THE ORIGIN OF THE _MOUND BUILDERS_ -------------- A THESIS BY 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.