Excerpt from Records of Ancient Races in the Mississippi Valley A portion of the facts and suggestions embodied in this work were included in a paper read, under the title of "Ancient Pictographs on the Banks of the Mississippi," before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at the Ann Arbor meeting two years ago. The illustrations of the pictographs, being shown on canvas, attracted so much interest that we at once saw that the value of the work when printed would largely depend on the illustrations. In having these cuts made, and arranging them in the text, the subject seemed to demand a larger and more complete discussion; showing, not only the pictographs and carvings on the rocks, but similar devices on the mound pottery and other objects, among which are the curious gorgets of shell bearing engraved representations of spiders with the symbol of the cross on their backs. With the exception of a few of the fine en gravings used by permission from Mr. Conant's work, and a few cuts of emblematic mounds, by permission of the editor of the American Antiquarian, the most of these illustrations are new, and made from objects either in my own collection or the collections of friends. We believe these pictographs have an important bearing on the study of our archæology, and may aid in throwing some light on the origin of the races that have been inhabitants of this continent. Quite probably our Mound-Builders left no written history; but that fragments exist here and there that exhibit rude attempts to record something, we believe we will show to the reader of this little book. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.