Impelled by this conviction, I now submit the narrative to public inspection, that others, better fitted than I, may judge as to the worth of this Geoffrey Benteen.
According to the earlier records of Louisiana Province, Geoffrey Benteen was, during his later years, a resident of La Petite Rocher, a man of note and character among his fellows.

There he died in old age, leaving no indication of the extent of his knowledge, other than what is to be found in the yellowed pages of his manuscript; and these afford no evidence that this "Gentleman Adventurer" possessed any information derived from books regarding those relics of a prehistoric people, which are widely scattered throughout the Middle and Southern States of the Union and constitute the grounds on which our century has applied to the race the term "Mound Builders." Apparently in all simplicity and faithfulness he recorded merely what he saw and heard.

Later research, antedating his death, has seemingly proven that in the extinct Natchez tribe was to be found the last remnant of that mysterious and unfortunate race.
Who were the Mound Builders?
No living man may answer.

Their history--strange, weird, mysterious--stretches backward into the dim twilight before tradition, its sole remaining record graven upon the surface of the earth, vaguely guessed at by those who study graves; their pathetic ending has long been pictured in our country's story as occurring amid the shadows of that dreadful midnight upon the banks of the Ocatahoola, when vengeful Frenchmen put them to the sword.

Whence they came, whether from fabled Atlantis, or the extinct Aztec empire of the South, no living tongue can tell; whither fled their remnant,--if remnant there was left to flee,--and what proved its ultimate fate, no previous pen has written.