Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1898-01-28

mound builders they find that the In
diana mounds are most remarkable or
all in the nation. Recent discoveries
have added a great deal of interest to
the Indiana mounds and they have
again demanded the attention of the
Smithsonian institution, which was
one of the prime movers some years
ago in the attempt to have the grounds
converted into national park.
A camera cannot do the Indiana
mounds justice. They are not great
heaps of earth which show we'll in a
photograph, as is the case with those
in Ohio and along the Mississippi,
and are not even as attractive as those
in Illinois and the northwest, which
follow the contour of snakes and wild
beasts, but they do possess outlines
we'll defined and precise Scientists are
convinced that their builders possessed
many of the talents of the ancients of
Egypt and Asia. Like the other
mounds, they are covered with forests
which show that ages have passed
since the builders occupied them.
The precision of the modern survey
or and the methods of the nineteenth
century builder have been combined In
the Indiana mounds, and the result is
a work of art rather than a crude heap.
If it was known that the builders had
surveyed Saturn through telescope
nd hoh a1l a, q
inner globe, it might be claimed that
they had used the planet and its girdle
as their pattern for the construction
OF earthworks. The five great mounds
lie just east of this city. The outer
circle of the greatest of the five is but
ten feet in height, but broad enough to
allow teams to pass over its crest. 1t
is $50 feet in diameter, and measured
from any point it is identically the
same distance from the center mound.
The precision of these outer ridges is
so nice they at once attract attention.
With graceful curve the ridge slopes
On an angle Of about 120 degrees to
great ditch fifteen feet wide and
about fifteen feet deep. Like the
ridge, it is perfect circle. From the
ditch rises the inner, the great mound.
The rise is rounded and evened off as
prettily as though it had just been
completed. In the very center of this
mound, which is fully 100 feet across,
is a prominence, and this is five feet
above the outer circle ridge, and TWEEN
ty feet higher than the inner ditch.
From this a path wide enough for
teams to pass runs to the outer ridge,
where there is an opening. 1t bridges
the ditch. All mounds, large and
small, are built on identically this pat
tern, all of the openings being to the
north and on direct line from the
center mound to the north star. These
openings have been much studied, but
significance of their direction has not
been determined The recent discov-
cries, given later, all tend to the be-
lief that all of these mounds are buried
deep under the present surface and
were built on the strata of shale prob
ably before the alluvial deposits were
made.
The great mounds of the Indian
group all belong to the Bronnenberg
family, which is among the wealthiest
and best known in this county. The
Bronnenbergs, while enterprising
farmers, have little idea of the assist
ance they might give to science by al
lowing excavations in the mounds.
They have persistenly refused to allow
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