by Squier and Davis. One might, indeed, almost suppose that recent
writers have not dared to trust to the evidence afforded by the original
carvings or their fac-similes, but have preferred to take the word of
the authors of the "Ancient Monuments" for beauties which were perhaps
hidden from their own eyes.

Following the lead of the authors of the "Ancient Monuments," also, with
respect to theories of origin, these carvings of supposed foreign
animals are offered as affording incontestible evidence that the
Mound-Builders must have migrated from or have had intercourse, direct
or indirect, with the regions known to harbor these animals. Were it
not, indeed, for the evident artistic similarity between these carvings
of supposed foreign animals and those of common domestic forms--a
similarity which, as Squier and Davis remark, render them
"indistinguishable, so far as material and workmanship are concerned,
from an entire class of remains found in the mounds"--the presence of
most of them could readily be accounted for through the agency of trade,
the far reaching nature of which, even among the wilder tribes, is well
understood. Trade, for instance, in the case of an animal like the
manatee, found no more than a thousand miles distant from the point
where the sculpture was dug up, would offer a possible if not a probable
solution of the matter. But independently of the fact that the
practically identical character of all the carvings render the theory of
trade quite untenable, the very pertinent question arises, why, if these
supposed manatee pipes were derived by trade from other regions, have
not similar carvings been found in those regions, as, for instance, in
Florida and the Gulf States, a region of which the archæology is fairly
well known. Primitive man, as is the case with his civilized brother,
trades usually out of his abundance; so that not seven, but many times
seven, manatee pipes should be found at the center of trade. As it is,