PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



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of as the great center of the population of the mound-builders. The 

 fact is, it was a great center of an ancient population. Wisconsin was 

 another great center of another population, while Southern Missouri was 

 still another great center of a different population, judging them by the 

 character of the mounds and the works of art found in them. Tennessee 

 may be considered as another center of a distinct population ; and we 

 have no reason to believe that one of these was more densely populated 

 than another. 



Having shown that belief in the existence of one uniform, homoge- 

 neous race with a common skull-form, all over the Mississippi Valley, is 



Fig. 24. Mound-builders' skulls, from mound near Naples, El. 



wholly untenable, in order to warrant us in still looking for the typical 

 mound skull we must assume either absolute uniformity of forms be- 

 longing to each tribe, or uniformity in variation, and that, from one or 

 the other of these causes, the typical skull of one tribe was the typical 

 form of every other. The first of these latter hypotheses, absolute uni- 

 formity of skull-form, has never been found existing in a single tribe, 

 and it would be a miracle to find, not only uniformity in a single tribe 



