ages to arrest the attention of mankind. The pastoral life of primitive times, when men dwelt in tents, or the open air, with the heavenly bodies in full view, was very favorable to the study of astronomy.

If the mound builders were not the ancestors of our Indians, who were they? The oblivion which has closed over them is so complete that only conjectures can be given in answer to the question. Those who do not believe in the common parentage of mankind contend that they were an indigenous race of the western hemisphere. Others, with more plausibility, think they came from the east, and imagine that they can see coincidences in the religion of the Hindoos and Southern Tartars and the supposed theology of the mound builders. An idol was found in a tomb near Nashville, consisting of three busts, representing a man in a state of nudity. On the head of each were carved the sacred fillet and cake with which, in ancient Greece, during sacrifices, the heads of the idol, the victim, and priest were bound. The Greeks are supposed to have borrowed these sacred appliances from the Persians, with whom they had frequent wars and an intimate maritime intercourse. Another idol, consisting of three heads united at the back, was taken from a tomb on the headwaters of the Cumberland river. Their features, which were expressive, exhibited in a striking manner the lineaments of the Tartar countenance. It has been further observed that wherever there was a group of mounds three of them were uniformly larger and more favorably situated than the rest. The triune character of these images and mounds are supposed to represent the three principal gods of the Hindoos, Brahmin, Vishnoo and Siva. This supposition has been farther strengthened by the discovery in many mounds of murex shells, which were sacred in the religion of the Hindoos, used as material in the construction of their idols, and as the musical instruments of their Tritons. In digging a well near Nashville, a clay vessel was found 20 feet below the surface. It was of a globose form, terminating at the top with a female head, the features of which were strongly marked and Asiatic. The crown of the head was covered with a cap of pyramidal form resembling the Asiatic headdress. The vessel was found sitting on a rock from under which issued a stream of water, and may have been used at the fountain in performing the ablutions enjoined by some of the oriental religions. Indeed, for this purpose the temples and altars of the Hindoos are always erected on the banks of some river, as the Ganges and other sacred streams, and the same practice was observed by the authors of the American tumuli.

From evidence of this kind it is inferred that this people came from Asia, and that their migrations, like those from Europe at the present day, were made at different times and from different countries.

They were no doubt idolators, and it has been conjectured that the sun was an object of adoration. The mounds were generally built in a situation affording a view of the rising sun. When inclosed with walls their gateways were toward the east. The caves in which they were occasionally found buried always opened in the same direction. Whenever a mound was partially inclosed by a semicircular pavement, it was on the east side. When bodies were buried in graves, as was frequently the case, they lay in an east

ern and western direction; and finally, medals have been found representing the sun and his rays of light.

At what period they came to this country is likewise a matter of speculation. From the comparatively rude state of the arts among them, it has been inferred that the time was very remote. Their axes were made of stone; their raiment, judging from the fragments which have been discovered, consisted of the barks of trees interwoven with feathers; and their military works were such as a people would erect who had just passed from the hunter to the pastoral state of society. The line of forts already referred to, in New York, were built on the brow of the hill which was originally the southern shore of Lake Erie. By the recession of the waters, they are now from 3 to 5 miles distant from their original limits. The surface, which became exposed by the retirement of the waters, is now covered with a vegetable mold from 6 to 10 inches deep, and it may reasonably be supposed that a long interval of time was required for the production of the forests by whose decomposition it was formed. But a much longer interval would be required for the Niagara to deepen its channel and thus cause the subsidence of the waters in the lake.

What finally became of this people is another query which has been extensively discussed. The fact that their works extend into Mexico and Peru has induced the belief that it was their posterity that dwelt in these countries when they were first visited by the Spaniards. The Mexican and Peruvian works, with the exception of their greater magnitude, are similar. Relics common to all of them have been occasionally found, and it is believed that the religious uses which they subserved were the same. One of the principal deities of the South Americans was the god of the shining mirror, so called because he was supposed to reflect, like a mirror, his divine perfections. The same god was also a Mexican divinity; and while other deities were symbolized by images, this one was represented by a mirror, and held in great veneration as the unknown god of the universe. Isinglas, common in the mounds in the United States, was the material generally employed for the construction of mirrors in Mexico; but in South America, obsidan, a volcanic product, which answered the same purpose, was more frequently used. If, indeed, the Mexicans and Peruvians were the progeny of the more ancient mound builders, then Spanish rapacity for gold was the cause of their overthrow and final extermination. A thousand other interesting queries naturally arise respecting these nations which now repose under the ground, but the most searching investigation can only give us vague speculations for answers. No historian has preserved the names of their mighty chieftains nor given an account of their exploits, and even tradition is silent respecting them. If we knock at the tombs, no spirit comes back with a response, and only a sepulchral echo of forget fulness and death reminds us how vain is the attempt to unlock the mysterious past upon which oblivion has fixed its seal. How forcibly their mouldering bones and perishing relics remind us of the transitory character of human existence. Generation after generation lives, moves and is no more; time has strewn the track of its ruthless march with the fragments of mighty empires; and at length not even their names nor works have an existence in the speculations of those who take their places.

CHAPTER IV.

THE INDIANS OF ILLINOIS.

The third distinct race which, according to ethnologists, has inhabited North America, is the present Indians. When visited by early European pioneers they were without cultivation, refinement or literature, and far behind their precursors, the mound builders, in a knowledge of the arts. The question of their origin has long interested archeologists, and is one of the most difficult they have been called on to answer. One hypothesis is that they are an original race indigeneous to the Western Hemisphere. Those who entertain this view think their peculiarities of physical structure preclude the possibility of a common parentage with the rest of mankind. Prominent among these distinctive traits is the hair, which in the red man is round, in the white man oval, and in the black man flat. In the pile of the European the coloring matter is distributed by means of a central canal, but in that of the Indian it is incorporated in the fibrous structure. Brown, who has made an exhaustive examination of these varieties of hair, concludes that they are radically different, and belong to three distinct branches of the human family, which, instead of a common, have had a trinary origin. Since, therefore, these and other peculiar ethnological features are characteristic only of the aboriginal inhabitants of America, it is inferred that they are indigenous to this part of the globe.

A more common supposition, however, is that they are a derivative race, and sprang from one or more of the ancient peoples of Asia. In the absence of all authentic history, and when even tradition is wanting, any attempt to point out the particular theater of their origin must prove unsatisfactory. They are perhaps an offshoot of Shemitic parentage, and some imagine, from their tribal organization and some faint coincidences of language and religion, that they were the descendants of the ancient Hebrews. Others, with as much propriety, contend that their progenitors were the ancient Hindoos, and that the Brahmin idea, which uses the sun to symbolize the Creator of the Universe, has its counterpart in the sunworship of the Indians. They also see in the Hindoo polytheism, with its 30,000 divinities, a theology corresponding with the innumerable minor Indian deities, of which birds, quadrupeds, reptiles, and fishes are made the symbols. The Persians, and other primitive oriental stocks, and even the nations of Europe, if the testimony of different antiquarians could be accepted, might claim the honor of first peopling America.

Though the exact place of origin may never be known, yet the striking coincidences of physical organization between the oriental

types of mankind and the Indians, point unmistakably to some part of Asia as the place whence they emigrated. Instead of 1800 years, the time of their roving in the wilds of America, as determined by Spanish interpretation of their pictographic records, the interval has perhaps been thrice that period. Their religions, superstitions and ceremonies, if of foreign origin, evidently belong to the crude theologies prevalent in the last centuries before the introduction of Mahometanism or Christianity. Scarcely 3000 years would suffice to blot out perhaps almost every trace of the language they brought with them from the Asiatic cradle of the race, and introduce the present diversity of aboriginal tongues. Like their oriental progenitors they have lived for centuries without progress, while the Caucassian variety of the race, under the transforming power of art, science, and improved systems of civil polity, have made the most rapid advancement. At the time of their departure eastward, a great current of emigration flowed westward to Europe, making it a great arena of human effort and improvement. Thence proceeding farther westward it met in America, the midway station in the circuit of the globe, the opposing current direct from Asia. The shock of the first contact was the beginning of the great conflict which has since been waged by the rival sons of Shem and Japheth. The first thought of the Indian, when hostilities commenced on the Atlantic border, was to retire westward. It was from beyond the Alleghanies, according to the traditions of their fathers, they had come, and in the same undefined region they located their paradise or happy hunting ground. To employ an aboriginal allegory, "The Indians had long discerned a dark cloud in the heavens, coming from the east, which threatened them with disaster and death. Slowly rising at first, it seemed shadow, but soon changed to substance. When it reached the summit of the Alleghanies it assumed a darker hue; deep murmurs, as of thunder, were heard ; it was impelled westward by strong wind, and shot forth forked tongues of lightning."

The movement of the sombre cloud typified the advance of labor, science and civilization. Pontiac foresaw the coming storm when he beheld the French flag and French supremacy stricken down on the plains of Abraham. To the British officer sent westward to secure the fruits of victory, he said: "I stand in thy path." To the assembled chiefs of the nations in council, he unfolded his schemes of opposition, depicted the disasters which would attend the coming rush of the Anglo-Saxon, and climaxed his invective against the hated enemy with the exclamation, "Drive the dogs who wear red clothing into the sea." Fifty years after the defeat of Pontiac, Tecumseh, emulating his example, plotted the conspiracy of the Wabash. He brought to his aid the powerful influence of the Indian priest-hood; for years the forest haunts of his clansmen rang with his stirring appeals, and the valleys of the West ran with the blood of the white invaders. But Tecumseh fell a martyr to his cause, and the second attempt to turn back the tide of civilization was a failure. The Appalachian tribes, under the leadership of Tuscaloosa, next waged a continuous war of three years against the southern frontiers. The conflict terminated by the sublime act of its leader, who, after a reward had been offered for his head, voluntarily surrendered himself for the good of his

countrymen. After this defeat, the southern tribes abandoned their long cherished idea of re-establishing Indian supremacy. A last and fruitless effort of this kind, by the Sacs and Foxes of Illinois, placed the vast domain east of the Mississippi in the hands of the ruthless conquerors.*

Algonquins and Iroquois.-Of the several great branches of North American Indians, as determined by sameness of language and mental and physical type, the only ones entitled to consideration in Illinois history, are the Algonquin, and incidentally the Iroquois. Before the encroachments of Europeans caused the retirement of the Algonquin tribes, they occupied most of the United States between the 35th and 60th parallels of latitudes, and the 60th and 105th meridians of longitude. They were Algonquins whom Cartier found on the banks of the St. Lawrence, whom the English discovered hunting and fishing on the Atlantic coast, from Maine to the Carolinas. They were tribes of this lineage whom Jesuit missionaries taught to repeat prayers and sing avis on the banks of the Mississippi and Illinois, and on the shores of the great lakes and Hudson Bay. The same great family waged war with the Puritans of New England, entered into a covenant of peace with Penn, and furnished a Pocahontas to intercede for the life of the adventurous founder of Virginia.

The starting point in the wanderings of the Algonquin tribes on the continent, as determined by tradition and the cultivation of the maize, their favorite cereal, was in the southwest. It is conjectured as they passed up the western side of the Mississippi Valley, their numbers were augumented by accessions from nomadie clans passthrough the central and southern passes of the Rocky Mountains. Then, turning eastward across the Mississippi, the southern margin of the broad track pursued toward the Atlantic was about the 35th parallel, the limits reached in this direction by these tribes. This would place in the central line of march, Illinois, and the adjacent regions, where the first European explorers found corn extensively cultivated and used as an article of food. On reaching the Atlantic they moved northeasterly along the seaboard to the mouth of the St. Lawrence, introducing along their track the cultivation of maize, without which many of the early British colonists must have perished. Next, ascending the St. Lawrence and the great lakes, they spread northward and westward to Hudson's Bay, the basin of Lake Winnepeg, and the valley of the Upper Mississippi. In this wide dispersion the original stock was broken into minor tribes; each, in the course of time, deviating in speech from the parent language, and forming a dialect of its own. head of the migratory column, circling round the source of the Mississippi, recrossed it in a southeasterly direction above the falls of St. Anthony, and passed by way of Green Bay and Lake Michigan into the present limits of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Thus, after revolving in an irregular elipse of some 3000 miles in diameter, they fell into the original track eastward.

The

The territory of the Iroquois lay like an island in this vast area of Algonquin population. They had three conflicting traditions of their origin: that they came from the west, from the north, and sprung from the soil on which they lived. Their confederacy at first consisted of 5 tribes, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas,

*Schoolcraft's, Part 5; Spencer's History of the United States