Ours are the only mounds making up a distinct mound-region on Canadian
soil. This comes to us as a part of the large inheritance which we who
have migrated to Manitoba receive. No longer cribbed, cabined, and
confined, we have in this our "greater Canada" a far wider range of
study than in the fringe along the Canadian lakes. Think of a thousand
miles of prairie! The enthusiastic Scotsman was wont to despise our
level Ontario, because it had no Grampians, but the mountains of
Scotland all piled together would reach but to the foot hills of our
Rockies. The Ontario geologist can only study the rocks in garden
plots, while the Nor'wester revels in the age of reptiles in his
hundreds of miles of Cretaceous rocks, with the largest coal and iron
area on the continent. As with our topography so with history. The
career of the Hudson's Bay Company, which is in fact the history of
Rupert's Land, began 120 years before the history of Ontario, and
there were forts of the two rival Fur Companies on the Saskatchewan
and throughout the country, before the first U. E. Loyalist felled a
forest tree in Upper Canada. We are especially fortunate in being the
possessors also of a field for archaeological study in the portion of
the area occupied by the mound builders--the lost race, whose fate has
a strange fascination for all who enquire into the condition of
Ancient America.
The Indian guide points out these mounds to the student of history
with a feeling of awe; he says he knows nothing of them; his fathers
have told him that the builders of the mounds were of a different race
from them--that the mounds are memorials of a vanished people--the
"Ke-te-anish-i-na-be," or "very ancient men." The oldest Hudson's Bay
officer, and the most intelligent of the native people, born in the
country, can only give some vague story of their connection with a
race who perished with small-pox, but who, or whence, or of what
degree of civilization they were, no clue is left.
It must be said moreover that a perusal of the works written about the
mounds, especially of the very large contributions to the subject
found in the Smithsonian Institution publications, leaves the mind of
the reader in a state of thorough confusion and uncertainty. Indeed,
the facts relating to the Mound Builders are as perplexing a problem
as the purpose of the Pyramids, or the story of King Arthur.
Is it any wonder that we hover about the dark mystery, and find in our
researches room for absorbing study, even though we cannot reach
absolute certainty? Could you have seen the excitement which prevailed
among the half-dozen settlers, I had employed in digging the mound on
Rainy River, in August last, when the perfect pottery cup figured
below was found, and the wild enthusiasm with which they prosecuted
their further work, you would have said it requires no previous
training, but simply a successful discovery or two to make any one a
zealous mound explorer.