CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 303 



Another evidence of the probable agricultural character of the mound-builders, 

 is furnished in the fact already several tinias remarked, that these remains are 

 almost entirely confined to the fertile valleys of streams, or to productive alluvions 

 bordering on the lakes or on the Gulf of Mexico, — precisely the positions best 

 adapted for agricultural purposes, and capable of sustaining the densest population, 

 as also affording, in fish and game, the most efficient secondary aids of support. 



If the mound-builders were a numerous, stationary, and an agricultural people , 

 it follows of necessity that their customs, laws, and religion, had assumed a fixed 

 and well defined form, — a result inseparable from that condition. The construc- 

 tion therefore of perman3nt fortifications for protection against hostile neighbors, 

 and of vast and regular religious structures, under this hypothesis, fell clearly within 

 their capabilities. 



The modes of warfare which they practised, so far as they can be made out, 

 and the probable state of the civil relations between them and their neighbors, and 

 among themselves, have been noticed in the remarks on the Works of Defence, 

 in a previous chapter. Little can, at present, be added upon these points. 



foi- the mound-builders very high antitjuit}', and tending to the conclusion thit the degree of civilizition 

 which they possessed was attained by a course of development in the Mississippi valley. It is not 

 impossible that future investigations may show that the agriculture and civilization of the Mexicins, 

 Central Americans, and Peruvians, had its origin among the builders of the ancient monuments on the 

 banks of the great Mississippi river, — the Nile and tlie Ganges of North America. 



" What was the first indispensable transition which withdrew a certain portion of the aborigines of 

 America from the barbarism and ignorance in which all the other tribes are still found ? That it was the 

 transition from the hunter to the agricultural state, no one can doubt. It is true some of the tribes among 

 whom ao-riculture was introduced, are still savages ; but not an instance exists in America of a nation, 

 either populous or to a certain extent civilized, which is not agricultural. * * * * We are then 

 led to inquire how agriculture was introduced into America, and whether it was imported or of domestic 

 origin. 



" We have here two leading facts, one positively ascertained, and the other generally admitted by these 

 who have inquired into the subject, the importance of which has not, it seems to rae, been adverted to. 



" The first is that all those nutritious plants cultivated in the other hemisphere, and which are usually 

 distinguished by the name of cereals (millet, rice, wheat, rye, barley, oats), were entirely unknown to 

 the Americans. 



" The second is that maize, which was the great and almost sole foundation of American agriculture, is 

 exclusively of American origin, and was not known in the other hemisphere till after the discovery of 

 America, in the fifteenth century. 



" If these two facts be admitted, it necessarily follows that the introduction of agriculture, — that first, 

 difficult, and indispensable preliminary step before any advance whatever can be made towards civiliza- 

 tion, — originated in America itself; that it was not imported from abroad; and that it was the result of 

 the natural progress from barbarism to a more refined social state by the race of red men, insulated, left 

 to themselves, and without any aid or communication from any foreign country. It is therefore highly 

 important for a correct view of the history of mm, that the presumed fact of maize being exclusively an 

 American plant, should be thoroughly investigated. * * * If a domestic origin is admitted, it is 

 quite natural that agriculture should have had its birth in the most genial climate, and in the native 

 country of the maize." — Transaclions of American Ethnological Societij, vol. i. p. 192. 



What climate more genial, and what soil better adapted to- the cultivation of maize, in its perfection, 

 than those portions of the Mississippi valley where the evidences of ancient civilization are most abundant 

 and imposing "? 



