Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 1).djvu/50

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46
PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

lated in prehistoric times. As a general rule (but one growing less reliable every day) the heaviest population has always been found in the best agricultural regions; the states having the largest number of fertile acres have had, as a rule, the largest populations—or did have until the cities grew as they have in the past generation.

This argument, though necessarily loose, still is of interest and of some importance in the present study. The earliest Indians found, without any question, the best parts of the country they once inhabited if we can take the verdict of the present race which occupies the land.

Coming down to a smaller scope of territory, can it be shown that in the case of any one state the early Indians occupied the portions most heavily populated today? It has been said that, in Ohio, four counties contain evidence of having been the scenes of special activity on the part of the earliest inhabitants: Butler, Licking, Ross, and Franklin. These are interior counties (at a distance from the Ohio and Lake Erie) and, of the remaining sixty-three interior counties in the state, only seven exceeded