The conclusion from this discovery would naturally be, that these institutions, notions, and monuments, are founded in an original connection,-especially as such a conclusion is in strict harmony with popular prejudices. But the philosophical mind will hesitate in accepting it, without inquiring how far similar conditions, and like constitutions, mental, moral, and physical, may serve to approximate institutions, religions, and monuments to a common or cognate type. The opinions of former scholars cannot be taken as conclusive in this inquiry ; for at no previous period of the world's history have the materials for prosecuting it been so abundant as now. The great collateral questions of natural science which have been settled within a few years, the knowledge which maritime and land discoveries have given to us of nearly every nation and people on earth, of their religions, institutions, history, habits, and customs, enabling us to institute comparisons between them all, and to weigh the relations which they sustain toeach other, these are advantages which students have not hitherto enjoyed, and for the want of which no ability could adequately compensate. For no sciences are so eminently inductive as Archæology and Ethnology, or the sciences of Man and Nations; none which require so extensive a range of facts to their elucidation.

In pursuing my investigations, I have sought only to arrive at truth, however much it may conflict with preconceived notions, or what are often called "established opinions." I have no system to sustain, no creed to defend; but entertain as many hypotheses as there are possibilities, and claim to be ready to reject or accept according to the weight of evidence and the tendency of facts. In this spirit, I neither fear nor deprecate criticism, but on the contrary, desire it; and so far

AMERICAN

ARCHEOLOGICAL RESEARCHES.

NO. I.

Not in

AMERICAN ARCHEOLOGICAL RESEARCHES, NO. I.

THE

SERPENT SYMBOL.

AND THE WORSHIP OF THE

RECIPROCAL PRINCIPLES OF NATURE

IN

AMERICA.

BY ENG SQUIER, A. M.

FOREIGN MEMBER OF THE BRITISH ARCHEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION; MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY
THE PHILADELPHIA ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES; THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT

OF SCIENCE; THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK; THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHU-
SETTS; THE TENNESSEE HISTORICAL AND ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY, ETC., ETC., ETC.

"If the human mind can ever flatter itself with having been successful in discovering the truth, it is when many
facts, and those facts of different kinds, unite in producing the same results."-HIGGINS' CELTIC DRUIDS.

NEW YORK:

GEORGE P. PUTNAM, 155 BROADWAY.

M DCCC LI.