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Updated: June 19, 2025
As perhaps on the whole the nearest approach to the form of a manatee appearing on any object claimed to have originated at the hands of the Mound-Builders, and from the fact that artists have interpreted its outline so differently, this figure, given by the latest commentators on the Cincinnati tablet, is interesting, and has seemed worthy of mention.
As, however, the authenticity of the tablet itself is not above suspicion, but, on the contrary, is believed by many archæologists to admit of grave doubts, the subject need not be pursued further here. The a priori probability that the toucan was known to the Mound-Builders is, of course, much less than that the manatee was, since no species of toucan occurs farther north than Southern Mexico.
They went south and are probably the same people we know as Creeks and Cherokees. Tallegewi is the only name for the Mound-Builders that has come down to us, though some people insist that it ought to be Allegewi, and the singular instead of being Tallega should be Allega. The Lenni-Lenape are the tribes we know as Delawares. The name means "Real People."
That they are the works of Indians must be admitted by all who are willing to be convinced by evidence. The importance and bearing of this evidence does not stop with what has been stated, for it is so interlocked with other facts relating to the works of the "veritable mound-builders" as to leave no hiatus into which the theory of a lost race or a "Toltec occupation" can possibly be thrust.
Among some of the latter the artistic instinct, while deriving its characteristic features, as among the Mound-Builders, from animated nature, exhibits a decided tendency towards the production of conventional forms, and often finds expression in creations of the most grotesque and imaginative character.
I can tell you all about the mound-builders or cave-men, so far as known, but I could not tell you the difference between the bones of a saint and those of a heathen. Ask me something easier! Ask me whether science is true!" "Is science true?" "No!" "Then why do you believe in it?" "I don't believe in it." "Then why do you belong to it?" "Because I want to help in making it truer.
It would be surprising, therefore, if an animal so striking, and one that has figured so largely in Indian totemism and folk-lore, should not have received attention at the hands of the Mound-Builders. Nothing resembling the toucan, as has been seen, has been found in the mounds; but, as stated, this bird is found in Southern Mexico.
Among the Mound-Builders a rampart of earth ten feet high around a village would afford no protection, but surmounted with long-houses, the walls of which rose continuous with the embankments, the strength of these walls, though of timber coated with earth, would render a rampart thus surmounted and doubled in height a formidable barrier against Indian assault.
Still there seems to be good ground for believing that the conception of a bird, for instance, in the abstract as distinct from some particular kind or species would never be entertained by a people no further advanced in culture than their various relics prove the Mound-Builders to have been.
It is permissible, at least, to conjecture, if one feels inclined to do so, that it was the Iroquois migration from the northwest, or that of the great family to which the Iroquois family belonged, which expelled the Mound-Builders from their border settlements, cut them off from the copper mines, and finally pushed them down the Mississippi; but nothing more than conjecture is possible in this case, and the supposition gives the Iroquois migration a greater antiquity than may be allowable.
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