[205] I read in the _Times_, March 6, 1871, that "The American papers state that workmen in Iowa, excavating for the projected Dubuque and Minnesota railroad, in the limestone at the foot of a bluff, discovered recently _some caves and rock chambers_, and, on raising a foot slab, a vault filled with human skeletons of unusual size, the largest being seven feet eight inches high. A figured sun on the walls is taken as indicating that the skeletons belonged to a people who worshipped that luminary [compare _supra_, p. 152] _and the representation of a man with a dove stepping out of a boat_, as an allusion to a tradition of the Deluge. The fingers of the largest skeleton clasped a pearl ornament, and traces of cloth were found crumbled at the feet of the remains. Many copper implements were found, and it is thought that the Lake Superior mines may have been worked at an early period. The remains were to be removed to the Iowa Institute of Arts and Sciences at Dubuque." Yet, strange to say, this is _no_ proof to Mr Catlin of the universal Deluge recorded in Scripture. "If," he says, "it were shown that inspired history of the Deluge and of the Creation restricted those events to one continent alone, then it might be that the American races came from the Eastern continent, bringing these traditions with them, for until that is proved, the American traditions of the Deluge are no evidence whatever of an eastern origin. If it were so, and the aborigines of America brought their traditions of the Deluge from the East, why did they not bring inspired history of the Creation?"[206]--P. 3. (_Vide_ pp. 134, 135.) [206] Compare account of Mandan tradition of the Creation, from "Hist. des Ceremonies Religieuses," _supra_, p. 191. The "O-kee-pa," Mr Catlin says, "was a strictly religious ceremony, ... with the solemnity of religious worship, with abstinence, with sacrifices, with prayer; whilst there were three other distinct and ostensible objects for which it was held,--1. As an annual celebration of the '_subsiding of the waters_' of the Deluge. 2. For the purpose of dancing what they call the Bull-dance, to the strict performance of which they attributed the coming of buffaloes. 3. For purpose of conducting the young men through _an ordeal of privation and bodily torture_, which, while it was supposed to harden their muscles and prepare them for extreme endurance, enabled their chiefs ... to decide upon their comparative bodily strength, endurance," &c.--P. 9.