the present white population of the Valley.

Some parts of Mexico and South America, were found to be populous upon
the first visits of the Spaniards; but I do not find satisfactory
evidence that population was ever dense, in any part of the territory
that now constitutes our Republic. Mr. Atwater supposes, from the mounds
in Ohio, the Indian population far exceeded 700,000, at one time in that
district. Mr. Flint says, "If we can infer nothing else from the mounds,
we can clearly infer, that this country once had its millions." Hence, a
principal argument assigned for the populousness of this country is, the
millions buried in these tumuli, the bones of which, in a tolerable
state of preservation, are supposed to be exhibited upon excavation. The
writer has witnessed the opening of many of these mounds, and has seen
the fragments of an occasional skeleton, found _near the surface_.
Without stopping here to enter upon a disquisition on the hypothesis
assumed, that these mounds, as they are termed, are as much the results
of natural causes, as any other prominences on the surface of the globe:
I will only remark, that it is a fact well known to frontier men, that
the Indians have been in the habit of burying their dead on these ridges
and hillocks, and that in our light, spongy soil, the skeleton decays
surprisingly fast. This is not the place to exhibit the necessary data,
that have led to the conviction, that not a human skeleton now exists in
all the western Valley, (excepting in nitrous caves,) that was deposited
in the earth before the discovery of the New World, by Columbus.

The opinion that this Valley was once densely populous, is sustained
from the supposed military works, distributed through the West. This
subject, as well as that of mounds, wants re-examination. Probably, half
a dozen enclosures, in a rude form, might have been used for military
defence. The capabilities of the country to sustain a dense population,
has been used to support the position, that it must have been once
densely populated. This argues nothing without vestiges of agriculture
and the arts. With the exception of a few small patches, around the
Indian villages, for corn and pulse, the whole land was an unbroken
wilderness. Strangers to the subject have imagined that our western
prairies must once have been subdued by the hand of cultivation, because
denuded of timber. Those who have long lived on them, have the evidences
of observatio