Page:Don Coronado through Kansas.djvu/127

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
116
116

116 EARLY INDIAN VILLAGES. specimens of flint implements: constructed mounds of stone and earth; and in some cases calcined the remains of the dead. "Second— Village sites of a wild and barbarous people who made very few, if any earthen vessels; and whose chipped flint implements are rudely and roughly made, and who infested the plains as hunters and warriors. "Third — ^VOlage sites which yield evidences that they were occupied alternately by people who widely differed in their customs and habits; the chipped im- plements of the first class and of the second class be- ing promiscuously intermixed over an identical field of observation." , As you wiU observe, the learned men who made careful research both above and under the soU, con- clude that there were plain indications of a higher race than the nomadic buffalo hunters. Of course, the Kansas, Osagej Pawnees and Missouris were the people who roamed over Quivira in 1673, when Father Marquette visited them, but bear in mind,, this was 129 years after the epoch here treated. That is a long time when comparisons are made. It is possi- ble, but not probable, that another people inhabited this region, and that they were conquered or driven out after the Spaniards were there; and that when the renowned French ecclesiastie visited the region, he gave the names of the invaders. Although it is now over 200 years since the reverend father drew his map of Quivira, or as he names it, "IJassin de la Floride," yet names by which he designated the var- ious tribes are still extant.