random, but are more or less in harmony with their surroundings.
Remember, too, their great number and their large size--a man 214 feet
long, a beast 160 feet long, with a tail measuring 320 feet, a hawk
240 feet in expanse of wing.

They are _unique_. To be sure, there are in Ohio three effigies, in
Georgia two, and in Dakota some bowlder mosaics in animal form. None
of these, however, are like the Wisconsin type. The alligator and
serpent of Ohio are different in location and structure from the
Wisconsin mounds, and are of designs peculiar. The bird mound in the
Newark circle is more like a Wisconsin effigy, but is associated with
a type of works not found in the effigy region. The birds of Georgia
are different in conception, in material, and in build. The mosaics of
Dakota are simply outlines of loose bowlders.

It seems to us that the effigy builders of Wisconsin were a peculiar
tribe, unlike their mound-building neighbors in Ohio or the South;
that they were a people with a passion for representing animal
figures. This passion worked itself out in these earth structures.
That a single tribe should be thus isolated in so remarkable a custom
is no more strange than that the Haida should carve slate or the
Bushman draw his pictures on his cavern walls.

Who were the effigy builders? This is a question often asked and
variously answered. Some writers would refer them to the Winnebagoes,
or, if not to them directly, to some Dakota stock from which the
Winnebagoes have descended.

Formerly I was a frequent visitor to the Sac and Fox Reservation in
Iowa. About 400 of the tribe are left. To an unusual degree they