50 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



informed him that the western country, and particularly Kentucky, had once been 

 inhabited by white people, but that they were exterminated by the Indians; that 

 the last battle was fought at the falls of the Ohio; and that the Indians succeeded 

 in driving the aborigines into a small island below the rapids, where the whole of 

 them were cut to pieces. He said it was an undoubted fact, handed down by tradi- 

 tion, and that the Colonel would have ocular proof of it when the waters of the 

 Ohio became low. This was found to be correct on examining Sandy Island, when 

 the river had fallen, as a multitude of bones were discovered. 



"Col. Joseph Daviess, when in St. Louis, in 1800, saw the remains of an 

 ancient tribe of the Sacs, who expressed some astonishment that any person should 

 live in Kentucky. They said the country had been the scene of much bloodshed, 

 and was fdled with the manes of its butchered inhabitants. They stated, also, that 

 the people who inhabited this country were wldlc, and possessed such arts as were 

 unknown by the Indians. 



"Col. McKee, who commanded on the Kenhawa when Cornstalk was inhumanly 

 murdered, had frequent conversations with that chief, respecting the people who 

 constructed the ancient forts. He stated that it was a current and assured tradi- 

 tion, that Ohio and Kentucky had been once settled by white people. That, after 

 many sanguinary contests, they were exterminated. Col. M. asked him if he could 

 tell who made those old forts, which displayed so much skill in fortifying. He 

 answered that he did not know, but that a story had been handed down from a 

 very k»t<j ago people, that there had been a nation of white people inhabiting the 

 country, who made the graves and forts." 



In the Portfolio, of June, 1816, from which the above extracts are taken, it is 

 said that the MSS. of Eev. Dr. Campbell had been placed in the hands of a friend 

 of the family to be prepared for publication. It is believed, however, that they 

 were never printed. The wJiite men spoken of, in the traditions recorded by the 

 author, may possibly have been the early Spanish and French adventurers; the 

 want of conformity to facts, in regard to events and localities, being explained by 

 the usual absence of consistency in the legendary tales of the natives. 



The Kaskaskia chief, Baptist Ducoign, told Gen. George Rogers Clark, that the 

 works on the Kaskaskia river were the palaces and fortifications of his forefathers 

 " when they covered the whole country and had large towns." 1 



The traditions related by Cusic, an educated Tuscarora, in his Ancient History 

 of the Six Nations, may be compared with the statement of the Iroquois to the 

 missionary Kirkland, that the defensive inclosures of New York were erected in 

 their wars with the southern and western Indians, three, four, or five centuries 

 ago. Cusic refers to the mounds and fortifications of the west, as the works of 

 ancient southern and western tribes, who had penetrated and occupied the country 

 nearly to the banks of Lake Erie. They were, he says, opposed by the northern 

 tribes, who were more skilled in the use of bows and arrows ; and after long and 

 bloody wars, which are conjectured to have lasted for centuries, the Algonco-Iro- 



1 Schoolcraft's Cond. and Prosp. of Am. Indians, IV, 135. 



