Two Talks Ladies Union

TWO TALKS LADIES' UNION

Dr. Augusta Chapin and Judge W. D. Harriman

PRE-HISTORIC MAN

AND FOREIGN TOURS OF THE TROPICS TO WHICH A LARGE NUMBER OF LADIES PAID CLOSE ATTENTION.

At the meeting of the Ladies Union Wednesday two interesting talks were given, the first half hour, which is usually occupied with the discussion of current topics was filled with a talk on foreign tours by Rev. Dr. Augusta J. Chapin. Dr. Chapin has traveled extensively and has personally conducted a large number of tours for parties of young ladies each summer. She told the ladies yesterday of the best tour for an American to take a visit abroad. She advised taking steamer direct from New York to Naples and from there visit Florence, Rome, Venice and other Italian cities and from there travel to Interlaaken, hence to Heidelberg, Paris, London, and if there Is time take a tour through England and Scotland. Dr. Chapin told in a most stirring manner of her visit to Venice at the time of the fall of the Campanile. She was on the spot three minutes after the great tower sank.

Judge Harriman read a paper on "The Pre-Historic Races of the United States" at the conclusion of Dr. Chapin's talk, and held the closest attention of his audience throughout. He said in part:

"It is probable that at least three separate and distinct races of men occupied successively the territory of the United States previous to its discovery and settlement by European peoples. First, the Indian found here at the time of the discovery. Second, the Mound Builder, who preceded the Indian, and third, a still more ancient race, whom for convenience we will call 'The Men of the Stone Age,' who preceded the Mound Builder. It is not certain, indeed it is not probable, that these three races comprise all who have occupied our land during that vast period which modern science has shown to have elapsed since the appearance of man upon our globe.

"It is a common theory or belief that the human race is continually improving, continually advancing in the scale of moral and intellectual character and dignity. This may be true of the race as a whole, but the Indian found here in the age of Columbus, was evidently the remains of a race in its decrepitude and decay. He had lost the arts and forgotten the names of his ancestors. He took do no thought for the future, and what was equally bad, he took no thought for the past. His animal instinct impelled him to satisfy the hunger of today, and so he spent his useless and purposeless life ranging through the forest, like other wild animals, in search of food. He produced nothing. He pursued nothing. He improved nothing. He was a walking digesting machine preying upon the fish, the beast and the bird, whose life would seem to have been equally as valuable as his own. Let me be understood, I am not describing or depicting the 'Noble Red Men' of the poet. I am not describing or depreciating the 'Royal Monarch of the Forest' upon whose apochryphal merits the sentimentalist loves to dwell. I describe the North American Indian as he actually was at the time of Columbus and as he actually appears after the lapse of 350 years upon our western plains and upon the government reservations today.

In a few years they will cease to exist. The race and all distinct trace of its past existence are vanishing from the earth together. One thing alone will perpetuate their memory -the beautiful words which they have furnished our vocabulary of proper names. We shall believe that such words as Michigan and Huron and Washtenaw and Ontario will not soon be forgotten and the memory of the Indian cannot utterly perish, so long as the Ohio, the Missouri, and the Father of Waters pursue their triumphant march to the sea.

The race which immediately preceded the Indian in the occupation of our country, is known to the ethnologist and scholar as the Mound Builder. Curious and substantial monuments of this strange and unknown people exist in nearly every state and territory in the union if we except New England. From the Everglades of Florida to Isle Royal in the northern waters of Lake Superior, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean. Whether the people who occupied this territory constituted a single nation, speaking the same language, and governed by the same laws, we can never tell. This we know that they were people of the same cranial structure- that they manufactured and used the same implements- that they erected similar structures of earth and stone, that they probably possessed the same religion and everywhere practiced substantially the same social customs.

It is a singular fact that some of the best known copper mines in the Lake Superior region today had been discovered and worked centuries ago by the Mound Builder.

"The race which inhabited our country previous to the Mound Builders may be called the 'Men of the Stone Age.' Stone axes, mortars, knives, awls, spears and arrowheads are all relics of the men of the stone age and are found in Michigan and every other state in the Union. It is true that these articles were occasionally used by the Indian, but no Indian ever had the industry to fashion a stone battle ax or the genius to clip a flint arrowhead.

"The stone axes which are often found in Michigan may be older than the great Pyramid. The arrowheads often often picked up on the farms of Washtenaw may have been slipt by the keen eye and steady hand of some cunning artificer ages before the stone cutters of Egypt fashioned the eyeballs of the Sphinx.