TWENTY-THIBD ANNUAL MEETING. 91 



ing of belief; 3. (a) A development in Art, (6) in Morals, (c) in Law, and (d) in 

 Custom. 



These are manifestations of a development to be seen in man as he passes 

 through the various stages of savagery, barbarism, and enlightenment. 



Civilization is the resultant of causes which may be classified and discussed as 

 follows: 



(1) The natural environments. 



(2) The cultivation of a desire of means for the support of life. 



(3) The cultivation of a desire for increased physical prowess and skill. 



(4) The cultivation of a desire for intellectual improvement. 



(5) The cultivation of a desire for spiritual happiness. 



If these desires have been awakened within the human breast, followed by an 

 activity of the various powers to attain the desired end, then there has been progress 

 in, the process of becoming civilized, and there will necessarily follow the implied 

 results as given in the definition. 



If the fact that traces of an awakening and development of the physical, intel- 

 lectual, and moral forces can be found and proven by arch?eological research, then 

 we may justly lay claim to a civilization for the prehistoric American Mound- 

 Builder. 



In reference to who these people were, we can only say that they composed a 

 confederation which occupied the southern half of the North-American continent 

 previous to the Indian invasion. Their origin is a subject of controversy and con- 

 jecture, and can only be based upon a comparative study of their monuments with 

 those of the surrounding, and, perhaps, kindred nations. 



Many people suppose that they were the ancestors of the Indians, and possessed 

 no higher state of civilization, when in fact no such knowledge could be gained 

 from the aborigines by early explorers. 



It is said that the "Choctaws and Chicasaws, who at one time occupied a part of 

 southwest Tennessee and northern Mississippi, do not claim the hundreds of well-built 

 mounds along the Mississippi river to be the work of their ancestors, and, in fact, 

 could throw no light upon their history." 



In talking with Bundy, war chief of the Miamis, on the Wabash, he told me that 

 the manufacture of stone and flint implements must not be attributed to the 

 Indians; but that, upon finding them, his people simply adopted the use of them. 



The third and most important question to be considered is "How, and to what 

 extent, can the Mound-Builders lay claim to a civilization?'' 



(1 ) Have natural environments affected them? 



Buckle champions the philosophy that these have been the great forces that 

 have wrought the civilization of the world, and that intellectual and social develop- 

 ment are but products of that onward progress. 



He claims that, during this remote period, only the people dwelling within the 

 limits of the torrid zone really possessed any degree of civilization; that those in 

 America, dwelling north of the 20th parallel, were wholly incapable of making 

 much progress in the arts of life, or organizing itself into a fixed and permanent 

 society; "and that here civilization could find no resting-place." 



That we may better determine the value of this dogmatic assertion, we must 

 take into account the fact that Buckle wrote his "History of Civilization" many 

 years before the American field of Archaeology had been explored to any great 

 extent. 



All of the later standard authors, as well as the Government reports, point 

 clearly to the fact of a prehistoric civilization for the Mound-Builder. 



