662 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCJENCE. 



Col. C. C. Jones, Jr., author of "Antiquities of the Southern Indians, Etc."; 

 Prof. Lewis H. Morgan, author of ''Ancient Society, Etc." ; Prof. N. H. Winch- 

 ell; Prof. Joseph Jones, author of "Aboriginal Remains of Tennessee;" Dr. 

 John J. R. Patrick, John P. Jones, Esq., and a host of other cultured students 

 all over the country, who have expended years in diligent research and laborious 

 investigation of American antiquities. 



But we cannot rely upon mere opinions, however dogmatically asserted, in 

 matters of natural science, to influence the convictions of thinking men. It is 

 only reasonable that, in the issue joined, some of the deductions and facts upon 

 which the views I have advanced are based, should be demanded and fairly con- 

 sidered. The proper presentation of all the evidence and a thorough discussion 

 of the data forming that basis would require the space of a large volume and can 

 only be epitomized in the limits allotted to this paper. 



Though a mound of earth was erected on the battle-field of Waterloo, by 

 order of the English government, only sixty- seven years ago, it is not seriously 

 maintained by any one that the construction of an earthen mound necessarily re- 

 quires a high degree of engineering skill or mathematical talent, or is in any 

 view the achievement of special genius. On the contrary, earthen mounds are 

 the product of only muscular effort, and were made by primitive people because 

 ihey were the form of tumuli requiring the exercise of the least skill ; the simplest 

 and most easily constructed as well as the most enduring. Mound building, for 

 the inhumation of the dead and in veneration of their memory, and for other rites 

 of a sacred character, and in commemoration of important events, has been prac- 

 ticed, not exclusively by any one branch of the human family, nor only in any 

 one era of the world's history, but ahke by savage, barbarian and semi-civilized 

 races, in all quarters of the globe, from the earliest to modern times. The early 

 New Zealanders, the Celts, Gauls, Japanese, Scythians, Scandinavians, etc., 

 heaped mounds over the bodies of their distinguished dead, and the ancient 

 Greeks also erected mounds over the remains of their heroes slain in battle. 



The mounds of the Mississippi basin are in no essential particular different 

 from those seen on the plains of Europe or the steppes of Asia ; and surely none 

 of them, in conception or execution, are above the capacity of the Indians who 

 entertained and fought De Soto, and whose descendants were subsequently studied 

 by Adair, Bartram, Du Pratz and Charlevoix. The internal evidence of the mounds 

 in this country, and the obvious uses of the numerous implements and ornaments of 

 stone, shell, bone, etc., manufactured by their builders, and often found buried 

 with their remains, imply that the mound-builder's methods of life, arts of sub- 

 sistence, customs, habits, and mental characteristics were precisely identical with 

 those of the Florida Indians at the date of their primal contact with Europeans ; 

 and were the natural resultants of the necessities, passions and superstitions of a 

 people occupying at best a middle plane of barbarism. In all the pre-historic re- 

 mains of the Mississippi Valley not the slightest proof has been found to sustain 

 the theory that it was at any time occupied by a race superior to the Mandans, 

 Choctaws and Natchez ; and there is not a sound reason for attributing the author- 



