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Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 1).djvu/53

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THEIR DISTRIBUTION
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these four in population in 1880—when the cities had not so largely robbed the country districts of their population as now. Thus the aborigines seem to have been busiest where we have been busiest in the last half of the nineteenth century.

In Wisconsin the mound-building Indians labored most in the southern part of the state, where the bulk of that state's population is today—seventy-five per cent being found in the southern (and smaller) half of the state.

In Michigan, a line drawn from the northern coast of Green Bay to the south-western corner of the state includes a very great proportion of the archæological remains in the state. That line today embraces on the southeast thirty-three per cent of the counties of the state, yet sixty-three per cent of the population.

Thus it can be said that in a remarkable measure the mound-building peoples found with interesting exactness the portions of this country which have been the choice spots with the race which now occupies it.

Here, in the valleys, and between them,