Gushing.] ' 4Uo [Nov. 6, 



course of development thus, not been cut short by the coming of the 

 Spaniard with his present to them of flocks and herds that made nomads 

 of them again, tliese already half-settled peoples would have become 

 more settled and would have gone on developing precisely as older 

 pojiulations had there developed, the more rapidly because acquiring 

 liberally from these older populations. Thus in the course of a simi- 

 lar period, or perhaps even in less lime, they would no doubt have 

 become Pueblos among the Pueblos. 



Now I cannot but look upon the mound-building phase of life as, like 

 the Pueblo-building phase, something that was influenced in a similar 

 manner ; and so, while I have no doubt that the ancient mound 

 builders represented, as do the various modern Pueblos, several dis- 

 tinct stocks of men, still I believe that all owed their culture and their 

 mound-building proclivities to the original common influence of sea- 

 shore or key-builder life, and that each successive wave of peoples who 

 penetrated the mound area from elsewhere, acquired the practice by the 

 combined influences of the area to mucli of which it was so eminently 

 suited, and of the peoples who had therein already become fixed in it. 



In like manner as the art of the mound builders seems to have been 

 related to that of the key builders, so certain forms found by us in the 

 keys appeared, as heretofore intimated, to have been inherited from, 

 or directly affiliated to, that of the farther south — of the Antilles, and 

 even of South America. I need only refer to the labret and ear button, 

 the latter of which, although common enough in the mounds, was still 

 more prevalent in the keys, and was a peculiarly southern object of 

 adornment, having prevailed universally throughout northern South 

 America, and, indeed, throughout meridian America generally. This 

 is true also of both forms of the atlatl found by us. They were not 

 only South American as well as Central American in type, but on them 

 were repeated even the decorative details of Yucatecan forms. In the 

 pointed and spooned paddle ; in the celt which, with its counterpart in 

 stone from the Cumberland (and in little amulets from other portions of 

 the mound area) which corresponded strictly with celts found throughout 

 the greater and lesser Antilles ; and finally, in the remarkable war club 

 I have described in a former page, this afliliation of art-types was even 

 more strikingly apparent. For, as I would repeat anew, this form 

 of war club, at least, could scarcely have been other than a survival of 

 a double, semicircular bladed hatchet that is peculiarly a South Amer- 

 ican type, as were war clubs like it — and also derived from it — in both 

 South and in some portions of Central America. 



When it is reflected that a not mconsiderable number of other forms 

 found by us in the court of the pile dwellers were, as were those that 

 I have so particularly referred to, almost too minutely identical with 

 like southern forms to admit of wholly independent origin (although 

 there is every probability that they had developed, even if elsewhere, yet 

 in a generally similar kind of environment), and when this fact is con- 



