Benteen was, during his later years, a resident of La Petite Rocher, a
man of note and character among his fellows. There he died in old age,
leaving no indication of the extent of his knowledge, other than what
is to be found in the yellowed pages of his manuscript; and these
afford no evidence that this "Gentleman Adventurer" possessed any
information derived from books regarding those relics of a prehistoric
people, which are widely scattered throughout the Middle and Southern
States of the Union and constitute the grounds on which our century has
applied to the race the term "Mound Builders."

Apparently in all simplicity and faithfulness he recorded merely what
he saw and heard. Later research, antedating his death, has seemingly
proven that in the extinct Natchez tribe was to be found the last
remnant of that mysterious and unfortunate race.

Who were the Mound Builders? No living man may answer. Their
history--strange, weird, mysterious--stretches backward into the dim
twilight before tradition, its sole remaining record graven upon the
surface of the earth, vaguely guessed at by those who study graves;
their pathetic ending has long been pictured in our country's story as
occurring amid the shadows of that dreadful midnight upon the banks of
the Ocatahoola, when vengeful Frenchmen put them to the sword. Whence
they came, whether from fabled Atlantis, or the extinct Aztec empire of
the South, no living tongue can tell; whither fled their remnant,--if
remnant there was left to flee,--and what proved its ultimate fate, no
previous pen has written. Out from the darkness of the unknown,
scarcely more than spectral figures, they came, wrote their single line
upon the earth's surface, and vanished, kings and people alike sinking
into speechless oblivion.