ork of the Mound sculptors, and those roughly done and "immeasurably
inferior to the relics of the mounds," to use their own words, were the
handicraft of the tribes found in the country by the whites. Conclusions
so derived, it may strike some, are open to criticism, however well
suited they may be to meet the necessities of preconceived theories.

After discussing in detail the methods of arranging the hair, the paint
lines, and tattooing, the features of the human carvings, Squier and
Davis arrive at the conclusion that the "physiological characteristics
of these heads do not differ essentially from those of the great
American family."

Of later writers some agree with Squier and Davis in believing the type
illustrated by these heads to be Indian; others agree rather with
Wilson, who dissents from the view expressed by Squier and Davis, and,
in conformity with the predilections visible throughout his work, is of
the opinion that the Mound-Builders were of a distinct type from the
North American Indian, and that "the majority of sculptured human heads
hitherto recovered from their ancient depositories do not reproduce the
Indian features." (Wilson's Prehistoric Man, vol. 1, p. 469.) Again,
Wilson says that the diversity of type found among the human sculptures
"proves that the Mound-Builders were familiar with the American Indian
type, but nothing more."--_Ibid._, p. 469.

The varying type of physiognomy represented by these heads would better
indicate that their resemblances are the result of accident rather than
of intention. For the same reason that the sculptured animals of the
same species display great differences of form and expression, according
to the varying skill of the sculptors or the unexacting demands made by
a rude condition of art, so the diversified character of the human faces
is to be ascribed, not to the successful perpetuation in stone by a
master hand of individual features, but simply to a want of skill on the
part of the sculptor. The evidence afforded by the animal sculptures all
tends to the conclusion that exact individual portraiture would have
been impossible to the mound sculptor had the state of culture he lived
in demanded it; the latter is altogether improbable. A glance at the
above quotations will show that it is the assumed fidelity to nature of
the animal carvings and their fine execution which has been relied upon
in support of a similar claim for the human sculptures. As this c