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An ancient and unknown people left remains of settled life, and of a certain degree of civilization, in the valleys of the Mississippi and its tributaries. We have no authentic name for them either as a nation or a race; therefore they are called “Mound-Builders,” this name having been suggested by an important class of their works.
Louis, Missouri, and Frankfort, Kentucky, were favorite seats of the Mound-Builders. This leads one of the most intelligent investigators to remark that “the centres of population are now where they were when the mysterious race of Mound-Builders existed.” There is, however, this difference: the remains indicate that their most populous and advanced communities were at the South.
With their undoubted advancement beyond the Iroquois and Minnitarees, the Mound-Builders may have constructed better houses upon these platform elevations than the plans indicate. No remains of adobes have been found in connection with these embankments, and nothing to indicate that walls of such brick had ever been raised upon them.
There is, therefore, in this peculiar line of art and custom an unbroken chain connecting the mound-builders of Ohio with the Indians of historic times, and in the same facts is evidence, which strengthens the argument, disconnecting the makers from the Mexican and Central American artisans.
The buzzard is to-day common over almost the entire United States, and is especially common throughout most of the Mississippi Valley. As to the paroquet, there seems to be no evidence in the way of carvings to show that it was known to the Mound-Builders, although that such was the case is rendered highly probable from the fact that it lived at their very doors.
Following the lead of the authors of the "Ancient Monuments," also, with respect to theories of origin, these carvings of supposed foreign animals are offered as affording incontestible evidence that the Mound-Builders must have migrated from or have had intercourse, direct or indirect, with the regions known to harbor these animals.
It shows not only the feasibility of occupying these embankments with long houses, but also that each pueblo was designed by the Mound-Builders to be a fortress, able to resist assault with the appliances of Indian warfare. From the defensive character of the great houses of the Village Indian in general, this feature might have been expected to appear in the houses of the Mound-Builders.
Careful study of what is shown in the many reports on these ancient remains seems plainly to authorize the conclusion that the Mound-Builders entered the country at the South, and began their settlements near the Gulf. Here they must have been very numerous, while their works at every point on the limit of their distribution, north, east, and west, indicate a much less numerous border population.
As a further illustration of the inaccurate zoological knowledge to which may be ascribed no small share of the theories advanced respecting the origin of the Mound-Builders, the following illustration may be taken from Wilson, this author, however, being but one of the many who are equally in fault. After exposing the blunder of Mr.
These houses differed among themselves in their plan and structure as well as size; but a common principle ran through them which was revealed by their adaptation to communistic uses. They reflect their condition and their plan of life with such singular distinctness as to afford practical hints concerning the houses of the Mound-Builders.
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