1892-03.] NOTES ON THE WESTERN DENES. 39- 



, CHAPTER III. 



Stone Implements. 



Some scientists seem to have an innate fondness for the mysterious and 

 the insolvable. Upon the sHghtest pretext they deUght in creating difficul- 

 ties or propounding problems. They long for novelties and must soar 

 above the concepts of such weak-minded mortals as are naive enough to 

 pay any attention to the " Hebrew myths " of the creation of man and his 

 comparatively recent appearance on the scene of this world. Whereas in 

 modern times we have no authentically recorded instance of mound 

 building by American Aborigines,* and because some of those artificial 

 works are of considerable magnitude, they jump to the conclusion that 

 the so-called mound-builders must have been a very ancient race, more 

 advanced in civilization than the Indians of our days and altogether 

 different from them.f In like manner, because in Europe, and in some 

 parts of America stone implements have been discovered which are of a 

 particularly rude pattern, they infer that these remains being found in 

 river beds or, in Europe, imbedded in geological strata supposed to have 

 been formed at a very remote epoch prove the existence, not only of 

 prehistoric, but even of pre- Adamite man. Students who prefer to rely 

 on the authority of such an unerring guide as the Bible to following 

 modern savants through their ever shifting, if not conflicting, theories, 

 cannot but remark, I fancy, tliat, in the same way as the latest researches 

 tend to confirm the opinion of those unprejudiced antiquarians who from 

 the beginning doubted the great antiquity of the American mounds and 

 the extraneous nationality of their builders,:J: even so it must ultimately 



* As will appear from note X the Cherokees did erect mounds, though unobserved by the whites, 

 within the present century. 



t " So strong in fact is the hold which this theory . . . has taken of the minds of both 

 American and European archaeologists, that it not only biases their conclusions but also moulds 

 and modifies their nomenclature, and is thrust into their speculations and even into their descrip- 

 tions as though no longer a simple theory, but a conceded fact." Burial MoiniJs of the Northern 

 Section of the U. S. by Prof Cyrus Thomas ; Fifth Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol. p. 80. 



X Evidence corroborative of this assumption would fill many pages. Scientists in every way 

 qualified to speak on this subject and to whom nobody can refuse a hearing have clearly shown 

 the futility of the theory which ascribes the erection of the mounds to non-Indian races. Prof. 

 Cyrus Thomas, than whom I think there is no more reliable authority on the subject, lays down 

 as one of the conclusions derived from the mound explorations under the auspices of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution that " nothing trustworthy has been discovered to justify the theory that the 

 mound builders belonged to a highly civilized race, or that they were a people who had attained a 



