256 DAVENPORT ACADKMV OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 



"Excluding such remains as are due to Europeans, and are post-Columbian, I 

 hold that all the ancient artificial works found in the Mississippi Valley and Gulf 

 States are to be attributed to the Indians found in this country at the time of the 

 discovery and their ancestors. By this limitation of the term 'Indians' I exclude 

 the Toltec, Aztec, and other civilized people of Mexico and Central America."* 



The position thus assumed by Major Powell, and maintained by 

 Prof. Thomas, finds recent and strong support in William H. Dall, 

 an honorary Curator of the National Museum, who, in his edition of 

 Marquis De Nadaillac's "Prehistoric America," just issued from the 

 .•Vmerican press, thus states his conclusions upon this interesting 

 question : 



"In closing this chapter, what, it may be asked, are we to believe was the char- 

 acter of the race to which, for the purpose of clearness, we have for the time being 

 applied the term 'Mound-builder?' The answer must be, they were no more nor 

 less than the immediate predecessors, in blood and culture, of the Indians described 

 by De .Soto's chronicler and other early explorers — the Indians who inhabited the 

 region of the mounds at the time of the discovery by civilized men."t 



The remarkable unanimity among these gentlemen, in their expres- 

 sions of opinion, clearly indicates concerted action, and a settled policy 

 in the management of this department of the Smithsonian Institution, 

 to force this peculiar theory upon the attention and secure its accept- 

 ance by the scientific world. 



Another class of archaeologists as strongly maintain the opjiosite 

 theory, that the Mound-builders were more advanced in civilization 

 than the American Indian, and hence have endeavored to trace them 

 to a Mexican origin, or to some earlier common ancestry. The leader- 

 ship on this side must be accorded to Messrs. Squier and Davis, who, 

 in their great work uj^on "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Val- 

 ley." thus state their conclusions : 



"Without undertaking to ]5oint out the affinities, or to indicate the probable 

 i)rigin of the builders of the western monuments, and the cause of their final dis- 

 appearance, we may venture to suggest that the facts so far collected point to a 

 connection, more or less intimate, betvveen the r^e of the mounds and the semi- 

 civilized nations wliich formerly had their seats among the sierras of Mexico and 

 Peru, and who erected the imposing structures which, from their number, vastness, 

 and mysterious significance, invest the central portion of the continent with an 

 interest no less absorbing than that which attaches to the Nile. These nations 

 alone, of all found in possession of the continent by the European discoverers, were 

 essentially stationary and agricultural in their habits — conditions indispensable to 

 large populations, to fixedness of institutions, and to any considerable advance in 



* American Antiquarian, March, 1885, p. 6$. 



t" Prehistoric America," by Marquis De Xadaillac, p. 130. 



