PRE-ARYAN AMERICAN MAN. 61 
ethnical revolution, which had already supplanted the autochthones of prehistoric 
Europe. 
The publication in 1848 of the first volume of the Smithsonian Contributions to know- 
ledge, devoted to the history and explorations of the ancient monuments ofthe Mississippi 
valley, gave a wonderful stimulus to archeological research in the United States. For a 
time, indeed, much credulous zeal was devoted to the search for buried cities, inscribed 
records, and a reproduction in more or less modified form, in northern areas, of the civili- 
zation of the Aztecs; not unmingled with dreams of Phcenician, Hebrew, Scandinavian, 
and Welsh remains. The history of some of its spurious productions is not without 
interest ; but its true fruits are seen in numerous works which have since issued from the 
American press, devoted to an accurate record of local antiquities. So thoroughly has this 
already been carried out, that it may be now affirmed with little hesitation that, to all 
appearance, the condition of the Indian tribes to the North of Mexico, as shown in the rude 
arts of a stone age, scarcely at all affected in its character by their use of the native copper 
of Lake Superior, represents what prevailed throughout the whole Northern continent in 
all the centuries—however prolonged,—since the hunters in the Delaware valley fashioned 
and employed their turtle-back celts. 
The condition of the nations of North America at the period of its discovery, at the 
close of the fifteenth century, may be described as one of unstable equilibrium ; and nothing 
in its archeological records points to any older period of settled progress. The physical 
geography of the continent presents in many respects such a contrast to that of Europe, as 
is seen in the steppes of Northern Asia, though with great navigable rivers, which only 
needed the appliances of modern civilization to make them for the New World what the 
Euphrates and the Tigris were to southern Asia in ancient centuries. Those vast table- 
lands, the great steppes of Mongolia and Independent Tartary, have ever been the haunts of 
predatory tribes by whom the civilization of southern Asia has been repeatedly overthrown ; 
and from thence came the Huns who ravaged the Roman world in its decline. Europe, on 
the contrary, nursed its youthful civilization among detached communities of its southern 
peninsulas on the Mediterranean Sea; and in later ages has repeatedly experienced the 
advantages of geographical isolation in the valleys of the Alps, in Norway and Denmark, 
in Portugal, the Netherlands, and the British Islands: where nations protected in their 
youth from predatory hordes, and sheltered during critical periods of change, have 
safely passed through their early stages of progress. 
All that we know, or can surmise of the nations of North America, presents a total 
contrast to this. In so far as the mystery of its prehistoric Mound-builders has been 
solved; we see there a people who had attained to a grade of civilization not greatly dis- 
similar to that of the village communities of New Mexico and Arizona; and who had 
settled down in the Ohio valley, not improbably while feudal Europe was still only 
emerging from mediæval rudeness: if not at an earlier date. The great river-valley 
was long occupied by populous urban centres of an industrious community. Agri- 
culture, though prosecuted only with the simplest implements, chiefly of wood and 
stone, must have been practised on an extensive scale. The primitive arts of the 
potter were improved; the value of the copper abounding in the remote region on 
the shores of Lake Superior was appreciated; though metallurgy in its practical applica- 
tions had scarcely entered on its first stage. The nation was.in its infancy; but it had 
