The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1879-10-02

mold upon the surface; but why should
/ the same practice be followed in the
prairies and bOttOm-lands, whose rich
ness is proverbial and inexhaustible?
| This question is easily answered when
I we consider that in the rich lowlandS of
the West the chief difficulty is too much
moisture, especially in seasons of I'M
usual rainfall. Acres of corn are often
utterly ruined at such times, when plant
ed upon low and level fields which have
not ample drainage, whereas had the
earth been raised eyed few inches in
drills or beds good crop would have
been secured. Mr.. Conant was informed
by an Iowa planter that he had often
seen this demonstrated in corn-fields
which happened to be filled with these
Garden Mounds. The low ground be-
tween them, if the season were rainy,
might yield no returns, while upon the
mounds themselves the harvest would be
excellent. The inference seems obvious
that the alluvial accumulations were
made for the better cultivation of maize,
which was doubtless the staple article
of ancient husbandry in the Mississippi
Valley.
Notwithstanding the variety of forms
presented in the multiudinous struct-
ures dispersed throughout North Amer
lea, Mr.. COnant thinks we can distin-
guish such signs of growth rs woud be
looked form the slow development of
national life, whether generated among
the people themselves, or helped for
ward by occasional and accidental inn
pulses from without. Such fitful and
apparently inconsiderable accessions of
stimulus from superior but alien civil
iZation might have been received in
divers ways. 1t is not necessary to lay
much stress on the story of Atlantis, or
on Phenecian and Carthaginian legends,
or on the pretensions of the Basques and
Dieppois- although some of these claims
of discovery and settlement appear to be
supported by facts, which, to say the
least, are curious-or on irish and
Welsh traditions, although Humboldt
considered these well worthy of atten-
ton. DE Quatrefages, however, has no
doubt that between the years 1000 and
800 number of unchronicled
Morse colonies must have found their
way to the American coasts, following
Scandinavian settlements in Greenland.
To such offshoots from the Aryan stock
he does not hesitate to refer the g white
Esquimax'' described by Charlevoix,
the fair-haired men of Pierre Martyr,
the fair men spoken of in some Mexican
traditions, and the White Savage
Chief whom the Spaniards met with in
their Cibola expedition. So much for
the Atlantic coast, while for the Pacific
side De Quatrefages has collected am
pie evidence to attest fhe occasional adj
vent of Chinese or japanese misSiona-
ries and traders. But while these infre-
quent visitors have impaired some leav-
ening influence as legislators and educa-
tors, De QuantrefageS cOncurs with
the majority of archaologists in believ-
inc the peopling of America to have re-
suited from successive migratiOns of
savage nations from the northern re-
gions of Asia by way of Behring's
Straits.
Mr.. COnant's researches have led him
to the conclusion that this influx from
the north split into two slowly moving
streams, the most important fork trend
ing toward the east of the Mississippi,
the other passing through the territory
west of the same river. This southwark
drift of a vast people seems to have
been arrested in the valley of the Ohio
for long period of time. 1t is certain
that the mound builders here reached
the highest stage of civilization they ever
attained on this side of Mexico and Cen
trail America. The current upon the
western bank of the great river, while it
had its source in the same fountain head
at the north, does not seem to have been
SO well defined in the characteristic
features of civilization, notwithstanding
the population in Missouri was at one
time no less great, if not greater, than
in Ohio. Mr.. Conant finds a cause of |
this relative backwardness in the fact |
that the Missouri mound builders never |
enjoyed a season of repose and eXemp- |
ton from war long enough topermit the I
concentration of energy upon internal |
affairs to the extent which developed |
the more advanced communities of the |
Ohio Valley.
In discussing the migratory move
mentS of the prehistoric nations in North |
America, Mr.. Conant points out that |
several distinct expeditions from the |
same ethnic seat, dispatched at times |
more or less remote from one another, |
are often loosely spoken of rs one mi !
grafton For example, the family group |
which bore the generic name of Nahu-
atlacas was composed of seven tribes, or |
perhaps we should better say drifted |
southwark in seven successive waves. |
Allthese branches of one trunk spoke sub I
stantiallv the same language, and issued |
from the same cradle of civilization |
which should probably be identified
with the valleys of the Mississippi and |
Ohio; but they appeared on the plateau
of Anahuac at widely different periods.
The Aztecs, whom COrtez found DOM
inant, had been the last to arrive. On
the other hand, it was prior to the COM
of the Christian era-indeed |
some archaolOgists would set the date
not less than thousand Years before |
that epOch-when the mysterious Nahuas
emerged in Mexico. Concerning their
origin and history almost nothing is
known, but this much is established, |
that the later Toltecs and Aztecs We're |
only Subdivisions of the great Nahua |
races, and that all spoke dialects of its |
ancestral language. The suggestion has
commended itself to some students that |
the primitive Nahuas were themselves
the builders of few, but those the most /
ancient, mounds of the Mississippi Val
ley, and were also the authors OF some |
of the stone structures in northern Mex |
leo during halt which possibly arrested
for some centuries their southwark |
march One of the most competent in
ternreterS of the Mexican monuments |