from Central America. The ground for this opinion seems to be the fact that horticulture must have originated in a semi-tropical region, where this type of village life was first developed, and, therefore, that all the forms of this life were derived from thence. It would be a mistake, as it seems to the writer, to adopt the track of horticulture as that of Indian migration. In its first spread horticulture would be more apt to return upon the line of the latter than wait to be carried, by actual migrations, with the people. Moreover it is unnecessary to invoke such an argument, for the reason that New Mexico had been for ages the seat of horticultural and Village Indians, and was necessarily occupied by them long before the country east of the Mississippi. Every presumption is in favor of their derivation from New Mexico as their immediate anterior home, where they were accustomed to snow and to a moderate degree of cold.[1]
THE USES FOR WHICH THEIR PRINCIPAL EARTHWORKS WERE DESIGNED, WITH A CONJECTURAL RESTORATION OF ONE OF THEIR PUEBLOS.
A brief reference to the character and extent of these works is necessary as a means of understanding their uses. The authors of the volume "The Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley" remark, in their preface, that "the ancient inclosures and groups of works personally examined and surveyed are upwards of one hundred. * * * About two hundred mounds of all forms and sizes, and occupying every variety of position, have also been excavated."[2] Out of ninety-five earthworks, exclusive of mounds, figured and described in this valuable memoir, and which probably mark the sites of Indian villages, forty-seven are of the same type and may unhesitatingly be assigned to the Mound-Builders; fourteen are groups of emblematical earthworks, mostly in Wisconsin, and may also be assigned to them; but the remaining thirty-four are very inferior as well as different in character. They are not above the works of the Indians in the
- ↑ At a recent meeting of the National Academy of Science at Washington, where this subject was presented, Prof. O. C. Marsh remarked, in confirmation of this suggestion, that "in a series of comparisons of Indian skulls, he had been struck with the similarity between those of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and of the Mound-Builders. As the shape of the Mound-Builder's skull is very peculiar, the coincidence is a very striking one."
- ↑ Smithsonian Cont. to Knowledge, Preface, XXXIV.
