THE 



CINCINNATUS. 



VOL. IL OCTOBER 1, 1857. NO. IQ 



AN ETHNOLOGICAL INQUIRY CONCERNING 

 THE ABORIGINAL RACES OF AMERICA. 



NO. I. — ARGUMENT FROM ANCIENT CRANIA. 



America has lost its claim to the title of " New World," given to 

 it by the great Italian navigator. The investigations of respectable 

 geologists bring us to the conclusion that the Mississippi river has 

 been running in its present bed for more than 100,000 years, and 

 that the Niagara has been pouring dovrn vast inland seas in gigantic 

 water-spouts, over its slowly eroding ledge of limestone, from an 

 antiquity equally remote. 



Its aboriginal races of men, too, are undoubtedly of very high 

 antiquity. Over an immense territory, bounded by the Atlantic 

 and Pacific, the Gulf of Mexico and the great Lakes, are scattered in- 

 numerable mounds covered with primitive forests, on the origin of 

 which, and the " Ancient People" that constructed them, the pres- 

 ent savage tribes of this continent have scarcely a tradition. To 

 show the extreme antiquity of these probable "Autochthones" of 

 this continent, it is only necessary to refer to the fact that from the 

 ruins of Nineveh and Babylon we have bones at least 2,500 years 

 old — from the pyramids and catecombs of Egypt crania have been taken 

 of still higher antiquity in a perfect state of preservation, unmummied; 

 yet the skeletons deposited in our Indian mounds, from the Lakes to 

 the Mexican Gulf, are crumbling into dust through age alone. 



A word in regard to the identity of this race of mound-builders 

 with the present aboriginal tribes which inhabit this country from 

 Cape Horn to Canada. Passing by the many evidences which 

 VOL. n., X. — 28. 



