Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/206

 and civilized races of the South; but this does little or nothing toward establishing a relationship between them.

As to when and why and how the mound-builders disappeared we can form a more accurate and reliable conception. A large number of the monuments left behind by them are of a defensive nature; in some localities, as in the valley of the Cuyahoga, near Cleveland, every headland which overlooks the river is crowned with a fort or citadel; and it is evident that those who occupied this and many other areas of the Mississippi Valley were engaged in a constant struggle with persistent, harassing enemies.

Following the migrations of the various tribes of the modern Indians (as we are able to do chiefly by the clew of language) we learn that they have come from the North, and have for hundreds of years been pushing by devious and interlacing routes southward to occupy the territory once possessed by sedentary, peaceful, and agricultural peoples—the mound-builders in the East and the stone-house builders in the West.

Limitation of time forbids the citation of the proof of this northern invasion, but it is sufficient to convince those who have most carefully studied the subject. We may therefore accept the conclusion that in America, as in Europe, hordes of northern barbarians (multiplied by the fecundity of a cool and healthful climate, and inspired by the force and restlessness acquired in their strife with Nature's obstacles) invaded southern lands whose more fertile soil and genial but enervating climate developed the arts of peace at the expense of those of war.

The commoner belief has been that the ultimate fate of the mound-builders was entire extinction; but there is good reason to believe that in the Natchez and Mandans, and perhaps some other tribes still existing, but in small numbers, at the advent of the whites, we have their lineal descendants. The grounds of this conclusion can not be fully set forth here, but it may be said that the tribes referred to in many respects contrast strongly with the more numerous and characteristic inhabitants of the country; and also that their customs and arts, their implements and structures, bear a close resemblance to those of the former occupants of the Mississippi Valley.

As to the time which has elapsed since the mines and structures of the mound-builders were abandoned we have only negative evidence. The heaps of débris about the Lake Superior copper mines, the filled-up oil wells, and the earthworks of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, were found by the incoming whites covered with dense forests in which the trees had attained their maximum size. Beneath this present generation of trees, and overgrown by their roots, were lying the prostrate and decaying trunks of a preceding generation. We thus have evidence that