GLIMPSES OP PiiE-HISTORIC TIMES. 51 



In some parts of the western territories the manner 

 in which these are perched on almost inaccessible 

 cliffs affords a testimony to the skill and enterprise 

 of these people, and an affecting evidence of their 

 struggle against the encroachments of the more war- 

 like and barbarous tribes. They were clever weavers, 

 potters, and workers in copper and silver, and had 

 made an amount of progress in the arts of life which 

 in Mexico astonished their Spanish conquerors. They 

 held all the great fertile plains and tablelands be- 

 tween the Eocky Mountains and the Alleghanies, and 

 had extended themselves to the mineral districts of 

 Lake Superior, where they worked extensive mines of 

 copper and silver. They have even left traces of their 

 presence in the valley of the St. Lawrence. But they 

 held their wide possessions by a precarious tenure. 

 Their arms were not superior to those of the ruder 

 races that surrounded them. Tradition and their 

 buried skeletons testify that they were of greater 

 physical strength than the savage tribes, and they 

 excelled in numbers, military skill, and the art of 

 fortification. Still they were subject to continual 

 raids and attacks, and before the discovery of America, 

 the Aztecs, a people of truly American physiognomy 

 and of savage instincts, had conquered Mexico, while 

 the region of the western plains, the meeting-place of 

 the three great waves of immigration, and the Scy thia 

 of North America, rearing a numerous and bold popu- 

 lation of buffalo-hunters, had overwhelmed with its 

 swarms the northern mound-builders. These, when 



