THE MOUND BUILDER CULTURE IN NEW YORK 



BY ARTHUR C. PARKER, ARCHEOLOGIST 



There was a time when western New York was regarded as 

 peculiarly the domain of a mysterious pre-Indian race known as 

 the " Mound Builders." 



Observers, astonished by the existence of earth works and other 

 prehistoric tumuli, wrote elaborate descriptions and devoted con- 

 siderable space to more or less melancholy speculation. The term 

 " Mound Builder " became quite as romantically wonderful in the 

 new world as did that of Druid in the old. 



The mounds and earth works of Ohio early attracted interest, and 

 especially as the colonists pushed westward and cleared new land 

 for settlement or agriculture. Thus we find such early authorities 

 as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, President Ezra Stiles of 

 Yale and Noah Webster advancing theories about the builders of 

 the mounds. The first extended discussion on the subject was 

 written by Dr Benjamin S. Barton, who in 1797 published his work 

 on " New Views on the Origin of the Tribes in America." In this 

 work he advanced the theory that the mounds were not built by 

 Indians but by "A people of higher cultivation, with established 

 law and order and a well- disciplined police." Doctor Barton seems 

 to have been the first writer to advance the notion of a " lost race." 



Soon after Doctor Barton's book appeared two other writers 

 discussed the subject, Bishop Madison of Virginia and the Rev. 

 T. M. Harris of Massachusetts. Harris thought the mounds proved 

 their builders were of superior skill and of higher civilizations, but 

 Doctor Madison, who had traveled widely and studied the mounds 

 and their antiquities, saw nothing in the evidence to convince him 

 that the mounds were not the product of the Indians. Each of 

 these observers was a pioneer of different schools of belief, but for 

 more than half a century those who believed in "a lost race of civi- 

 lized men whom the Indians displaced or annihilated" controlled 

 public opinion on the subject. Even today there are many who 

 puzzle over the "mysterious race now departed." J. P. McLean, 

 for example, who in 1879 published his book on "The Mound 

 Builders" commenced his first chapter thus: "An ancient race, 



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