The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1877-01-06
The Mound Builders,

The North American Indians are, as q
race, in no higher plane of culture now
than they were three hundred years ago
If they have any inherent capability for
progress-if they could, had they remained
isolated and unmolested, have ever raised
themselves above the conditions of the Sc.
cond age of stone implements, that pro.
gress was arrested when they came into
subsection to another and higher race
Ii seems irrational to assume that such
people, whose contact for two centuries
and half with the culture of another race
has been unproductiye of any good, can
have once fallen from a standardization
possessed by their ancestors, but of which
they have neither distinct inheritance nor
even dim tradition. There is no influence
visible or conceivable to account for a
change so remarkable. They had evi.
IDENTIFY never lost their physical vigor; no
enemy had ever before come to dispossess
them of the soil which they claimed as
their own, or TO trample out by conquest
and ssrvitude the feeble sparks of nascent
development; and no higher civilization
had invaded and overwhelmed the feeble
efforts Of the childhood of a race. 1t is
to set aside all the facts of history, as well
as all rational conjecture, to suppose that
a race now apparently SO hopelessly inca
pable of improvement had, without cause,
at some former period, fallen from the con.
dition of partially cultivated people to
that Of savage hunters in country which
had become a wilderness through their
own voluntary degradation.
But behind these Indians, who were in
possession of the country when it was dis
covered by Europeans, is dimly seen the
shadowy form Of another people who have
left many remarkable evidences of their
habits and customs and of singular de-
gree of civilization, but who many centu.
ries ago disappeared, either exterminatcd
by pestilence or by some powerful aud
pitiless enemy, or driven from the country
to seek new homes south and west of the
Gulf of Mexico.
The evidences Of the presence of this
ancient people are found almost every.
where upon the North American cont.
nent, except, perhaps, upon the Atlantic
coast. They consist of mounds sometimes
of imposing size, and other earth works, so
numerous that in Ohio alone there are, or
were, until quite recently, estimated to be
not less than ten thousand of the mounds,
and fifteen hundred enclosures of earth
and stone, all evidently the work of the
same people. In other parts of the couu-
try they were found in such numbers that
no attempt has ever been made to count
them all.
There are no data by which the exact
age of these singular relies of a numerous
and industrious people, living long.sus-
tanned agricultural life, can be fixed. But
it is evident from certain established facts
that this must date from very remote
period The chief seat of their power and
population seems to have been in the Mis-.
sissippi Valley. The signs of their occu-
patton are many along the banks of its
rivers, but they are rarely found upon the
last-formed terraces Of those streams
those which have been longest in forma.
ton, and were the beds of the rivers when
most Of the earth-works we're built. 1t is
very seldom that the human bones found
in them, except those of later and evident.
ly intrusive burial, are in a condition to
admit of their removal, as they crumble
into dust on exposure to the air; while
bones in British tumuli, known to belong
to the Roman period aud to ages older
than the Christian era, are frequently taken
entire from situations, as regards soil and
moisture, much less conducive to their
preservation than those of the mounds.
They are often, also, covered by the prime.
val forests, which are known to have grown
undisturbed since the country was first oc.
cupied bythe whites, and the annual growth
Of these trees has been asccrtained to be
sometimes from five to eight centuries.
But this, so far from fixing the date of
the occupation of these works, does not
even indicate the time when they were
abandoned; for considerable period must
have elapsed before the ground was occu.
pied by trees of any kind, and before the
forest, in its gradual and slow encroach.
ment, obtained complete possession of the
ground; aud then forest after forest may
have grown and fallen, aud mingled with
the soil through the progress of many cen.
turies, before the seed of the latest growth
was sown, five hundred or a thousand years
ago.-Brydnt's History cfhe u 5.