ARCHEOLOGY. 31 



were, sooner or later, compelled to abandon. Finally the superior skill 

 of the invaders triumphed. To escape utter extermination the remnant 

 of the native tribe fled southward of the Ohio. The Delawares passed 

 on to the sea, while the Iroquois remained west of the mountains. 



It is said the Iroquois have a similar legend. 



The most that can be made of it, however, is that the Delawares at 

 some indefinite time and place in their migrations, expelled a people who 

 made use of some sort of protective works. This is scarcely sufficient to 

 identify them with the Mound Builders. Still less does it justify a recent 

 attempt to show that because they "went south" and because "Tallegwi" 

 can by skillful manipulation be transmuted into " Cherokee, " the latter 

 people are therefore lineal descendants of the former. By a similar pro- 

 cess the name Alleghany has been derived from "Allegwi." 



On the other hand, if it be assumed that, after the Allegwi were 

 driven back from their borders, the struggle reached its maximum in 

 central Ohio, the progressive development of defensive works will be 

 accounted for, from the minor embankments forming a part of the prin- 

 cipal groups, through the hill-top enclosures in the same sections, to the 

 strongholds in rugged, broken, country remote from other evidences of a 

 permanent settlement, as exemplified in the forts of Highland and Perry 

 counties. 



But allowing the tradition everything that can be claimed for it, the 

 question is merely shifted, not solved; there is nothing to indicate what 

 river may have constituted the boundary, except the statement that it 

 was "full of fish" — a vague description. The transcriber of the legend 

 claims to have identified the Detroit as the proper stream, and to have 

 seen on its banks a great mound under which lay the bones of the slain. 

 But this stream could not have been crossed by immigrants from the west 

 unless they had first made their way into the Georgian Bay district and 

 retraced their route; moreover, the country about the western end of 

 Lake Erie, and particularly the northwest corner of Ohio where they 

 must have come first, is precisely the region in which remains of Mound 

 Builders or any other prehistoric race, are most lacking. 



With aboriginal methods, the construction of such works as Fort 

 Ancient or Fort Miami would have required a considerable length of 

 time; yet they must have been completed before an enemy could molest 

 the laborers to any great extent. It does not seem they could be erected 

 to meet an emergency; on the other hand it is improbable that a people 

 with foresight thus to provide for a contingency would make no effort to 

 protect outlying territory in the direction of any river or other natural 

 division they could choose as a boundary. 



The resemblance of the fiat-topped mounds at Marietta to those of 

 the Cahokia group or analogous structures farther to the south may be 

 merely a coincidence or may indicate a relationship between the builders. 

 It is easier to accept the former alternative than to believe a single group 



