and on account of the numerous interments which have left the surface of the grand mound a bone pile.  This is shown by the small mound being on a site more recent than that of the large mound.  Suppose a hundred years to have sufficed to raise the small mound to its height when the devastating ruin of the Sioux slaughtered the last mound builder and checked the mound.  From our previous position this would represent a point some 500 years ago.  But during this 500 years according to our hypothesis all of the point of land below the small mound, that is to say, about 300 yards in length, has been formed.  The question then is, how long at the same rate must it have taken the 200 yards between the two mounds to form.  This brings us then to a point say 300 years before the time of beginning of the small mound.  We thus arrive at about 800 years ago as the time when the grand mound was begun.  It will thus be seen that we have reached back to the eleventh century, the time previously deduced from historic date for the arrival of the Toltecans on the Rainy River.

CONCLUSION.

Our investigation has now come to an end.  I have led you to examine the few fragments of a civilization which it would be absurd to declare to have been of the very highest type, but yet of a character much above that of the wandering tribes, which, with their well-known thirst for blood, destroyed the very arts and useful habits which might have bettered their condition.  The whirlwind of barbarian fury is ever one which fills peaceful nations with terror.  We may remember how near in the “Agony of Canada,” the French power was to being swept out of existence by the fierce fury of the Iroquois—­up to that time always victorious.  We may remember how civilization in Minnesota was thrown back by the Sioux massacre of 1861.  It is only now by persistent and unwearied efforts that we can hope to conquer the Indians by the arts of peace, and by inducing him to take the hoe in place of the tomahawk, to meet nature’s obstacles.  Who can fail to heave a sigh for our northern mound builders, and to lament the destruction of so vast and civilized a race as the peaceful Toltecans of Mexico, of the Mississippi, and of the Ohio, to which our Takawgamis belonged?  After all, their life must in the main, ever remain a mystery.

     THE LOST RACE

     “One of our visits to the mound was at night.”

     Oh, silent mound! thy secret tell! 
     God’s acre gazing toward the sky,
     ’Midst sombre shade ’neath angel’s eye
     Thou sleepest till the domesday knell.

     Sweet leaflets, on the towering elms. 
     Oh whisper from your crested height! 
     Or have lost forests borne from sight
     The secret to their buried realms?

     Stay, babbling river, hurrying past,
     Cans’t thou, who saw’st the toilers build,
     Not picture on thy bosom stilled,
     Life-speaking shadows long since cast?