Page:Science vol. 5.djvu/193

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��In the chapters that relate to the archeology of the Mississippi valley we are fortunately on safer groiiDfl. The arts and industries of the recent Indians, as seen in their ornaments and implements, and as descrilieil by the early chroniclers, furnisb a convenient standard bj' which lo fix the place of the so-called moiind- buildera in the scale of civilization; and a comparison of these remains with the mounds and their conl«nts enables us to say with cer- tainty that these two peoples, admitting them to have been distinct, had attained to about the same stage of material development. In- deed, the two classes of remaina are believed to agree in every essential jtartiuular. Not a single specimen has yet Ijecn taken from the mounds, that indicates a different phase of civ- ilization from that which the Indian is known to have reached, — nothing which he could not have made, or miglit not have bought from his ueighbors in Mexico or on the Atlantic sea- board. This is certainly an imixirtant link in the chain of evidence that jxtints to the identity of the Indians with the mound-buildei-s; and if we add to it the fact that the Indians are admitted to have bnilt both mounds and em- bankments, and thai "they ore the only i>eo- ple except the whites, who, so far as we know, have ever held the region in which these re- mains are found," it will be seen that there is ample ground for the conclusion that the mounds and enclosures of the Mississippi val- ley, of every sort and size, " were the work of Uieae same Indians, or of their immediate an- cestors." All other inferences are denied lo ufl until it can be shown, that, at some time in tbe past, there lived in this valley a people other than the Indian, who had reached the same or a higher sLige of de^'clop^lenl. To sa3', OS is sometimes done, that such a people may have lived bere,^and, for that matter, il is as easy to nuppoae a dozen or two of them as one. — may be very true, but it docs not meet the point. Sup|K>silions are neither facts nor ailments: and, unfortunately for the advo- cates of this theory, the modern school of eth- nolugiats has a decided preference for the last two. Until, then, it can be shown that there lived here, in prehistoric times, some other people, who chipped flints, wove cloth, ham- mered metals, worked in stone, manufactured pottery, built mounds and earthworks, and did all the other things that the '' red Indians of historic times ' can be proved to have done, it will not be necessary to go any farther, or to waste any more lime in search of a mound- bnildcr. I^bln dealing with the arcbitecturnl and other

��prehistoric remains of Arizona, Central Amer- ica, and Peru, ihe same method of investi- gation is followed with equally satisfactory results. The el ifl'- dwellers, considered as a separate and distinct people, with a civilization ditfercnl from that of ihc Pueblo Indians, are made to take a place by the side of the mound- builders, in the limbo of exploded theories; the deserted cities of Mexico and Centra] Amer- ica are found to be nothing but the abandoned dwellings of a people whose mode of life, as Bandelier well says, "differed from the com- munal bfc of the Indians in other regions only by the exigencies of another climate and of varying natural resources;" and the ruined temples, palaces, and fortresses of Peru, stripped of all exaggeration, and measured by the same unfailing standard, are recognized as a striking but legitimate product of the civiliza- tion which was in existence there at the time of the conquest, and which, in many of its fea- tures, was but a counterpait of that which prevailed in Mexico, and, we may add, in the regions to the east of the Mississippi.

Tliis is a brief summary of some of the con- clusions leacbed in the present volume, or which may be deduced from the premises here laid down; and, to those of us who have watched the progress of anthropological studies in this country for the past few years, it is needless to say that they represent the current scienti6c opinion of the day. Indeed, it could not well be otherwise, since thej' are the logical results of the application to American nrcheologj- of the method of investigation which has been in use everywhere else, and which is the only one that promises to lead to any thing satisfactory. The old plan of inventing a new ci^-llization, or resurrecting an extinct people by way of ac- counting for every differently shaped pot that happened to turn up, has been tried, and found wanting; and we have at last adopted a ejstem of cl a ssiH cation and comparison that enables us to connote the relations between lieoplc and things, to tix their several values, and assign them their relative places in the scale of prog- ress. Squier began the good work many years ago, but failed to carry it to a logical conclu- sion. When the mantle fell from his shoulders, Morgan picked it up; and, though be sometimes swung the pendulum too far in his direction, yet there can be no doubt as to the tremendous impetus he gave to the study. Following him came the Bureau of ethnology at Washington, the Peabody museum at Cambridge, the Ar- chaeol<^ical institute of America, and the Soei^l^ des Am^ricanistes in Kurope; and it is to their systematic exertions in the collec-

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