bear on degeneration in culture. Such are the colossal human figures of hewn stone in Easter Island, which may possibly have been shaped by the ancestors of the existing islanders, whose present resources, however, are quite un- equal to the execution of such gigantic works.[1] A much more important case is that of the former inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley. In districts where the native tribes known in modern times rank as savages, there formerly dwelt a race whom ethnologists call the Mound-Builders, from the amazing extent of their mounds and enclosures, of which there is a single group occupying an area of four square miles. The regularity of the squares and circles and the repetition of enclosures similar in dimensions, raise interesting questions as to the methods by which these were planned out. To have constructed such works the Mound-Builders must have been a numerous population, mainly subsisting by agriculture, and indeed vestiges of their ancient tillage are still to be found. They did not however in industrial arts approach the level of Mexico. For instance, their use of native copper, hammered into shape for cutting instruments, is similar to that of some of the savage tribes farther north. On the whole, judging by their earthworks, fields, pottery, stone implements and other remains, they seem to have belonged to those high savage or barbaric tribes of the Southern States, of whom the Creeks and Cherokees, as described by Bartram, may be taken as typical.[2] If any of the wild roving hunting tribes now found living near the huge earthworks of the Mound-Builders are the descendants of this somewhat advanced race, then a very considerable degradation has taken place. The question is an open one. The explanation of the traces of tillage may perhaps in this case be like
1 J. H. Lamprey, in Trans, of Prehistoric Congress, Norwich, 1868, p. 60; J. Linton Palmer, in Journ. Eth. Soc., vol. i. 1869.
2 Squier and Davis, 'Mon. of Mississippi Valley,' &c., in Smithsonian Contr., vol. i. 1848; Lubbock, 'Prehistoric Times,' chap. vii.; Waitz, 'Anthropologie,' vol. iii. p. 72; Bartram, 'Creek and Cherokee Ind.,' in Tr. Amer. Ethnol. Soc., vol. iii. part i. See Petrie, 'Inductive Metrology,' 1877, p. 122. [Note to 3rd ed.]
