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It was evidently being removed to the top of the mine, nearly thirty feet above; and the stone and copper tools of the miners were found lying about, as if the men had just gone away.

Now, when did this ancient race of Mound-Builders antiquity. live? There is not a line of their writing left, so far as is now known; nor is there any distinct tradition about them. But there is one sure proof that they lived very long ago. At the mouth of this very mine just described there are trees, nearly four hundred years old, growing on earth that was thrown out in digging the mine. Of course, the mine is older than the trees. On a mound at Marietta, O., there are trees eight hundred years old. The mounds must, of course, be as old as that, and nobody knows how much older. It is very probable that this mysterious race may have built these great works more than a thousand years ago.

Were they the ancestors of the present American Indians?

Pueblo
Indians.

It is very natural to ask whether the Mound-Builders were the ancestors of our present American Indians. It is not at all certain that they were, because the habits of the two races are quite different. Most Indian tribes now show nothing of the skill and industry required for these great works. The only native tribes that seem to have a civilization of their own are certain races, called Pueblo Indians (meaning village Indians), in New Mexico. These tribes live in vast stone buildings, holding, sometimes, as many as five thousand people. These buildings are usually placed on the summits of hills, and have walls so high as only to be reached by ladders. The Pueblo Indians dress neatly, live in families, practise various arts, and are utterly different from the roving tribes farther north.

But, after all, the style of building of even the Pueblo
Indians is wholly unlike anything we know of the
Mound-Builders; for the Mound-Builders do not seem
to have erected stone buildings, nor do the Pueblo
Indians build lofty mounds.

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origin.

Perhaps the Mound-Builders will always remain a good Possible deal of a mystery. They may have come from Asia, or have been the descendants of Asiatics accidentally cast on the American shore. Within the last hundred years no less than forty Japanese vessels have been driven across the Pacific Ocean by storms, and wrecked on the Pacific coast of North America; and this may have

happened as easily a thousand years ago as a hundred. It is certain that some men among the Mound-Builders had reached the sea in their travels; for on some of their carved pipes there are representations of the seal and of the manati, or sea-cow, animals which they

[graphic]

knowledge

of them.

PUEBLO BUILDING, RESTORED.

could only have seen by travelling very far to the east or west, or else by descending the Mississippi River to Our limited its mouth. But we know neither whence they came nor whither they went. Very few human bones have been found among the mounds; and those found had almost crumbled into dust. We only know that the MoundBuilders came, and built wonderful works, and then made way for another race, of whose origin we know almost as little.

CHAPTER III.

WHE

THE AMERICAN INDIANS.

WHEN the first European explorers visited the Appear.
Atlantic coast of North America, they found

it occupied by roving tribes of men very unlike Europeans in aspect. They were of a copper-color, with

ance.

[graphic]
[blocks in formation]

INDIAN WIGWAMS.

different parts

tribes.

of the country, such as Mohegans, Pequots, Massachu- Names of setts, Narragansetts, Hurons, and Wampanoags. But they almost all belonged to two great families, the Algonquins and the Iroquois; these last being commonly called the "Six Nations." The Europeans named them

Manner of living.

all "Indians," because all the first explorers supposed that North America was only the eastern part of India. These tribes of natives differed very much in some respects as to their mode of life. Some were warlike, others peaceful. Some lived only by hunting, others had fields of waving corn, and raised also beans, pumpkins, tobacco, American hemp, and sunflowers, these Dwellings. last for the oil in the seeds. Some had only little tents of skin or bark, called "wigwams; " others built permanent villages, with streets, and rows of houses. These houses were sometimes thirty feet high, and two hundred and forty feet long, and contained as many as twenty families. They were built of bark, supported by wooden posts; they had a slit, about a foot wide, the whole length of the roof, to let the light in, and the smoke out. The fires were built on the ground, in a row, under the long opening.

Roving disposition.

But, however carefully they may have built their houses, all these Indians were alike in being a roving race, living in the open air most of their time, and very unwilling to be long confined to one place. They were always moving about, changing their abode at different. seasons of the year, or when they wished to pursue a different kind of game. One of their commonest reasons for removing was that they had burned the woods immediately around them. So when the first white settlers came, and the Indians were puzzled to know why these strangers arrived, some of them thought that it must be because they had burned up all the wood in the country from which they came, and that they visited the American continent merely to find fuel.

The Indians were not commonly equal to the Euro

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