As having, for the purposes of the present paper, a close connection
with the animal carvings, another class of remains left by the
Mound-Builders--the animal mounds--may next engage attention. As in the
case of the carvings, the resemblance of particular mounds to the
animals whose names they bear is a matter of considerable interest on
account of the theories to which they have given rise.
The conclusion reached with respect to the carvings that it is safe to
rely upon their identification only in the case of animals possessed of
striking and unique characters or presenting unusual forms and
proportions, applies with far greater force to the animal mounds.
Perhaps in none of the latter can specific resemblances be found
sufficient for their precise determination. So general are the
resemblances of one class that it has been an open question among
archæologists whether they were intended to represent the bodies and
arms of men, or the bodies and wings of birds. Other forms are
sufficiently defined to admit of the statement that they are doubtless
intended for animals, but without enabling so much as a reasonable guess
to be made as to the kind. Of others again it can be asserted that
whatever significance they may have had to the race that built them, to
the uninstructed eyes of modern investigators they are meaningless and
are as likely to have been intended for inanimate as animate objects.
There are many examples among the animal shapes that possess
peculiarities affording no hint of animals living or extinct, but which
are strongly suggestive of the play of mythologic fancy or of
conventional methods of representing totemic ideas. As in the case of
the animal carvings, the latter suggestion is perhaps the one that best
corresponds with their general character.