The Mound Builders

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 17, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 36.

The Mound Builders.

MAJOR J. W. POWELL, director of the United States Geological Survey, in a recent communication to Science, comes to the defense of the opinion that the mound builders were no other than the Indian tribes found in this country in post-Columbian times and their ancestry. He affirms that there has never been presented one item of evidence that the mound builders were a people of culture superior to that of the tribes that inhabited the valley of the Mississippi a hundred years ago. The evidence is complete that these tribes have built mounds within the historic period; and no mounds or earth-works have been discovered superior in structure or contents to those known to have been built in historic times. The theory that this country was inhabited by a people highly organized as nations, and having arts of a higher grade than those belonging to tribal society, according to this distinguished student of American archæology, is wild and baseless; and the fruit of that theory is nothing but exaggeration and false statement.—New York Observer.