CI ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



improbable in itself, is, moreover, inconsistent with the great similarity in their 

 physical type, and the structure of their languages, between almost all the several 

 nations and tribes which inhabited America when discovered in modern times by 

 the Europeans. If, as is highly probable, the prodigious subdivision of languages 

 took place in America, after making every allowance for the greater changes to which 

 unwritten languages are liable, and for the necessary subdivision of nations, in the 

 hunter state, into separate communities, yet, for producing such radical diversity 

 and great multiplication of languages, we want the longest time we are permitted 

 to assume. There is the highest probability that America was inhabited at a date 

 as early as is consistent with the laws which govern the multiplication of the human 

 species, and with the time necessary for the spreading of men to the extreme shores 

 of the other hemisphere." 



" I beg leave once more to repeat that, unless we suppose that which we have no 

 right to do, a second miraculous interposition of Providence, in America, the pro- 

 digious number of American languages, totally dissimilar in their vocabularies, 

 demonstrates, not only that the first peopling of America took place at the earliest 

 date which we are permitted to assume ; but also that the great mass of the exist- 

 ing Indian nations are the descendants of the first emigrants ; since we must other- 

 wise suppose that America was peopled by one hundred different tribes, speaking 

 languages totally dissimilar in their words." 



After expressing his opinion that, if the articles from the mounds do not afford 

 evidences of a much greater progress in the arts than the Indians had attained 

 when first visited by the Europeans, the monuments themselves are proofs, not 

 only of a more dense, and therefore agricultural population, but also of a different 

 social state, he proceeds to say : — 



" As now informed, there is but one leading fact which may aid us in forming 

 any conjecture respecting that extinct race. Their monuments are found exclu- 

 sively in the valley of the Mississippi, and they are not even seen on the upper 

 or northwestern branches of the Missouri. Not a single one has ever been found 

 either east of the Alleghany, or west of the Rocky Mountains. It seems impossi- 

 ble that, if coming immediately either from Europe or Asia, they should have left 

 no traces whatever of their existence in the regions where they must have landed. 

 There seem to be but two alternatives. Either they were a colony from Mexico; 

 or some of the savage tribes must by concmest, or by some other means unknown 

 to us, have converted themselves into an agricultural nation. The first supposition 

 seems to me the most probable ; and, at all events, their agriculture must have been 

 derived from Mexico. In either case, and whatever opinion may be entertained 

 respecting their origin, or their apparent progress in agriculture, it appears that they 

 were not numerous or strong enough to maintain their position ; and they must 

 have been ultimately either exterminated or driven away by the savage tribes which 

 surrounded them." 



Mr. Gallatin had previously gone into an argument to prove the domestic origin 

 of the astronomical knowledge possessed by Peruvians and Mexicans. He had, 

 also, endeavored to show that the cereals of the eastern hemisphere (millet, rice, 

 wheat, rye, barley, oats), were entirely unknown to the Americans ; and that maize, 



