ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT. XLIII 



Since the days of Harris and Madison the discussion of this 

 ■ subject has gone forward on the hues which their differences 

 defined. Those who hokl that the Indians did not buiki the 

 mounds are far from agreeing as to who did buikl them. Many, 

 hke Mr. John T. Short, author of "The North Americans of 

 Antiquity," follow Harris in the direction of the Toltecs, who, 

 it is assumed, occupied the Mississippi basin prior to their 

 appearance in the valley of Anahuac on the summit of the 

 mountains of Mexico. Wilson, in his " Prehistoric Man," argues, 

 on the contrary, that the Toltecs came from the south, and that 

 the Aztecs went from the north after building our mysterious 

 mounds.- Dawson, in his "Fossil Man," holds that the mounds 

 were built by the Tallegwi, a primitive peo23le reconstructed 

 from the traditions of the Delawares ; Lewis H. Moi-gan ex- 

 pressed the opinion that the makers of the mounds were 

 related to the Puelilo tribes of New Mexico ; Squier and Davis, 

 Avho, in their "Ancient Monuments," exercised a world-wide 

 influence on this question partly because their conclusions 

 were published under the powerful authority of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, set forth their views as follows : 



"We may venture to suggest that the facts thus far col- 

 lected point to a connection more or less intimate between the 

 race of the mounds and the semicivilized nations which for- 

 merly had their seats among the Sierras of Mexico, upon the 

 plains of Central America and Peru, and who erected the 

 imposing structures which from their number, vastness, and 

 m}'sterious significance, invest the central portion of the con- 

 tinent with an interest not less absorbing than that which 

 attaches to the valley of the Nile." 



But the assumption that the mounds scattered irregularly 

 over the face of this country from Florida to the Red River 

 of the North were the work of a lost and nameless race, and 

 that the deposits of Indian remains within them were the result 

 . of "intrusive burials," has been losing- ground before recent 

 evidence accumulated by archeologists. The spade and pick, 

 in the hands of patient and sagacious investigators, have every 

 year brought to light facts tending more and more strongly to 

 prove that the mounds, defensive, mortuary and domiciliary, 



