A. D.
The Toltecs arrived in Anahuae, or the country now called Mexico,*
migrating from the North .......................... 648
They abandoned the country ............................ .................................... 1051
The'Chichemecs arrived..................................................... 1170
The Acholchuans arrived about ........... 1200
The Mexicans reached Tula................................................................... 1296
They founded Mexico ......... :..................................... ................. 1326
Here, then, we have the dates of successive migrations of these
Toltecan races, from the seventh to the fourteenth century; and,
although much doubt exists with regard to the accuracy of some of
these dates, no one who investigates the subject will deny that they are
sufficiently close for all practical purposes, and maybe taken as the basis
of chronological calculation. Clavigero, Gallatin, Humboldt, Prescott,
Squier, Morton—in short, all authorities, are substantially agreed
on this point. These Toltecan races, who it seems inhabited, though
perhaps, at different epochs, almost every portion of the present territory
of the United States, must have been pressed upon by causes
now unknown to us, and forced to migrate from their original abodes.
They sought an asylum in the southern countries — Mexico, Central
America, Peru; and here gave birth to the semi-civilization found at
the time of the Spanish conquest. Gallatin, however, thinks it most
probable that the Toltecan races and their civilization commenced in
the tropic, and spread towards the north. Over an immense territory,
hounded by the Atlantic and Pacific, the Gulf of Mexico and the
Great Lakes, are scattered those countless mounds, on the origin
of which the savage tribes surrounding them for the last three or
four centuries have not even preserved a tradition.
“ Not far from one hundred enclosures, of various sizes, and five hundred mounds, are
found in Ross county, Ohio. The number of tumuli in the State may be safely estimated
at ten thousand, and the number of enclosures at one thousand or fifteen hundred.” 370
Prom this single State, constituting hut a small fraction of the
surface over which they are scattered, may he formed some idea of
the enormous number of these remains and of the ante-historical population
which constructed them. These tumuli were of several distinct
kinds, viz., sepulchral and sacrificial; dikes, fortifications, &c. Squier’s
investigations lead him to aver: —
“ The features common to all are elementary, and identify them as appertaining to one
grand system, owing its origin to a family of men moving in the same general direction,
acting under common impulses, and influenced by similar cajuseflaai
These mounds, from their number and magnitude, present indisputable
evidence of the existence of- very large agricultural populations.
How many centuries were these people increasing, migrating,
and concentrating, around so many thousand widely-scattered nuclei ?
How long was it before they possessed a density and command of
labor requisite for such structures ? How long, after building such
national monuments, did they live around, before abandoning them ?
Were they not the same people who migrated into Mexico and Central
America from the seventh to the thirteenth century a . c. ? Surely,
any reply to this view of the subject alone, in connection with the
physical type of the race, must carry them back to times contemporary
with the Pharaohs of Egypt.
Too valuable to be mutilated, a long extract from the standard
work before quoted is here introduced.
S The antiquity of the ancient monuments of the Mississippi Valley has been made the
subject of incidental remark in the foregoing chapters. It will not be out of place here to
allude once more to some of the facts bearing upon this point. Of course, no attempt to
fix their data accurately, from the circumstances of the case, can now be successful. The
most that can be done is, to arrive at approximate results. The fact that none of the
ancient monuments occur upon the latest formed terraces of the river-valleys of Ohio, is one
of much importance in its bearing upon this question. If, as we are amply warranted in
believing, these terraces mark the degrees of the subsidence o f the streams, one of the four
(which may be traced) has been formed since those streams have followed their present
courses. There is no good reason for supposing that the mound-builders would have
avoided building upon that terrace, while they erected their works promiscuously upon all
the others. And if they had biiilt upon it, some slight traces of their works would yet be
visible, however much influence one may assign to disturbing causes’—overflows, and shifting
channels. Assuming, then, that the lowest terrace, on the Scioto river, for example,
has Been formed since the era of the mounds, we must next consider that the excavating
power of the Western rivers diminishes yearly, in proportion as they approximate towards
a general level. On the Lower Mississippi, where alone the ancient monuments are sometimes
invaded by the water, the bed of the stream is rising, from the deposition of the materials
brought down from the upper tributaries, where the excavating process is going on.
This^excavating power, it is calculated, is in an inverse ratio to the square of the depth —
that is to say, diminishes as the square of the depth increases. Taken to be approximately
correct, this rule establishes, that the formation of the latest terrace, by the operation
of the same causes, must have occupied much more time than the formation of any of
the preceding three. Upon these premises, the time since the streams have flowed in their
present courses may be divided into four periods of different lengths of which the latest,
supposed to have elapsed since the vace of the mounds flouvished, is much the longest.
“ The fact that the rivers in shifting their channels have in some instances encroached
upon the superior terraces, so as in part to destroy works situated upon them, and afterwards
receded to long distances of a fourth or half a mile or upwards, is one which should
not be overlooked in this connection. In the case of the ‘high bankworks,’ the recession
has been nearly three-fourths of a mile, and the intervening terrace or ‘ bottom’ was, at
the period of the early settlement, covered with a dense forest. This recession and subsequent
forest growth must of necessity have taken place since the river encroached upon the
ancient works here alluded to.
“ Without doing more than to allude to the circumstance of the exceedingly decayed state
of the skeletons found in the mounds, and to the amount of vegetable accumulations in the
ancient excavations and around the ancient works, we pass to another fact, perhaps more
important in its bearing upon the question of the antiquity of these works, than any of
those presented above. It is, that they are covered with primitive forests, in no way distinguishable
from those which surround them, in places where it is probable no clearings