THE MOUNDS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. Bg) 
mounds with those that are known to have been made and used by the 
recent Indians. This has not proceeded from any failure to appreci- 
ate the full ethnical significance of these resemblances, nor has it been 
caused by any lack of material; but it has been the result of the limits 
voluntarily placed upon the investigation. At some future time it may 
be necessary to revert to this subject, and then it will be competent to 
show that the ‘vestiges of art” found in the mounds ‘do not excel in 
any respect those of the Indian tribes known to history.”* In the 
meantime we can well afford to content ourselves with this brief and 
cursory examination into the early records. Summing up the results 
that have been attained, it may be safely said, that so far from there be- 
ing any @ prior? reason why the red Indians could not have erected these 
works, the evidence shows conclusively that in New York and the Gulf 
States they did build mounds and embankments that are essentially 
of the same character as those found in Ohio. And not only is this 
true, but it has also been shown that whilst for reasons that have been 
given, we are without any historical account of the origin of the Ohio 
system of works—the only one about which there seems to be any dis- 
pute—yet there can be no doubt that one of the more elaborate of them, 
viz: the mound at Circleville, in which were found articles of iron and 
silver, was built after contact with the whites, and therefore by the re- 
cent Indians. 
In view of these results, and of the additional fact that these same 
Indians are the only people, except the whites, who, so far as we know, 
have ever held the region over which these works are scattered, it is 
believed that we are fully justified in abandoning the seemingly nega- 
tive position occupied at the outset of this argument, and in claiming 
that the mounds and inclosures of Ohio, like those in New York and 
the Gulf States, were the work of the red Indians of historic times, or 
of their immediate ancestors. To deny this conclusion, and to accept 
its alternative, ascribing these remains to a mythical people of a differ- 
ent civilization, is to reject a simple and satisfactory explanation of a 
fact in favor of one that is far-fetched and incomplete; and this is 
neither science nor logic. 
*J. W. Powell, in Transactions of the Anthropological Society of Washington, p. 116: 
Pamphlet, 1881. 
