The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1874-06-18
AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES.
From the New York Times.

From the New IOTK Ilme6.A
Our people are not much inclined to think
of great antiquity as belonging to the in.
habitants of this continent, or to value high
ly the relics of our extinct human races.
The popular contempt for the red Indian,
and the knowledge that all which can be
preserved ofhis tools, implements, weapons
and works of art, form but poor collection
of antiquities, are in part the explanation
of this Indifference. Then, till very recent
ly, our scholars and divines were unwilling
to concede very great antiquity to the hn-1
man race, and this continent, especially,
was supposed to be inhabited by modern
races. n
But the idea has at length fairly daWned.
on the cultivated mind throughout the werld
that man has by no means been an inhab-
liant of this earth merely during the past
5000 or 5000 years. but on the contrary,
that he may have existed here for the past
fifty or sixty thousand years. Though g.
modern, in the scale of geology. The human
being is Of venerable antiquity by any, his
torlcal scale. On this continent, so ancient
in lts geological structure, man must have
lived for countless ages. hunting with his
flint weapons the mammoth and mastodon,
and either using or pursuing the camel long
before the gigantic canons were eroded by
rushing waters through the Sierras. or the
volcanoes had poured their deep floods of
lava over the hills and wales of the Pacific
coast. ### #H #N3#
Through all countries an intense interest
has been awakened in the habits and condi-
tiOn of the prehistoric man. y Libraries of
works have accumulated, devoted to the most
ingenious speculations and researches on
the antiquities discovered in the drift of
Europe. while the whole hypothetical specu-
lation Of the day on human Origin turns on
these archaeological discoveries. Europe is
full now of the most admirable museums,
entirely appropriated to the different periods
of prehistoric human antiquity-the Stone
Age, the Iron Age. the Bronze Age, and sim
liar divisions. The United STATES alone has
been comparatively Indifferent to her own
antiquity. Mr.. Peabody has left munifcent
would seem to be to collect and preserve
American antiquities but neither in Salem.
Cambridge, nor New Haven, SO far as we
hear is there any remarkable collection of
the wonderful remains of extinct races diss
covered on our own soil. The remarkable
private collections existing are being grad
ually removed to Europe, so that now, it is
said, student who would know thoroughly
what American antiquities are must visit
certain private English collections in provin-
eial towns of Great Britain. One exception
alone must be made--the Smithsonian coli
lection, at WashiDgton-but even this ad
m!rable selection Is not complete.
Centuries before the red Indian appeared
on The northern cont inent, a race perhaps
ola kindred stock) of higher civilization
dwet on the Western pra'ries. The Mound.
Builders" as thsy are appropriately called,
left their remarkable lines OF earth.works
from the lower Mississippi to the Ohio.
These structures, on which successive for
eSts OF various groBths have fourished and
died, still survive, and surprise the stranger
by their intrcacy, skill, and the evidences oil
vast labor which they display. Some are
temples, some burial-places some are gar
dens, some are representations on a gigantic
scAe of the forms of animals and birds.
for what purpose it Is difficult to explain.
Among these structures are mounds in |
the form of trupcated pyramids, which seem |
Al he hn fret or ha mi olI
and terraced structures in Central America |
and Mexico, which, perhaps, formed the
highest material works of this mysterious
race. They must have conducted an inland J
commerce over vast territory, and obtained
or purchased mica from the North Carolina
mountains, copker from Shake Superior,
obsidan from Mexico, specnlar Iron from
Missouri, and salt from Michigan articles
which The red Indians never possessed cx.
cept by accident. They understood a rude
agriculture and the arts Of weayinQ, and OF
moldiDg pottery and figures Of animals.
They even at times melted copper and use
it in Instruments, though they naver SEEM
to have done this with iro2. The forms oil
their skulls, and the evidences from their
arts, show milder and more cultivated |
race than any the whites have ever known
north OF Central America.
Who they were. whence they came, OF
what blood " stock, ID hidden in the midst
of az far antiquity. They spread their busy
life. and lett their traces over the whole
Central Vest, perhaps existing there as long
as the Anglo-Saxon race has existed, and
then they perish ed--their only history being
written on the ground. record obliterated
by the growth of forests for uncounted cen
turtles, but now partly deciphered by 9 peo-