Mexico, Central America, and Peru are dotted with the ruins of
stone edifices, but in all the mound-building area of the United
States not the slightest vestige of one attributable to the people
who erected the earthen structures is to be found. The utmost they
attained in this direction was the construction of stone cairus,
rude stone--walls, and vaults of cobble-stones and undressed
blocks. This fact is too significant to be overlooked in this
comparison, and should have its weight in forming a conclusion,
especially when it is backed by numerous other important
differences.

Though hundreds of groups of mounds marking the sites of ancient
villages are to be seen scattered over the Mississippi Valley and
Gulf States yet nowhere can there be found an ancient house. The
inference is therefore irresistible that the houses of the mound-
builders were constructed of perishable materials; consequently
that the builders were not sufficiently advanced in art to use
stone or brick in building, or else that they lived a roving,
restless life that would not justify the time and trouble
necessary to erect such permanent structures. As the last
inference is irreconcilable with the magnitude and extent of many
groups of these remains we are forced to the conclusion that the
first is true.

One chief objection to the Indian origin of these works is, as
already stated, that their builders must have been sedentary,
depending largely upon agriculture for subsistence. It is evident,
therefore, that they had dwellings of some sort, and as remains of
neither stone nor brick structures are found which could have been
used for this purpose, we must assume that their dwellings were