40 TKAXSACTIOXS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. IV. 



prove to be the case with regard to the fabulous age ascribed to what are 

 called palaeolithic implements. By the end of the last century Voltaire and 

 his school were wont to adduce the pretended enormous antiquity of the 

 Egyptian monuments as an irrefutable evidence of the inaccuracy of the 

 Mosaical chronology. Time went on, and the days came when Cham- 

 pollion and Sir. H. Rawlinson deciphered the Egyptian and Assyrian 

 inscriptions. Then the very same works which fifty years before were 

 instanced as an excuse for the encyclopedists' sneers at the Scriptures 

 were converted into the best extrinsical proof of the accuracy of the 

 Mosaical account. 



I am not an archaeologist, much less a geologist. Yet, upon entering into 

 a question in connection wherewith so many strange and, to me, evidently 



higher culture status than the Indians. It is true that works and papers on American Archzeology 

 are full of statements to the contrary which are generally Ijasecl on the theory that the mound- 

 builden; belonged to a race of much higher culture than the Indians. Yet, when the facts on 

 which this opinion is based are examined with sober scientific care, the splendid fabric which has 

 been built upon them by that great workman, imagination, fades from sight. . . The links 

 discovered directly connecting the Indians and the mound-builders are so numerous and so well 

 established that there should be no longer any hesitancy in accepting the theory that the two are 

 one and the same people. . . The testimony of the mounds is very decidedly against the 

 theory that the mound-builders were Mayas or Mexicans" IVori- in Mound Exploration of the 

 Bur. Etluio!,, Washington, i88j, p. 1 1-13. To corroborate by actual facts my position on this 

 question, I glean from the same paper the following extracts : — "In another Wisconsin mound 

 , . . was found lying at the bottom on the original surface of the ground, near the center, a 

 genuine, regularly-formed gunflint. In another 7enneisee mound some 6 feet high and which 

 showed no signs of disturbance, an old fashioned horn handled case-knife was discovered near the 

 bottom. . . From a group in Northern Mississippi in the locality formerly occupied by the 

 Chickasaw were obtained a silver plate with the Spanish coat of arms stamped upon it, and the 

 iron portions of a saddle. At the bottom of a North Carolina mound, part of an iron blade 

 and an iron awl were discovered in the hands of the principal personage buried therein. . . 

 At the bottom of an undisturbed Pennsylvania mound, accompanying the original interment 

 . was a joint of a large cane wrapped in pieces of thin and evenly wrought silver foil, 

 smoothly cut in fancy figures." Ibid. p. 9 and 10. I have underlined the names of the states 

 mentioned to show that mound-building in post-Columbian times was by no means local or 

 exceptional. To the above should be added the still more significant fact that in a small undis- 

 turbed mound in east Tennessee a stone with letters of the Cherokee alphabet rudely carved 

 upon it was lately discovered by a party of American explorators. 1 he problem of the Ohio 

 Mounds, p. 37, note I. Dr. D. G. Brinton in his latest work. The American Race, p. 87-88, 

 admits that "there is, to say the least, a strong probability that they [the modern Muskokis] are 

 the descendants of the constructors of those ancient works" [namely, the mounds in their 

 vicinity]. Over and above the authorities already quoted, here is how Dr. J. W. Powell, the 

 learned head of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, ends a review of an import- 

 ant paper by Mr. W. H. Holmes : — " This eliminates one more source of error cherished by 

 lovers of the mysterious to establish and exalt a supposed race of Mound-Builders." Third 

 Ann. Rep. Btireau of Ethnology, p. Ixiii. ; Washington, 1884. Nobody will deny that that 

 gentleman, owing to his official position, enjoys opportunities of judging of the merits or demerits 

 of a cause of which few indeed can boast. Lastly, it must be added that unlimited evidence goes 

 to prove that in almost every case the modern Indians occupy the exact territory where their 

 forefathers lived when they first came in contact with the whites. 



