rn. We can not tell in what portion
of the continent it was native, but, in whatever section it was, there,
probably, first commenced permanent village life.

A settled residence, and being no longer dependent on hunting for a
livelihood, would advance the Indians greatly in the scale of culture.
So we can understand how in one section would arise Indian tribes
possessed of quite complicated systems of government and religion and a
knowledge of agriculture. And from this as a center they would naturally
spread out to other sections. The conclusion to which we seem driven is,
that there is no necessity for supposing the Mound Builders to be any
thing more than village Indians, in much the same state of development
as the southern Indians at the time of the discovery. The Indian race
shows us tribes in various stages of development, from the highly
developed Pueblo Indians on the one hand to the miserable Aborigines of
California on the other.

These various tribes may be classified as the wild hunting tribes and
the sedentary, partially civilized tribes. To this last division belong
the Mound Builders. We have seen how the partially civilized tribes in
the valley of the San Juan were gradually driven south by the pressure
of wild tribes. We need not doubt but such was the case in the
Mississippi Valley. But we need not picture to ourselves any imposing
movement of tribes. In one location a mound-building tribe may have been
forced to abandon its territory, which would be occupied by bands of
hunting tribes. In other cases they would cling more tenaciously to
their territory. The bulk of them may have been forced south; some in
other directions, and, like the Pimas on the River Gila, or the Junanos
east of the Rio Grande, have retrograded in culture.<60> Some bands may
even have reached Mexico, and exerted an influence on the culture of the
tribes found there.<61>

It is only necessary to add a brief word as to the antiquity of the
Mound Builders' works, or rather as to the time of abandonment. On this
point there is a great diversity of opinion, and it seems to us almost
impossible to come to any definite conclusion. The time of abandonment
may vary greatly in different sections of the country, and we have seen
how apt Indian tribes, even in the same section, are to abandon one
village site in order to form another a few miles away.<62> Fort Hill,
in Ohio, that so strongly impressed its first explorers with a sense
of