MORGAN] VOLUNTARY WITHDRAWAL. 219 
existed without either flocks and herds, or field agriculture with the use of 
the plow. In some favored areas, where the facilities for irrigation were 
unusual, a considerable population has been developed upon horticulture; 
but no traces of irrigating canals have been found in connection with the 
works of the Mound-Builders. Furthermore, it was unnecessary in their 
areas. Transplanted froma comparatively mild to a cold climate, they must 
have found the struggle for existence intensified. Like the Cibolans in '540, 
it was doubtless at all times equally true of them, that “they had barely 
provisions enough for themselves.” And yet there is no cereal equal to 
maize in the rich reward it returns even for poor cultivation. It grows in 
the hill, can be eaten green as well as ripe, and is hardy and prolific. At 
the same time, while it can be made the basis of human subsistence, it is 
not sufficient of itself for the maintenance of vigorous, healthful life. Vege- 
tables and game were requisite to complete the supply of food. The difhi- 
culties in the way of production set a limit to their numbers. These also 
explain the small number of their settlements in the large areas over which 
they spread. Although they found native copper on the south shore of Lake 
Superior, and beat it into chisels and a species of pointed spade, the number 
of copper tools found is small, much too small to lead to the supposition 
that it sensibly influenced their cultivation. A pick pointed with a stone 
chisel, a spade of wood, and a triangular piece of flint set in a wooden 
handle and used as a knife, were as perfect implements as they were able 
to command. Horticulture practiced thus rudely was necessarily of limited 
productiveness. 
The idea has been advanced that ‘‘the condition of society among the 
Mound-Builders was not that of freemen, or, in other words, that the state 
possessed absolute power over the lives and fortunes of its subjects.”? It is 
a sufficient answer to this remarkable passage that a people unable to dig a 
well or build a dry stone wall myst have been unable to establish political 
society, which was necessary to the existence of a state. 
From the absence of all traditionary knowledge of the Mound-Builders 
among the tribes found east of the Mississippi, an inference arises that the 
1 Foster’s Pre-historic Races, ete., p. 386. 
