While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Whoever built the mounds had a faculty not
possessed by modern Indians. Building
instincts seem hereditary. The beaver and
the musk rat build a house. Other creatures
to whom a dwelling might be serviceable,
such as the squirrel, obtain shelter in
another way. And races have their
distinctive tendencies likewise. It never
occurs to an Indian to build a mound. From
what has been already said as to the fertile
localities in which the mounds are found we
are justified in believing that their
builders were agriculturists. Dr. Dawson in
Montreal by the use of the microscope
detected grains of charred corn in the
remains of Hochelaga. I have examined a
small quantity of the dust taken from one of
the shells found in the grand mound, with
the microscope, and though I am not
perfectly certain, yet I believe there are
traces of some farinaceous substance to be
seen. On skirting the shores of the Lake of
the Woods into which Rainy River runs, at
the present time, you are struck by the fact
that there are no Canadian farmers there,
and likewise that there are no mounds to be
seen, while along the banks of Rainy River
both the agriculturist is found cultivating
the soil and the mounds abound. It would
seem to justify us in concluding that the
farmer and the mound builder avoided the one
locality because of its barren rocky
character, and took to the other because of
its fertility. Moreover the continual
occurrence of pottery in the mounds shows
that the mound builders were potters as
well, while none of the tribes inhabiting
the district have any knowledge of the art
of pottery. The making of pottery is the
occupation peculiarly of a sedentary race,
and hence of a race likely to be
agriculturists. As it requires the building
faculty to originate the mounds, so it
requires the constructive faculty to make
pottery. In constructive ability our Indians
are singularly deficient, just as it is with
greatest difficulty that they can be induced
even on a small scale to practice
agriculture. It has been objected to this
conclusion that the Indians can make a
canoe, which is a marvel in its way. But
there is a great difference in the two
cases. In the canoe all the materials remain
the same. The approximation to a chemical
process makes the pottery manufacture a much
more complicated matter. Indeed the Indian
in token of his surprise at his success in
being even able to construct a canoe, states
in his tradition that it is the gift of the
Manitou. Furthermore the mound builder used
metal tools, and was probably a metal
worker. It is true the copper implements
mentioned, as having been found were brought
to Rainy and Red Rivers. I have, however,
pointed out the intimate connection judging
by the line of transport subsisting between
Rainy River and Lake Superior, the mining
locality for copper. To sink a mine in the
unyielding Huronian rock of Lake Superior,
with mallet and hammer and wedge and fire,
take out the native copper, work it into the
desired tools, and then temper these
requires skill and adaptation unpossessed by
the Indians. For centuries we know that the
Lake Superior mine in which are found tools
and timber constructions, have been buried,
filled in for ten feet with debris, and have
rank vegetation and trees growing upon them.
It is certain that the Indian races, even
when shown the example, cannot when left
alone follow the mining pursuit. Not only
then by the ethnological, and other data
cited do we conclude that the mound builders
belong to a different race from the present
Indians, but the tradition of the Indians is
to the same effect. Then
I would lead
you back now to what little we know from the
different sources, of the early history of
our continent. When the Spaniards came to
Mexico in the early years of the 16th
century, Montezuma, an Aztec prince was on
the throne. The Aztecs gave themselves out
as intruders in Mexico. They were a bloody
and warlike race, and though they gave the
Spaniards an easy victory it was rather a
reception, for they were overawed by
superstition as to the invaders. They stated
that a few centuries before, they had been a
wild tribe on the high country of the Rio
Grande and Colorado, in New Mexico. The
access from[Pg 15] the Pacific up the
Colorado would agree well with the
hypothesis that the chief sources of the
aboriginal inhabitants of America were
Mongolian, and that from parties of Mongols
landing from the Pacific Isles on the
American coast, the population was derived.
At any rate the Aztecs stated that before
they invaded Mexico from their original
home, they were preceded by a civilized
race, well acquainted with the arts and
science, knowing more art and astronomy in
particular than they. They stated that they
had exterminated this race known as
The main features of the story seem correct.
The Toltecs seem to have been allied to the
Peruvians. Their skulls seem of the
Brachycephalic type. The Toltecs were
agriculturists, were mechanical, industrial,
and constructive. In Mexico, and further
south in Nicaragua, as well as northward,
large mounds remain which are traced to
them. According to the Aztec story the
Toltecans spread in Mexico from the seventh
to the twelfth century at which latter day
they were swept away. My theory is that it
was this race-which must have been very
numerous-which either came from Peru in
South America, capturing Mexico and then
flowing northward; or perhaps came from New
Mexico, the American Scythia of that day,
and sending one branch down into Mexico,
sent another down the Rio Grande, which then
spread up the Mississippi and its
tributaries The mounds mark the course of
this race migration. They are found on the
Mississippi. One part of the race seems to
have ascended the Ohio to the great lakes
and the St. Lawrence, another went up the
Missouri, while another ascended the
Mississippi proper and gained communication
from its head waters with the Rainy and Red
Rivers. When then did the crest of this wave
of migration reach its furthest northward
point? Taking the seventh century as the
date of the first movement of the Toltecs
toward conquest in Mexico, I have set three
or four centuries as the probable time taken
for multiplication and the displacement of
former tribes, until they reached and
possessed this northern region of "The
Takagamies," or far north mound builders.
This would place their occupation of Rainy
River in the eleventh century. Other
considerations to which I shall refer seem
to sustain this as the probable date. The
grand mound is by far the
on Rainy River. It is likewise at the mouth
of the Bowstring River, which is its largest
tributary and affords the readiest means of
access from the Mississippi up which the
Toltecan flood of emigration was surging. My
theory is that here in their new homes, for
three centuries they multiplied, cultivated
the soil, and built the mounds which are
still a monument to their industry. Here
they became less warlike because more
industrious, and hence less able to defend
themselves. I have already stated that the
swept into
Mexico from the Northwest about the twelfth
century. The sanguinary horde partly
destroyed and partly seized for its own use
the civilization of the Toltecans. We have
specially to do with an Aztec wave that
seems to have surged up the valley of the
Mississippi. As the great conquering people
captured one region, they would settle upon
it, and send off a new hive of marauders.
Indian tribes, numerous but of the same
savage type, are marked by the old
Geographers as occupying the Mississippi
valley. It was when one part of the northern
horde came up the valley of the Ohio, as the
Savage Iroquois, and another up the head
waters of the Mississippi as the Sioux, the
tigers of the plains, that we became
familiar in the sixteenth century with this
race. The French recognized the Sioux as the
same race as the Iroquois and called them "Iroquets"
or little Iroquois. The two nations were
confederate in their form of government;
they had all the fury of Aztecs, and
resemblances of a sufficiently marked kind
are found between Sioux or Dakota and the
Iroquois dialect, while their skulls follow
the Dolichocephalic type of cranium. With
fire and sword the invaders swept away the
Toltecs; their mines were deserted and
filled up with debris; their arts of
agriculture, metal working and pottery
making were lost; and up to the extreme
limits of our country of the Takawgamis,
only the mounds and their contents were
left.
saw
the expiring blaze of this tremendous
conflagration just as the French arrived in
Canada. Cartier saw a race in 1535 in
Hochelaga, who are believed to have had
Brachycephalic crania, who were
agriculturists, used at least implements of
metal, dwelt in large houses, made pottery
and were constructive in tendency. In 1608
when Champlain visited the same spot, there
were none of the Hochelagans remaining. This
remnant of the Toltecans had been swept out
of existence between the Algonquin wave from
the east and the Iroquois from the
southwest. The French heard of a similar
race called the Erie and of another the
Neutrals, who had the same habits and
customs as the vanished Hochelagans, but who
had been visited by the scourge of the
Iroquois on the Ohio as they ascended it,
and had perished. Thus from the twelfth
century, the time set for the irruption of
the savage tribes from New Mexico, two or
three centuries would probably suffice to
sweep away the last even of the farthest
north Takawgamis. This, say the fifteenth
century, would agree very well, not only
with time estimated by the early French
explorers, but also with the tradition of
the Cree who claim that for three or four
centuries they have lived sole possessors
upon the borders of Lake Superior, Lake of
the Woods, and Lake Winnipeg. Our theory
then is that the mound builders occupied the
region of Rainy and Red Rivers from the
eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. Their
works remain.
then are the mounds? If our conclusions are
correct the oldest mound in our region
cannot exceed 800 years, and the most recent
must have been completed upwards of 400
years ago. Look at further considerations,
which lead to these conclusions. We learn,
that 200 years ago, viz.: in 1683, the "Clistinos"
and "Assinipouals" (Cree and Assiniboine)
were in their present country. The Cree
were at that time in the habit of visiting
both Lake Superior and Hudson's Bay for the
purpose of trade. They were then extensive
nations and no trace of a nation which
preceded them was got from them. The fallen
tree on the top of the grand mound, judging
by the concentric rings of its trunk is 150
or 200 years old, and yet its stump stands
in a foot or more of mould that must have
taken longer than that time to form. Even
among savage nations it would take upwards
of half a dozen generations of men, to lose
the memory of so great a catastrophe as the
destruction of a former populous race. Then
some 400 years ago would agree with the time
of extermination of the Hochelagans, or with
the destruction of the Erie, who according
to Labontan were blotted out before the
French came to the continent. The
Hochelagans, Eries, and Takawgamis being
northern in their habitat, I take it were
among the last of the Toltecans who
survived. The white man but arrived upon the
scene to succeed the farmer, the metal
worker and the potter, who had passed away
so disastrously, and to be the avenger of
the lost race, in driving before him the
savage red man.
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