ad most widely over the country when it was first
visited by Europeans.

Among all these Indians there was a tradition that their ancestors came
from a distant region in the Northwest, and this tradition is accepted
as true by those who have studied them most carefully. Mr. Morgan
supposes they came across the continent, and estimates that not less
than a thousand years must have passed between the departure of the
various groups of the Algonquin family from a common centre in the
northwest and the condition in which they were found two hundred years
ago. When Europeans began to explore North America, this family had
become divided into several branches, and each of these branches had a
modified form of the common language, which, in turn, had developed
several dialects. A long period was required to effect so great a
change; but, whatever estimate of the time may be accepted, it seems to
be a fact that the Algonquins came to the Mississippi Valley long after
the Mound-Builders left it, and also later than the Iroquois or Dacotah
family. That the Iroquois preceded the Algonquins at the East appears to
be indicated by the relative position of the two families in this part
of the country. Mr. Parkman, in his work on "The Jesuits in North
America," describes it as follows: "Like a great island in the midst of
the Algonquins lay the country of tribes speaking the generic tongue of
the Iroquois."

There is no trace or probability of any direct relationship whatever
between the Mound-Builders and the barbarous Indians found in the
country. The wild Indians of this continent had never known such a
condition as that of the Mound-Builders. They had nothing in common with
it. In Africa, Asia, and elsewhere among the more uncultivated families
of the human race, there is not as much really _original_ barbarism as
some anthropologists are inclined to assume; but there can be no serious
doubt that the wild Indians of North America were original barbarians,
born of a stock which had never, at any time, been either civilized or
closely associated with the influences of civilization.

Some of the pottery and wrought ornaments of the Mound-Builders is equal
in finish and beauty to the finest manufactured by the ancient
Peruvians. They constructed artificial ponds like the aguadas in Central
America. They used sun-dried brick, especially at the South, where walls
of this material have been discovered supporting some of the mounds and