ation reach its furthest northward point? Taking the seventh
century as the date of the first movement of the Toltecs toward
conquest in Mexico, I have set three or four centuries as the probable
time taken for multiplication and the displacement of former tribes,
until they reached and possessed this northern region of "The
Takagamies," or far north mound builders. This would place their
occupation of Rainy River in the eleventh century. Other
considerations to which I shall refer seem to sustain this as the
probable date. The grand mound is by far the

LARGEST MOUND

on Rainy River. It is likewise at the mouth of the Bowstring River,
which is its largest tributary and affords the readiest means of
access from the Mississippi up which the Toltecan flood of emigration
was surging. My theory is that here in their new homes, for three
centuries they multiplied, cultivated the soil, and built the mounds
which are still a monument to their industry. Here they became less
warlike because more industrious, and hence less able to defend
themselves. I have already stated that the

AZTEC WHIRLWIND OF CONQUEST

swept into Mexico from the Northwest about the twelfth century. The
sanguinary horde partly destroyed and partly seized for its own use
the civilization of the Toltecans. We have specially to do with an
Aztec wave that seems to have surged up the valley of the Mississippi.
As the great conquering people captured one region, they would settle
upon it, and send off a new hive of marauders. Indian tribes, numerous
but of the same savage type, are marked by the old Geographers as
occupying the Mississippi valley. It was when one part of the northern
horde came up the valley of the Ohio, as the Savage Iroquois, and
another up the head waters of the Mississippi as the Sioux, the tigers
of the plains, that we became familiar in the sixteenth century with
this race. The French recognized the Sioux as the same race as the
Iroquois and called them "Iroquets" or little Iroquois. The two
nations were confederate in their form of government; they had all the
fury of Aztecs, and resemblances of a sufficiently marked kind are
found between Sioux or Dakota and the Iroquois dialect, while their
skulls follow the Dolichocephalic type of cranium. With fire and sword
the invaders swept away the Toltecs; their mines were deserted and
filled up with debris; their arts of agriculture, metal working and
pottery making were lost; and up to th