The New York Times on Mystery Mounds & Large Skeletons

What if I told you that the European colonists who made their way to the New World not only found a thriving culture previously settled by Native Americans, but also began to discover the remains of another culture that seemed to predated the Native Americans by thousands of years? As their wagon-trains pushed westward, why did these settlers often find giant earthen mounds engineered with an ancient knowledge and mathematics that had withstood the ages of time? And to their amazement, when these colonists would often dig inside of these mounds, why would they find the remains of skeletons measuring anywhere from seven to ten feet in length, often buried with copper ornaments and weapons? And why did reputable newspapers like the New York Times publish these strange accounts by the thousands all the way up until the early 1900s?