About this record
This article describes a visit to Aztalan in the autumn of 1839. Its anonymous author advances the claim that remains as sophisticated as those he saw at Aztalan could not have been made by Native Americans, and so posits that Asian or European visitors must have built the mounds. His fanciful descriptions and supposed facts -- including rock stairways and towers -- cast doubt on whether he even actually set foot on the site. His opinion, however, was widely shared at the time. His article was used several years later to support the hypothesis that the builders of Aztalan were an ancient race described in the Book of Mormon (given elsewhere at Turning Points).
Citation
"Discovery of America in the eighth century by a civilized race from Asia or Europe...Ruins of one of their cities in Wisconsin." Unattributed clipping in a scrapbook at the Wisconsin Historical Society (1845).