Time and space will not permit us to discuss these queries very fully,
but perhaps we can tell enough about them in a few lines for the present
purpose. Archæologists are now pretty well agreed that the
Mound-builders, the Indians and all other peoples who lived in the
Americas before the coming of Christopher Columbus, belonged to a single
great race, which we may call the American Indian race. They believe
that the Western Hemisphere was first peopled directly from Asia, by way
of Bering Straits, by bands of savages or barbarians belonging to the
Mongolian or Yellow race. These simple folk appear to have migrated to
America soon after the disappearance of the great ice glaciers which
once covered all of our northern country, reaching as far south as
central Ohio. Geologists tell us that this happened some 12,000 to
15,000 years ago.
And so, from the Arctic regions on the north, to the southern tip of
South America, these yellow-skinned immigrants spread until they peopled
both continents. In Mexico, Central America and Peru, they came to have
great civilizations, and to be known as the Aztecs, Incas, and others.
Just why some of them became so highly civilized while others, like some
of our Indians, remained the lowly barbarians that they were, is
explained partly by what the archæologists call environment; that is, by
weather, rainfall, soil, natural food supplies as game, fish, wild
fruits—in a word, environment means the things we find around and about
us. In the end we find that while all these peoples belonged to the same
race they had formed different habits and customs and were really very
different from one another in what is termed culture.
As to what became of the Mound-builders, we cannot give very
satisfactory answers. Some of them must have been destroyed by famine,
disease, and warfare with enemies, just as were many of the nations of
early history, in the Old World. Others probably gave up the habit of
building Mounds, for some reason or other, and contented themselves with
living just like other Indians. In this case, they were of course, the
ancestors of the Indian tribes which we have known in historic times.
In the following pages there are shown pictures and descriptions of the
commoner relics found in the fields and taken from the Mounds. Most of
these objects were used both by the Mound-builders and the Indians who
did not build Mounds. Where this is not true, it is made plain in the
descriptions. It is hoped that these pictures and descriptions will help
the reader to understand the relics so freely found in Ohio, and that
they will encourage those who may be interested further to visit the
Ohio State Museum, in Columbus. Here the finest collections of Indian
and Mound-builder relics to be found anywhere are displayed for the
study and enjoyment of the public.