706 PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



the Chicago Academy of Sciences " the generalization as to the former 

 existence on this continent of an anomalous race, characterized by a 

 remarkably depressed forehead." * 



Judge Force suggests that " Dr. Foster's argument is very good, 

 but he failed in the first step ; he failed to get crania of the mound- 

 builders." t 



Dr. E. H. Davis remarked before the American Ethnological Society 

 in 1859, that " in more than one hundred mounds opened by Mr. Squier 

 and himself, they had found only one or two skulls in good preserva- 

 tion." $ 



The assumption of the existence of a typical mound-skull implies that 

 there was one homogeneous race, or tribe, that built all the great mounds 

 and earth- works everywhere in the Mississippi Valley, or that the mounds 

 were the work of various tribes, and that the typical skull of each separates 

 tribe was the typical skull of every other tribe. The first hypothesis is 

 wholly untenable. The variation in form of these earth-works would 

 indicate that they are the work of different peoples. The peculiar char- 

 acteristic of the Ohio works is the great squares and circles nowhere 

 else found of such magnitude or in such numbers ; while that of Wis- 

 consin is in the wonderful animal eflBgics, spread out like picture-writing 

 upon a grand scale on the prairies and in the central and southern x>or- 

 tions of the vast valley. These works culminated in great teocalU, such 

 as the great mound at Cahokia and that of Seltzertown, in Mississippi. 

 I know that it has generally been accepted without much investigation 

 that the center of this widespread race was in Ohio, and that the wonder- 

 ful animal mounds of Wisconsin were the work of the same people, built 

 probably as a pastime as they went to and returned from the copper 

 mines on Lake Superior. This is wholly unwarranted by the facts. 

 Mound-building upon the scale of these great earth-works, anywhere 

 in the Mississippi Valley, was a slow and laborious process. The exten- 

 sive earth- works of Ohio were erected by a people who lived on them 

 and about them. The same may be said of the animal mounds of Wis- 

 consin. The erection of such magnificent works of art, considering the 

 stage of the civilization of the workmen, far beyond the borders of their 

 territory, where they would never be seen by members of their own 

 tribe, except by those engaged in commerce or on the war-path, is in- 

 credible. The great burial mounds on the banks of the Illinois and 

 other tributaries of the Mississippi contain the bones of those who lived 

 in the vicinity, and the wonderful teocalli in the center and south were 

 erected in the midst of the homes of their builders. The fact that the 

 mounds of Ohio were first explored, and the result of that exploration 

 given to the world in a magnificent volume by the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion, is one of the reasons why that locality has been frequently spoken 



* Prehistoric Races, pp. 275, 282. 



\ Indians of Ohio, &c.,p. 64. 



t Hisl. Magazine, vol. Ill, p. 264. 



