Many theories have been set up as to the origin, objects and purposes of the Western mounds. They seem to rise and fall in accordance with the ingenuity of the numerous writers on the subject. A curious and novel idea has been made public by a St. Louis Judge, relative to the mounds on the American bottom. He argues that the locality of St. Louis and its environs was once the bed of a great lake, supplied by the Missouri and Mississippi, with an outlet at Niagra Falls. In the course of centuries the barriers of the lakes at the falls were worn away, as the present falls (the outlet at Erie) will in time be. The great lake was thus drained, and the region became cultivatable. But it was a dangerous region. When the ice ran and the driftwood came down the narrow passage below would gorge, and the river would stand back on the former bed of the lake. To remedy this, a race of people far superior to the present Indians–probably the ancesters of the Aztecs–built the mounds as places of refuge for themselves and their flocks and herds, when the water rose. They were evidently built for practical purposes, and are clearly artificial formations. They were not intended for tumuli (burial places), as no skeleton or weapon has been found in any of them, except one skeleton, and that was wrapped in a Macinaw blanket. If we take into account the “wear down” of all these mounds for a thousand years, and count the numbers on both sides of the river, it is easy to see they were once capacious enough to furnish places of refuge for all the inhabitants of the valley and their flocks and herds and provisions. Whoever looked from the dome of the Court House (continues the Judge) and saw the ferryboats taking the inhabitants of the American bottom from the mound on that side of the river, at the last great overflow, will at once see the plain, practical purpose of these mounds.–Philadelphia Press.
It’s likely that the mounds in question are the Cahokia mounds, which apparently was a ceremonial city. (Now, of course, they’re midwestern rather than western.) The Judge is so far unfindable.
It was common into the 20th century to assume that the Mississippian culture was somehow superior and unrelated to the Native American cultures existing at the time of European migration into the Americas.
One interesting thing is the “Macinaw blanket” that would have originated at least 700 miles from Cahokia. Where is it now?