We need not expect to trace a continuous line of ruins from the San Juan Valley to that of the Ohio, granting the migration to have taken place, because a migrating race would not be apt to erect monuments until they reached the end of their line of migration. Those who take this view of it say that it is not at all strange that when these migrating tribes reached their new homes in the Mississippi Valley they erected structures differing from those they had formerly built, because all their surroundings would be different, and in the prairie sections they would find neither stone for building their pueblos nor clay suitable for adobe construction. So they would do the next best thing, and build a fortified village. This is the view of that eminent scholar, Mr. Morgan. It must be borne in mind, however, that the fortified villages of the southern Indians, including those of the Mississippi Valley, corresponded more nearly with those of the Atlantic shore, and more northern tribes, than with the pueblo structures.
There is another line of proof which we think has been read the wrong way, or, at least, applied too strongly, and made to do service in proving that the Mound Builders migrated from the valley of the Ohio to Mexico, and there laid the foundation of that wonderful civilization which is yet a riddle to the antiquarian.56 This is derived from a study of the skulls procured from various sections of this country, Peru, and Mexico. It is sufficient to state that anatomists have made a careful study of the skulls of individuals of various nations, and instituted certain comparisons between them, and discoveries of great importance have been made by this means. Now, some of our best American scholars have insisted that the skulls of the Mound Builders and the ancient inhabitants of Mexico and the Inca Peruvians are so similar that they must have belonged to the same race.
This type of skull, however, is characteristic, not only of the Mound Builders, the ancient Mexicans and the Peruvians, but of the Pueblos, and of such tribes as the Natchez, Creeks, and Seminoles. We think, with all due regard to the opinions of others, that in the present state of our knowledge of craniology we are not authorized in drawing very important conclusions therefrom. About all we are justified in stating is that the sedentary or village Indians, whether found in North or South America, have certain common features.
It is also hard to see any great resemblance between the works of the Mound Builders and the Pueblo tribes. The truncated mounds discovered by Mr. Holmes, we remember, were also used as foundations for house structures along the Gila. In this feature we, of course, see a resemblance to the platform mounds of the Mississippi Valley. But we must be careful in tracing connections on such a slim basis as this. We must remember also what a difference there is in the pottery of the two sections.57 If we were to give an opinion, based on the present known facts, we should say the separation between the people who afterwards developed as the pueblo builders of the west and the Mound Builders of the Mississippi Valley took place at an early date.
But let us not suppose that this conclusion clears up all mysteries. A problem which has thus far defied the efforts of some of our best thinkers is still before us, and that is: “From whence came the Indians?” As we remarked at the beginning of this chapter, no one theory has yet received universal acceptance. In view of these facts, it is not best to present any theories, but content ourselves with such statements as seem reasonably well settled. On all hands it is agreed that the Indians have been in America a long while, and whatever advance they were able to make in the scale of civilization has been achieved in this country.58
This statement implies that they were in undisturbed possession of this country long enough for some tribes of them to reach the middle status of barbarism, which means advancement sufficient to enable them to cultivate the ground by irrigation, and to acquire a knowledge of the use of stone and adobe brick in building.59 More than half the battle of civilization had then been won. Look at it as we will, this demands an immense period of time for its accomplishment. In the arts of subsistence, government, language, and development of religious ideas the advancement they had been able to make from a condition of savagism to that in which the Mound Builders evidently lived, or the Aztecs in Mexico, represents a progression far greater than from thence to civilization.
We are, therefore, sure that the Indians have inhabited this country for an extended period. We can prolong the mental vision backwards until we discover them, a savage race, gaining a precarious livelihood by fishing and the chase. In America there was but one cereal, or grain, growing wild. That was maize, or Indian corn. We can not tell in what portion of the continent it was native, but, in whatever section it was, there, probably, first commenced permanent village life.
A settled residence, and being no longer dependent on hunting for a livelihood, would advance the Indians greatly in the scale of culture. So we can understand how in one section would arise Indian tribes possessed of quite complicated systems of government and religion and a knowledge of agriculture. And from this as a center they would naturally spread out to other sections. The conclusion to which we seem driven is, that there is no necessity for supposing the Mound Builders to be any thing more than village Indians, in much the same state of development as the southern Indians at the time of the discovery. The Indian race shows us tribes in various stages of development, from the highly developed Pueblo Indians on the one hand to the miserable Aborigines of California on the other.
These various tribes may be classified as the wild hunting tribes and the sedentary, partially civilized tribes. To this last division belong the Mound Builders. We have seen how the partially civilized tribes in the valley of the San Juan were gradually driven south by the pressure of wild tribes. We need not doubt but such was the case in the Mississippi Valley. But we need not picture to ourselves any imposing movement of tribes. In one location a mound-building tribe may have been forced to abandon its territory, which would be occupied by bands of hunting tribes. In other cases they would cling more tenaciously to their territory. The bulk of them may have been forced south; some in other directions, and, like the Pimas on the River Gila, or the Junanos east of the Rio Grande, have retrograded in culture.60 Some bands may even have reached Mexico, and exerted an influence on the culture of the tribes found there.61
It is only necessary to add a brief word as to the antiquity of the Mound Builders’ works, or rather as to the time of abandonment. On this point there is a great diversity of opinion, and it seems to us almost impossible to come to any definite conclusion. The time of abandonment may vary greatly in different sections of the country, and we have seen how apt Indian tribes, even in the same section, are to abandon one village site in order to form another a few miles away.62 Fort Hill, in Ohio, that so strongly impressed its first explorers with a sense of antiquity,63 may have been abandoned long before the Circleville works, where Mr. Atwater could still distinguish vestiges of the palisades that once helped to defend it.