The Mound Builders, from what information we have been able to obtain, must have lived in the Mississippi valley and at one time or another way back in some remote age they must have resided on what later became Iowa. Chronology is not definite as to when or how the Mound Builders arrived in the new world. It is merely speculation when one says that traditions point to a time two or three thousand years ago when the Mound Builders resided in the Mississippi valley and lived in villages and towns. It is true, that in various parts of the old world records have been found of other races which have preceded the races of which history has any definite record. As the North American Indians had no written language prior to the arrival of the Europeans, their traditions, consequently, go back but a short time at best. It is true that there have been found on the American continent various bones of animals which no longer exist, and there have been found relics of a race of men who were far different from the Indians as the whites found them on their arrival. In North America these pre-historic races have been called Mound Builders, and they have been the first inhabitants of the vast plains of what later became the United States. Still, it may be possible that the Mound Builders may have driven out or exterminated some other preceding race of people, who had dwelt in this country for ages before the Mound Builders made their entrance into what is known as the New World. Who knows? [Illustration: B. L. WICK] In Johnson's _Encyclopedia_, Vol. 1, page 125, one finds the following: "Remains of the Mound Builders are spread over a vast extent of country. They are found on the sources of the Alleghany, in the western part of the state of New York, and in nearly all the western states, including Michigan and Iowa. They were observed by Lewis and Clark on the Missouri a thousand miles above its junction with the Mississippi. They lined the shores of the Gulf of Mexico from Texas to Florida, whence they extended through Alabama and Georgia into South Carolina. They are especially numerous in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Texas. Many of these remnants were evidently designed as works of defense or as large towers in war. No inconsiderable number appear to have been formed as sepulchre monuments or as places of burial for the dead, while others seemed obviously to have been constructed as temples or places of worship or sacrifice."