We

possession of Mexico and Central America, they found a people more civilized than the natives of the West India islands; they found also remains of a still earlier civilization. find to-day, in New Mexico and Arizona, a remnant of the more civilized race of Pueblo Indians1 in the Cliff Dwellers, who cultivate fields which they have learned to irrigate, and weave and make pottery which shows a sense of beauty.

In the Mississippi Valley, and especially in the valley of the Ohio, are found to-day great mounds, some of them shaped like animals. There is one in Loudon, Adams County, Ohio, known as the Serpent Mound.2 These mounds have been opened, and a great many domestic utensils and what are thought to be burial urns have been taken out.3 Ashes have been found in them, as if great fires had been built; but whether these mounds were burial places, or places of worship, or sites for rude houses, cannot always be known. At first there was a

1 The Pueblo Indians lived in communities on the plains; for defense they climbed to natural shelves along the sides of cliffs; hence the name.

2 This mound and the land about it constitute a park of seventy-five acres owned by the Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Mass. See a full account in The Century Magazine, March, April, 1890.

3 Squier's Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, though printed many years ago, is the most satisfactory account in general of the mounds. See also Short's Americans of Antiquity, and The Mounds of the Mississippi Valley, by Lucien Carr, Smithsonian Report for 1891.

disposition to regard the people who built these mounds as a distinct race, but many scholars now regard them as the ancestors of the tribes found by Europeans when they first visited the country between the Mississippi River and the Alleghanies.

15. The Indians on the Atlantic Coast. - The Indians living between the Atlantic coast and the Mississippi Valley were cinnamon-colored, had high cheek bones, long, coarse, black

hair, and small, black eyes. They lived upon the fruit they found, the fish they caught, the animals they killed; some

1 This is one of a great many buildings, the ruins of which 1.ay be seen today in Yucatan and Honduras, often in the depths of forests and overgrown with vegetation. Like a number, it is a temple crowning a pyramid. This pyramid has a very steep slope, about one hundred feet in height, and is reached by a succession of steps. The temple, which is richly ornamented, consists of two parts, one reared on the summit, the other looking like a chapel lower down. The cut is taken from Charnay's Ancient Cities of the New World, a book which describes the ruins in Central America as seen in 1880. See also Short's Americans of Antiquity.

Various Scenes in Indian Life: Cliff Dwelling. - War Dance. - Exposure of the Dead. Travel by Water. Chief's Head.

lived upon maize or Indian corn which they planted. If everything else failed, they could dig roots and eat them. They did not look forward very far, however, so that there were times when they suffered severely from want of food.

They used bows and arrows in hunting. The arrows had flint heads, and their hatchets were made out of flint. They cooked their food by roasting it over a fire, or stewing it in unglazed earthenware pots. But since these pots would have been cracked in a fire, they heated the water by putting in redhot stones. They wore as little clothing as they could in warm weather, and when winter came, they dressed themselves in skins from the animals which they killed. On great occasions they used ornaments of claws and feathers. When they went to war, they smeared themselves with colored clay.

Their houses were made by driving poles into the ground in a circle and drawing their tops together. Then they covered the poles with bark or skins, and the wigwam, as it was called, was finished. Inside there was a hole in the ground for a fire; and the family slept on skins or bushes. The women, who were called squaws, did the work, not only of cooking, but of planting the corn and gathering it, of dressing the skins, and of making the wigwams. They bore the burdens when moving from one place to another. Until Europeans came, there were no horses in the country.

The Buffalo. - As the game upon which they depended moved about the country, so the Indians roved in search of it. The

buffalo was an animal every part of which the Indian used. He cooked or dried the flesh, for food. He tanned or otherwise dressed the skin and used it for his bed, and he cut it up for ropes and cords. The marrow served for fat. The sinews made bowstrings. The hair was twisted into ropes and halters, and spun and woven into a coarse cloth; the bones made war clubs, and the shoulder blades were used for hoes. They made canoes from the bark of trees, and paddled along the rivers and lakes. By looking at a map which has no State lines

Buffalo.

upon it, one can see what a network of waterways covers the country now occupied by the United States.

Their Country.-Living thus out of doors, the Indians learned the ways of bird and beast. They became swift of foot, quick of eye, cunning and ready. They learned to endure hardships; to go a long while without food. They could find their way through the woods by signs which white people never saw. They had names for all the places which they visited. Every waterfall, river, lake, mountain, valley, and cape was named by them, and very many of these names were taken up by white settlers and remain to this day. Some of the names of our States are Indian names. A number of Indians living together and hunting together formed a tribe, and these tribes had their own names. Each tribe had a sachem, who was chief; and the right to be chief often continued in the same family. But if a sachem lost the respect of the tribe, the warriors would choose another, who was usually one of his relatives.

16. The Main Groups of Indians. There were three principal groups of Indian tribes east of the Mississippi. In the north the most powerful were those which went by the name of the Iroquois. They were made up of distinct tribes, at first five, afterward six, banded together in a league, with laws and government.1

The Iroquois had their home within the borders of what is now the State of New York, but they also drove out the tribes living in the region south of Lakes Erie and Ontario, and on the peninsula east of Lake Huron. The Algonquins, the other great northern group, covered nearly all the rest of the country east of the Mississippi and north of what is now North Carolina. In the south were the Mobilians, comprising Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws. These various groups had each its own language and customs. War was constantly carried on between the Iroquois and the Algonquins. They did not meet each other in the open field. The Indian mode of

1 For this reason they are sometimes called the Five Nations or the Six Nations.