CHAPTER XIX. 



C; N C L U D I N G OBSERVATIONS. 



With tlie facts presented in the foregoing chapters before him, the reader will 

 be able to deduce his own conclusions, as to the probable character and condition 

 of the ancient population of the Mississippi valley. That it was numerous and 

 widely spread, is evident from the number and magnitude of the ancient monuments, 

 and the extensive range of their occurrence. That it was essentially homogeneous , 

 in customs, habits, religion, and government, seems very well sustained by the 

 great uniformity which the ancient remains display, not only as regards position 

 and form, but in respect also to those minor particulars, which, not less than more 

 obvious and imposing features, assist us in arriving at correct conclusions. This 

 opinion can be in no way affected, whether we assume that the ancient race was 

 at one time diffused over the entire valley, or that it migrated slowly from one 

 portion of it to the other, under the pressure of hostile neighbors or the attrac- 

 tions of a more genial climate. The differences which have already been pointed 

 out between the monuments of the several portions of the valley, of the northern, 

 central, and southern divisions, are not sufficiently marked to authorize the belief 

 that they wei'e the works of separate nations. The features common to all are 

 elementary, and identify them as appertaining to a single grand system, owing its 

 origin to a family of men, moving in the same general direction, acting under 

 common impulses, and influenced by similar causes . 



Without undertaking to point out the affinities, or to indicate the probable 

 origin of the builders of the western monuments, and the cause of their final disap- 

 pearance, — inquiries of deep interest and vast importance in an archaeological 

 and ethnological point of view, and in which it is believed the foregoing chapters 

 may greatly assist, — we may venture to suggest that the facts thus far collected 

 point to a connection more or less intimate between the race of the mounds and 

 the semi-civihzed nations which formerly had their seats among the sierras of 

 Mexico, upon the plains of Central America and Peru, and who erected the 

 imposing structures which from their number, vastness, and mysterious significance, 

 invest the central portions of the continent with an interest not less absorbing than 

 that which attaches to the valley of the Nile. These nations alone, of all those 

 found in possession of the continent by the European discoverers, were essentially 

 stationary and agricultural in their habits, — conditions indispensable to large popu- 

 lation, to fixedness of institutions, and to any considerable advance in the econo- 

 mical or ennobling arts. That the mound-builders, although perhaps in a less degree, 

 were also stationary and agricultural, clearly appears from a variety of facts and 



