[Rarebooks] fs: The Ancient Mound Builders myth in 1853

[Joslin Hall Rare Books]

Pidgeon, William. TRADITIONS OF DE-COO-DAH. And Antiquarian Researches: 
comprising extensive explorations, surveys, and excavations of the 
wonderful and mysterious earthen remains of the mound-builders in America...

New York; Thayer, Bridgman, & Fanning: 1853.

A rather dramatic study by an author who has swallowed the popular (and 
erroneous) legend of the "ancient mound builders" hook line and sinker. As 
McKusick points out ("The Davenport Conspiracy") the theory that an 
ancient, extinct race of "white Indians" had created the burial mounds 
found along the Mississippi and in other Midwestern sites fed into the 19th 
century conception of the "current" indigenous American Indians as lazy and 
regressive. Of course, this theory went, ancestors of the current tribes 
could not have built such mounds. Of course their ancestors -had- built 
them, but that discovery would be a time in coming...

Hardcover. 6"x9", 334 pages, numerous b/w plates and a folding 
frontispiece; original, very elaborate gilt-decorated cloth covers; covers 
lightly soiled and rubbed, tips worn, spine head and base a bit worn; a 
little internal browning and soil, but overall a very nice copy. [01185] 
$300.00

The covers-
<http://www.joslinhall.com/images/th-01185.jpg>


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