Tradition--that perishable, yet ever renewed monument of the pristine world--throws no light upon the subject.

It is an undoubted fact, however, that in this part of the globe thousands of our fellow-beings had lived.

When they came hither, what was their origin, their destiny, their history, and how they perished, no one can tell.
How strange does it appear that nations have existed, and afterwards so completely disappeared from the earth that the remembrance of their very names is effaced; their languages are lost; their glory is vanished like a sound without an echo; though perhaps there is not one which has not left behind it some tomb in memory of its passage! The most durable monument of human labor is that which recalls the wretchedness and nothingness of man.
Although the vast country which we have been describing was inhabited by many indigenous tribes, it may justly be said at the time of its discovery by Europeans to have formed one great desert.

The Indians occupied without possessing it.

It is by agricultural labor that man appropriates the soil, and the early inhabitants of North America lived by the produce of the chase.