part 2). Cf. E. W. Hilgard, in _Smithsonian Contributions_, no. 248.

* * * * *

Foster rather strikingly likens what we know of the history of the human race to the apex of a pyramid, of which we know neither the height nor extent of base. Our efforts to trace man back to his beginning would be like following down the sides of that pyramid till it reaches a firm base, we know not where. Many geologists believe in a great ice-sheet which at one time had settled upon the northern parts of America, and covered it down to a line that extends across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and westerly in a direction of some variableness. There are some, like Sir William Dawson,[1651] who reject the evidence that persuades others. Prof. Whitney (_Climatic Changes_, 387) holds that it was a local phenomenon confined in America to the northeastern parts. The advocates look to Dr. James Geikie[1652] as having correlated the proofs of the proposition as well as any, while writers like Howorth[1653] trace the resulting phenomena largely to a flood.

How long ago this was, the cautious geologist does not like to say;[1654] nor is he quite ready to aver what it all means.[1655] Perhaps, as some theorize, this prevailing ice showed the long winter brought about by the precession of the equinoxes, as has long been a favorite belief, with the swing of ten thousand years, more or less, from one extreme to the other.[1656]

Others believe that we must look back 200,000 years, as James Croll[1657] and Lubbock do, or 800,000 and more, as Lyell did at first, and find the cause in the variable eccentricity of the earth’s orbit, which shall account for all the climatic changes since the dawn of what is called the glacial epoch, accompanying the deflection of ocean currents, as Croll supposes, or the variations in the disposition of sea and land, as Lyell imagines.[1658] This great ice-sheet, however extensive, began for some reason to retreat, at a period as remote, according as we accept this or the other estimate, as from ten thousand to a hundred thousand years.

* * * * *

That the objects of stone, shaped and polished, which had been observed all over the civilized world, were celestial in origin seems to have been the prevalent opinion,[1659] when Mahudel in 1723 and even when Buffon in 1778 ventured to assign to them a human origin.[1660]

In the gravels which were deposited by the melting of this more or less extended ice-sheet, parts of the human frame and the work of human hands have been found, and mark the anterior limit of man’s residence on the globe, so far as we can confidently trace it.[1661] Few geologists have any doubt about the existence of human relics in these American glacial drifts, however widely they may differ about the age of them.[1662]

It was in the _American Naturalist_ (Mar. and Ap., 1872) that Dr. C. C. Abbott made an early communication respecting the discovery of rude human implements in the glacial gravels[1663] of the Delaware valley, and since then the Trenton gravels have been the subject of much interest. The rudeness of the flints has repeatedly raised doubts as to their artificial character; but Wilson (_Prehistoric Man_, i. 29) says that it is impossible to find in flints broken for the road, or in any other accumulation of rocky débris, a single specimen that looks like the rudest implement of the drift. Experts attest the exact correspondence of these Trenton tools with those of the European river drift. Abbott has explained the artificial cleavages of stone in the _American Antiquarian_ (viii. 43). There are geologists like Shaler who question the artificial character of the Trenton implements. From time to time since this early announcement, Dr. Abbott has made public additional evidence as he has accumulated it, going to show, as he thinks, that we have in these deposits of the glacial action the signs of men contemporary with the glacial flow, and earlier than the red Indian stock of historic times.[1664] He summarizes the matter in his “Palæolithic implements of a people on the Atlantic coast anterior to the Indians,” in his _Primitive Industry_ (1882).[1665]

* * * * *

Some discoveries of human bones in the loess or loam of the Mississippi Valley have not been generally accepted. Lyell (_Second Visit_, ii. 197; _Antiq. of Man_, 203) suspends judgment, as does Joseph Leidy in his _Extinct Mammalia of North America_ (p. 365).

* * * * *

The existence of man in western Europe with extinct animals is a belief that, from the incredulity which accompanied the discovery by Kemp in London, in 1714, of a stone hatchet lying in contiguity to some elephant’s teeth,[1666] has long passed into indisputable fact, settled by the exploration of cave and shell heaps.[1667] In North America, this conjunction of man’s remains with those of the mastodon is very widely spread.[1668] The geological evidence is quite sufficient without resorting to what has been called an Elephant’s head in the architecture of Palenqué, the so-called Elephant Mound in Wisconsin, and the dubious if not fraudulent Elephant Pipe of Iowa.[1669] The positions of the skeletons have led many to believe that the interval since the mastodon ceased to roam in the Mississippi Valley is not geologically great. Shaler (_Amer. Naturalist_, iv. 162) places it at a few thousand years, and there is enough ground for it perhaps to justify Southall (_Recent Origin, etc._, 551; _Ep. of the Mammoth_, ch. 8) in claiming that these animals have lived into historic times.

* * * * *

A human skeleton was found sixteen feet below the surface, near New Orleans—(which is only nine feet above the Gulf of Mexico), and under four successive growths of cypress forests. Its antiquity, however, is questioned.[1670] The belief in human traces in the calcareous conglomerate of Florida seems to have been based (Haven, p. 87) on a misconception of Count Pourtalès’ statement (_Amer. Naturalist_, ii. 434), though it has got credence in many of the leading books on this subject. Col. Whittlesey has reported some not very ancient hearths in the Ohio Valley (_Am. Ass. Arts and Sciences, Proc., Chicago, 1868, Meeting_, vol. xvii. 268).

* * * * *

The testimony of the caves to the early existence of man has never had the importance in America that it has had in Europe.

It was in 1822 that Dr. Buckland, in his _Reliquiae diluvianae_ (2d ed., 1824), first made something like a systematic gathering of the evidence of animal remains, as shown by cave explorations; but he was not prepared to believe that man’s remains were as old as the beasts. He later came to believe in the prehistoric man. In 1833-34, Dr. Schmerling found in the cave of Enghis, near Liége, a highly developed skull, and published his _Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles découverts dans les cavernes de la province de Liége_.[1671]

In 1841, Boucher de Perthes began his discoveries in the valley of the Somme,[1672] and finally discovered among the animal remains some flint implements, and formulated his views of the great antiquity of man in his _Antiquités Celtiques_ (1847), rather for the derision than for the delectation of his brother geologists. In 1848, the Société Ethnographique de Paris ceased its sessions; but Boucher de Perthes had aroused a new feeling, and while his efforts were still in doubt his disciples[1673] gathered, and amid much ridicule founded the Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, which has had so numerous a following in allied associations in Europe and America.

He tells us of the struggles he endured to secure the recognition of his views in his _De l’homme antédiluvien et de ses œuvres_ (Paris, 1860), and his trials were not over when, in 1863, he found at Moulin Quignon a human jaw-bone,[1674] which, as he felt, added much strength to the belief in the man of the glacial gravels.[1675]

* * * * *

The existence of man in the somewhat later period of the caves[1676] was also claiming constant recognition, and the new society was broad enough to cover all. In 1857, Dr. Fuhlrott had discovered the Neanderthal skull in a cave near Düsseldorf.

In 1858, the discovery of flint tools in the Brixham cave, in Devonshire, was more effective in turning the scientific mind to the proofs than earlier discoveries of much the same character by McEnery had been. In March, 1872, Emile Rivière investigated the Mentone caves, and found a large skeleton, unmistakably human, and the oldest yet found, supposed to be of the palæolithic period. (Cf. _Découverte d’un Squelette humain de l’Epoque paléolithique_, Paris, 1873.) All this evidence is best set forth in the collection of his periodical studies on the mammals of the Pleistocene, which were collected by William Boyd Dawkins in his _Cave Hunting: researches on the evidence of caves, respecting the early inhabitants of Europe_ (London, 1874),[1677] a book which may be considered a sort of complement to Lyell’s _Antiquity of Man_ and Lubbock’s _Prehistoric Man_; Dawkins (ch. 9, and _Address_, Salford, 1877, p. 3) and Lubbock (_Scientific Lectures_, 150) unite in holding the modern Eskimos to be the representative of this cave folk. No argument is quite sufficient to convince Southall that the archæologists do not place the denizens of the caves too far back (_Recent Origin of Man_, ch. 13), and he rejects a belief in the steady slowness of the formation of stalagmites (_Epoch of the Mammoth_, 90), upon which Evans, Geikie, Wallace, Lyell, and others rest much of their belief in the great antiquity of the remains found beneath the cave deposits.[1678]

The largest development of cave testimony in America has been made by Dr. Lund,[1679] a Danish naturalist, who examined several hundred Brazilian caves, finding in them the bones of man in connection with those of extinct animals.[1680] The remains of a race, held to be Indians, found in the caves of Coahuila (Mexico) are described by Cordelia A. Studley in the _Peabody Mus. Reports_, xv. 233. Edward D. Cope has studied the contents of a bone cave in the island of Anguilla (West Indies), in the _Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge_, no. 489 (1883). J. D. Whitney describes a cave in Calaveras County, in the _Smithsonian Rept._ (1887), and Edward Palmer one in Utah (_Peab. Mus. Rept._, xi. 269). Putnam explored some in Kentucky (_Ibid._ viii.). Putnam’s first account of his cave work in Kentucky, showing the use of them as habitations and as receptacles for mummies, is in the _Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist._, xvii. 319. J. P. Goodnow made similar explorations in Arizona (_Kansas City Rev_., viii. 647); E. T. Elliott in Colorado (_Pop. Sci. Mo._, Oct., 1879), and Leidy in the Hartman cave, in Pennsylvania (_Philad. Acad. Nat. Sci. Proc._, 1880, p. 348). Cf. also Haldeman in the _Am. Philos. Soc. Trans._ (1880) xv. 351. Col. Charles Whittlesey has discussed the “Evidences of the antiquity of man in the United States,” in describing some cave remains of doubtful age.[1681] W. H. Dall’s _On the remains of later prehistoric man obtained from caves in the Catherine archipelago, Alaska territory, and especially from the caves of the Aleutian islands_ (Washington, 1878) is included in the _Smithsonian contributions to knowledge_, xxii.

* * * * *

Throughout the world, naturalists have found on streams and on the seacoast, heaps of the refuse of the daily life of primitive peoples. Beneath the loam which has covered them there are found the shells of edible mollusks and other relics of food, implements, ornaments and vessels, of stone, clay, and bone. Sometimes it happens that natural superposed accumulations will mark them off in layers, and distinguish the usages of successive periods.[1682]

In the Old World such heaps upon the Danish coast have attracted the most attention under the name of Kjœkkenmœddinger, or Kitchen-middens, and their teachings have enlivened the recitals of nearly all the European archæologists who have sought to picture the condition of these early races.

It seems to be the general opinion that in the Old World this shell-heap folk succeeded, if they do not in part constitute the contemporaries of, the men of the caves.[1683]

These accumulations are known usually in America as shell heaps, and it is generally characteristic of them that, while they contain pottery and bone implements, the stone instruments are far less numerous, and generally occur in the upper layers in those of Florida, but they are scattered through all the layers in those of New England. Professor Jeffries Wyman, whose name is in this country particularly associated with shell-heap investigations, could not find[1684] that any one had in the scientific spirit called attention to the subject in America earlier than Caleb Atwater in the _Archæologia Americana_ (vol. i., 1820), who had observed such deposits on the Muskingum River in Ohio. They had not passed unnoticed, however, by some of the early explorers. Putnam (_Essex Inst. Bulletin_, xv. 86) notes that J. T. Ducatel observed those on the Chesapeake in 1834. The earliest more particular mention of the inland mounds seem to have been made in Prinz Maximilian’s _Travels in the United States_.[1685] Foster, in his _Prehistoric Races of the U. S._ (ch. 4,—a special survey of the American heaps), says that Professor Vanuxem was the first to describe the sea-side mounds in 1841, in the _Proc. Amer. Asso. Geologists_ (i. 22).[1686]

There has been as yet little found in America from which to develop the evidence of early man from any lake or river dwellings, while so much has been done in Europe.[1687] In some parts of Florida the Indians are reported to have built houses on piles; and in South America tree-houses and those on platforms are well known. Mr. Hilborne T. Cresson has reported (_Peabody Mus. Rept_., xxii. for 1888) the discovery of pile ends in the Delaware River, and has shown that two of these river stations are earlier than the third, as is evident from the rude implements of argillite found in the two when compared with those discovered in the third, where implements of jasper and quartz and fragments of pottery were associated with those of argillite.

The earliest discoveries of the cliff houses of the Colorado region were made by Lieut. J. H. Simpson, and his descriptions appeared in his _Journal of a Military Reconnoissance_, in 1849.[1688] No considerable addition was made to our knowledge of the cliff dwellers till in 1874-75, when special parties of the Hayden Geological Survey were sent to explore them (_Hayden’s Report_, 1876), whence we got accounts of those of southwestern Colorado by W. H. Holmes, including the cavate-houses and cliff-dwellers of the San Juan, the Mancos, and the ruins in the McElmo cañon.[1689] W. H. Jackson gives a revised account of his 1874 expedition in the _Bulletin_ of the Survey (vol. ii. no. 1), adding thereto an account of his explorations of 1875. Jackson also gives a chapter on the ruins of the Chaco cañon.[1690]

* * * * *

In coming to the class of ruins lying in a few instances just within, but mostly to the north of, the Mexican line, we encounter the Pueblo race, whose position in the ethnological chart is not quite certain, be their connection with the Nahuas and Aztecs,[1691] or with the moundbuilders,—red Indian if they be,—or with the cliff-dwellers, as perhaps is the better opinion. Their connection with savage nations farther north is not wholly determinable, as Morgan allows, on physical and social grounds, and perhaps not as definitely settled by their architecture as Cushing seems to think.[1692]

The Spaniard early encountered these ruins,[1693] and perhaps the best summary of the growth of our knowledge of them by successive explorations is in Bancroft’s _Nat. Races_, iv. ch. 11.[1694] In the century after the Spanish conquest, we have one of the best accounts in the _Memorial_ of Fray Alonso Benavides, published at Madrid in 1630.[1695] The most famous of the ruins of this region, the Casa Grande of the Gila Valley in Arizona,[1696] is supposed to have been seen (1540) by Coronado, then in a state of ruin; but we get no clear description till that given by Padre Mange, who accompanied Padre Kino to see the ruins in 1697.[1697]

There are few descriptions[1698] of the antiquities of this country previous to the military examination of it which was made during the Mexican War. Such is recorded in W. H. Emory’s _Notes of a Military Reconnoissance from Fort Leavenworth in Missouri to San Diego in California_,[1699] which gives us some of the earliest representations of these antiquities, including the ruins of Pecos.[1700] In 1849, Col. Washington, the governor of New Mexico, organized an expedition against the Navajos, and Lieut. James H. Simpson gives us the first detailed account of the Chaco cañon in his _Journal of a Military Reconnoissance_ (Philad., 1852).[1701] He also covered (p. 90), among the other ruins of this region, the old and present habitations of the Zuñi, but these received in some respects more detailed examination in Capt. L. Sitgreave’s _Report of an Expedition down the Zuñi and Colorado rivers_ (Washington, 1853),[1702] accompanied by a map and other illustrations.[1703] New channels of information were opened when the United States government undertook to make surveys (1853) for a trans-continental line of railways; and a great deal of material is embodied in Whipple’s report on the Indian tribes in the _Pacific R. R. Reports_, vol. iii. The running of the boundary line between the United States and Mexico also contributed to our knowledge. The commissioner during 1850-53 was John Russell Bartlett, who, on the failure of the government promptly to publish his report, printed his _Personal narrative of explorations and incidents_ (N. Y., 1854), and made in some parts of it an important contribution to our knowledge of the antiquities of this region.[1704]

No considerable advance was now made in this study for about a score of years. Major Powell first published his account of his adventurous exploration (1869) of the Colorado cañon in _Scribner’s Monthly_ (Jan., Feb., Mar.) in 1875, and it was followed by his official _Exploration of the Colorado River_ (Washington, 1875), making known the existence of ruins in the cañon’s gloomy depths. The _Reports_ of the U. S. Geological Survey, including the accounts by W. H. Jackson and W. H. Holmes, give much valuable and original information; and a good deal of what has been included in the _Reports of the Chief of Engineers_ (U. S. Army) for 1875 and 1876 will also be found in the seventh volume, edited by F. W. Putnam, of _Wheeler’s Survey_,[1705] including the pueblos of Acoma, Taos, San Juan, and the ruin[1706] on the Animas River.

The latest examinations of these Pueblo remains, of which we have published accounts, are those made by A. F. Bandelier for the Archæological Institute of America. He has given his results in his “Historical introduction to studies among the sedentary Indians of New Mexico,” and in his “Report on the ruins of Pecos,” which constitutes the initial volume of _Papers, American series_, of the Institute (Boston, 1881).[1707] He believes Pecos to be Cicuye, visited by Alvarado in 1541,—a huge pile with 585 compartments, finally abandoned in 1840. In October, 1880, he examined the region west of Santa Fé (_Second Rept. Archæol. Inst._). His explorations also determined the eastern limits of the sedentary occupation of New Mexico (_Fifth Report_). He renewed his studies in 1882 (_First Bull. Archæol. Inst._, Jan., 1883), and thought the ruins showed successive occupiers, and divides them into cave dwellings, cliff houses, one-story buildings, and those of more than one, with each higher one retreating from the front of the next lower.

The most essential sources of information have thus been enumerated, but there is not a little fugitive and comprehensive treatment of the subject worth the student’s attention who follows a course of investigation.[1708]

* * * * *

The literature of the moundbuilders, and of the controversies arising out of the mysterious relics of their life, is commensurate with the very wide extent of territory covered by their traces.[1709] It was long before any intelligent notice was taken of the mounds by those who traversed the wilderness. De Soto, in 1540, could get no traditions concerning them beyond the assurances that the peoples he encountered had built them, or some of them. We read of them also in Garcilasso de la Vega, Biedma and the Knight of Elvas, on the Spanish side; but on the French at a later day we learn little or nothing from Joutel, Tonti, and Hennepin, though something from Du Pratz, La Harpe and some of the missionaries. Kalm,[1710] the Swede, in 1749, was about the first to make any note of them. Carver found them near Lake Pepin in 1768. In 1772 the missionary David Jones[1711] made observations upon those in Ohio. Adair did not wholly overlook them in his _American Indians_ in 1775. Prof. James Dunbar, of Aberdeen, in his _Essays on the history of mankind in rude and uncultivated ages_ (Lond., 1780), uses what little Kalm and Carver afforded. Jefferson in his _Notes on Virginia_ (1782) speaks of them as barrows “all over the country,” and “obvious repositories of the dead.”[1712] Arthur Lee makes reference to them in 1784. A map of the Northwest Territory, published by John Fitch about 1785, places in the territory which is now Wisconsin the following legend: “This country has once been settled by a people more expert in the art of war than the present inhabitants. Regular fortifications, and some of these incredibly large, are frequently to be found. Also many graves and towers like pyramids of earth.” In 1786 Franklin thought the works at Marietta might have been built by De Soto; and Noah Webster, in a paper in Roberts’ _Florida_, assented.[1713] B. S. Barton, in his _Observations in some parts of Natural History_ (London, 1787), credited the Toltecs with building them, whom he considered the descendants of the Danes.

As the century draws to a close, we find occasional and rather bewildered expression of interest in the _Observations on the Ancient Mounds_ by Major Jonathan Heart;[1714] in the _Missions_ of Loskiel; in the _New Views_ of Dr. Smith Barton; in the _Carolina_ of William Bartram; and in the travels of Volney. In 1794 Winthrop Sargent reported in the _Amer. Philos. Soc. Trans._, iv., on the exploration of the mounds at Cincinnati. The present century soon elicited a variety of observations, but there was little of practical exploration. A New England minister, Thaddeus Mason Harris, passed judgment upon those in Ohio, when he journeyed thither in 1803.[1715] The commissioner of the United States to run the Florida boundary, Andrew Ellicott, describes some near Natchez in his _Journal_ (1803). Bishop Madison communicated through Professor Barton some opinions about those in Western Virginia, which appear in the _Transaction_ of the American Philosophical Society, taking different grounds from Dr. Harris, who had thought them works of defence. The explorations of Lewis and Clark (1804-6) up the Missouri, and of Pike (1805-7) up the Mississippi, produced little. Robin, the French naturalist, in 1805,[1716] Major Stoddard[1717] and Breckenridge[1718] later, saw some in Louisiana, Missouri, and Illinois. A leading periodical, _The Portfolio_, contributed something to the common stock in 1810 and 1814, giving plans of some of the mounds. Those in Ohio were again the subject of inquiry by F. Cuming in his _Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country_ (Pittsburg, 1810), and by Dr. Daniel Drake in his _Picture of Cincinnati and the Miami Valley_ (Cinn., 1815). John Heckewelder, the Moravian missionary, accounted for the ancient fortifications through the traditions of the Delawares, who professed once to have inhabited this country, but it has been suspected that the worthy missionary was imposed upon.[1719] DeWitt Clinton, in 1811, before the New York Historical Society, and again in 1817, before the Literary and Philosophical Society of New York, had given some theories in which the Scandinavians figured as builders of the mounds in that State.

It was thus at a time when there was much speculation and not much real experimental knowledge respecting these remains that, under the auspices of the then newly founded American Antiquarian Society, Mr. Caleb Atwater, of Ohio, was employed to explore and survey a considerable number of these works. He embodied his results in the initial volume of the publication of that society, the _Archæologia Americana_.[1720] After pointing out scattered evidences of the traces of European peoples, found in coins and other relics throughout the country, Atwater proceeds to his description of the earthworks, mainly of Ohio; and beside giving many plans,[1721] he enters into the question of their origin, and expresses a belief in the Asiatic origin of their builders, and in their subsequent migration south to lay, as he thinks, the foundations of the Mexican and Peruvian civilizations.

During the next twenty-five years there cannot be said to have been much added to a real knowledge of the subject. Yates and Moulton in their _Hist. New York_ (1824) borrowed mainly from Kirkland (1788) the missionary. Humboldt had no personal contact with the remains to give his views any value (1825). Warden in his _Recherches_ (1827) gave some new plans and rearranged the old descriptions. There was some sober observation in M’Culloh’s _Researches_ (3d ed., 1829); some far from sober in Rafinesque (1838); some compiled descriptions with worthless comment in Josiah Priest’s _American Antiquities_ (Albany, 1838); something like scientific deductions in S. G. Morton’s study of the few moundbuilders’ skulls then known, in his _Cranea Americana_ (1839); with an attempt at summing up in Delafield (1839) and Bradford (1841). This is about all that had been added to what Atwater did, when E. G. Squier and E. H. Davis eclipsed all labors preceding theirs, and began the series of the _Smithsonian Contributions_ with their _Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley_ (Washington, 1847 and 1848).[1722] During the preceding two years they had opened over two hundred mounds, and explored about a hundred earthwork enclosures, and had gathered a considerable collection of specimens of moundbuilders’ relics.[1723] They had begun their work under the auspices of the American Ethnological Society, but the cost of the production of the volume exceeded the society’s resources, and the transfer was made to the Smithsonian Institution. The work took a commanding position at once, and still remains of essential value, though some of the grounds of its authors are not acceptable to present observers; and indeed in his work on the mounds of New York, which the Smithsonian Institution included in the second volume of their _Contributions_, Squier found occasion to alter some of his opinions in his earlier work, or at least to ascribe the mounds of that State to the Iroquois. The third volume of the same _Contributions_ (1852) introduces to us one of the ablest of the local investigators in a paper by Charles Whittlesey, of “Descriptions of Ancient Works in Ohio,”—the forerunner of numerous papers which he has given to the public in elucidation of the mounds.[1724] Three years later (1855), in the seventh volume of the _Smithsonian Contributions_, a new field in the emblematic and animal mounds of the northwest was for the first time brought to any considerable extent to public attention in the paper by Increase A. Lapham, on the “Antiquities of Wisconsin.” Lapham had made his explorations under the auspices of the American Antiquarian Society,[1725] and his manuscript had been revised by Haven, when it was decided to consign it for publication to the Smithsonian Institution.

The animal mounds had been indeed earlier mentioned, and the great serpent mound of Ohio had long attracted attention; but it was in the territory now known as Wisconsin that these mounds were found chiefly to abound. Long, in 1823, speaks of mounds in this region; but the forest coverings seem to have prevented any observer detecting their shapes till Lapham first noted this peculiarity in 1836. In April, 1838, R. C. Taylor was the earliest to figure them in the _Amer. Journal of Science_ (Silliman’s), and again they were described by S. Taylor in _Ibid._, 1842. Prof. John Locke referred to them in a _Report on the mineral lands of the United States_, made to Congress in 1844. William Pidgeon, who had been a trader among the Indians, published in his _Traditions of De-coo-dah, and Antiquarian researches: comprising extensive exploration, surveys and excavations of the Mound Builders in America; the traditions of the last Prophet of the Elk Nation, relative to their origin and use, and the evidences of an ancient population more numerous than the present Aborigines_ (N. Y., 1853; again 1858) what he pretended was in large part the results of his intercourse with an Indian chief, involving some theories as to the symbolism of the mounds. The book contained so many palpable perversions, not to say undisguised fictions, that the Smithsonian Institution refused to publish it;[1726] and the book has never gained any credit, though some unguarded writers have unwittingly borrowed from it.[1727]

In the eighth volume of the _Smithsonian Contributions_,[1728] Haven, the librarian of the Amer. Antiq. Soc., summed up the results of mound exploration as they then stood. The steady and circumspect habit of Haven’s mind was conspicuous in his treatment of the mounds. It is to him that the later advocates of the identity of their builders with the race of the red Indians look as the first sensibly to affect public opinion in the matter.[1729] He argued against their being a more advanced race (p. 154), and in his _Report_ of the Am. Antiq. Soc., in 1877 (p. 37), he held that it might yet be proved that the moundbuilders and red Indians were one in race, as M’Culloh had already suggested.

At the time when Haven was first intimating (1856) that this view might yet become accepted, it was doubtless held to be best established that those who built the mounds were quite another race from those who lived among them when Europeans first knew the country. The fact that the Indians had no tradition of their origin was held to be almost conclusive, though it is alleged that the southern Indians in later times retained no recollections of the expedition of De Soto, and Dr. Brinton thinks that it is common for Indian traditions to die out.[1730] It is not till recent years that any considerable number of moundbuilder skulls have been known, and from the scant data which the early craniologists had, their opinion seems to have coincided with those in favor of a vanished race.[1731] It was a favorite theory, not yet wholly departed, that they were in some way connected with the more southern peoples, the Pueblo Indians, the Aztecs, or the Peruvians; either that they came from them, or migrated south and became one with them.[1732] The bolder theory, that we see their descendants in the red Indians, is perhaps gaining ground, and it has had the support of the Bureau of Ethnology and some able expounders.[1733]