1896.] 441 [Gushing. 



Mr. Gushing : If I maybe permitted, Mr. President, to follow an ad- 

 dress, already so long, with a few remarks in reply to the most in- 

 teresting discussion with which Dr. Brinton and Dr. Putnam have at 

 cace honored me and added greatly to the value of my communication, 

 I shall much esteem the privilege. 



The President : — The Society will be pleased, I am sure, to listen to 

 further remarks from Mr. Gushing. 



Mr. Gushing : — First, then, in reference to Dr. Brinton's part in the 

 discussion, let me say tliatit was quite impossible for me to undertake to 

 review, much less to dwell upon, the nvimerous historic references 

 to early natives in Florida, that seem — as I am well aware — to have 

 pertained to the waning days of a people who were either the actual 

 key dwellers — as I have called them — or were certainly inheritors, 

 in great part, of their culture. Gould I have done this, Dr. Brinton 

 would have perceived that my belief fully, — almost more than fully — 

 accorded with his own, regarding the affiliations of these people with 

 later and historic peoples. I would add, relative generally to the early 

 inhabitants of western, southern-central and southwestern Florida, 

 that from archoeologic evidence alone, one can scarcely doubt they were, 

 at the time of the discovery, chiefly Maskokians (or of the stock to which 

 not only the Muskhogees, but also the Ghoctaws or Ghahtas, the 

 Hitchiti and other tribes of the Greek Gonfederacy, of the Southern 

 States, belonged, — as, if I remember aright, Dr. Brinton long ago 

 pointed out in one of liis published works. And since I regard these 

 Southern mound-building Indians as having inherited their mound- 

 building habits and much of their culture otherwise, quite directly from 

 key dwellers, I of course believe, with him, that the key dwellers them- 

 selves may be looked upon as having been, during the later centuries of 

 their existence, not only American Indians, but North American Indians, 

 and thus, in a racial sense, by no means a new people. 



After all, the chief significance of these discoveries and finds of ours 

 in the keys of southwestern Florida is to be found, as I have said before, 

 in the unique illustration they afford of a peculiar local development in 

 culture and art as influenced by, or related to, a peculiar environment ; 

 and in this, while they may not pertain to a new or hitherto unknown 

 people, they certainly do reveal either a new phase of human culture, or 

 else an old culture in an entirely new light. 



Nevertheless, I wish to explain a little more explicitly, quite exactly 

 where I stand with regard to these ancient key dwellers of mine — as to 

 who they were more remotely, as to what may have been their origin ! 

 It is true I do not believe — and I do not think I have anywhere stated 

 the belief — that they were a neic people, or even that theirs was wholly 

 a new culture. I admit that there have appeared various articles in 

 which the most extravagant announcements have been made relative 

 to my Florida discoveries, — such announcements as I would not for a 

 moment have encouraged the statement of; and even in what I myself 





