If the account of Cusic and the Lenape traditions concur in solving
the mystery of the mound-builders, and proving their identity with the
Allegewi of the Lenape tradition, the evidence is strengthened by the
concurrent testimony of language, which, as Mr. Hale and others have
shown, renders it probable that the conquered race, fleeing down the
Mississippi, were received and adopted by the Choctaws and Cherokees,
who thus became in part their descendants. Both the language of the
Cherokees lying to the southeast of the mound-builders' dominions, and
who claim to have built the Grave Creek mound, and that of the Choctaws
lying to the southwest, have in their vocabularies been largely
recruited from a similar foreign linguistic element. One remnant of
the Allegewi mingling with their conquerors, the Talamatan or Hurons,
became in part the ancestors of the Cherokees. Living to the southeast
of the mound-builders' dominions, the Cherokees had their council lodge
on the summit of a vast mound, the construction of which they ascribed
to a people who had preceded them. In grammar their language resembled
the Huron-Iroquois, while in vocabulary it has been largely recruited
from some foreign source.
The other remnant of the vanquished Allegewi, fleeing down the
Mississippi "to the southward," would have been received and protected
by the warlike Choctaws, themselves a mound-building people in
comparatively recent times, and the peculiar foreign element in whose
language, which differs considerably from that of the sister Creek and
Chicasaw nations, would thus be explained.