The Origin of the Mound Builders

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Title: The Origin of the Mound Builders
Author: Coffin, Alfred Oscar
Language: English
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BUILDERS ***

THE ORIGIN

OF THE

_MOUND BUILDERS_

--------------

A THESIS

ALFRED O. COFFIN, M.A.,

Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College,
Rodney, Mississippi.

--------------

1889.

--------------

CINCINNATI, OHIO:
Elm Street Printing Company, No. 176 Elm Street,
1889.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE ORIGIN of the MOUND-BUILDERS.

--------------

I.
The Mound-builders of the Mississippi Valley.
──────

“To ask or search, I blame thee not; for heaven
Is as the book of God before thee set,
Wherein to read his wondrous works.”

Let any traveler start from Wisconsin and traverse the Mississippi
Valley to the Gulf of Mexico, and cross the country from the Alleghenies
to the Western Plateau, and throughout his course he will find thousands
of mounds of earth with a conical or pyramidal apex, and containing
within their interior relics of human remains and inventions.

When a traveler asks the origin and reasons of these mounds, he is
almost invariably met with the enigmatical answer, “Indian mounds.” They
were not made by the Indians whom Columbus found on this continent; in
fact, their origin was unknown to the Red Man, since they found them
here, and they looked as recent to the first European adventurers, with
the remains of ancient forests on their summits, as they do to us now.

When a boy, I have stood and wondered at the stupendous magnificence of
the Mound-builders’ rude art, in crowning a beautiful hill with a throne
for their Chieftain, or perhaps a temple to their god of nature, or
possibly a sacrificial altar, on which to shed human blood to appease an
irate divinity, or to dedicate the triumphal march of a conquering hero.
Since a man, I have wandered among the thousands of mounds, from the
Great Lakes to the Mexican Gulf, and have pondered among the
unclassified tumuli on the plains of Texas that stretch away toward the
Rio Grande, and have wondered if these are the watch-towers of a
gigantic antediluvian prairie-dog contemporaneous with the _Deinosaurs_,
or if they are the mute landmarks of a mysterious people who trafficked
here while Cheops was building on the Nile. While modern science is
endeavoring to classify the ethnic relations of the Mound-builders, it
is also aware that that hypothesis alone will have credence, that
accords best with the cumulative evidence of those most infallible
guides, comparative craniology and philology.

The science of craniology recognizes three, and sometimes four, kinds of
skulls, determined by the ratio of length to the breadth; that is, the
length of any skull being represented by 100, the “cephalic index” is
the proportion of this 100 covered by the breadth. Skulls with a
cephalic index between 74 and 78 are said to be _mesocephalic_, because
this is the average of mankind. If the index is above 78, they are said
to be _brachycephalic_; if below 74, they are _dolichocephalic_, or
long-headed. The _dolichocephalic_, according to Prof. Retzius, are
found in the eastern part of this continent, from Labrador through the
Antilles to Paraguay. The _brachycephali_, or short heads, are found in
the West, from Behring’s Strait, through Oregon and California, Mexico,
Central America and Chili, to Terra del Fuego. It must be remembered
that the terms “brachycephalic” and “dolichocephalic” are not absolute,
but only relative as to length and breadth, for a dolichocephalic
cranium may be actually shorter than a brachycephalic one.

The Caribs, who inhabit the shores of the Caribbean Sea, are a nautical
people, who conquered the Antilles, as is attested by their war
implements being found there, and entered North America by the
southeast, and spread north to Canada, giving rise to the red Indian,
whose dolichocephalic skulls and roving habits agree precisely with the
Caribs of Venezuela. The brachycephalic type is supposed to have entered
America by Behring’s Strait, giving rise to the Aleutians and Esquimaux,
and passing through Washington Territory and California has
characterized the Hualpa Indians of the latter, and the semi-civilized
cliff-dwellers of Colorado and Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. The high
degree of civilization which Cortez found in Mexico, the unnumbered
temples of the Montezumas, the splendor of Toltec civilization, the
paved roads of Peru, and the gilded palaces of the sun-worshipers of
Lake Titicaca, all show that the brachycephalic civilization of the
Pacific Slope was as distinct from the culture of the hunting tribes of
the Atlantic, as though separated by an ocean. In the Chicago Academy of
Science are a number of Mound-builders’ skulls, taken from mounds in
Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois. There are no other skulls of any
other race in this country like them—with scarcely any forehead
whatever, but with a sudden slope from the superciliary ridges backward.
These skulls are neither dolichocephalic nor brachycephalic; therefore
we can neither look to the ancestry of the Red Men, nor to the Asiatic
type, for the progenitors of the Mound-builders, who may justly be
considered the autochthones of America.

Before attempting to account for the presence of the Mound-builders in
the Mississippi Valley, we will describe a few of their mounds, the only
history they have left us.

These mounds are divided into three classes, according to their use.
The most northern remains of the Mound-builders yet discovered are on
the southern shore of Lake Superior, and in the valley of the
Wisconsin River. All of these mounds are representations of animals on
a gigantic scale—hence we will call them _effigy_ mounds—and seem to
represent their religious rites. No other mounds are found here, which
was not a place of residence, and this character of mound is not found
elsewhere except the great Serpent Mound in Adams County, Ohio. Around
Chicago the mounds are not more than twelve feet high, but in Iowa
they were so plentiful that the French named the river in that State
“Des Moines,” which means “the mounds.” Where St. Louis stands was
once so thickly studded with mounds, that the city has been called
“The Mound City.” In the State of Mississippi the largest river was so
thickly strewn with these prehistoric ruins that the Choctaws called
it “_Yazoo-okhinnah_”—“The River of Ancient Ruins.” In Illinois the
mounds are oblong, square, ellipsoidal and conical. Cahokia, the
largest mound in the United States, stood here. It formed a
parallelogram with sides respectively seven hundred and five hundred
feet long and ninety feet high, and covered fifteen acres—larger than
the largest pyramid in Egypt. On the top of this mound was probably a
temple, for many bones and funeral vases were taken from the interior;
so we call this a _temple_ mound. The banks of the Ohio, Scioto,
Wabash and Muskingum are so thickly covered with mounds and tumuli,
that Squier and Davis estimate that Ohio alone contains ten thousand,
and plainly indicate that this was the capital of the Mound-builders’
empire. A number of these are conical mounds, and the bones and
charcoal indicate that they were _sacrificial_ mounds. Near Newark,
Ohio, occur the most stupendous of the Mound-builders’ works, covering
two square miles, and containing walls, pyramids, circles and turrets,
which in our day, with machinery and horse-power, would require many
thousand men many months to perform.

One of the wonders of the world is the great Serpent Mound in Adams
County, Ohio, which stamps the religious character of the vanished race.
The total length of the serpent is fourteen hundred and fifteen feet,
and the distance between the jaws one hundred feet. It lies on the crest
of a hill, and its folds correspond with the windings of the hill. Is
this serpent an emblem of the one that plays such a part in the
mythology of the old world? “This symbol prevails in Egypt, Greece,
Assyria, and among the superstitions of the Celts, Hindoos and Chinese.
Wherever native religions have had their scope, this symbol is sure to
appear.”

On the Ohio River, twelve miles from Wheeling, in West Virginia, stands
the Grave Creek Mound, seventy feet high and a thousand feet in
circumference. This was a _signal_ mound, from the summit of which
signal fires could be seen far down the valley, and others transmitted
the message in like manner, till it reached Cahokia on the Mississippi.

The growth of civilization has always been along the courses of great
rivers—the Nile, Euphrates, Ganges, Hoangho, Danube, the Mississippi and
Ohio. The Mound-builders were an agricultural people, for maize has been
found in the mounds, and nowhere do we find the mounds where maize will
not grow. Where the population of the United States is growing densest
every year, there, too, the Mound-builders reached their acme, showing
that what we consider natural advantages so did they. Ohio, the second
State in the Union, was likewise their capital, with its ten thousand
mounds to-day marking the spot where flourished their vanished cities.

They were an agricultural people, because no other occupation could have
supported so vast a concourse of people. Their government was despotic;
for when we consider that they had no metallic tools or beasts of
burden, but that these mounds were raised by earth scraped from the
surface and carried up in baskets, we are bound to conclude that these
mounds are the work of slaves; for, studying the history of Egypt, we
know that no wealth or power on earth could have erected these pyramids
by freemen working in competition for freemen’s wages.

Two thousand men were employed three years in carrying a stone from
Elephantis to Sais, and the building of one pyramid required the labor
of three hundred and sixty thousand men for twenty years.

They understood political economy and the division of labor; else so
many men could not have been fed, while their labor was withdrawn from
production and locked up in this yearly labor, unless there was a
powerful reserve force like Joseph to store the granaries in time of
plenty.

They were a commercial people; for in these mounds we find copper from
Lake Superior, shells from the Mexican Gulf, mica from the Alleghenies,
iron pyrites from Missouri and obsidian from Mexico.

They were an inventive people; for we find specimens of cloth, woven
from a vegetable fibre, in several different patterns; and they were not
warlike, for most of the instruments taken from the mounds are of
agricultural pattern. They were not of the same stock as the red Indian,
because the Indian, even in the nineteenth century, is still in the
Stone Age, roving in feral tribes, and starving to death annually rather
than taint his inherited dignity by manual labor. The Indian’s
implements are of flint, and _always_ on the surface of the ground. The
Mound-builder’s implements are of argillite, and found _beneath_ the
surface and gravel. The Indian’s habitation is never durable enough to
be traced by his succeeding progeny, while the Mound-builder has left
his mark which ten thousand years will but intensify.

The Mound-builders can not be identified with the Pueblo Indians,
because the pottery of the Puebloes is corrugated and indented, and
_never_ has the semblance of any animal form whatever; while that of the
Mound-builders is striated, and eminently characterized by animal forms
and statuettes of the human form divine. They can not be classed with
the Esquimaux, because the Esquimaux are a strictly Orarian people, and
we have no evidence of their ever having been aught else.

“The brain is the seat of mental activity, and we place the seat of the
intellectual faculties in the anterior lobe; of the propensities which
link us to the brute, in the middle lobe; and of those which appertain
to the social affections, in the posterior lobe. The predominance of any
one of these divisions in a people would stamp them as either eminently
intellectual, eminently cruel, or eminently social.” From an examination
of the few authentic skulls of the Mound-builders, we are confident that
these people were neither eminent for great virtues nor great vices, but
were a mild, inoffensive race, who would fall an easy prey to a crafty
and cruel foe. The Mound-builders entered the Mississippi Valley by way
of Mexico, being drawn thither by the superior attraction of the soil
and climate of our river terraces and bottoms, and they remained here
until crowded out by the savage hunting tribes of red Indians, when they
retraced their steps to Mexico and developed that higher intellectual
and architectural skill which we will now consider.

And now, having hastily glanced at a very few of the tens of thousands
of mounds familiar to every inhabitant of the Mississippi Valley, we
will follow the trail of the Mound-builders as evinced by their works,
through Phillips County, Arkansas, four miles from Helena, thence to Red
River, where they disappear.

Taking up the trail again at the Hollywood plantation, near Saint
Joseph, Louisiana, in Tensas Parish, we find ten mounds in a circle
facing the temple. A few miles southward, facing Natchez, in Catahoula
Parish, is another group. Crossing Louisiana, we enter Texas, and from
the Trinity to the Colorado River there are millions of mounds, all of a
conical form, that have baffled ethnologists for the last fifty years.
They are from one to five feet in height, and from thirty to one hundred
and forty feet in diameter. All scientists who have examined them have
pronounced them the “inexplicable mounds.” During the summer of ’87 and
’88 I have traveled for days among the same mysterious mounds in Texas,
stretching in an unbroken line toward the Rio Grande, and have
pronounced them “landmarks” that indicated the line of departure of the
Mound-builders, in their migration across the treeless prairies.

This conclusion brings us to consider the Mound-builders after the
migration, in their new home.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

II.
The Mound-builders in Mexico.
──────

“Nations melt
From Power’s high pinnacle, when they have felt
The sunlight for a while, and downwards go.”

We know that the Mound-builders had a knowledge of Mexico before their
southwestern migration, because obsidian was found in their mounds, and
this mineral is found only in Mexico.

No links are so conclusive in connecting the Mound-builders of the
Mississippi Valley with those of Mexico, as the truncated, pyramidal
mounds. True to the historical traditions that all great centers of
civilization have been along the great river basins, we would naturally
turn to the water-courses of Mexico to resume the trend of our
narrative, and we are not disappointed.

On the Panuca River, near the Gulf of Tampico, Mr. Norman found
twenty-five mounds, some of them covering two acres, and built of earth
as those in the Mississippi Valley, though some were faced with stones.
According to the Smithsonian Report of 1873, across the river from Vera
Cruz occurs a locality of mounds covering three square leagues. The
pyramids of Papantla and Tuscapan are of solid masonry with steps on the
outside. The pyramid of Cholula is truncated, its base being one
thousand four hundred and twenty-three feet long, covering forty-four
acres. Its perpendicular height is one hundred and seventy-two feet, and
its truncated summit contains more than one acre; this was the Mecca of
the valley of Anahuac. The hanging gardens of Tezcuco had a summit
reached by five hundred and twenty steps and crowned by a fountain.
Nezahualeoyotl built a pyramidal temple nine stories high, dedicated to
“The Unknown God, the Cause of Causes.” In the ruins of Mitla, Oaxaca,
Guingola, and numerous others, we have numerous ruins of different
construction; but to say that they are the works of different races of
people is saying too much. All the inhabitants of Nahuac were kindred
tribes, and spoke the Nahuatl language, though entering the valley at
different times in different clans. Winchell states that the Mongoloids
entered North America by Behring’s Strait and spread east and southward;
that the beginning of this wave is lost in obscurity, but in due
succession the Nahuas moved forward. The Toltecs followed and crowded
the Nahuas through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec into Yucatan and Central
America. The Astecs followed the Toltecs in occupancy. While the Astecs
crowded on the Toltecs, these pushed farther the Nahuas, and the Nahuas
pressed on the rear of their unknown and mysterious predecessors, and so
forth to the borders of Chili. Also another branch of Mongoloids entered
South America by the Polynesian route, crossed the Andes, ascended the
Atlantic Slope to the Caribbean Sea, crossed to the Antilles and entered
North America by the Tortugas and Florida, ascended the Atlantic Slope
and began war on the peaceful inhabitants of the Pacific Slope, when the
white man arrived and interrupted this symmetrical rotation and sequence
of invasion. I beg leave differ with regard to a part of this plan, on
grounds adduced further on.

The Toltec clan was among the first to enter the Valley of Mexico or
Nahua, followed by the Chichimecs, who were succeeded by the seven clans
or tribes who dwelt in the valley at the same time, and who probably are
connected with “the seven mysterious cities of Cibola” in New Mexico.

These tribes were the Xochimilcos, Cholcos, Tepanecos, Acolhuas,
Tezcucans, Tlascaltecas and Astecs. For political strength the Astecs,
Tezcucans and Tlascans formed a triumvirate, and each had their capital
city, viz.: Tezcuco, Tlasca, and Tenochtitlan. The Astec clan in its
peregrinations had kept the name _Astec_, in honor of their ancient
home, _Aztlan_ or _Atlantis_, but their priest, Aacatl, decreed that
they should be called _Mexicatls_, in honor of their war god, _Mexitli_,
because he had enabled them to conquer their brethren.

In the midst of the beautiful Lake Tezcuco, on an island, they built
their national capital, Tenochtitlan, which the Spaniards called “the
most beautiful spot on earth.” Cortez destroyed this beautiful city and
built the modern city of Mexico on its ruins. It was here that the
ill-starred “Moteuczoma”—whom the Spaniards have misspelled
Montezuma—poured the wealth of his kingdom into the coffers of Cortez,
and in return suffered the most humiliating degradation and death
recorded on the pages of history.

Tenochtitlan was a great city. Two thousand temples, one hundred palaces
and a thousand sumptuous dwellings have melted before the desecrating
Spaniards as a mirage before a thirsty traveler.

The priests, in their too zealous zeal to uproot polytheism, wreaked
their holy vengeance upon temples and idols; and history can produce no
parallel to the vandalism that would sack the temples of all the written
documents and ideographic paintings and make a bonfire of them on the
public plaza, on the plea that they were from the devil!

The zenith of New World civilization became a setting sun before a
savage Christianity. The path of the Christian became a sirocco, the
garden spot of the world became a holocaust.

Tenochtitlan, the city of palaces, the capital of the Valley of Anahuac,
was razed to the ground, and the testimony of a thousand years of
civilization was as completely lost to the modern world as the buried
island of Atlantis, and by a Christian nation!

It matters little with which particular tribe of Anahuac the
Mound-builders have become identified, since all the Nahuatl tribes were
Mound-builders, and were forging a high civilization out of Nature
herself.

The differentiation of the Mound-builders’ intellectuality, the gradual
increments of their power of specialization, would naturally improve an
earth mound by facing it with stone, and in turn to build it entirely of
stone, and finally truncate a solid pyramid, crown its top with a palace
or a temple, and its terraces with fountains and hanging gardens. It is
but natural that the pottery of the Ohio mounds, with their rude images
of animals and things, would suggest the association of several such
images to record a thought, and, as civilization advanced, to resolve
itself into the curious hieroglyphics of the Astecs. The effigy mounds
of Wisconsin were but an inherent impulse to perpetuate their symbols of
worship upon the most lasting monuments known to their rude art—earth
mounds. What could be more natural than that, as soon as stone temples
took the place of earth mounds, they should emblazon those same symbols
on the lasting rock? That same perseverance that could raise Cahokia and
Grave Creek Mound has intensified itself in chiseling beautiful facades
and frescoes out of solid porphyry, with no other tools than obsidian
chisels. The bas-reliefs are as delicate as those cut by steel, and the
paintings on the temples of Mexico of human faces, are as identical with
the shape of the skulls in the museum in Chicago, with their retreating
foreheads and prominent superciliary ridges, as a painting can be like a
skull.

The laws of the Astecs were written in blood by a Draco, and a historian
who misrepresented facts was punished with death. Accepting the above as
proof evident that the paintings are correct, the large nose of the
statues will forever contradict the alliance of the Astecs or
Mound-builders with the Mongoloids. Hereafter we shall use the word
Mound-builders as a synonym for Astecs, since we believe we have
established sufficiently the analogy.

You ask, Then why have not the records of the Astecs preserved their
early history in the Mississippi Valley? Such in all probability was the
case, but the Spaniards burned every record they could find, and
whatever history we have is fragmentary, and only such as escaped the
diligence of the priests. We may marvel at first that the cupidity of
the Spaniards should thus outweigh every other consideration of right
and justice, but we must consider that this was the age of chivalry,
just succeeding the Crusades, when all Europe turned knight-errants and
went to war against the Saracens of Asia. It was the war of the Cross
against the Crescent, when each Christian thought it his duty to kill a
Turk, in order to plant the Cross in heathen lands.

This fever struck chivalrous Spain, and no leader could have been found
more imbued with the spirit than Hernando Cortez, and it was with this
spirit that he entered Mexico—to win gold for his crown and the country
for his church. Iconoclasm was his creed, gold his desire, and fire and
the sword his argument. When he entered the sanctuaries of their
temples, and offered the sacerdotal official the image of the Virgin, in
an unknown tongue, as a substitute for their tutelary divinities, on
their inability to comprehend his motives, he invariably overturned
their altars, broke their idols, and, with the assumption of a man
ordained by Jehovah, invoked the saints to let them be anathema
maranatha. No cataclysm of nature since the destruction of Atlantis has
been so blighting to the growth of a nation, or so completely
annihilating to their past history, as the Spanish Conquest of the New
World.

Tenochtitlan, the mistress who demanded tribute of all Mexico, has
vanished, and the Modern Mexico, phœnix-like, soars aloft with
outstretched wings, and hovers over the earth with her music, then sinks
with the last sad notes of the dying swan, to immolate herself, that she
may rise from her ashes, to rise higher and sing clearer.

A Catholic cathedral occupies the place of the Teocalli, but at what
cost! Ten thousand souls without the knowledge of an Evangel; the canals
of the New World Venice turned into a Golgotha; the beautiful lake of
Tezcuco turned into a salt marsh, the hanging gardens and fountains of
princes into cactus beds, and the history of a people blotted from the
face of the earth!

The modern traveler, as he looks at the changed scenes in the Valley of
Mexico, may truthfully say:

“Here didst thou fall, and here thy hunters stand
Signed in thy spoil, and crimsoned in thy lethe.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

III.
The Mound-builders in Central America.
──────

“Thou unrelenting Past!
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain—
And fetters, sure and fast,
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.

“Far in thy realm withdrawn,
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom;
And glorious ages gone,
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.

“Full many a mighty name
Lurks in thy depth, unuttered, unrevered:
With thee are silent fame,
Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared.”

While the Mayas of Yucatan and Central America spoke a different
language from the Astecs, certain analogies in building and invention
warrant us in considering them at this point. The oldest civilization in
America was in Yucatan, Honduras and Guatemala, and, according to
Bancroft, the oldest city in the western world is Copan, which was in
ruins, deserted, and overgrown by a dense tropical forest, at the time
of the Spanish Conquest, three hundred and sixty years ago.

The Mayas of Yucatan, according to their traditions, first arrived there
793 B.C. from “Tulapam.” We don’t know where “Tulapam” was; but they
must have come by sea, because the natives of Yucatan to-day speak a
language exactly similar to that spoken by the extinct aborigines of
Cuba, Hayti and Jamaica, when the Spaniards first arrived there. North
of Guatemala stand the ancient ruins of Palenque, the Mecca of Central
America, whose facaded palaces and stuccoed temples are full of
hieroglyphics and bas-reliefs, beautiful in ruins, telling the sad
history of a vanished race who here offered sacrifice to Quetzalcohuatl,
the nature god of the Mayas.

Nepenthe rules here supreme. A tropical forest has torn asunder her
pyramids, while trees nine feet in diameter have shot up in the midst of
her buildings, and nine feet of vegetable mold fill the inner courts
above the pavement, where sacerdotal processions, possibly before the
birth of Phœnician commerce, swung their censers and performed their
mysterious rites.

A few words concerning Uxmal and its ruins will answer for the rest of
Yucatan. The walls of this temple were nine feet thick, and the rich,
sculptured facades are the finest in America. The sculptured portion
covers twenty-four thousand square feet, while the terraced mound
supporting the house contained over sixty thousand cubic yards of
material; and we must remember that these people had neither metallic
tools nor beasts of burden.

Nothing but the feeling of profoundest awe must fill the modern
traveler, as he emerges from the depths and gloom of a tropical forest,
and comes face to face with the massive walls of the pyramid of Copan,
containing twenty-six million cubic feet of stone brought from a distant
quarry, and whose base is six hundred and twenty-four feet by eight
hundred and nine feet, with a tower one hundred and eighty-two feet,
built of huge blocks of stone, surmounted by two huge trees rooted in
its mold.

Within its ruins were found fourteen statues, the largest thirteen feet
four inches tall, and all covered with bas-reliefs and hieroglyphics
whose workmanship is equal to that on the Egyptian pyramids.

In front of the statues stand huge altars six feet square, divided into
thirty-six tablets of hieroglyphics, which tell to the world their
history; but they speak in an unknown tongue, so the traveler must
surmise if these were the emblems of the Mayan pantheon, or the palace
of a pre-Adamite man.

The curtain falls, the traveler returns, and the æons commence again
their ceaseless cycles around mysterious Copan.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

IV.
The Lost Atlantis.
──────

“Man’s steps are not upon thy paths; thy fields
Are not a spoil for him; thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth’s destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send him, shivering in thy playful spray,
And howling to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dash him again to earth—there let him lie.”

Whence sprang the Mound-builders? It is evident, after reading the
foregoing, that a people who could reach such a degree of civilization,
must have received an impetus from without, which makes us conclude that
the Mound-builders migrated to America.

“The Story of Atlantis,” as recorded by Plato in his _Timæus_, has been
regarded as a myth, but seems destined to become genuine history. The
translation of the Greek philosopher is as follows:—“Among the great
deeds of Athens, of which recollection is preserved in our books, there
is one which should be placed above all others. Our books tell that the
Athenians destroyed an army that came across the Atlantic Sea, and
insolently invaded Europe and Asia, for this sea was then navigable, and
beyond the straits where you place the Pillars of Hercules, there was an
island larger than Asia (Minor) and Libya combined. From this island one
could pass easily to other islands, and from these to the continent
which lies around the interior sea. The sea (Mediterranean) on this side
the strait of which we speak, resembles a harbor with a narrow entrance;
but there is a genuine sea, and the land which surrounds it is a
veritable continent. In the Island of Atlantis reigned three kings, with
great and marvelous power. They had under their dominion the whole of
Atlantis and other islands, and some parts of the continent. At one time
their power extended into Libya, and into Europe as far as Tyrrhenia,
and, uniting their whole force, they sought to destroy our whole country
at a blow; but their defeat stopped the invasion and gave independence
to all the countries this side the Pillars of Hercules. Afterward, in
one day and one fatal night, there came mighty earthquakes and
inundations which engulfed the warlike people. Atlantis disappeared
beneath the sea, and then that sea became inaccessible, so that
navigation on it ceased, on account of the quantity of mud which the
engulfed island left in its place.”

Plutarch, in his “Life of Solon,” relates that the Lawgiver learned this
story of Atlantis from Egyptian priests.

Diodorus Siculus relates:—“Over against Africa lies a very great island,
in the vast ocean, many days’ sail from Libya westward. The soil there
is very fruitful, a great part whereof is mountainous, but much likewise
champaign, which is the most sweet and pleasant part, for it is watered
by several navigable streams, and beautiful with many gardens of
pleasure, planted by divers sorts of trees and an abundance of orchards.
The towns are adorned with many stately buildings and banqueting-houses,
pleasantly situated in the gardens and orchards.”

Theopompos, who wrote in the fourth century B.C., tells substantially
the same story, which was given by Silenus to the ancient king Midas,
recorded by Aristotle. The Gauls possessed traditions on this subject,
which were collected by the Roman historian Timagenes, who lived in the
first century before Christ. This record states that three distinct
peoples dwelt in Gaul (France): (1) The indigenous population, (2) The
invaders from a distant island (Atlantis), (3) The Aryan Gauls.

Marcellus, also, in a book on the Ethiopians, speaks of seven islands
lying in the Atlantic Ocean near Europe, which we may undoubtedly
identify with the Canaries; but he adds: “The inhabitants of these
islands preserve the memory of a much greater island, Atlantis, which
had, for a long time, exercised dominion over the smaller ones.”

Now all these ancient writers clearly state that a continent existed
west of Africa, which was destroyed by a great cataclysm. The tribes in
Central America and Mexico, in Venezuela, British and Dutch Guiana,
distinctly describe these cataclysms, one by water, one by fire, and a
third by winds. Catlin, in his “Lifted and Subsided Rocks of America,”
describes the tradition of such a cataclysm.

The Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, in his “Quatre Lettres sur le Mexique,”
and “Sources de l’Histoire Primitive du Mexique,” has translated the
“Teo Amoxtli,” which is the Toltecan mythological history of the
cataclysm of the Antilles. The festival of “Izcalli” was instituted to
commemorate this terrible calamity, in which “princes and people humbled
themselves before the Divinity, and besought him not to renew the
frightful convulsions.”

It is claimed that, by this catastrophe, an area larger than France
became engulfed, including the Lesser Antilles, the extensive banks at
their eastern extremity, the peninsulas of Yucatan, Honduras and
Guatemala, and the great estuaries of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of
Mexico. With Yucatan and Guatemala went down the splendid cities of
Palenque and Uxmal, and others whose sites and inhabitants are now in
the ocean bed.

In verification of these ancient traditions, our modern geographies tell
us that Old Guatemala was destroyed by a water volcano in the sixteenth
century, and again in the eighteenth by an earthquake. The sea-shells on
both sides of the Isthmus of Panama are alike, and according to
geographical distribution of animals, this could only come about by the
Isthmus having been once submerged, and after remaining so long enough
for the intermixture of species, being raised; and the submarine fossils
found on the Isthmus prove the hypothesis.

According to Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, the oldest Mexican records date
back to nine hundred and twenty-five years before Christ, when a strange
people came among them. In opposition to Winchell’s hypothesis of a
northwest Mongolian migration to Mexico, I wish to prove that the
Mound-builders were the people who came after the cataclysms, and that
they came from the continent of _Atlantis_.

And what hope have I to establish such affinity? “_Dans les pays les
plus différent_,” says Benjamin Constant, “_chez les peuples de moeurs
les plus opposées, le sacerdoce a dû aû culte dés éléments et des
astres, un pouvoir dont audjour d’hui nous concevons à peine l’idée._”

The nearest lands west of Africa, where Plato located the continent of
Atlantis, are the Canary Islands, the nearest being about fifty miles
from Africa, and the whole group extending about three hundred miles,
and separated from the continent by a channel more than five thousand
feet deep. Of all oceanic islands (not continental) discovered by
Europeans, _the Canaries alone were inhabited_. Here were found the
Guanches, now extinct, who, at the time of their discovery, were not
aware that a continent existed in their neighborhood, for, on being
asked by the Spanish missionaries how they had come to their
archipelago, they answered: “God placed us on these islands, and then
forsook and forgot us.” Now who were these Guanches? Their islands have
never been connected with Africa, because the channel between them is a
mile deep, and Wallace, in his “Island Life,” has proved that any island
surrounded by water over five thousand feet deep is of volcanic origin,
and that is just the clue we are seeking. If craniometry is a reliable
science, the Guanches were not savages, but _superior to the Egyptians_!
According to Prof. Flower’s measurements, the skull of the English of
low grade contains 1,542 cubic centimeters, the Guanches 1,498, Japanese
1,486, Chinese 1,424, Italians 1,475, and the Ancient Egyptians 1,464.
That a remnant of a race found on an island in mid-ocean should have a
better developed brain than many continental nations who have made
history, is significant. We should expect such a people to conquer their
neighbors, just as is recorded by Plato. And now as to their dispersion.
When Columbus set sail from Palos in 1492, he steered directly for the
Canary Islands for repairs. When he left the Canaries, without any
effort of his own the trade winds carried his vessels straight to the
West Indies. These winds blow in this direction _all_ the time. In
December, 1731, a ship started from Teneriffe with a cargo of wine for
one of the Western Canaries, and, having only six men on board, they
were unable to manage the ship, and the trade winds carried them
straight to Trinidad, on the Island of Cuba, of course. While Atlantis
was sinking, some of the inhabitants escaped on rafts and boats, and,
being exactly at the same point at which Columbus and the ship’s crew
started in the path of the trade winds, there was nothing to do but
wait, and they were carried to the West Indies, through the Caribbean
and Gulf of Mexico, to Yucatan and Mexico. We can easily see now why the
oldest civilization of the New World is in Central America. Some of
these emigrants stopped in the West Indies, for the aborigines spoke the
same language as the Mayas of Yucatan to-day. Some stopped in South
America, for Dr. Lund, the eminent Swedish naturalist, in the bone caves
of Minas Gerais, Brazil, found human skulls exactly like those of the
Mound-builders.

The sudden destruction of these people recalls the beautiful lines from
Richardson’s Geology, on “The Nautilus and the Ammorite:”

* * * * *

“They sailed all day, through creek and bay,
And traversed the ocean deep;
And at night they sank on a coral bed,
In its fairy bowers to sleep.

“And the monsters vast, of ages past,
They beheld in their ocean caves;
They saw them ride, in their power and pride,
And sink in their deep sea graves.

* * * * *

“And they came at last, to a sea long past;
But as they reached its shore,
The Almighty’s breath spoke out in death,
And the Ammorite breathed no more.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

V.
Deductions.
──────

We now proceed to discuss the relation of the Mound-builders to the
inhabitants of _Atlantis_, or their immediate neighbors, the Egyptians.
Dr. Waitz, in his “Anthropology of Primitive Peoples,” observes: “The
first elements of civilization, as far as history reaches, always appear
as communicated from one people to another; and of no people can it be
proved how, where and when they have become civilized by their own
inherent power.” Now, Winchell in his genealogical charts, represents
the entire peopling of the Pacific Slope from Alaska to Chili by
Mongoloid branches, and the world knows that the civilization of the
Chinese is and has always been a _petrified fossil_. The race is
absolutely devoid of civilizing qualities. Their state is founded upon
the worship of the shades of their ancestors. Their exalted egotism has
for ages resisted every attempt to force advancement among them, and the
only thing that we can call development among them is atavism.

To say that such a people gave rise to the Esquimaux, is to verify all
history; to say that they are the source of the Astec civilization and
Inca sun-worship, is to perpetuate an anthropological paradox.

Empiricism alone holds but a secondary place in establishing scientific
truth, and all _à priori_ reasoning _must_ hold precedence, when analogy
and affinity would supplement the existing links of discontinued
evidence.

Separated by a channel only fifty miles wide, we may with justice assume
that the civilization of Atlantis and Egypt was very similar. Egypt is
the only land of the ancient world where pyramids are found. On a direct
line of the trade winds, in Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and the
Ohio Valley, we find other pyramids. In Egypt we find the temple
emblazoned with hieroglyphics chiseled in the solid rock, describing the
history of one of the oldest civilizations in the world. In Uxmal,
Mexico, Copan and Palenque are tablets, friezes, bas-reliefs, facades
and hieroglyphics; though inferior to the Egyptians’ in mimetic art,
still of the highest order, considering this to be the product of the
Neolithic Age.

The Egyptians were the only people of the Old World who embalmed their
dead. According to the French historian, Lucien Bart, the Zapotecs and
Chichimecs of the Mexican Valley embalmed their chiefs, and if we may
believe this author, the caves of the Cordilleras are vast museums, as
full of interest as the catacombs of Rome.

That the Americans mummified their dead, is proven by mummies having
been found in Peru and the northwestern part of Patagonia. Dr. Aq. Reid
has found others which prove the relation of Peruvian civilization to
that of Patagonia.

One of these mummies has been deposited in the museum of Ratisbon,
Bavaria, and another was sent to the Smithsonian Institute. (_vid._ Aq.
Reid, Smithsonian Annual Report, 1862, pp. 87, 426.) This mummy led to
the remark of Alexander Winchell: “The humid atmosphere of Patagonia
leads to the inference that the mummification of the dead was practiced
under the influence of some controlling motive, which must have been
inherited from ancestors dwelling in a more propitious clime, and from
which even the dripping meteorology of Patagonia was insufficient to
eradicate.” The Egyptians were accurate astrologers and astronomers.
They accurately calculated eclipses and the reappearances of stars whose
reappearance would require over a thousand years, and the pyramids are
set to the cardinal points. Less than a hundred years ago, the great
Calendar Stone of the Astecs was dug up, in the City of Mexico. It is of
a solid piece of porphyry, and weighs fifty tons. It was brought many
leagues, across a broken country, without beasts of burden, and
Bustamente states that ten thousand men were employed in its
transportation. The Calendar Stone was buried when Cortez sacked the
city of Tenochtitlan, and in itself constitutes a history. From it we
learn that the Astecs were astrologers, astronomers, and calculated
eclipses, and knew the solstices of the sun. They divided the year into
eighteen months of twenty days each, and like the ancient Egyptians, had
five complementary days to make out the three hundred and sixty-five,
and every fifty-two years they threw in twelve and one-half days for
leap year. Like the Persians and Egyptians, a cycle of fifty-two years,
or “an age,” was represented by a serpent, so prominent in ancient
mythology. Their astrological year was divided into months of thirteen
days each, and there were thirteen years in their indications, which
contained each three hundred and sixty-five periods of thirteen days. It
is also curious, that their number of lunar months of thirteen days,
contained in a cycle of fifty-two years, with the intercalation of
thirteen (twelve and one-half) days, should correspond exactly with the
number of years in a great Sothic period of the Egyptians, viz:—fourteen
hundred and ninety-one.

Is it reasonable to suppose that this strange affinity with Egyptian
civilization was accidental? or that a Turanian branch independently
evolved itself into a counterpart of Hamitic Berbers? Hardly.

The ideographic paintings of the Astecs or Mound-builders preserve
traditions of the creation of the world, a universal flood, confusion of
tongues and dispersion of men, and that a single man and woman saved
themselves in a boat which landed near Mount Colhuacan, and that all
their children were born deaf, and remained so till a dove one day, from
the top of a tree, taught them each in a different tongue. All Astec
traditions, without exception, insist that they came from a far-off
island called Aztlan (Atlantis). Dr. Lapham, in his “Antiquities of
Wisconsin,” locates “Azatland” in Wisconsin, on account of the large
number of _effigy_ mounds found there, and Dr. Foster, in his
“Prehistoric Races,” figures these mounds called “Azatland,” but the
Astec painting published by Gemellé Carera, in his _Giro del Mondo_, has
hieroglyphics representing their departure from Aztlan in canoes and on
rafts, after the confusion of tongues, and a teocalli, or temple, by the
side of a palm-tree. Now we all know palms do not grow in Wisconsin, but
they do grow in Africa.

Max Müller, the world’s greatest authority in philology, says, that of
all indices to the mysteries of the ancient world, language is the most
satisfactory, and the _only_ evidence worth listening to with regard to
ante-historic periods.

If we class the languages of the world into groups according to
cognation, we find the Aryan languages comprising the Indian, Persian
(Sanskrit), Hellenic, Latin group (Italian, Wallachian, Provencal,
French, Portuguese and Spanish), Slavonic (Russian), Teutonic (English),
and the Keltic or Welsh, of which the oldest is the Sanskrit and Zend.

The Semitic group comprises the Hebrew, Phœnician, Assyrian and Arabic,
while the Babylonian and Chinese stand alone. The Aryan and Semitic form
a class known as _the inflectional_, and are the only languages of the
world that are adapted to and possess a literature, and that have
advanced the progress of the world in religion, arts, or sciences.

Though springing from a common center, they have grammatical structures
that prevent the one being derived from the other. The Semitic branched
southward and westward, and was the language of the Chaldee, Arab,
Hebrew and Egyptian, the latter sometimes classed as Hamitic. The
Chinese is an _inorganic_ language, _monosyllabic, and destitute of all
grammar_. The nouns have no number, declensions or cases, and the verbs
are without conjugation through moods, tenses and persons. All Mongoloid
races that reached North America must have done so by Behring’s Strait,
and all such races or descendants would undoubtedly have a trace of
their parental language. If the Mound-builders or Astecs were derived
from Mongoloids, we should expect a monosyllabic language, but, on the
contrary, “The Astec language has more diminutives and augmentatives
than the Italian, and its substantives and verbs are more numerous than
in any other language.” Another proof of its wealth is, that when
missionaries first went among them, they found no trouble in expressing
abstract ideas like religion, virtue, etc.

The Sanskrit word God is _Devan_; the Latin, _Deus_; the _Greek_,
_Θεός_, and the Astec word is _Teotl_. Whether this similarity in sound
and spelling was accidental or constitutional, I know not, but
comparative philology recognizes radical rather than phonetic
affinities.

The Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration of souls was the ruling
passion among the Astecs. Whether this was the fruition of all
polytheistic religions, or the retention of primordial culture, I know
not; but we know the Egyptians embalmed their dead, lest the dissolution
of the body would destroy also the soul, and the greatest desecration
that could befall the ancient Greeks and Romans was the refusal of
burial, because the soul of him thus uncared for wandered thenceforth as
a disembodied ghost. We read in Homer’s “Iliad” how the dead Patroclus
comes to the sleeping Achilles, who tries in vain to grasp him with
loving arms, but the soul, like smoke, flits away below the earth. How
Hermotimos, the seer, used to go out of his body, till at last, his
soul, coming back from a spirit journey, found that his wife had burnt
his body on a funeral pile, and that he had become a bodyless ghost. How
Odysseus visits the bloodless ghosts in Hades, and the shadows of the
dead in Purgatory wondered to see the body of Dante there, which stopped
the sunlight and cast a shadow.

This idea of the phantom life of souls as shades and shadows constitutes
the higher philosophy of the transcendental metaphysics of the ancient
Greeks, whose exponent was Pythagoras.

Forbearing to enter here upon the religious status of the Astecs, we
turn again to their language. If we are to believe the highest authority
on these subjects, we are ready to prove that the Atlas Mountains and
Atlantic Ocean, while known to the Greeks a thousand years before
Christ, still belong to the Nahuatl language in North America.

The words _Atlas_ and _Atlantic_ have no satisfactory etymology in any
language in Europe or Asia, and we are certain no such roots are found
in the Greek; but in the Nahuatl language we find their homes.

The consonants most used are _l_, _t_, _x_, _z_; next the sounds _tl_
and _tz_; but _l_, the most frequent used, is never found at the
beginning of a word.

The radicals _a_, _atl_, which signify water, _atlan_, on the border or
amid the water, give us the adjective _Atlantic_, pertaining to the
land, _Aztlan_ (or _Atlantis_), in the midst of the water. We have also
_atlaca_, to hurl or dart from the water, whose preterite makes _atlaz_.
In the time of Columbus a city named _Atlan_ existed on the Gulf of
Darien, with a good harbor, but now it is only a small pueblo named
_Acla_.

Undoubtedly we have reached the fountain-head. The nearest point of land
from the Island of “Atlantis” was the Atlas Mountains, which at that
distance would seem to be _darted up from the water_; from their
_Atlantis_, _in the midst of the water_. One has but to look on the map
of Mexico to-day, and see that my theory is supported by such words as
Tlascoran, Tlascala, Tlatlanquitepec, Tlascopan, Tenochtitlan,
Chialinitzla, Yxtacamaxtitlan, Popocatapetl, etc., and scores of others,
which prove that those combinations of liquids and consonants are at
home _only_ in the Nahuatl countries; _ergo_, the Atlas Mountains and
Atlantic Ocean and “Atlantis” were named by these people before their
continent was destroyed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

VI.
The First Men of America.
──────

“Antiquity appears to have begun
Long after their primeval race was run.”

Time is the only alembic to test the true character of great men or
deeds. Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe and Hugo are the few select
representatives whom the world acknowledges as its spokesmen.
Shakespeare was in his grave a hundred years before he spoke
authoritatively to the world, and with Dante it was no better. Ages had
passed away before the seven cities of Greece warred for the honor of
Homer’s birthplace, but for twenty-six centuries has the “Siege of Troy”
stood out in profile as the model epic of the world, but of doubtful
veracity because of its antiquity; but Dr. Schliemann’s excavations seem
destined yet to find the funeral pyre of Patroclus, surrounded by the
remains of Trojan captives.

Even within the last twelve months has the French archæologist, M.
Marcel Dieulafay, brought to light the ancient city of Susa, and we may
now behold the palace of Artaxerxes Mnemon, whose foundation was laid by
Xerxes I. 485 B.C.; and now, after twenty-three centuries, the Bible
student may take his Bible in his hand and turn to the Book of Esther
and read, while the guide in the ancient capital of Persia points to
this spot where Mordecai sat, to that spot where Haman was hanged, to
this Court where the lovely Esther was crowned queen, and whence the
sorrowing Vashti departed, as the unfortunate Hebe, cupbearer of Jove,
before the victorious Ganymede.

Plato recorded the sad fate of Atlantis nearly five hundred years before
Christ, and Solon had recorded the same in a poem two hundred years
before. Plato says the expedition against Egypt took place during the
reigns of the Athenian kings, Cecrops and Erechtheus, and according to
the “Marble of Paros,” those kings ruled in 1582 B.C. and 1409 B.C.,
which is not a great deal more ancient than the siege of Troy.

Though this is ancient history, we have as much right to accept Plato’s
history as Homer’s, if it can be established.

The Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg claims that Mexican chronology dates back
two thousand eight hundred and fourteen years. Because America was
latest discovered, it is the popular opinion that it should have been
the latest developed, but there is evidence sufficient that the New
World is in every sense the oldest.

We know that this continent was once covered with glaciers as low down
as New Jersey and the Ohio River. According to Dr. Croll, glaciation is
brought about by the combined effect of the eccentricity of the earth’s
orbit and the precession of the equinoxes, which makes the distance of
our planet from the sun vary considerably during the year. We are three
million miles nearer the sun in winter than in summer, while the reverse
is the case in the Southern Hemisphere. If our winter now were long as
our summer, and we were to continue three million miles nearer the sun
in the winter, a decided change would occur, and our winters would grow
longer and colder, and our summers shorter and hotter. Now the
precession of the equinoxes and the motion of aphelion actually bring
this about every ten thousand five hundred years, and the condition of
the two hemispheres is reversed as regards their glaciation, and this
reversion has been going on during all geologic time.

But the eccentricity itself of the earth in its orbit between perihelion
and aphelion varies, and since the eccentricity is now at its minimum,
three million miles, we infer that our last glacial epoch occurred ten
thousand five hundred years ago, and the ice mantle has retreated from
39° in New Jersey to 61° in Southern Greenland, which is now covered by
a glacier twelve hundred miles long, four hundred miles wide, and a mile
thick, while the ice in the Southern Hemisphere has increased to several
miles in thickness, and to such extent, that the nearest point to the
South Pole Sir Ross was able to reach, was still fourteen hundred miles
from the Pole.

While the St. Lawrence and the area of the Great Lakes were under these
glaciers, of course there could have been no outlet to the Atlantic of
the waters, which were forced by the Alleghenies to flow to the Gulf, at
the time of the great thaw ten thousand years ago, and the St. Lawrence
could only have been formed after the ice had retreated beyond the Great
Lake areas. Since that period the Niagara has been cutting its way from
Lake Ontario through the solid limestone of the Upper Silurian Period,
until the Falls of Niagara are now seven miles from the lake. Dana
estimates that the river has cut its way at the rate of a foot a year,
which would make it thirty-five thousand years cutting its channel. Sir
Charles Lyell, as quoted in Hugh Miller’s “Testimony of the Rocks,”
estimates the rate at fifty yards in forty years, which would make it
ten thousand years, which agrees exactly with the time the glacier
crossed the Great Lakes. However long it was, man was here then, for a
tooth of a man has been found with that of a mammoth in the Drift of the
Niagara, and Dr. Abbott has found bones of the mastodon and the wisdom
tooth of a man, fourteen feet under the gravel of the Delaware, and
their rolled and abraded surfaces prove them either pre-glacial or
contemporaneous with glaciers.

While the great glaciers were breaking up at the head-waters of the
Platte, Yellowstone and Missouri, the flooded rivers dropped their
sediment in the vast inundated lakes, whose rich bottoms formed the
loess which so well characterizes the fertile prairie soil of the
Western States to-day.

In Nebraska, stone arrow-heads and the bones of the ancient elephant
were found thirty feet under the loess, and in Greene County, Illinois,
a well was dug seventy-two feet through the loess, when a stone hatchet
was found, proving that the hatchet was dropped there when Illinois was
covered by a lake over which the rude hunter paddled his canoe.

Dr. Koch, of St. Louis, found the bones of the mastodon in the Osage
Valley in Missouri, which was killed while mired down, by fire being
built around it, which consumed nearly all the bones of the animal
except the legs and toes. The presence of ashes and stones proves
conclusively that the huge animal met his death at the hands of man.

One other instance to prove that man existed on this continent in the
Pliocene Epoch: Dr. Winslow sent to the Natural History Society, of
Boston, a skull of a human being found in a shaft in California one
hundred and eighty feet deep, and under five successive layers of
volcanic lava and tufa and four layers of auriferous gravel. To quote
from Foster’s “Prehistoric Times”: “Since the introduction, then, of man
on this continent, the physical features as well as the climate have
undergone great changes. The volcanic peaks of the Sierra Nevadas have
been lifted up, the glaciers have disappeared, the great cañons
themselves have been excavated in the solid rock, and what then were the
beds of streams, now form the Table Mountains.” Admitting this skull to
be Pliocene, we have a human bone in America older than the oldest human
relics found on the continent of Europe. When we consider that this
skull was _in situ_ before the mainland of the Sierras was uplifted by
volcanic upheavals, accompanied by flaming rivers of molten lava,
followed by the glacial night of cold, ice and snow, we no longer
believe that the first inhabitants of North America crossed Behring’s
Strait from Asia.

We have argued that the Mound-builders both entered and left the
Mississippi Valley by the south, and that the Red Indian entered by
Florida from the Antilles, as implements found in Jamaica correspond
with those found in Venezuela, and DeSoto found a higher civilization
among the Natchez tribes of the South than was found among any others.

According to the Icelandic sagas, Lief and Bjorn reached Labrador about
the year 1000 A.D. and found a dwarfish race of men “of short stature,”
whom they called skraelings. We know well such terms could not apply to
the stately Algonquin warriors the Europeans found in New England. No;
these were Esquimaux, whom the warlike Indians had compelled to follow
the retreat of the glaciers toward the Land of the Midnight Sun. They
crossed to the Great Lakes and compelled the peaceful Mound-builders to
go southward. They crossed the Rocky Mountains and drove the inhabitants
of the Sierras also. They crowded them into the gorges and cañons of
Colorado, Utah and Arizona. The frightened refugees were driven to the
necessity of building dwellings in the overhanging cliffs of rivers, and
these nests of human swallows are now known as the “Cliff-dwellers” of
the Colorado and Hili.

They were not allowed to stay here. Driven by their relentless hunters,
they moved onward to the plateaus of Arizona and cactus plains of New
Mexico, where, huddled up between the tribes of Mexico on the south, and
the hunting Indians behind them, they built the pueblos and “The Seven
Cities of Cibola.” The archæological remains prove to us to-day that New
Mexico was as thickly settled by these miserable fugitives as
Pennsylvania or Delaware. The mournful spectacle to-day of the adobe
pueblos along the Pecos and Rio Grande, is the closing chapter of a
history written in blood, and sealed by the life of a nation, with
characters forever enigmatical to the civilized world.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

VII.
Conclusion.
──────

“And thy request think now fulfilled, that asked
How first this world and face of things began,
And what before thy memory was done
From the beginning.”

The former existence of Atlantis is an hypothesis, it is true, but so is
the existence of Lemuria, and nearly every scientist of Europe believes
that a continent once existed in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and
India, and the proof is not wanting.

On the Island of Madagascar are found thirty-three species of monkeys,
called Lemurs, which are not found in Africa, nor in any other part of
the globe, except Ceylon, India, and the Malay Archipelago. Because the
Lemurs are found only in this region, Sclater, the English zoölogist,
has called the sunken continent “Lemuria.”

Between Madagascar and India are a number of submerged banks of less
than one thousand fathoms deep, which a slight elevation would make
comparative easy stages of communication between Madagascar and India
for all animals. An elevation of three hundred feet would unite Java,
Sumatra and Borneo into one great peninsula of the Asiatic continent.

The Island of Madagascar is two hundred and fifty miles wide and one
thousand miles long, and is separated from Africa by the Mozambique
Channel, only two hundred and fifty miles wide. Africa has monkeys,
apes, and baboons; also lions, leopards, hyenas, zebras, rhinocerii,
elephants, buffaloes, giraffes, and many species of deer and antelopes;
but strange to say, not _one_ of these animals is found in Madagascar,
or anything like them. There are in Madagascar, according to Wallace’s
“Island Life,” and Dr. Hartlaub’s “Birds of Madagascar,” one hundred
species of land birds, and only four or five have any kindred in Africa;
but in Malaysia and India we find identical species, and on the islands
of Mauritius, Rodriguez, Bourbon and the Seychelles group we find so
many curious birds without wings, with similar kindred in Madagascar,
that we know these islands have been connected.

The Seychelles group, two hundred by three hundred miles in extent, are
seven hundred miles northeast from Madagascar, and have fifteen peculiar
species of birds, while three of them are found in Madagascar, and some
have kindred in India.

There are five species of lizards which are found in Mauritius, Bourbon,
Rodriguez and Ceylon, and even to the Philippine Islands.

The Mascarene group contains one thousand and fifty-eight species of
plants, of which sixty-six are found in Africa but not in Asia, and
eighty-six are found in Asia and not in Africa, showing a closer
relation to Asia than to Africa. Milne-Edwards has even surmised a
“Mascarene” continent, to include all the outlying islands around
Madagascar. Beccari, in his work on the geographical distribution of
palms, after noting the difficulties of the dispersion of the fruits,
reaches the conclusion that, when we find two congeneric species of
palms on widely separated lands, it is reasonable to infer that these
lands have been united. On the Mascarene Islands, in Ceylon, the
Nicobars, at Singapore, on the Malaccas, New Guinea, in Australia and
Polynesia occur various species of _Phychosperma_, all very difficult of
dissemination, and hence could have reached their present habitat only
by being connected by intervening lands now in the ocean bed. Winchell,
in his “Pre-Adamites,” states among his principles: 1st, The doctrine of
pre-Adamites is entirely consonant with the fundamental principles of
Biblical Christianity; 2d, A chain of profound relationship runs through
the constitution of all races, and they may be regarded as
genealogically connected together; 3d, The initial point of the
genealogical line may be located in Lemuria.

Peschell, in his “Races of Man,” says: “This continent, which would
correspond with the Indian Ethiopia of Claudius Ptolemæus, is required
by anthropology, for we can then conceive how the inferior populations
of Australia and India, the Papuans of the East India Islands, and
lastly the Negroes, would thus be enabled to reach their present abode
by dry land.” The selection of this spot is far more orthodox than it
might at the first glance appear, for we here find ourselves in the
neighborhood of the four enigmatical rivers of the scriptural Eden—in
the vicinity of the Nile, Euphrates, Tigris and Indus. By the gradual
submergence of Lemuria, the expulsion from Paradise would also be
inexorably accomplished. To this he adds the arguments of such
ecclesiastical writers as Lactantius, the venerable Bede, Hrabanus
Maurus, Cosmas Indicopleustes and the anonymous geographer of Ravenna.
In the second chapter of Genesis we read: “A river went out of Eden to
water the garden, and from thence it was parted and came into four
heads.” Whether such a river exists to-day, I know not. Dr. McCausland,
in his “Adam and Adamite,” believes that Eden was on the west bank of
the modern Euphrates, near the Persian Gulf. He says the Pison river of
Genesis, in conjunction with the modern Karùn, is the Pasitigris of the
ancients, which runs through the country of Evilat or Havillah, and
flows into the Euphrates before it falls into the Persian Gulf. The
second is the modern Karashú, the Gyndes of the ancients, which
traverses the land of Cush. The Hiddekel is plainly the Tigris, and is
designated in Daniel x. 4, and runs westward to Assyria.

We know by the remains of sea-shells that the Great Desert of Sahara was
once the bottom of the ocean, and its elevation may have been consonant
with and the direct cause of the submergence of Lemuria.

Alfred Wallace says none but the unscientific have revived Atlantis
since Darwin’s “Origin of Species” and Prof. Asa Grey on “The Affinity
of North American and Asiatic Floras.” It is not my desire to pose as
unscientific, nor to construct a highway for the Polearctic or Nearctic
fauna and flora, but to prove that the anthropological and ethnological
affinities of the Nahuatl tribes deserve a newer and better
classification; and if the restoration of Atlantis will accomplish that
end, then let the theory stand or fall on its merits.

If Lemuria can be established by affinity, why not accept as much of
such collateral evidence concerning Atlantis as is compatible with
science.

The Pacific Ocean is not stormy. Winchell says South America was peopled
by Mongoloids from the Polynesian Islands. Since no storms prevail
there, the theory would indicate a design on the inhabitants to seek new
shores, which lay so many hundred miles away, across a sea where storms
would never carry them by accident; but in the peopling of Central
America from the East, the stormy Atlantic and unvarying trade winds
would carry any unwary voyager who strayed too far from shore. As to the
establishing of scientific data in support of Atlantis, I have to add
that it is probably a short while before the acceptance will be as
universal as Lemuria.

In 1873 Her Majesty’s ship _Challenger_ made soundings in the Atlantic
off the north coast of Africa, and in 1874 the German frigate _Gazelle_
made further soundings in the same region.

In 1877 Commander Gorringe, of the U. S. sloop _Gettysburg_, discovered,
about one hundred and fifty miles from the Straits of Gibraltar, an
immense bed of pink coral in thirty-two fathoms of water.

“These various series of soundings, when located on a map, indicate the
existence of an extended bank of comparatively shallow water, in the
midst of which the Canaries and the Madeiras rise to the surface. The
location of the newly discovered mountain in the Atlantic lies within
the fifteen-thousand-fathom line, and here is probably the stump of the
ancient Atlantis.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Origin of the Mound Builders" ***

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