Dakota Village Sites Reminiscent of the Ohio Hopewell Mound Builders

   Speaking of the region west of the Mississippi, Biedman says: "We journeyed two days, and reached a village in the midst of a plain, surrounded by walls and a ditch filled by water, which had been made by Indians." This town is supposed to have been situated in the north-eastern part of Arkansas, and it is interesting to note that recent investigators find what are probably the remains of these walled towns, in the shape of enclosures with ditches and mounds, in North-eastern Arkansas and South-eastern Missouri. The tribes throughout the entire extent of the Mississippi Valley were accustomed to palisade their villages—at least, occasionally.
  It has been surmised that, if their history could be recovered, it would clear up a great many difficult questions. They were accustomed to fortify their village's with ditches, embankments, and Palisades. This gives us a cut of one of their villages. It is to be observed that it has a great likeness to some of the enclosures ascribed to the Mound Builders. This has been noted by many writers. 
   Says Brackenridge: "In my voyage up Missouri, I observed the ruins of several villages which had been abandoned twenty or thirty years, which in every respect resembled the vestiges on the Ohio and Mississippi." Lewis and Clark, in their travels, describe the sites of several of these abandoned villages, the only remains of which were the walls which had formerly enclosed the villages, then three or four feet high. The opinion has been advanced that the enclosures of the Mound Builders were formerly surmounted by palisades. Mr. Atwater asserts that the round fort which was joined to a square enclosure at Circleville showed distinct evidence of having supported a line of pickets or palisades.
    Should it be accepted that the enclosures of the Mound Builders represent village sites, and that they were probably further protected by palisades, it would seem, after what we have just observed of the customs of the Indians in fortifying their villages, to be a simple and natural explanation of these remains.