ARCHAEOLOGY. (AMERICAN). 



15 



strides beyond the culture of the earlier Pa- 

 laeolithic age. The only station in America 

 that has furnished an ample line of really and 

 exclusively primitive specimens, is that of the 

 Trenton gravels, in New Jersey. They were of 

 a date much earlier than the extinction of the 

 native American horse and the mastodon. 

 There is nothing unlikely, therefore, in the re- 

 ported discoveries of man's pointed flints and 

 his bones in place along with the remains 

 of these quadrupeds. There is no a priori ar- 

 gument against mastodon mounds and pipes, 

 but their authenticity is merely a question of 

 evidence. The material of which implements 

 are made supplies us data. All of the oldest 

 implements are manufactured from rocks 

 of the locality. When, therefore, we find a 

 weapon of a material not obtainable in the lo- 

 cality, as the obsidian of the Yellowstone Park 

 in Ohio, and the black slate of Vancouver's 

 Island in Delaware, we have a sure indication 

 that it belongs to a period of development con- 

 siderably later than the earliest. The exten- 

 sion of cultivated plants, as of maize and to- 

 bacco plants of Southern Mexico, which were 

 cultivated from Canada to Patagonia is also 

 evidence of considerable development. 



Another source of evidence is in the con- 

 sideration of languages, of which there are 

 about eighty stocks in North and one hundred 

 in South America, some of them having scores 

 of dialects spoken over wide areas. Nothing 

 less than a vast antiquity, stretching back tens 

 of thousands of years, can explain this exceed- 

 ing diversity of languages and their dialects. 



More attention has been paid to the physical 

 than to the linguistic data of the native Ameri- 

 cans, but with not more satisfactory results. 

 The most accurate examinations of their physi- 

 cal characteristics show that, with a great 

 diversity in details, essentially the same type 

 prevails over the whole of both continents, and 

 Prof. J. Kollmann, of Basle, has concluded, 

 from analysis of the cranioscopic formulas of 

 the most ancient American skulls, that the 

 physical identity of the American race is as 

 extended in time as it is in space ; and we 

 may declare that throughout the whole conti- 

 nent, and from its earliest appearance in time, 

 it is and has been one, as distinct in type as 

 any other race, and from its isolation probably 

 the purest in all its racial traits. 



The geological evidences are such that no 

 one who examines them will now deny that 

 man lived in both North and South America 

 immediately after the Glacial epoch, and that 

 he was the contemporary of many species now 

 extinct. Some discoveries are said to place 

 the human species in America previous to the 

 appearance of the glaciers; but they have not 

 been of a character to convince the archaaolo- 

 gist. In the light of present knowledge we 

 can not assume any immigration from Africa or 

 Southwestern Europe, or Polynesia ; and zoolo- 

 gists hesitate, from the lack of other types near 

 enough to him in development, to consider man 



an autochthon in the New World. From the 

 theories of man's origin at a primal center, 

 which is the one most agreeable to anthropolo- 

 gists, the earliest Americans must have made 

 their advent on this continent as immigrants. 

 But we cannot assign the position of the im- 

 migration on the scale of geologic time, till we 

 have more complete discoveries. 



Work of the Bureau of Ethnology . The Bureau 

 ot Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution 

 having undertaken an exploration of the mounds 

 in the United States on an extensive scale, has 

 so far made a prominent feature of its plan 

 the search for and study of the various forms 

 and types of the works and minor vestiges of art, 

 and the marking out of the different archaeo- 

 logical districts as disclosed by investigation. 

 Operations have been carried on in Southwest- 

 ern Wisconsin and the adjoining districts of 

 Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois, the northeastern 

 part of Missouri, the western part of Southern 

 Illinois, Southeastern Missouri, the eastern part 

 of Arkansas, certain points in Northern and 

 Western Mississippi, the Kanawha valley of 

 West Virginia, East Tennessee, Western North 

 Carolina, Northern Georgia, and a few points 

 in Northern Florida. Some work has also been 

 done in New York, Ohio, Kentucky, West Ten- 

 nessee, Alabama, and Southwestern Georgia. 

 Hundreds of groups have been examined, and 

 in most cases surveyed, platted, and described. 

 More than 2,000 mounds have been explored, 

 including almost every known type as to form, 

 and not Jess than 38,000 specimens have been 

 obtained. Some singular and unexpected dis- 

 coveries have been made of objects in rela- 

 tively modern styles. Some of these things 

 clearly pertained to intrusive burials, but a 

 large portion of them appear to have been 

 placed in the mounds at the time they were 

 constructed, and in connection with the origi- 

 nal interment. From the data so far obtained 

 by the bureau and other workers in the same 

 field, the conclusions are drawn, according to 

 the report of Dr. Cyrus Thomas, that the 

 mound-builders of the area designated con- 

 sisted of a number of tribes or peoples bearing 

 about the same relations to one another and 

 occupying about the same status in culture as 

 the Indian tribes that inhabited the country 

 when it was first visited by Europeans; that 

 the archaeological districts, as determined by 

 the investigations, conform to a certain extent 

 to the localities of the tribes or groups of cognate 

 Indians at the time of the discovery ; and that 

 the theory is not justified by trustworthy dis- 

 coveries that the builders belonged to a highly- 

 civilized race, or that they were people who 

 had attained a higher status in culture than the 

 Indians. It also appears that each tribe adopted 

 several different methods of burial, at which 

 often some kind of a religious or superstitious 

 ceremony was performed, in which tire played 

 a conspicuous part ; but there is no evidence 

 that human sacrifices were offered. The cus- 

 tom of removing the flesh before the final 



