MORGAN. ] THEY PROBABLY CAME FROM NEW MEXICO. 201 
THE PROBABLE CENTER FROM WHICH THE MOUND-BUILDERS EMIGRATED INTO THESE 
AREAS. 
It is well known that the highest type of Village Indian life was found 
in Yucatan, Chiapas, and Guatemala, and that the standard declines with 
the advance of the type northward into Mexico and New Mexico, thus 
tending to show that it was best adapted to a warm climate; but it does not 
follow that we must look to these distant regions for the original home of 
the Mound-Builders. The nearest point from which they could have been 
derived was New Mexico, and that is rendered the probable point from 
physical considerations, and still more from their greater nearness in con- 
dition to the Village Indians of New Mexico, below whom they must be 
ranked. The migrations of the American Indian tribes were gradual move- 
ments under the operation of physical causes, occupying long periods of 
time and with slow progress. There is no reason for supposing, in any 
number of cases, that they were deliberate migrations with a definite desti- 
nation. With maize, beans, and squashes (the staples of an established 
horticulture), the Village Indians were independent of fish and game as 
primary means of subsistence, and with the former they possessed superior 
resources for migrating over the wide expanses of open prairies between 
New Mexico and the Mississippi. The movement of the tribes who con- 
structed the earth-works in question can be explained as a natural spread of 
Village Indians from the valley of the Rio Grande, or the San Juan, to the 
shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and thence northward to the valley of the 
Ohio, which was both easy and feasible. Its successful extension for any 
considerable distance north of the gulf was rendered improbable, by reason 
of the increasing severity of the climate. There are some reasons for sup- 
posing that climate delayed the movement for centuries, and finally defeated 
the attempt to transplant permanently even the New Mexican type of village 
life into a northern temperature so much lower during the greater part of 
the year. 
A number of archeologists, who have considered the question of the 
probable anterior home of the Mound-Builders, are inclined to derive them 
