SHETRONE] CULTURE PROBLEM IN OHIO ARCHAEOLOGY 149
recorded of the finding of objects of white manufacture in the mounds of Ohio, and the fact that this important mound region should be the exception in this respect might be taken as additional evidence of the completeness of the Iroquoian devastation. While it is possible that mound-building in the Ohio valley may have ceased from other and earlier causes, it would seem a reasonable surmise that the trait, though obsolescent, was still existent at the time of the Iroquoian invasion and that its extinction was com- pleted by that event through the expulsion and scattering of any tribes in which it prevailed. The twin phenomena the relatively long period of depopulation in so large and strategic an area, and the early disappearance of mound-building in the very center of its highest development are markedly striking. The suggested Algonquian authorship of certain archaeological remains will be discussed in connection with prehistoric culture groups.
RECOGNITION OF CULTURE VARIETIES
A tentative discussion of the prehistoric culture groups of the Ohio area does not permit of more than casual reference to the period of general exploration, covering the greater part of the past century, and a passing tribute to such pioneer investigators as Atwater, Whittelsey, and Squier and Davis, who blazed the archaeo- logical trail in the territory; nor will space permit of anything like due consideration of the work of Putnam, Thomas, Moorehead, Fowke, Mills, and others, whose labors have brought the science in the local field to its present high stage of development.
While the existence in the Ohio and the general mound areas of diversified culture groups doubtless had been suspected by indi- vidual observers considerably earlier, an examination of the litera- ture shows the first authoritative expression to have been that of Professor Cyrus Thomas, in 1891. As director of the extensive campaign of mound exploration inaugurated by the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1881, he concluded that the native Indian tribes were the builders of the mounds and earthworks, thus setting at rest, officially at least, the mooted question as to the identity of the so-called Mound Builders. Supplementary to this finding,
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