302 ANCIENT MONUMENTS. 



circumstances, most of wliich will no doubt recur to the mind of the reader, but 

 which will bear recapitulation here. 



It may safely be claimed, and will be admitted without dispute, that a large 

 local population can only exist under an agricultural system. Dense commercial 

 and manufacturing communities, the apparent exceptions to the remark, are them- 

 selves the oflspring of a large agricultural population, with which nearly or 

 remotely they are connected, and upon which they are dependent. Now it is 

 evident that works of art, so numerous and vast as we have seen those of the Mis- 

 sissippi valley to be, could only have been erected by a numerous people, — and 

 especially must we regard as numerous the population capable of constructing 

 them, when we reflect how imperfect at the best must have been the artificial aids 

 at their command, as compared with those of the present age. Implements ot 

 wood, stone, and copper, could hardly have proved very efficient auxiliaries to the 

 builders, who must have depended mainly upon their own bare hands and weak 

 powers of transportation, for excavating and collecting together the twenty millions 

 of cubic feet of material which make up the solid contents of the great mound at 

 Cahokia alone. 



But the conclusion that the ancient population was exceedingly dense, follows 

 not less from the capability which they possessed to erect, than from the circum- 

 stance that they required, works of the magnitude we have seen, to protect them 

 in danger, or to indicate in a sufficiently imposing form their superstitious zeal, 

 and their respect for the dead. As observed by an eminent archteologist, whose 

 opinions upon this and collateral subjects 'are entitled to a weight second to those 

 of no other author, "it is impossible that the population, for whose protection 

 such extensive works were necessary, and which was able to defend them, .shouFd 

 not have been eminently agricultural." The same author elsewhere observes, of 

 the great mound at Grave creek, that " it indicates not only a dense agricultural 

 population, but also a state of society essentially different from that of the modern 

 race of Indians north of the tro|)ic. There is not, and there was not in the 

 sixteenth century, a single tribe of Indians (north of the semi-civilized nations) 

 between the Atlantic and the Pacific, which had means of subsistence sufficient to 

 enable them to apply, for such [turposes, the unproductive labor necessary for the 

 work ; nor was there any in such a social state as to compel the labor of the people 

 to be thus apphed."* 



* Gallatin's " Notes on the seiiii-civilizetl uiilioiib of Mexico," Transtuliuiis af American Ethnului/ictil 

 Socicly, vol. i. p. 207. 



Mr. Gallatin, in the memoir here (|uotc(l, lias discussed at considerable Ieni,''th the (iiu'stion of the oriijin 

 of agriculture among the American nations. His views, altog(>tlier the most piiilosophical of any liitherto 

 presented on the subject, mav not be without tlicir interest in this connection. It should be observed, at 

 the outset, that Mr. Gallatin is of the opinion, not only that agriculture on this continent was of domestic 

 ori'dn, but also that it originated between the tropics, — spreading thence in ditl'erent directions to the 

 north and south. The evidence in support of the latter conclusion is not presented in sufficient detail 

 to enable us to judge how well sustained it may be. If we admit its correctness, we must derive the 

 agriculture of the mound-builders from the south, and assign 'nat race chronologically a comparatively 

 low date. This we are not vet prepared to do; on the ccuilraiy. (here are many facts going to establish 



