64 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



an evidence of migration from that direction. The fact that there 

 are mounds in Brazil bearing a remarkable likeness to those of the 

 Ohio valley has lately been pointed out by M. Netto (Archivo do 

 Museo nacional do Kio de Janeiro, Yol. VI., 1885), and certain 

 objects held to be of southern origin, or as indicating such origin for 

 those whose handiwork they were, have often been found in the 

 mounds of the Mississippi valley. But such objects may have been 

 obtained by commercial interchange, and the South American moimds 

 may be of independent origin, or perhaps the work of refugees who 

 fled from the north after the defeat of the " Mound-builders " and 

 their dispersion. Perhaps the best view of the matter is that the 

 " Mound-builders " were a vast confederacy, similar perhaps to the 

 great league of the Iroquois, or to the combination which existed 

 between the kings of Mexico, Tezcuco, and Tlacopan, in the time of 

 Montezuma. This league may have consisted of many tribes, and 

 the art of mound-building may have been a foreign graft from more 

 southern peoples ; but this is doubtful. 



Many writers have professed to see in the Pueblos Indians of 

 New Mexico the modern representatives of the old Mound-builders. 

 If this be true, the Mound-builders must have spoken a dialect akin 

 to some of the numerous Athapascan languages, or these survivors 

 of that ancient people must have adopted such a language instead of 

 their former tongue. For a comparison of the Pueblos dialects 

 (Tesuques, Jemez, Zuni, &c.) with the Navaho, Xecorilla, Apache, 

 and other languages, with Athapascan affinities leads to this con- 

 clusion. It may, as Mr. Hale suggests, be philology which will 

 finally settle the much vexed question of the origin of the peoples 

 known as Mound-builders. 



Our present knowledge is not sufficient to entitle us to speak with 

 certainty regarding the origin of the numerous tribes who occupied 

 the Pacific coast frohi California to Alaska ; it is very pi'obable that 

 a great mixing has taken place hei'e, and only long and careful study 

 of these languages can aid us in solving the question of their origin. 



We now turn to the populations of Mexico and Central America. 

 Since the day when Father Duran in 1585 expressed the opinion 

 that they were the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, human ingenuity has 

 been almost exhausted in suggesting possible origins for these intei'est- 

 ing peoples. It is needless, perhaps, to observe that all theories 



