Linguistics Show Algonquins Were Not the Ohio Valley Mound Builders

Linguistic shows that the Algonquins arrived late in the Mississippi Valley and could not have been the builders of the mounds in the Ohio Valley. Who the archaeologists call "Hopewell" were the Dakota or Iroquois people.

 Ancient America, 1871.
     Among all these Indians there was a tradition that their ancestors came from a distant region in the Northwest, and this tradition is accepted as true by those who have studied them most carefully. Mr. Morgan supposes they came across the continent and estimates that not less than a thousand years must have passed between the departure of the various groups of the Algonquin family from a common center in the northwest and the condition in which they were found two hundred years ago. When Europeans began to explore North America, this family had become divided into several branches, and each of these branches had a modified form of the common language, which, in turn, had developed several dialects. A long period was required to effect so great a change; but whatever estimate of the time may be accepted, it seems to be a fact that the Algonquins came to the Mississippi Valley long after the Mound-Builders left it, and also later than the Iroquois or Dakota family. That the Iroquois preceded the Algonquins at the East appears to be indicated by the relative position of the two families in this part of the country. Mr. Parkman, in his work on “The Jesuits in North America,” describes it as follows: “Like a great island in the midst of the Algonquins lay the country of tribes speaking the generic tongue of the Iroquois.”