The Origin of the Mound BuildersCoffin, Alfred Oscar
History
The Origin of the Mound Builders
Coffin, Alfred Oscar
Indians of Mexico -- Antiquities; Mexico -- Antiquities; Mound-builders
The Caribs, who inhabit the shores of the Caribbean Sea, are a nautical
people, who conquered the Antilles, as is attested by their war
implements being found there, and entered North America by the
southeast, and spread north to Canada, giving rise to the red Indian,
whose dolichocephalic skulls and roving habits agree precisely with the
Caribs of Venezuela. The brachycephalic type is supposed to have entered
America by Behring’s Strait, giving rise to the Aleutians and Esquimaux,
and passing through Washington Territory and California has
characterized the Hualpa Indians of the latter, and the semi-civilized
cliff-dwellers of Colorado and Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. The high
degree of civilization which Cortez found in Mexico, the unnumbered
temples of the Montezumas, the splendor of Toltec civilization, the
paved roads of Peru, and the gilded palaces of the sun-worshipers of
Lake Titicaca, all show that the brachycephalic civilization of the
Pacific Slope was as distinct from the culture of the hunting tribes of
the Atlantic, as though separated by an ocean. In the Chicago Academy of
Science are a number of Mound-builders’ skulls, taken from mounds in
Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois. There are no other skulls of any
other race in this country like them—with scarcely any forehead
whatever, but with a sudden slope from the superciliary ridges backward.
These skulls are neither dolichocephalic nor brachycephalic; therefore
we can neither look to the ancestry of the Red Men, nor to the Asiatic
type, for the progenitors of the Mound-builders, who may justly be
considered the autochthones of America.
Before attempting to account for the presence of the Mound-builders in
the Mississippi Valley, we will describe a few of their mounds, the only
history they have left us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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