an area of two or three square miles. There are two large circles in this group which approximate true circles, and have been the basis of much unnecessary speculation as to how “Indians” could have “done it,” with the conclusion that the “mysterious race” did it. When it is remembered how easy it is to construct a fairly accurate circle in a great many ways, it is surprising that anyone should have thought “Indians” could not do it, when they did _and do_ so many things that require more skill. One clear-headed and accurate writer reminds the reader that people who could manufacture cloth could certainly make a rope with which to lay out a plan. Almost all Amerinds could make rope, the Pai Ute, Uingkarets, and Shevwits Utes, who cannot make cloth at all, making excellent rope and cord. But it was not necessary to make a rope of fibre. Amerinds have always been skilful at tanning deerskins, and buckskin strings braided make one of the best kind of ropes; indeed, it does not even require to be tanned, as it can be worked in the rawhide state. We should have to descend low in the scale of humanity, indeed, to find a tribe that could not make a cord long enough to lay out any circle yet discovered on this continent. There is nothing difficult about it. The largest circle at Newark has a diameter of about a thousand feet. This would require a rope only five hundred feet long, which would be nothing for any tribe on the continent to make. [Illustration: MÁHTOTÓHPA (THE FOUR BEARS), A MANDAN CHIEF George Catlin, 1832 ]