116 REPORT— 1876. 



implements and ornaments, disks, and tubes — pearl, shell, and silver Leads, mora 

 or less inj ured by the tire— ornaments cut in mica, ornamental pottery, and numbers 

 of elaborate carvings in stone, mostly forming pipes for smoking. The metallic 

 articles are all formed by hammering, but the execution is very good ; plates of 

 mica are found cut into scrolls and circles ; the pottery, of which ver\' few remains 

 have been found, is far superior to that of any of the Indian tribes, since Dr. Wilson 

 is of opinion that it must have been formed on a wheel, as it is often of uniform 

 thickness throughout (sometimes not more than one sixth of an inch), polished, 

 and ornamented with scrolls and figures of birds and flowers in delicate relief. 

 But the most instructive objects are the sculptured stone pipes, representing not 

 only various easily recognizable animals, but also human heads, so well executed 

 that they appear to be portraits. Among the animals, not only are such native 

 forms as the panther, bear, otter, wolf, beaver, raccoon, heron, crow, turtle, frog, 

 rattlesnake, and many others well represented, but also the manatee, which perhaps 

 then ascended the Mississippi as it now does the Amazon, and the toucan, which 

 could hardly have been obtained nearer than Mexico. The sculptured heads 

 are especially remarkable, because they present to us the features of an intellectual 

 and civilized people. The nose in some is perfectly straight, and neither promi- 

 nent nor dilated ; the mouth is small, and the lips thin ; the chin and upper lip are 

 short, contrasting with the ponderous jaw of the modern Indian, wJiile the 

 cheek-bones present no marked prominence. Other examples have the nose 

 somewhat projecting at the apex in a manner quite unlike the features of any 

 American indigenes ; and although there are some which show a much coarser 

 face, it is very difficult to see in any of them that close resemblance to the 

 Indian type which these sculptures have been said to exhibit. The few authentic 

 crania from the mounds present corresponding features, being far more symmetrical 

 and better developed in the frontal region than those of any American tribes, 

 although somewhat resembling them in the occipital outline*; while one was 

 described by its discoverer (Mr. ^\^ Marshall Anderson) as a "beautiful skull 

 worthy of a Greek." 



The antiquity of this remarkable race may perhaps not be very great as com- 

 pared with the prehistoric man of Europe, although the opinions of some writers 

 on the subject seem affected by that " parsimony of time " on which the late Sir 

 Charles Lyell so often dilated. The mounds are all overgrown with dense forest, 

 and one of the large trees was estimated to be eight hundred years old, while other 

 observers consider the forest growth to indicate an age of at least 1000 years. But 

 it is well known that it requires several generations of trees to pass away before 

 the growth on a deserted clearing comes to correspond with that of the surrounding 

 virgin forest, while this forest, once established, may go on growing for an unknown 

 number of thousands of years. The 800 or 1030 years estimate from the growth 

 of existing vegetation is a minimum which has no bearing whatever on the actual 

 age of these mounds ; and we might almost as well attempt to determine the time 

 of the glacial epoch from the age of the pines or oaks which now grow on the 

 moraines. 



The important thing for ns, however, is that when North America was first 

 settled by Europeans, the Indian tribes inhabiting it had no knowledge or tradition 

 of any preceding race of higher civilization than themselves. Yet we find that 

 such a race existed ; that they must have been populous and have lived under some 

 established government; while there are signs that they practised agriculture 

 largely, as, indeed, they must have done to have supported a population capable of 

 executing such gigantic works in such vast profusion ; for it is stated that the 

 mounds and earthworks of various kiuds in the state of Ohio alone amount to 

 between eleven and twelve thousand. In their habits, customs, religion, and arts 

 they differed strikingly from all the Indian tribes ; wliile their love of art and of 

 geometric foims, and their capacity for executing the latter upon so gigantic a 

 scale, render it probable that they were a really civilized people, although the 

 form their civilization took may have been very different from that of later people 

 subject to very different influences, and the inheritors of a longer series of ancestral 



* Wilson's ' Prehistoric Man, 3rd ed. vol. ii. pp. 123-130. 



