Book excerpt: "With westward expansion in the United States beyond the Appalachian wall in the late eighteenth century, settlers increasingly encountered the mysterious earthen mounds of the interior eastern woodlands. These mounds, and the identity of the mound builders, would remain at the center of archaeological interest and debate through much of the succeeding nineteenth century. The Division of Mound Exploration of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, was established in 1881 to resolve the issue of the identity of the builders of the mounds. Published in 1894 as the accompanying paper of the Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, the final research report of the Division rejected the various speculative scenarios of vanished races and convincingly demonstrated that the forebearers of American Indian groups were the builders of the mounds. This final report is generally recognized as marking the beginning of modern archaeology in the Americas."--Page 5.