It is hardly necessary to add that among the specimens obtained from various localities can be found every possible gradation, from the ancient Ohio type to the modern form last mentioned. There is, therefore, in this peculiar line of art and custom an unbroken chain connecting the mound-builders of Ohio with the Indians of historic times, and in the same facts is evidence, which strengthens the argument, disconnecting the makers from the Mexican and Central American artisans. As this evidence appears to point to the Cherokees as the authors of some of the typical mounds of Ohio, it may be as well to introduce here a summary of the data which bear upon this question. Reasons which are thought well-nigh conclusive have already been presented for believing that the people of this tribe were mound- builders, and that they had migrated in pre-Columbian times from some point north of the locality in which they were encountered by Europeans. Taking up the thread of their history where it was dropped, the following reasons are offered as a basis for the conclusion that their home was for a time on the Ohio, and that this was the region from which they migrated to their historic locality. As already shown, their general movement in historic times, though limited, has been southward. Their traditions also claim that their migrations previous to the advent of the whites had been in the same direction from some point northward, not indicated in that given by Lederer, but in that recorded by Haywood, from the valley of the Ohio. But it is proper to bear in mind that the tradition given by Lederer expressly distinguishes them from the Virginia tribes, which necessitates looking more to the west for their former home. Haywood connects them, without any authority, with the Virginia tribes, but the tradition he gives contradicts this and places them on the Ohio. The chief hostile pressure against them of which we have any knowledge was from the Iroquois of the north. This testimony is further strengthened by the linguistic evidence, as it has been ascertained that the language of this tribe belongs to the Iroquoian stock. Mr. Horatio Hale, a competent authority on this subject, in an article on Indian migrations published in the American Antiquarian, [Footnote: Am. Antiquarian, vol. 5, 1883, p. 26] remarks as follows: