50 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [mARCH 9, 



Superior to the Gulf, and from the Prau'ies on the west to the 

 Alleghanies on the east. These prove the long occupation of 

 the Mississippi Yalley by a people or peoples, who were seden- 

 tary and agricultural, who had many fixed places of residence, 

 and built towns of large size. It has been asserted that not 

 less than ten thousand of these ancient monuments exist within 

 tlie State of Ohio, and it is claimed with a show of probability, 

 that the population which left these monuments was not only 

 far greater than that of the Indians at the time of the advent 

 of the whites, Imt that it was equal to the present population of 

 the same area. For the accumulation of so great a population, 

 the removal of the forest, the establishment of a system of cul- 

 tivation which should provide means of subsistence, and the 

 construction of even the monuments which now remain, must 

 have required many centuries, and still other centuries must 

 have elapsed in the gradual decay of this population and the 

 return of the coimtry to a state of nature. 



2. — All the monuments were not only unoccupied, but had 

 been so long abandoned that they were covered and concealed 

 by a dense, mature and even venerable forest growth. Trees 

 of the largest size and having an age of many hundred years 

 were everywhere found growing on them, and the roots of 

 these trees covered the decaying trunks of their immediate pre- 

 decessors which died before they began to live. Harris, who in 

 1803 examined the earthworks at Marietta, states that the evi- 

 dence was clear that two generations of forest trees, and per- 

 haps many more, had grown upon these works since their aban- 

 donment ; an interval of time that could not be less than a 

 thousand years. 



3. — The so-called Indians found by the whites inhabiting the 

 Mississippi Valley, had no knowledge nor traditions of the 

 builders of the monuments, and were in complete ignorance of 

 the purposes for which they were constructed. 



4. — The habits and mode of life of the modern Indian are 

 very different from those of their predecessors, and if their de- 

 scendants, tliey have greatly changed and degenerated. The 

 ancient inhabitants of the country worked the copper mines of 

 Lake Superior, rudely, it is true, but for a long period of time, 

 and they liad so thoroughly explored the country, that the 

 traces of ancient mining were the chief guides in the subse- 

 quent operations of the whites, The mounds of debris piled 



