48 TRANSACTIONS OF THE MARCH 9, 



to prove the soil was now for the first time opened to the sunlight. 



Thus several generations passed, and in time the invading 

 hosts pressed through the great water-gap which connected the 

 Hudson with the Lakes, or crossed the Aileghanies from Penn- 

 sylvania and Virginia, and took possession of the basin of the 

 Ohio. Here, too, they found an unbroken forest, and the wan- 

 dering and stealthy savage in full possession. Ultimately, how- 

 ever, he was compelled to yield to the superior number and 

 intelligence of the whites, and within fifty years from the first 

 struggle on the " dark and bloody ground " of Kentucky, he 

 liad practically abandoned all the territory east of the Missis- 

 sippi. 



When the forests were opened in this region, it was for the 

 first time discovered that the nomadic Indians were not autoch- 

 thonous, though commonly called aborigines, and that they had 

 been preceded by a sedentary and partially civilized people, who 

 had cultivated the soil, worked the mines and oil wells, and left 

 behind them a series of monuments which are scattered over all 

 the region lying between the Lakes and the Gulf. These monu- 

 ments consisted of mounds, walls and other structures, com- 

 posed of earth or rough stone, and among them tlie mounds 

 (chiefly sepulchral) were so conspicuous that the people by 

 whom they were constructed, for want of other designation, 

 were called the Mound Builders. 



The records of this ancient people (or peoples), with the les- 

 sons they teach in regard to their degree and kind of culture 

 and their ethnical relations, will be referred to again. 



Meantime we pass to notice a still more extensive and inter- 

 esting series of monuments, which attest the ancient occupation 

 of America i)y other and more civilized races. 



Long before the whites had entered the Yalley of the Mis- 

 sissippi and had discovered the first traces of the Mound Buil- 

 ders, the Spaniards had invaded Mexico and Peru, and found 

 there a civilization in some respects superior to their own; a 

 civilization which extended throughout Mexico, the Isthmus, 

 and the west coast of South America to the frontiers of Chili ; 

 that had produced cities rivaling in extent and the magnificence of 

 their buildings those of the Old World, cities that were lighted 

 at night, guarded by police, that contained palaces, temples, 

 courts of justice, schools of law, medicine and literature, with 

 public gardens, aqueducts, fountains and artificial lakes. 



