Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1880-81, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1883, pages 117-166

"Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley" by Henry W. (Henry Wetherbee) Henshaw, is a scholarly report that investigates the artistic talent shown in ancient sculptures from the Mississippi Valley mounds, and especially how they portrayed animals. The document looks at how these mound sculptures might challenge what people thought about the skills of the Mound-Builders and whether the animals in the sculptures have been correctly identified. The report begins by talking about how skillful these Mound-Builder sculptures appear and how important it is to carefully look at them because some animals might be identified incorrectly. Henshaw calls into question whether these sculptures are actually better than those made by other North American Indians, highlighting that that we need to be very careful judging these artworks when comparing them to real animals. The opening paragraphs setup a close study of the sculptures to try to understand what they tell us about the Mound-Builders' culture and knowledge