acteristics, and cherish their ancient customs. Apparently the
Spanish and the American civilization is merely a gloss over their
ancient life which they seek every opportunity to express. They are
to-day practically non-assimilative and live to a large extent their
own life in their own way, although they have adopted a few of the
American customs. While quite a large number of these villages are now
to be seen very much in their primitive style of architecture and life,
more than 3,000 architectural ruins in the Southwest, chiefly in
Arizona and New Mexico, have been discovered. Many of them are
partially obscured in the drifting sands, but they show attempts at
different periods by different people to build homes. The devastation
of flood and famine and the destruction of warlike tribes retarded
their progress and caused their extinction. The Pueblo Indians were in
the middle status of barbarism when the Spaniards arrived, and there
they would have remained forever or become extinct had not the Spanish
and American civilizations overtaken them. Even now self-determined
progress seems not to possess them. However, through education the
younger generations are being slowly assimilated into American life.
But it appears that many generations will pass before their tribal life
is entirely absorbed into a common democracy.

_The Mound-Builders of the Mississippi Valley_.--At the coming of the
Europeans this ancient people had nearly all disappeared. Only a few
descendants in the southern part of the great valley of the Mississippi
represented living traces of the Mound-Builders. They had left in
their burial mounds {198} and monuments many relics of a high type of
the Neolithic civilization which they possessed. As to their origin,
history has no direct evidence. However, they undoubtedly were part of
that great stream of early European migration to America which
gradually spread down the Ohio valley and the upper Mississippi. At
what time they flourished is not known, although their civilization was
prehistoric when compared with that of the Algonquins, Athabascans, and
Iroquois tribes that were in existence at the time of the coming of the
Europeans. Although the tradition of these Indians traces them to the
Southwest, and that they became extinct by being driven out by more
savage and more warlike people, whence they came and whither they went
are both alike open to conjecture.

Their civilization was no