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<blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 8340587" data-attributes="member: 21169">A similar myth developed about the 5000+ year old burial mounds built in the vicinity of the Great Lakes, Ohio River valley, and Mississippi River valley.Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings (2003):The discovery of Indian burial mounds led to the idea that North America had once supported a nascent civilization, perhaps equivalent to those of Mexico and Peru. This quasi-civilization had, however, declined and fallen, as had those of the Incas and Mexicans. Because they did not construct mounds, existing Indians, it was often claimed, were either the degenerate offspring of the mound builders or an altogether different race. According to the second possibility, the Indians were the barbarian destroyers of the perhaps white race that had constructed the mounds.

President Andrew Jackson contended that the government was only doing to the Indians what they had done to the earlier, mysterious, quite possibly white race of mound builders.President Andrew Jackson, <a href="http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=3&amp;psid=666" target="_blank">second annual message to Congress</a> (1830):&quot;In the monuments and fortresses of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated or has disappeared to make room for the existing savage tribes.&quot;Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation (1992):&quot;These speculations [about the mounds and other North American ruins] harmonized with the &quot;lost race&quot; fantasies produced in the same period by Burroughs, and earlier by writers like H. Rider Haggard.&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Doug McCrae, post: 8340587, member: 21169"] A similar myth developed about the 5000+ year old burial mounds built in the vicinity of the Great Lakes, Ohio River valley, and Mississippi River valley. Patrick Brantlinger, [I]Dark Vanishings[/I] (2003): [INDENT]The discovery of Indian burial mounds led to the idea that North America had once supported a nascent civilization, perhaps equivalent to those of Mexico and Peru. This quasi-civilization had, however, declined and fallen, as had those of the Incas and Mexicans. Because they did not construct mounds, existing Indians, it was often claimed, were either the degenerate offspring of the mound builders or an altogether different race. According to the second possibility, the Indians were the barbarian destroyers of the perhaps white race that had constructed the mounds.[/INDENT] [INDENT][/INDENT] [INDENT]President Andrew Jackson contended that the government was only doing to the Indians what they had done to the earlier, mysterious, quite possibly white race of mound builders.[/INDENT] President Andrew Jackson, [URL='http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=3&psid=666']second annual message to Congress[/URL] (1830): "In the monuments and fortresses of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated or has disappeared to make room for the existing savage tribes." Richard Slotkin, [I]Gunfighter Nation[/I] (1992): "These speculations [about the mounds and other North American ruins] harmonized with the "lost race" fantasies produced in the same period by Burroughs, and earlier by writers like H. Rider Haggard." [/QUOTE]

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