ABSTRACT
The 'Mound-Builders,' as they are appropriately called, left their remarkable lines of earthworks from the Lower Mississippi to the Ohio. They even at times melted copper, and used it in instruments, though they never seem to have done this with iron. The forms of their skulls, and the evidences from their arts, show a milder and more cultivated race than any the whites have ever known north of Central America. The extinction of such a vast and widely-spread race as was that of the Mound-Builders, in all probability by the fierce and powerful Red Indian, indicates an immense extent of time. It may be temporarily assumed that, as nearly every point in Hoei-shin's narrative seems to agree more or less with something known of the Mexican, Peruvian, or New Mexican history or legends, it was not with the old Mound-Builders that the monks came in contact.
