164 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



Our knowledge of the Indians who inhabited the Piedmont area 

 of South Carolina is imperfect, derived mainly from the writings of 

 a few travelers and traders whose observations were made between 

 two hundred and three hundred years ago. and they afford us little 

 information regarding the culture of the people. The artifacts here 

 figured are the same as those found in the Mississippi Valley belonging 

 to the so called Mound Builder culture, the most highly developed in 

 North America north of Mexico, and the recognition of their affinity 

 is most important. If the people who made them may be classed with 

 the Mound Builders, they were no longer mere hunters and fishers 

 but had in fact reached the agricultural stage. They constituted a 

 marginal area of that great mound building culture, which, in prehis- 

 toric times, was one of the highest and most widely extended in North 

 America, and to a knowledge of this a more extensive examination 



Fig. 1890. — Tugala Creek. Piedmont region of South Carolin.H. 

 Small globula vase luted to lip of a larger. 



of these and similar objects will vastly contribute. No addition to 

 our knowledge of the Mound Builders from documentary sources is, 

 of coiu'se, to be looked for. and we must therefore rely upon archeo- 

 logical investigation to add new ]«ges to our limited knowledge of 

 them and through them to our knowledge of prehistoric man in 

 America. There are numerous mounds of consideral)le size in the 

 region we are discussing which demand investigation and many more 

 artifacts may undoubtedly be obtained from them. It is highly im- 

 probable that these mounds were made by the Indians found in 

 possession when the country was first visited by white men. They are 

 rather to be attributed to stocks related to those of the Mississippi 

 V^alley which, from causes unknown, had drifted eastward in pre- 

 historic times. Only the archeologist can solve the ])roblem which 

 these mysterious peo]:»le present — the Mound Builders of the Pied- 

 mont, whose nearest relatives were the better known Motuid Builders 

 of the Mississippi Valley. 



