E. G. Squier

Ephraim George Squier (1821–1888) was an American archaeologist, journalist and diplomat. Born in Bethlehem, New York, he edited newspapers in Ohio, where with the physician Edwin Davis he surveyed the mounds and earthworks of the Mississippi valley; their Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (1848) was the first publication of the Smithsonian Institution. As chargé d'affaires to Central America in 1849 he explored Nicaragua, and as United States commissioner to Peru in the 1860s he studied Inca remains, described in Peru: Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas. He also wrote on the serpent symbol and the states of Central America.