eo: 
614 The Ancient Puéblos. [ September, 
been small and its impetus inconsiderable, since the necessity of 
maritime transport, though only from island to island, woul 
naturally impair its force. In the opinions of others, and among 
them Humboldt, even the Rocky Mountains in their extension 
northward may have led similar branches of emigrants to adopt 
a different path in their progress towards the south. Whether 
these branches originally issued from the lake regions, though it 
is not impossible, is difficult to determine. They must at any 
rate, in departing from their homes, have taken a directly west 
or at least south-west direction. Although no substantial reasons 
can be assigned why any race of those latitudes should have 
given a preference to the toilsome defiles of the Rocky mountains, 
when the fair and commodious plains and prairies of the south 
lay before them, yet too many points of apparent connection pre- 
sent themselves to admit of our consigning their adoption of 
such a route to the category of impossibilities. 
“Tt is from the Rio Gila that we are first enabled to perceive 
definite traces of the course of the migration into the regions of 
the south; the indications of the different stages of its progress 
increase with its entrance upon Mexican territory, but we yet 
possess only sparingly the means of identification. The first 
immigrants who appeared in the north of Mexico brought with 
them the so-called Toltecatl civilization, the work of the races of 
ane great Nahoa family. F ~ 7 F 
“If we admit that the age of the civilization indicated in the 
region of the Mississippi reaches back 2,000 years, it is not im- 
possible that the Nahoas were also the builders of the earth- 
mounds in North America, or at least belonged to the race from 
which these works proceeded. As regards the stone structures 
of the great casas of El Zape and La Quemada, we cannot but 1n- 
fer that their builders must have been long permanently settled in 
those districts, which accords much better with later researches 
than the assumption of many that the immigrating tribes had 
merely halted in the places for a few years, perhaps a quarter of a 
century, and in that time had erected these monuments.” 
_ A. Marlot observes, in his “ General Views on Archeology,” “Itis 
finally worthy of remark that the ‘mound-builders,’ as the 
mericans call the race of the copper-age, seem to have preceded 
and prepared the Mexican civilization, destroyed by the Span- 
iards; for in progressing southwards, a gradual transition 1s 
noticed from the ancient earthworks of the Mississippi valley to 
the more modern constructions of Mexico, as found by Cortez. 
(Translated by Philip Harry, Esq., for the Smithsonian Report 
_ for 1860.) 
In concluding the subject, I wish to extend my thanks to Prof. 
= F. V. Hayden, through whose courtesy the illustrations for these 
c papers have been furnished, © 
