are singularly deficient, just as it is with greatest difficulty that they can be induced even on a small scale to practice agriculture.  It has been objected to this conclusion that the Indians can make a canoe, which is a marvel in its way.  But there is a great difference in the two cases.  In the canoe all the materials remain the same.  The approximation to a chemical process makes the pottery manufacture a much more complicated matter.  Indeed the Indian in token of his surprise at his success in being even able to construct a canoe, states in his tradition that it is the gift of the Manitou.  Furthermore the mound builder used metal tools, and was probably a metal worker.  It is true the copper implements mentioned, as having been found were brought to Rainy and Red Rivers.  I have, however, pointed out the intimate connection judging by the line of transport subsisting between Rainy River and Lake Superior, the mining locality for copper.  To sink a mine in the unyielding Huronian rock of Lake Superior, with mallet and hammer and wedge and fire, take out the native copper, work it into the desired tools, and then temper these requires skill and adaptation unpossessed by the Indians.  For centuries we know that the Lake Superior mine in which are found tools and timber constructions, have been buried, filled in for ten feet with debris, and have rank vegetation and trees growing upon them.  It is certain that the Indian races, even when shown the example, cannot when left alone follow the mining pursuit.  Not only then by the ethnological, and other data cited do we conclude that the mound builders belong to a different race from the present Indians, but the tradition of the Indians is to the same effect.  Then

WHO WERE THE MOUND BUILDERS?

I would lead you back now to what little we know from the different sources, of the early history of our continent.  When the Spaniards came to Mexico in the early years of the 16th century, Montezuma, an Aztec prince was on the throne.  The Aztecs gave themselves out as intruders in Mexico.  They were a bloody and warlike race, and though they gave the Spaniards an easy victory it was rather a reception, for they were overawed by superstition as to the invaders.  They stated that a few centuries before, they had been a wild tribe on the high country of the Rio Grande and Colorado, in New Mexico.  The access from the Pacific up the Colorado would agree well with the hypothesis that the chief sources of the aboriginal inhabitants of America were Mongolian, and that from parties of Mongols landing from the Pacific Isles on the American coast, the population was derived.  At any rate the Aztecs stated that before they invaded Mexico from their original home, they were preceded by a civilized race, well acquainted with the arts and science, knowing more art and astronomy in particular than they.  They stated that they had exterminated this race known as

THE TOLTECS.