The Native Races (Vol. 1-5). Hubert Howe Bancroft
found a man in Peru who had seen a rock with something very like Greek letters engraved upon it; six hundred years after the apotheosis of Hercules, Coleo made a long voyage; Homer knew of the ocean; the Athenians waged war with the inhabitants of Atlantis; hence the American Indians were Greeks. Lord Kingsborough proves conclusively that these same American Indians were Jews: because their "symbol of innocence" was in the one case a fawn and in the other a lamb; because of the law of Moses, "considered in reference to the custom of sacrificing children, which existed in Mexico and Peru;" because "the fears of tumults of the people, famine, pestilence, and warlike invasions, were exactly the same as those entertained by the Jews if they failed in the performance of any of their ritual observances;" because "the education of children commenced amongst the Mexicans, as with the Jews, at an exceedingly early age;" because "beating with a stick was a very common punishment amongst the Jews," as well as among the Mexicans; because the priesthood of both nations "was hereditary in a certain family;" because both were inclined to pay great respect to lucky or unlucky omens, such as the screeching of the owl, the sneezing of a person in company," etc., and because of a hundred other equally sound and relevant arguments. Analogous reasoning to this of Lord Kingsborough's was that of the Merced Indians of California. Shortly after the discovery of the Yosemite Valley, tidings reached the settlers of Mariposa that certain chiefs had united with intent to drop down from their mountain stronghold and annihilate them. To show the Indians the uselessness of warring upon white men, these chieftains were invited to visit the city of San Francisco, where, from the number and superiority of the people that they would there behold, they should become intimidated, and thereafter maintain peace. But contrary to the most reasonable expectations, no sooner had the dusky delegates returned to their home than a council was called, and the assembled warriors were informed that they need have no fear of these strangers: "For," said the envoys, "the people of the great city of San Francisco are of a different tribe from these white settlers of Mariposa. Their manners, their customs, their language, their dress, are all different. They wear black coats and high hats, and are not able to walk along the smoothest path without the aid of a stick."
There are many advocates for an Asiatic origin, both among ancient and modern speculators. Favorable winds and currents, the short distance between islands, traditions, both Chinese and Indian, refer the peopling of America to that quarter. Similarity in color, features, religion, reckoning of time, absence of a heavy beard, and innumerable other comparisons, are drawn by enthusiastic advocates, to support a Mongolian origin. The same arguments, in whole or in part, are used to prove that America was peopled by Egyptians, by Ethiopians, by French, English, Trojans, Frisians, Scythians; and also that different parts were settled by different peoples. The test of language has been applied with equal facility and enthusiasm to Egyptian, Jew, Phœnician, Carthaginian, Spaniard, Chinese, Japanese, and in fact to nearly all the nations of the earth. A complete review of theories and opinions concerning the origin of the Indians, I propose to give in another place; not that intrinsically they are of much value, except as showing the different fancies of different men and times. Fancies, I say, for modern scholars, with the aid of all the new revelations of science, do not appear in their investigations to arrive one whit nearer an indubitable conclusion.
It was obvious to the Europeans when they first beheld the natives of America, that these were unlike the intellectual white-skinned race of Europe, the barbarous blacks of Africa, or any nation or people which they had hitherto encountered, yet were strikingly like each other. Into whatsoever part of the newly discovered lands they penetrated, they found a people seemingly one in color, physiognomy, customs, and in mental and social traits. Their vestiges of antiquity and their languages presented a coincidence which was generally observed by early travelers. Hence physical and psychological comparisons are advanced to prove ethnological resemblances among all the peoples of America, and that they meanwhile possess common peculiarities totally distinct from the nations of the old world. Morton and his confrères, the originators of the American homogeneity theory, even go so far as to claim for the American man an origin as indigenous as that of the fauna and flora. They classify all the tribes of America, excepting only the Eskimos who wandered over from Asia, as the American race, and divide it into the American family and the Toltecan family. Blumenbach classifies the Americans as a distinct species. The American Mongolidæ of Dr. Latham are divided into Eskimos and American Indians. Dr. Morton perceives the same characteristic lineaments in the face of the Fuegian and the Mexican, and in tribes inhabiting the Rocky Mountains, the Mississippi Valley, and Florida. The same osteological structure, swarthy color, straight hair, meagre beard, obliquely cornered eyes, prominent cheek bones, and thick lips are common to them all. Dr. Latham describes his American Mongolidæ as exercising upon the world a material rather than a moral influence; giving them meanwhile a color, neither a true white nor a jet black; hair straight and black, rarely light, sometimes curly; eyes sometimes oblique; a broad, flat face and a retreating forehead. Dr. Prichard considers the American race, psychologically, as neither superior nor inferior to other primitive races of the world. Bory de St. Vincent classifies Americans into five species, including the Eskimos. The Mexicans he considers as cognate with the Malays. Humboldt characterizes the nations of America as one race, by their straight glossy hair, thin beard, swarthy complexion, and cranial formation. Schoolcraft makes four groups; the first extending across the northern end of the continent; the second, tribes living east of the Mississippi; the third, those between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains; and the fourth, those west of the Rocky Mountains. All these he subdivides into thirty-seven families; but so far as those on the Pacific Coast are concerned, he might as reasonably have made of them twice or half the number.
All writers agree in giving to the nations of America a remote antiquity; all admit that there exists a greater uniformity between them than is to be found in the old world; many deny that all are one race. There is undoubtedly a prevailing uniformity in those physical characteristics which govern classification; but this uniformity goes as far to prove one universal race throughout the world, as it does to prove a race peculiar to America. Traditions, ruins, moral and physical peculiarities, all denote for Americans a remote antiquity. The action of a climate peculiar to America, and of natural surroundings common to all the people of the continent, could not fail to produce in time a similarity of physiological structure.
INDIVIDUALITY OF RACE.
The impression of a New World individuality of race was no doubt strengthened in the eyes of the Conquerors, and in the mind of the train of writers that followed, by the fact, that the newly discovered tribes were more like each other than were any other peoples they had ever before seen; and at the same time very much unlike any nation whatever of the old world. And so any really existing physical distinctions among the American stocks came to be overlooked or undervalued. Darwin, on the authority of Elphinstone, observes that in India, "although a newly arrived European cannot at first distinguish the various native races, yet they soon appear to him entirely dissimilar; and the Hindoo cannot at first perceive any difference between the several European nations."
It has been observed by Prof. von Martius that the literary and architectural remains of the civilized tribes of America indicate a higher degree of intellectual elevation than is likely to be found in a nation emerging from barbarism. In their sacerdotal ordinances, privileged orders, regulated despotisms, codes of law, and forms of government are found clear indications of a relapse from civilization to barbarism. Chateaubriand, from the same premises, develops a directly opposite conclusion, and perceives in all this high antiquity and civilization only a praiseworthy evolution from primeval barbarism.
Thus arguments drawn from a comparison of parallel traits in the moral, social, or physical condition of man should be received with allowance, for man has much in common not only with man, but with animals. Variations in bodily structure and mental faculties are governed by general laws. The great variety of climate which characterizes America could not fail to produce various habits of life. The half-torpid Hyperborean, the fierce warrior-hunter of the vast interior forests, the sluggish, swarthy native of the tropics, and the intelligent Mexican of the table-land, slowly developing into civilization under the refining influences of arts and letters—all these indicate variety in the unity of the American race; while the insulation of American nations, and the general characteristics incident to peculiar physical conditions could not fail to produce a unity in their variety.
RACES OF THE PACIFIC.
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