The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-01-06
MOUNDS AND AnRow-HEAps.

We find an absurd article going the rounds. of which this Is the beginning paragraph:
 That the Indian mounds throughout the Western part of the Central States were not made by Indians. as believed by many historians and archaeologists, but by the action of the wind. and that no Indian of the past 300 years ever made a hint-head arrow, is the state ment of Dr. Charles A. Eastman. full blooded Sioux Indian who was educat, ed in thei East and who Is now engaged by the government in South Dakota In giving more euphonious and respect able names to the Indians than the wicked ones many Of them have been claiming for wears.
 We call 1t absurd" because the in- timation that the numerous mounds of all sizes which abound in the South and West were formed by winds is not even good nonsense. These mounds are not merely numerous: they are practically innumerable. and of all sizes Many of them are regular squares, paralielograms or circles. and some of them are thirty or forty feet high. There are said to be. or to have been. more than ten thousand of these mounds in Ohio alone. while in many other States they are to be found in great numbers. whether they were erected for purposes of worship or de- fence cannot certainly be known. but 1t is probable that both had something to do with their erection.
 If Dr. Eastman thinks they were formed by the action of the wind. he should tell us why 1t is that none have been formed within the memory of man. The Indians found here when the first Europeans invaded the country were as ignorant of the object of these mounds as the whites have been, but attributed them to . race or people who occupied the country at some re- mote period. and of whom the present Indians have no knowledge. The gem eral and somewhat unsatisfactory title of "Mound-builders' has been applied to the architects of these singular for nations, and that is about as definite as any information we have on the sub- ject. They were not built by the wind. at all events.
 But Dr. Eastman, not satisfied with upsetting the mound theory. as he evil dently thinks he has done. attempts to show that there were no flint arrow heads among the Indians. At least he goes so far as to say that he had never "seen or heard of an Indian who ever knew one of his kind making an arrow head from flint rock" and adds that the Sioux have no traditions up- on the subject of flint arrow-heads."
 That may well be. Dr. Eastman is not quite 50 years of age, and the man ufacture of flint arrow heads went out of use when the Indians were able to get metal ones from the whites. He has doubtless never seen an Indian making these implements, and it may be that he has not conversed with any Indian who ever saw the operation performed. He might with equal truthfulness say that he never saw Indians making stone pipes. but they did make them. and some of them keep it up now, just as we are assured that there are still to be found in some parts of the extreme West, Indians who make arrow-heads of flint Tn short. Dr. Eastman cannot establish his the- ory of the mounds, nor can he show that the aborigines did not make their own arrow-heads from various kinds of stone. Longfellow's allusion to the fancient arrow-maker," in the Song of Hiawatha," was founded on facts we'll known to the earliest Europeans.