EXPLANATORY AND INTRODUCTORY. O 



while it startles the reader with the magnitude and 

 strangeness of the questions suggested, appals him 

 with their complexity and difficulty. 



To those who, like the writer of these pages, have 

 long been familiar with the manners of the American 

 aborigines and with the antiquities of America, the 

 facts detailed in such publications as LyelFs " Anti- 

 quity of Man," Christie and Lartet's " Keliquise 

 Aquitanicse," Morlot's Memoirs on the Swiss Lake 

 Habitations, and Dupont's on the Belgian Caves, 

 appear like a new edition of a familiar story ; and as 

 Dr. Wilson has well shown in his " Pre-historic Man," 

 existing humanity, as it appears in the native Ameri- 

 can, is little else than a survival of primeval man in 

 Europe. In short, the early voyagers who first met 

 the American tribes really held conference with their 

 own ancestors, or with men among whom still lived 

 manners and customs extinct in Europe before the 

 dawn of history. Why, then, should not that method 

 of reasoning from existing causes to explain ancient 

 facts, by which geology has achieved its greatest 

 triumphs, be applied to the extinct tribes of the old 

 world ? Why should not the enormous mass of exist- 

 ing information as to rude man in America be em- 

 ployed to illustrate and explain conditions long since 

 passed away in the eastern continent ? 



To attain successfully such a result requires some- 

 thing more than the desultory and imperfect refer- 

 ences which have been casually made by writers on 

 European archaeology. It requires that large and 



