io6 HarsJibcrger. — Mai.ce: 



& ■ 



Brinton ' says, "A trip to the Ohio confirms the opinion 

 that the Southern Indians represent the mound-builders. It 

 would probably be hasty to point to any one of the southern 

 tribes as being specifically the descendants of the nation 

 who constructed the great works in the Scioto and Miami 

 Valleys." The evidence shows that the tribes of the Gulf 

 States and lower Mississippi constructed similar mounds, and 

 of even greater magnitude than the Ohio mounds. The 

 Choctas, the Natchez, the Cherokees, the Creeks, all built 

 mounds. Do Soto states that most of the Indians visited by 

 him built mounds. The Cherokees assert that they once 

 lived in the upper Ohio Valley, and that they built Grave 

 Creek and other mounds, and this tradition is supported by 

 historic data. Cyrus Thomas 2 asserts that the Cherokees 

 were the mound-builders. The agriculture of the mound- 

 builders was, therefore, scarcely older than that of the adjacent 

 southern tribes, who got maize from the west. What caused 

 the desertion of the mounds ? The Iroquois and Algonquins 

 stayed their old-time strife, and united, as tradition goes, 

 against a common and powerful foe. This foe was the 

 nation, or confederacy, of the Alligewi, the " semi-civilized 

 mound-builders" of the Ohio Valley. A desperate war- 

 ensued, which lasted about ioo years, but eventually the 

 Alligewi fled southward, and seem to have mingled with the 

 more southern tribes. 3 Heckewelder* gives the Algonquian 

 tradition of the same event. The legend relates that the 

 Algonquins in their southeastern migration learned the culti- 

 vation of maize after they had reached a comparatively low 

 latitude, southern Indiana or Ohio. 5 



We have data as to the relative age of some Ohio 

 mounds. " In the pre-European state of the country, probably 

 some time after the year iooo, the American bison or buffalo 

 appears to have been absent from all the region east of the 



1 Brinton, Trans. Anthrop. Soc. Wash., in, 116. 



2 Thomas, Magaz. Amer. Hist., 1SS4, XI, 396-407; American Anthropologist, lv, 



137- 



3 Hale, Iroquois Book of Rites (Brinton's Library), 11 ; Amer. Assoc. Adv. Science, 

 18S2 ; American Antiquarian, 1S83, Jan. and Apr. 



4 Heckewelder, Indian Nations. 



6 The Lenape and their Legends (The Walam Olum), 187. 



