PREFACE. xxxiii 



and incidental observations. In addition to the several authorities above named, 

 we may mention Lewis and Clarke, Major Long, Dr. Edwin James, Henry R. 

 Schoolcraft, Timothy Flint, Hugh Williamson, Dr. Barton, Rev. Joseph 

 Doddridge, President Jefferson, Dr. Lewis C Beck, Dr. S. P. Hildreth, 

 Keating, Haywood, Howe, Nuttall, Latrobe, Rochefaucault, Short, Col- 

 lins, Dickeson, Brown, Featherstonhaugh, Professors Gerard Troost, John 

 Locke, and C. G. Forshey, R. C. and S. Taylor, Prince Maximilian, Prof. 

 Rafinesque, Charles Whittlesey, etc., etc., as among those who have contri- 

 buted to the general stock of information upon this subject. 



The first attempt towards a general account of the ancient monuments of the 

 West, was made by Mr. Caleb Atwater, who deserves the credit of being the 

 pioneer in this department. His Memoir, constituting 150 octavo pages, was 

 published in the first volume of the " Archfeologia Americana," in 1819. It 

 contains plans and descriptions of a considerable number of ancient works, — 

 embracing the imposing structures at Marietta, Newark, Portsmouth, Circleville, 

 etc., etc., — with accounts of a variety of ancient remains found in the mounds. 

 It gives a better conception of the number, magnitude, and more obvious cha- 

 racteristics of the monuments treated of, than was before possessed, and for a 

 time appeared to have satisfied public inquiry. It contains many errors, for Avhich 

 however we can find a ready apology in the unsettled state of the country, and 

 the attendant difliculties of investigation at the time it was written, — errors which, 

 under present advantages of i-esearch, would be inexcusable. 



The facts presented by the earlier of the authorities above named, have been 

 collected by various authors, either in support of a favorite hypothesis, or with a 

 view of conveying to the world some conception of the antiquities of our country. 

 These compilations, however, have proved eminently unsatisfactory, not less from 

 the vague nature of the original accounts, than from the circumstance that they 

 were in most instances mixed up with the crudest speculations and the wildest 

 conjectures. Even when this was not the case, the fact that the original observations 

 were made in a disconnected and casual manner, served still further to confuse the 

 mind of the student and render generalization impossible. It was under an impres- 

 sion of existing deficiencies in these respects, — the paucity of facts, and the loose 

 manner in which most of them had been presented, — that the investigations recorded 

 in'this memoir were commenced and prosecuted. At the outset, as indispensable 

 to independent judgment, all preconceived notions were abandoned, and the work 

 of research commenced de novo, as if nothing had been known or said concernins 

 the remains to which attention was directed. It was concluded that if these monu- 

 ments were capable of reflecting any certain light upon the grand archaeological 

 questions connected with the primitive history of the American ('ontinenl. the 



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