Ohio History Journal

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REVIEWS, NOTES AND COMMENTS

REVIEWS, NOTES AND COMMENTS

 

BY THE EDITOR

 

THE MOUND BUILDERS

A chorus of cordial appreciation greets the sumptu-

ous volume entitled The Mound Builders, by Henry

Clyde Shetrone, Director of the Ohio State Archaeologi-

cal and Historical Society. Promptly on its appearance

from the press, the following appreciative review ap-

peared in the Cincinnati Enquirer:

 

THE MOUND BUILDERS

THE MOUND BUILDERS. By Henry Clyde Shetrone. D. Apple-

ton & Co., New York.

Ohio should be proud that it is the accepted cradle of Amer-

ica's greatest primitive people; it should be proud that an Ohio

man is recognized as the greatest living authority on that people's

life and customs, and it should find source of lasting satisfaction

in the fact that this same Ohio man has given to scientific litera-

ture a book that is certain to take its place as the standard defini-

tive work on the subject.

"Scientific literature" perhaps is hardly the most apt de-

scription of Mr. Shetrone's classic effort, for he has combined

cold science with a happy and warming medium of popular phrase,

and the result is a book that for layman and student of arch-

aeology alike, packs honest romance and really exciting reading.

Even a reader with little or no inherent love or interest in

Ohio should find it hard to lay the volume aside, once he has fairly

launched into it.

Mr. Shetrone, who is curator of the Ohio Archaeological

Society, Columbus, has produced more than what he set out to

write--"a book that will give me the important facts regarding

the Mound Builders." It is this reviewer's opinion that the book

will take its place alongside that one real classic of early Amer-

ican archaeology, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley,

by Squier and Davis, which, although laid on the world's doorstep

in 1848, still is recognized as the foundation, or keystone, of all

(845)