Chapter III.
THE COLONIES OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.
If we will suppose a civilized, maritime people to have planted colonies, in the remote past, along the headlands and shores of the Gulf of Mexico, spreading thence, in time, to the table-lands of Mexico and to the plains and mountains of New Mexico and Colorado, what would be more natural than that these adventurous navigators, passing around the shores of the Gulf, should, sooner or later, discover the mouth of the Mississippi River; and what more certain than that they would enter it, explore it, and plant colonies along its shores, wherever they found a fertile soil and a salubrious climate. Their outlying provinces would penetrate even into regions where the severity of the climate would prevent great density of population or development of civilization.
The results we have presupposed are precisely those which we find to have existed at one time in the Mississippi Valley.
The Mound Builders of the United States were pre-eminently a river people. Their densest settlements and greatest works were near the Mississippi and its tributaries. Says Foster ("Prehistoric Races," p. 110), "The navigable streams were the great highways of the Mound Builders."
Mr. Fontaine claims ("How the World was Peopled") that this ancient people constructed "levees" to control and utilize the bayous of the Mississippi for the purpose of agriculture and commerce. The Yazoo River is called Yazoo-okhinnah—the River of Ancient Ruins. "There is no evidence that they had reached the Atlantic coast; no authentic re-
