BENSHAw.] MANATEE. 127 



writers have not dared to trust to the evidence afforded by the original 

 carvings or their facsimiles, but have preferred to take the word of the 

 authors of the "Ancient Monuments " for beauties which were perhaps 

 hidden from their own eyes. 



Following the lead of the authors of the "Ancient Monuments," also, 

 with respect to theories of origin, these carvings of supposed foreign 

 animals are offered as affording iucoatestible evidence that the Mound- 

 Builders must have migrated from or have had intercourse, direct 

 or indirect, with the i"egions known to harbor these animals. Were it 

 not, indeed, for the evident artistic similarity between these carvings of 

 supposed foreign animals and those of common domestic forms — a sim- 

 ilarity which, as Squier and Davis remark, render them " indistinguish- 

 able, so far as material and workmanship are concerned, from an entire 

 class of remains found in the mounds " — the presence of most of them could 

 readily be accounted for through the agency of trade, the far reaching na- 

 ture of which, even among the wilder tribes, is well understood. Trade, 

 for instance, in the case of an animal like the manatee, found no more than 

 a thousand miles distant from the point where the sculpture was dug up, 

 would offer a possible if not a probable solution of the matter. But in- 

 dependently of the fact that the practically identical character of all the 

 car\nngs render the theory of trade quite untenable, the very pertinent 

 question arises, why, if these supposed manatee pipes were dei'ived by 

 trade from other regions, have not similar carvings been found in those 

 regions, as, for instance, in Florida and the Gulf States, a region of which 

 the archaeology is fairly well known. Primitive man, as Is the case with 

 his civilized brother, trades usually out of his abundance ; so that not 

 seven, but many times seven, manatee pipes should be found at the cen- 

 ter of trade. As it is, the known home of the manatee has furnished 

 no carvings either of the manatee or of anything suggestive of it. 



The possibility of the manatee having in past times possessed a wider 

 range than at present seems to have been overlooked. But as a matter 

 of fact the probability that the manatee ever ranged, in comparatively 

 modern times at least, as far north as Ohio without leaving other traces 

 of its presence than a few sculptured representations at the hands of 

 an ancient people is too small to be entertained. 



Nor is the supposition that the Mound-Builders held contemporaneous 

 possession of the country embraced in the range of the animals whose 

 efiBgies are supposed to have been exhumed from their graves worthy of 

 serious discussion. If true, it would involve the contemporaneous oc- 

 cupancy by the Mound-Builders, not only of the Southern United States 

 but of the region stretching into Southern Mexico, and even, accord- 

 ing to the ideas of some authors, into Central and South America, an 

 area which, it is needless to say, no known facts will for a moment 

 justify us in supposing a people of one blood to have occupied con- 

 temporaneously. 



Assuming, therefore, that the sculptures in question are the work of 



