Nation in a Nutshell | Page 3

the Mound-Builders were miners. For,
on the southern shores of Lake Superior, great excavations indicate an
extensive and skilful mining of copper at a very remote period. It is
singular, on the other hand, that no iron implement has ever been
discovered in the mounds. The builders used iron-ore as a stone, but
never learned the art of moulding it into weapons or utensils.
Thus the fact that vast areas of what are now the United States were
once occupied by an active, skilful, imaginative, and progressive race,
seems fully established. Not less certain is it that in their physical type,
in their government, in their arts, habits, and daily pursuits, they were
separated by a wide gap from the Red Indians whom our ancestors
found in possession of the continent. The Indian was roving, and
hunted for subsistence. The Mound-Builders were sedentary, and
undoubtedly cultivated maize as their chief article of food.
[Sidenote: Origin of the Mound-Builders.]
But how remote the Mound-Builders were from the era of European
settlement, whence they came; how, whither, and when they
vanished,--these are questions before which science stands harassed,
impotent to answer positively. There are those who, marking certain
apparent resemblances between the implements, religious rites and
customs, and cranial formations, of the Mound-Builders, and those of
the Asiatic Mongols, conclude that the former were originally Asiatic
hordes, who, crossing Behring Straits, when, perhaps, the two
continents were united at that point, formed a new home and
established a new empire here. Others, with more proof, connect them
with that great Toltec race which occupied Central America and

Mexico, before they were driven out by the ruder and more warlike
Aztecs.
[Sidenote: The Aztecs.]
The Toltecs have left ample records of their existence and gorgeous
civilization, in noble monuments and very numerous though till
recently undecipherable inscriptions; and many similarities lend weight
to the theory that the empire of the Mound-Builders, in the Ohio,
Mississippi, and Missouri valleys, was the result of a great Toltec
migration from Central America, which they left to Aztec dominion.
Thus while we call our continent the "New World," it is not improbable
that we may be living in a country which was alive with art, splendor,
invention, and power, when Europe was a dreary waste, over which the
now extinct monsters roamed unmolested by man.

II.
THE ERA OF DISCOVERY.
[Sidenote: Historic Myths.]
We live in times when the researches of scholars are minute, pitiless,
and exhaustive, and when no hitherto received historical fact is
permitted to escape the ordeal of the most critical scrutiny. Many are
the cherished historical beliefs which have latterly been assailed with
every resource of logical argument and formidably arrayed proofs,
unearthed by tireless diligence and pursuit. Thus we are told that the
story of William Tell is a romantic myth; that Lucretia Borgia, far from
being a poisoner and murderess, was really a very estimable person;
and that the siege of Troy was a very insignificant struggle, between
armies counted, not by thousands, but by hundreds.
In the same way the old familiar question, "Who discovered America?"
which every school-boy was formerly as prompt to answer as to his age
and name, has in recent years become a perplexing problem of
historical disputation; and at least can no longer be accurately answered
by the name of the gallant and courageous Genoese who set forth
across the Atlantic in 1492.
[Sidenote: Icelandic Discoverers.]
Bancroft, on the first page of his history, pronounces the story of the
discovery of our country by the Icelandic Northmen, a narrative
"mythological in form and obscure in meaning"; and adds that "no clear

historical evidence establishes the natural probability that they
accomplished the passage." But the first volume of Bancroft was
published in 1852. Since then, the proofs of the discovery of the
continent by the Icelanders, very nearly five hundred years before
Columbus was thrilled with the delight of beholding the Bahamas, have
multiplied and grown to positive demonstration. They no longer rest
upon vague traditions; they have assumed the authority of explicit and
well attested records.
[Sidenote: Discoverers of America.]
The discovery of the New England coast by the Icelanders is the
earliest which, down to the present, can be positively asserted. But it
has been recently urged that there are some evidences of American
discovery by Europeans or Asiatics long prior to Leif Erikson. There
are certain indications that the Pacific coast was reached by Chinese
adventurers in the remote past; and it is stated that proofs exist in Brazil
tending to show that South America was discovered by Phoenicians
five hundred years before Christ. The story is said to be recorded on
some brass tablets found in northern Brazil, which give the number of
the vessels and crews, state Sidon as the port to