74 SIE DANIEL WILSON 



level way between the ditches, eighty feet wide, and at this point it measures about thirty 

 feet from the bottom of the ditch to the summit. The area of the enclosure is almost per- 

 fectly level, so that during rain-floods the water stands at a uniform height nearly to the 

 edge of the ditch. 



The skulls, both of the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods of Europe, have been suc- 

 cessfully appealed to for indications of the intellectual capacity of the ancient races ; and 

 similar evidence has been employed to test that of the Mound-Builders. But ancient 

 mounds and earthworks were habitually resorted to at long subsequent dates as favourite 

 places of interment ; so that skulls derived from modern graves are not infrequently 

 ascribed to the ancient race ; and much difficulty has been found in agreeing on a typical 

 mound skull. Even after eliminating those derived from superficial interments, a very 

 noticeable diversity is found in the comparatively few undoubtedly genuine mound 

 skulls, which, as I long since suggested, may be due to the actual presence of two essen- 

 tially distinct races among the ancient settlers in the Ohio valley.' It seems to accord 

 with the unmistakable traces of intellectual progress of a kind foreign to the attainments 

 of any known race of the North American continent, thus found in association with other 

 arts and methods of work not greatly in advance of those of the Indian savage. The 

 only satisfactory solution of the problem seems to present itself in the assuinption of the 

 existence among them of a theocratic order, like the priests of ancient Egypt, the 

 Brahmins of India, or the Incas of Peru, under whom the vanished race of the Ohio 

 valley — Tallegcwi, Natchez, Alleghans, or other American aborigines — executed their vast 

 geometrical earthworks with such mathematical accuracy. 



The contents of the earthworks of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys show that the 

 copper, found in a pure metallic condition at various points around Lake Superior, was 

 not unknown to their constructors. But in this they had little advantage over the 

 Iroquois and Algonkin tribes, in whose grave-moirnds copper axes and spear-heads 

 occasionally occur. It is even possible that working parties were despatched from time 

 to time to the ancient copper mines on the Kewenaw peninsula, to bring back supplies of 

 the prized malleable rock, which could be bent and hammered into a shape that no other 

 stone was susceptible of But the labours of the native miners were inadequate to pro- 

 vide supplies that could in any degree suffice to displace the flint or quartzite of the 

 implement maker. One use, however, has been sirggested for the copper, in relation to 

 the labours of the flint-workers. Mr. George Ercol Sellers, whose researches among the 

 worksho^js of the ancient tool-makers have thrown much light on their processes, was 

 led, from careful observation of some of their xmfinished work, to the opinion that cop- 

 per was in special request in the operations of the flint-flakers. After referring to the 

 well-known use of horn or bone-flakers, he thus proceeds : " From the narrowness of the 

 cuts in some of the specimens, and the thickness of the stone where they terminate, I 

 have inclined to the belief that, at the period they were made, the Aborigines had some- 

 thing stronger than bone to operate with, as I have never been able to imitate some of 

 their deep heavy cuts with it ; but I have succeeded by using a copper point, which pos- 

 sesses all the properties of the bone, in holding to its work without slipping, and has the 

 strength for direct thrust reqirired." ' No copper tool, however, was recovered by him 



1 Prehistoric Man, 3rd Ed. ii. 132. '' Smithsonian Reports, part i., 1885, p 880. 



