Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/185

 SECT. V.] GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 149 nothing in them, which may not have been performed by a savage people. The Scandinavian colony of Vinland (New- foundland) is out of the question. The Norwegians might indeed have penetrated through the Straits of Bellisle to the St. Lawrence. But, if not destroyed by the savages, a considera- ble time must have elapsed, before they could in their subse- quent progress, have reached the Mississippi, and ascended its western tributaries. The well ascertained age of trees, growing on those ramparts in the lower part of the valley of the Ohio, proves, that some of those works w T ere erected before the thir- teenth century ; and we know, that the insignificant colony of Vinland had not left its original seats in the year 1120. Igno- rant as we are and shall ever remain of the internal revolutions, w T hich may have formerly taken place amongst the uncivilized tribes of North America, it is not probable that we can ever know by whom the works in question were erected. Should it appear, from a review of all the facts, that they must be ascribed to a populous and agricultural nation, we must, I think, conclude that this was destroyed by a more barbarous people. It appears at least extremely improbable, that, independently of external causes, or of some great catastrophe, a people once become agricultural should take such a retrograde step, as to degenerate again into the hunting or savage state. All the Indians of North America, north of the civilized districts of the Mexican empire,* may be arranged in two classes; those who cultivated the soil, and those who derived their subsistence exclusively from the natural products of the earth and the sea. The territory, over which cultivation had extended, is that which is bounded on the east by the Atlantic, on the south by the Gulf of Mexico, on the west generally by the Mississippi or perhaps more properly by the prairies, on the north, it may be said, by the nature of the climate. The northern boundary of cultivation was, near the Atlantic, that which divided the Abenakis from the Etchemins, including certainly the river Kennebec, and probably the Penobscot. With the exception of the Hurons and other kindred tribes on the northern shores of Lake Erie, there was no cultivation north latitude, unless an exception be found in the long- and narrow valley of the Rio Norte called New Mexico. I do not know whether the Indians there cultivated the soil before the Spanish conquest, or whether they have been compelled to do it. The subject deserves investigation.
 * 1) These do not now extend so far north as the thirtieth degree of