The archaeologist W.A. Kenyon felt that serpent mounds in Canada were "strangely out of place." Here is what he wrote in Mounds of Sacred Earth: Burial Mounds of Ontario (1986):

If we stand on the north shore of Rice Lake, for example, and look at the ancient serpent resting quietly in its grove of oaks, our minds drift spontaneously to the south; for the Serpent Mound is an alien form - the only one of its kind in Canada- and its nearest relative, almost a quarter of a mile long, sits on a high bluff overlooking a small stream in Adams County, Ohio. Originally, we feel, these serpents must have been conceived in the jungles of Central American or Mexico. As they moved north, their ranks gradually thinned, for the harsh climate of the higher northern latitudes is not suitable for tropical serpents. And so the last surviving member of that strange breed came to rest in Ontario, on the flank of the Precambrian Shield.

The serpentine mounds are found in Serpent Mounds Provincial Park located on Rice Lake southeast of Peterborough. At one time the mounds were believed by the local inhabitants, both Indian and European, to be earthwork that had been raised as a defence against the marauding Iroquois from New York State.

In 1896 archaeologists established that the mounds or tumuli served as a burial site. Yet the skeletal remains that have been found are so few in number as to suggest that they were erected to serve additional purposes. The materials have been dated to the first three centuries of the Christian era. The mounds were constructed not by a mysterious non-Indian race of migrant Mound-Builders, as once believed, but by the Adena and Hopewell peoples of the north, ancestors of the present-day Indians.

The principal Serpent Mound is a sinuous structure with head and tail. From the air it resembles an immense spermatozoa more than it does some sort of sea serpent. It measures 194 feet in length and an average 25 feet in width. It is surrounded by eight other mounds, low oval or circular structures with major diameters. These other mounds were vividly described by the archaeologist David Boyle as "eggs".