ANCIENT HISTORY OF NORTH AMERICA. 427 



stoue hatchets, and fashioned with the hammer. The natives evidently 

 had no idea of its fusibility. For this reason, the use of the metal does 

 not indicate greater progress, and we are thus deprived of a means of 

 classification. 



In Mexico, Central Americn, and Peru, it was difierent, however. 

 There we have evidence of a high degree of skill in the working of 

 metals (iron being almost the only exception) in the more recent period. 

 They had advanced beyond the mere hammering of pieces of metal 

 found by accident, and understood smelting, and eveu attempted to 

 obtain metals by mining for ores. The American remains were, there- 

 fore, arranged according to the places where they were found, or the 

 purposes for which they were intended. But to keep in view the i)rog- 

 ress of development, I have taken the liberty of adopting the following 

 arrangement : I would assume a i)eriod immediately preceding the advent 

 of the Europeans in America, and continuing for a short time after. 

 This would correspond to our historical age, and may be designated, in 

 a restricted sense, as the historic period. 



A second epoch would include a time far removed even from the rec- 

 ollection of the inhabitants at the time of Columbus, and characterized 

 by a different distribution of the iiopulation and other complete revo- 

 lutions. To this period belong the great mounds, particularly those of 

 the Ohio Valley. It might be called the mound i^eriod, and corresponds 

 to the advanced portion of the age of stone, and the beginning of the 

 age of bronze in Europe. 



The third and most ancient period would then include those discov- 

 eries which point to the co-existence of man with extinct species of ani- 

 mals. It corresponds to the age of the mammoth and the reindeer in 

 Europe, and might be called the diluvial period. 



Utensils of all kinds, and buildings or mounds, belong to the two.more 

 recent periods. The buildings of the first or historic period are found 

 chiefly in the eastern parts of the United States and Canada, in Mexico, 

 and CentralAmerica. In the United States, Canada, and farther north, 

 they consist of mounds and bulwarks. 



The mounds of the first period are places of interment, and corre- 

 spond precisely to the tumuli in Europe. They were i^robably used for 

 the burial of chiefs, since they contain for the most part one or only a 

 few skeletons. Sometimes, however, heaps of bodies or their skeletons 

 are piled up, and covered with a knoll of earth. Whether these are 

 the bodies of Indians fallen in battle, or of the victims of immense sac- 

 rifices, remains undecided. They are on an average 5 feet high, with a 

 base 25 feet in circumference; but there are some as high as 15 feet, 

 and having a circumference of CO feet. That the Indians, even during 

 the time of their first intercourse with the Europeans, erected such liil- 

 locks as graves for distinguished chiefs, or to commemorate important 

 events, has been proved in several cases. 



The works of defense consist of walls of earth, and rarely of stone, 



