Few mounds or earthworks are found east of the Alleghany Mountains, north of Tennessee and North Carolina, but to my mind this is not positive proof that the people who built earthworks in other places did not live there. The Amerind changes his methods so completely when circumstances demand, that it would not be safe to say that those who built mounds west of the Alleghany range did not live east of it. If the Mokis should have migrated to Ohio in priscan days, they certainly would not have built stone houses there. They would have erected mounds and wooden houses, for the reason that the stone would have been difficult to secure. Many tribes have readily changed from one method to another in building, as pointed out in a previous chapter. With the Amerind, it depends so much on circumstances what he will do in a given locality. For example, the traditions of the Mokis require their kiva to be under ground. This is easy in their cliff-land, but how would it be in Louisiana? Even in Zuñi surface kivas are found acceptable. [Illustration: AN ONYX JAR FROM MEXICO IN PROCESS OF MANUFACTURE The excavating was being done by a hollow drill, probably of reed, and sand Photographed and described by M. H. Saville for the American Museum _Bulletin_, vol. xiii., article xi., July 9, 1900 ] In Mexico there are numerous large mounds which, as noted before, sustained buildings, now commonly called “temples.” “At Teotihuacan” says Charnay, “the pyramid of the Sun is six hundred and eighty feet at the base by one hundred and eighty feet high.... Like all great pyramids they [the Sun and Moon pyramids] were divided into four storeys, three of which are still visible, but the intermediate gradations are almost effaced. A temple stood on the summit of the large mound, having a colossal statue of the Sun, made of one single block of stone.... The interior of the pyramid is composed of clay and volcanic pebbles, incrusted on the surface with the light porous stone, tetzontli. Over this was a thick coating of white stucco such as was used for dwellings. Where the pyramid is much defaced, its incline is from 31 to 36 degrees, and where the coatings of cement still adhere 47 degrees.”[310] One of the largest mounds in Mexico and one of the largest in North America is the Great Mound of Cholula. It is about one thousand feet square at the base, of which the approximate area is over twenty acres. It now has much the appearance of a natural hill, surmounted by a church of modern construction. There are “three distinct projections, surrounding and supporting a conical hill, and separated from each other by wide depressions. The entire mass consists of adobe bricks laid in adobe clay, undisturbed except where erosion, earthquakes, or the hand of man have mutilated it. The bricks break joints and are of various sizes.”[311] The altitude is about two hundred feet. Limestone slabs were used for steps. Bandelier does not