probability, to include faithful representations of the predominant
physical features of the ancient people by whom they were executed.

Short, too, accepting the popular idea that they are faithful and
recognizable copies from nature, remarks in the North Americans of
Antiquity, p. 98, _ibid._, p. 187:

There is no reason for believing that the people who wrought stone
and clay into perfect effigies of animals have not left us
sculptures of their own faces in the images exhumed from the
mounds;" and again, "The perfection of the animal representations
furnish us the assurance that their sculptures of the human face
were equally true to nature.

Squier and Davis also appear to have had no doubt whatever of the
capabilities of the Mound-Builders in the direction of human
portraiture. They are not only able to discern in the sculptured heads
niceties of expression sufficient for the discrimination of the sexes,
but, as well, to enable them to point out such as are undoubtedly
ancient and the work of the Mound-Builders, and those of a more recent
origin, the product of the present Indians. Their main criterion of
origin is, apparently, that all of fine execution and finish were the
work 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