Identifier: popularhistoryof00brya (find matches)
Title: A popular history of the United States : from the first discovery of the western hemisphere by the Northmen, to the end of the first century of the union of the states ; preceded by a sketch of the prehistoric period and the age of the mound builders
Year: 1876 (1870s)
Authors: Bryant, William Cullen, 1794-1878 Gay, Sydney Howard, 1814-1888
Subjects:
Publisher: New York : Scribner, Armstrong, and Company
Contributing Library: Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection
Digitizing Sponsor: The Institute of Museum and Library Services through an Indiana State Library LSTA Grant

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f improvement had,without cause, at some former period, fallen from the condition of apartially cultivated people, to that of savage hunters in a country 20 THE MOUND BUILDERS. (Chap. IL Race inAmerica an-terior toIndians. which had become a wilderness through their own voluntary degrada-tion. But behind these Indians, who were in possession of the countrywhen it was discovered by Europeans, is dimly seen theshadowy form of another people who have left many remark-able evidences of their habits and customs and of a singulardegree of civilization, but who many centuries ago disappeared, eitherexterminated by pestilence or by some powerful and pitiless enemy,or driven from the country to seek new homes south and west of theGulf of Mexico. The evidences of the presence of this ancient people are foundalmost everywhere upon the North American Continent, except,perhaps, upon the Atlantic coast. They consist of mounds sometimesof imposing size, and other earthworks, so numerous that in Ohio
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Earthworks in Ohio. alone there are, or were till quite recently, estimated to be not lessthan ten thousand of the Mounds, and fifteen hundred enclosures ofearth and stone all evidently the work of the same people. In otherparts of the country they were found in such numbers that no attempthas ever been made to count them all. There are no data by which the exact age of these singular relicsof a once numerous and industrious people, living a long-sustained,agricultural life, can be fixed. But it is evident from certain estab-lished facts that this must date from a very remote period. The chiefseat of their power and population seems to have been in the Missis- GREAT AGE OF MOUNDS. 21 sippi Valley. The signs of their occupation are many along the banksof its rivers, but they are rarely found upon the last formed ^ Ill Mounds in terraces of those streams, — those which have been lonejest Mississippi Valley. in formation, and which were the beds of the rivers whenmost of the earthworks

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