56 toner's address. 
probable that among the Mound-Builders and their 
successors, the Natchez Indians, there may have ex- 
isted a sort of primacy or unity of religion throughout 
the Mississippi Valley. This possibly may have been 
serpent and sun worship, or some form of religion in 
which these were figures that symbolized a meaning of 
which we have no knowledge.* It is an interesting 
question in ethnology to account for the fact and to as- 
certain whence came the races of semi-civilized village 
and communal Indians now occupying the region of our 
country included within the territories of New Mexico, 
Arizona, and the southern parts of Colorado and Utah. 
It is believed by many, that within this boundary once 
existed an old civilization, older even than the Seven 
Cities of Cibola. The population in this region was 
once very considerable, particularly along the water- 
courses of the Gila, the Casas Grandes, the Del Norte, 
the Colorado, the head branches of the Arkansas, the 
Pecos, the San Juan, the Chamas, the Chaco, the Ca- 
nadian, the Puerco of the West, and other streams 
throughout the rich adjacent mountain valleys. There 
are within this region a number of distinct tribes, 
speaking different languages, yet possessing so many 
^ It is true that in a few caves and in some of the temples and sac- 
rificial mounds crude picture drawings and symbols of the sun and 
other planetary bodies, supposed to be associated with sun-worship, 
have been found. This evidence seems to favor the theory that the 
Mound-Builders or their immediate successors were sun-worshipers. 
The Indians of historic times were all more or less superstitious and 
practiced wizard incantations, which have been erroneously called re- 
ligious observances. I am aware it is claimed that a few tribes in New 
Mexico and Colorado practice a sort of sun-worship. If so, these 
facts furnish a foundation for a claim to relationship with the ancient 
Mound-Builders. 
