THE RED MEN OF IOWA.

It may be of interest to give some facts in regard to a relic which was a matter of much curiosity among the early settlers of Jefferson county, though doubtless it may have been comparatively modern. Some four miles west of the city of Fairfield, Cedar Creek, a tributary of Skunk River, meanders in a zigzag channel through a woody country, interspersed with small areas of prairie. At a certain point on the south side of the stream the land is low and level, while on the north side the country is elevated and broken. The bluff on that side rises from the bed of the stream to a height of thirty feet or more, and at the time of the first settlement in that part of the State by the whites, presented an almost perpendicular face of solid sandstone. When this bluff was first seen by the white settlers, they discovered, nearly thirty feet above the bed of the creek, at a point most difficult of access, an iron cross firmly bolted to the solid sand-rock. The shaft of the cross was about three feet in length, and the horizontal bar about eighteen inches. The rock on which this relic was fastened, many years ago was undermined by quarrymen, and it finally fell from its elevated position, after which the cross was disconnected from the rock and carried away by the curious. One bar of it at a recent date was still in the possession of the late Judge Charles Negus, of Fairfield, who some years ago contributed to the "Annals of Iowa" a full account of the relic. Near the place where it was found there is a series of artificial mounds, varying in diameter from twenty-five to fifty feet, and from three to five feet high, and all covered with large trees

Having now glanced at a few of the remains of an ancient people who occupied the soil of Iowa, many queries arise is the mind. By whom were they constructed, and for what purpose? As to this there are many theories and much speculation. It is generally conceded, however, that they could not have been the work of the Indian races. The known character and habits of the Indian favor this conclusion. They were doubtless the work of a people who preceded the Indian--the same race of people who, in a still later age, reared the stupendous structures whose remains exist in Mexico and throughout the forests of Central America. The Indians doubtless often used the mounds reared by their predecessors as burial-places for their dead, when, according to their custom, they deposited with them many of the relics which we find. It has been observed that these remains are always situated on the second and higher terraces of the valleys, and frequently in the most elevated and commanding positions, but never on the lowest level, or "first bottom." This is one of the facts from which their great antiquity has been inferred. It is believed that since their construction the long period has elapsed necessary by the slow processes of nature for the formation of the lower levels of land along our streams. How far back in the dim ages of the past it was when those hordes of Asiatic invaders came down from the northwest, and perhaps after a long and desperate conflict finally subdued the builders of these monuments,