THE ANCIENT MINEES OF LAKE SUPEEIOE. 231 



miners of Lake Superior, with the modern tribes who have found 

 there their hunting grounds. 



There was a period in the long-past epochs of America's unrecord- 

 ed history, when the valleys of the Mississippi and the Ohio were 

 occupied by a numerous and settled population, known to the modern 

 Archaeologist as the Race of the Mound-builders. Alike in physical 

 conformation and in arts they approximated to the races of Central 

 America, and differed from the Red Indians alone known to Europeans 

 as the occupants, and by them familiarly styled the aborigines, of the 

 whole northern regions of the American Continent south of the Arctic 

 Circle. The Mound-builders were not, to all appearance, far advanced 

 in civilization. Compared with the tribes of Central America, first 

 visited by the Spaniards, their arts and social state were in an 

 extremely rudimentary state. The contrast, however, is no less 

 striking between the evidences of their settled condition, with the 

 proofs of extensive co-operation which their numerous earth-works 

 supply, and all that pertains to the nomade tribes which have been 

 alone known to occupy the American forests during post- Columbian 

 centuries. 



The Mounds of the Mississippi Valley abound in copper ornaments 

 and implements, proving the familiarity of their builders with the 

 mineral wealth of the Lake regions ; and to just such a race, with their 

 imperfect mechanical skill, their partially developed arts, and their 

 aptitude for continuous combined operations, would we ascribe, a 

 priori, such ancient mining works as exist on the shores of Lake 

 Superior, overshadowed with the forest-growth of centuries. The 

 Mounds constructed by the Ancient brachycephalic Race are in like 

 manner overgrown with the evidences of their long desei'tion ; and 

 the condition in which recent travellers have found the long-forgotten 

 cities of Central America, may serve to show what even New York, 

 and "Washington, and Philadelphia ; what Toronto, Montreal, and 

 Quebec, would become after a very few centuries, if abandoned, like 

 the desolate cities of Chichenitza or Uxmal, to the inextinguishable 

 luxuriance of the American forest growth. 



The history of the cities of Central America is known, and the 

 date is well ascertained when the irruption of a new race extinguish- 

 ed their advancing civilization, and threw back into primitive barbar- 

 ism the remnant of the ancient race which they failed to extirpate. 

 It seems no illegitimate assumption to affirm of the Mound-builders of 

 the Mississippi, and the ancient Miners of Lake Superior, in like 

 manner, that some great catastrophe, — the intrusion it may be of the 

 present Red Indian Race, or more probably the still deadlier influence 



