THOMAS. } THE MYSTERY OF THE MOUNDS OF OHIO. 59 
all or even the larger portion of them were built by Indians inhabiting 
the district when first visited by the whites, or by their ancestors. 
Hence the mystery which enshrouds them is deeper and much more 
difficult to penetrate than that which hangs about the antiquities of 
some of the other districts; in fact, they present probably the most dif- 
ficult problem for solution in this respect of any ancient works of our 
country. That some of the burial mounds, graves, and other works are 
to be attributed to Indians who entered this district after the Euro- 
peans had planted colonies in Canada and along the Atlantic coast is 
probably true, but that much the greater portion of the typical works 
belong to a more distant period must be conceded. It isa singular fact 
that in the latter half of the seventeenth century, when European ex- 
plorers began to penetrate {nto this region, what is now the State of 
Ohio was uninhabited. 
The Miami confederacy, inhabiting the southern shore of Lake Michigan, extended 
southeasterly to the Wabash. The Illinois confederacy extended down the eastern 
shore of the Mississippi to about where Memphis now stands. The Cherokees oceu- 
pied the slopes and valleys of the mountains about the borders of what is now East 
Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia. The great basin bounded north by Lake 
Erie, the Miamis, and the Illinois, west by the Mississippi, east by the Alleghanies, 
and ons by the headwaters of the streams that flow into the Gulf of Me Pxico, seems 
to have been uninhabited except by bands of Shawnees, and scarcely visited except 
by war parties of the Five Nations.! 
With the exception of some slight notices of the Erie or Cat Nation 
dwelling south of Lake Erie, the mere mention of the Tongarias (possibly 
but another name for the Eries, with whom Colden identifies them), lo- 
cated somewhere on the Ohio, and the tradition regarding the Tallegwi, 
the only history which remains to us regarding this region previous to 
the close of the seventeenth century, is to be gathered from the ancient 
monuments which dot its surface. Even conjecture can find but few 
pointers on this desert field to give direction to its flight. But it does 
not necessarily follow, because we are unable to determine the direction 
in which the goal we are seeking lies, that we cannot tell some of the 
directions in which it does not lie, and thus narrow the field of our in- 
vestigation. I will therefore venture to offer the following sugges- 
tions: 
As the evidence in regard to the antiquities of the northwestern, the 
southern, and the Appalachian districts points so decidedly to the In- 
dians as the authors, I think we may assume that the works of Ohio 
are attributable to the same race. As they bear a strong resemblance 
in several respects tothe West Virginia and North Carolina works, and 
as the geographical positions of the defensive works indicate pressure 
from the north and north-west, we are perhaps justified in excluding 
from consideration all tribes known to have had their principal seats 
north of the Ohio in historic times, «xcept the Eries, which form an un- 
certain and so far indeterminable factor in the problem. 
‘Early Notices of the Indians of Ohio, by M. F. Force, 1879, p. 3. 
