«Северные американцы древности. Происхождение, миграции и тип цивилизации»

[33] Judge M. F. Force: Mound-Builders. Cincinnati, 1872. Rev. S. D. Peet in the American Antiquarian for April, 1878, refers to the visit of the Ohio Archæological and the National Anthropological Conventions to Fort Ancient in September, 1877, and states that during the visit the significance of the walls of the lower enclosure was discovered. “They bear a resemblance,” he remarks, “to the form of two massive serpents, which are apparently contending with one another. Their heads are the mounds, which are separated from the bodies by the opening which resembles a ring around the neck. They bend in and out and rise and fall, and appear like two massive green serpents rolling along the summit of this high hill. Their appearance under the overhanging forest trees is very impressive”—p. 50. See also Mr. Peet’s memoir on a Double-walled Earthwork in Ashtabula County, Ohio, in Smithsonian Report for 1876, pp. 443–4.

[34] Dr. Foster, Pre-Historic Races, p. 145, cites a letter from Prof. E. B. Andrews, of the Ohio Geological Survey, describing an earthwork discovered by him in Vinton County with the ditch outside the parapet. In his Report of Explorations of Mounds in Southern Ohio, published in Tenth Ann. Report of the Peabody Museum of Am. Arch. and Eth., p. 53 (Camb., 1877), the Professor remarks: “On a spur of a ridge about two miles east of Lancaster is an earth wall, evidently for defence. The ditch is on the outside of the wall, where it should be according to modern ideas of defence. In this particular the earthwork differs from all the circles and so-called ‘forts,’ either circular or square, which I have seen, these having the ditch on the inside.”

[35] Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, p. 128: “No one, I think, can view the complicated system of works here displayed and stretching away for miles without arriving at the conclusion that they are the result of an infinite amount of toil expended under the direction of a governing mind, and having in view a definite aim. At this day, with our iron instruments, with our labor-saving machines, and the aid of horse-power, to accomplish such a task would require the labor of many thousand men continued for many months. These are the work of a people who had fixed habitations, and who, deriving their support in part at least from the soil, could devote their surplus labor to the rearing of such structures. A migratory people dependent upon the uncertainties of the chase for a living, would not have the time, nor would there be the motive, to engage in such a stupendous undertaking.”

[36] Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, p. 129.

[37] North American Review, July, 1876.

[38] Robert Clarke’s Pre-Historic Remains at Cincinnati, p. 18: “I believe I am correct in saying that there is no clay in Ohio which could be applied in this way and resist for any length of time the washing rains and sudden winter changes of temperature of our climate,” et seq.

[39] See A. B. Tomlinson’s Grave Greek Mound (1838). Schoolcraft in American Ethnological Soc. Transactions, vol. i. Especially Squier and Davis.

[40] Dr. Patton has described some interesting mounds near Vincennes, Indiana. A giant mound, which towers above many others of considerable proportions, is called the Sugar-loaf Mound, and stands on a promontory which overlooks the rich valley of the Wabash. The height of the Sugar-loaf is seventy feet, with a circumference at the base of one thousand feet. Dr. Patton in June, 1873, sank a shaft in this mound to the depth of forty-six feet. The composition of the mound was of siliceous sand, nowhere found in the region except in other mounds. At ten feet below the summit bones were found, but much decayed. Immediately below them was a layer of charcoal and ashes. Thirty feet deeper the same conditions were repeated, and the bones again were so brittle as to render it impossible to save them. A bed of calcined clay was next entered which could not be penetrated with the instruments at command. One mile south of the Sugar-loaf is a pyramidal mound forty-three feet high, with a circumference of 714 feet at the base and a platform on top fifteen feet wide and fifty feet in length. Others of as great proportions are described. Smithsonian Report, 1873, pp. 411 et seq. See also Antiquities of La Porte County, Indiana, by R. S. Robertson in Smithsonian Report for 1874, pp. 377 et seq. A very low type of cranium was exhumed from one of the mounds in this county. Also see Mounds at Merom and Hutsonville on the Wabash, by F. W. Putnam—Proceedings of the Boston Soc. of Nat. Hist., vol. xv, 1872. Fifty-nine mounds were examined, and three stone graves discovered.

[41] For an excellent treatment of this part of the subject, see Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, pp. 130–144 inclusive.

[42] In Ancient Monuments of Mississippi Valley.

[43] Explorations of the Aboriginal Remains of Tennessee. Smithsonian Contribution No. 259. Oct. 1876, p. 100.

[44] Antiquities of Tennessee, p. 39, and other places.

[45] Antiquities of Tennessee, p. 138.

[46] Eleventh Annual Report of Peabody Museum, pp. 348–360. Cambridge, 1878. See also Antiquities of Jackson County, Tenn., by Rev. Joshua Hale, in Smithsonian Reports for 1874, p. 384. Very interesting and valuable explorations have been conducted in Tennessee by Mr. E. O. Dunning for the Peabody Museum of Am. Arch. and Eth. See Reports, 3d, p. 7; 4th, p. 7; 5th, p. 11.

[47] Mr. Jas. R. Page’s Results of Investigations of Indian Mounds, in Transactions of St. Louis Acad. of Science, vol. iii, p. 226, and copied in Cincinnati Quar. Journal of Science, Oct. 1875, vol. ii, No. 4, pp. 371 et seq.

[48] In Cincinnati Quar. Journal of Science, Oct. 1875, p. 378. Also see Wilson’s Pre-Historic Man, vol. i, p. 318.

[49] See Wilson’s Pre-Historic Man, vol. i, p. 317.

[50] Fontaine’s How the World was Peopled, p. 278, and Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, pp. 111 et seq.

[51] How the World was Peopled, p. 278.

[52] Squier and Davis’s Ancient Monuments, pp. 117 et seq. Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, p. 112.

[53] E. Cornelius in Silliman’s Journal, vol. i, p. 223, and Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, p. 122.

[54] Smithsonian Report, 1870, and Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, p. 123. A further description of works on Etowah River in Bartow Co., Ga., by Mr. Stephenson in Smithsonian Report for 1872, p. 421. A full and elaborate treatment is also that by Charles C. Jones, Jr., entitled Monumental Remains of Georgia. Savannah, 1861. 12mo, p. 118.

[55] Smithsonian Report, 1872.

[56] Smithsonian Report, 1874, pp. 390 et seq.

[57] These measurements were carefully made by Dr. S. H. Headlee, of St. James, Missouri, and communicated to the editors of the Cincinnati Quar. Jour. of Science, published in January number, 1875, pp. 94–5.

[58] A sensational description of this mound which appeared in the St. Louis Times is used by Mr. S. M. Hosea as the basis of an article on Sacrificial Mounds in the above number of the Cincinnati Quarterly Jour. of Science, p. 62. The account contains some wonderful statements, which are evidently made by some unscientific person, and hence are utterly worthless. Although, judging from internal evidence, we have little faith in the reliableness of the correspondent, we give a paragraph for what it is worth: “The approach or causeway which leads across the trench from the north is ten feet in width. Ascending from this causeway to the summit of the mound are the remains of a rude flight of stairs, constructed originally of roughly-hewn stones. Most of these steps are now displaced, and quite a number have rolled down into the trench below, but there is unmistakable evidence that they were at one time arranged in regular order of ascent, and could doubtless be again replaced in position by an intelligent architect.” “By a series of investigations, I found that about a foot beneath the surface there was a regular solid platform of stone covering the entire top of the mound. This platform, though constructed by rude and unmechanical hands, is placed in position with a precision and firmness that might well defy the ravages of the elements in all coming ages. About twelve feet from the northern edge of the mound, and directly on a line with the approach and stairway, I noticed a very perceptible elevation of the earth, covering an area of about twenty by fifteen feet; and driving a pick into the elevated ground, the point struck upon solid rock a few inches below the surface. * * * Pushing our work, we soon unearthed a piece of workmanship that an antiquarian would have worked a week to bring to light. The newly-discovered curiosity consisted of a flat rock twelve feet long, ten feet wide, and eleven inches thick. The centre of the stone was hollowed to a depth of six inches, with a margin of about one foot around the edge.” “At the south end of the stone, a round hole five inches deep and four in diameter was drilled. Amongst the dirt taken out of this place hewn in the stone, was a large fossil tooth and a piece of small broken stone column, and several bits of pottery ware.” This description is very suggestive of the Mexican Temple or Teocalli, but unfortunately for the facts, Dr. Headlee, who made the measurements given in the text a short time subsequently, failed to find any certain evidences that either a stairway or temple had existed on the mound.

[59] Report on the Geology of Arkansas, vol. ii, p. 414—cited by Foster.

[60] See on chambered mounds similar to English barrows, Curtiss in Peabody Museum Reports, vol. ii, p. 717; Broadhead in Smithsonian Report for 1879, pp. 350 et seq. (with cuts).

[61] “Within the State, from Pulaski County to Arkansas, in all the little valleys which wind in and out among the flint-crowned hills of the Ozarks, are seen what may be termed garden mounds. These are elevated about two or three feet above the natural surface of the land, and are from fifteen to fifty feet in diameter, varying thus in size according to the amount of richer soil which could be scraped together. Their presence may always be detected in fields of growing grain by its more luxuriant growth and deeper green.”—A. J. Conant in the Transactions cited above, p. 354. The same writer has treated the subject more fully in a recent work published at St. Louis, entitled, “The Commonwealth of Missouri.”

[62] Ancient Monuments, p. 115, and Pre-Historic Races, p. 120.

[63] Baldwin’s Ancient America, p. 72.

[64] Prof. Forshey, in Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, pp. 121, 122, remarks: “There is a class of mounds west of the Mississippi Delta and extending from the Gulf to the Arkansas and above, and westward to the Colorado in Texas, that are to me, after thirty years’ familiarity with them, entirely inexplicable. In my Geological Reconnoissance of Louisiana in 1841–2, I made a pretty thorough report upon them. I afterwards gave a verbal description of their extent and character before the New Orleans Academy of Sciences. These mounds lack every evidence of artificial construction based on implements or other human vestigia. They are nearly all round, none angular, and have an elevation hemispheroidal of one foot to five feet, and a diameter from thirty feet to one hundred and forty feet. They are numbered by millions. In many places, in pine forests and upon the prairies, they are to be seen nearly tangent to each other as far as the eye can reach, thousands being visible from an elevation of a few feet. On the gulf-marsh margin, from the Vermillion to the Colorado, they appear barely visible, often flowing into one another, and only elevated a few inches above the common land. A few miles interior they rise to two and even four feet in height. The largest I ever saw were perhaps one hundred and forty feet in diameter and five feet high. These were in Western Louisiana. Some of them had abrupt sides, though they are nearly all of gentle slopes. There is ample testimony that the pine trees of the present forests antedate these mounds. The material for their construction is like that of the vicinity everywhere, and often there is a depression in close proximity to the elevation.” We can make no conjecture concerning the use of those mounds described by Prof. Forshey, except to suggest that they in all probability served as foundations for dwellings in a low country, which at that time may have been moister and more marshy than at present. If such was the case, the whole region must have presented the appearance of a continuous community instead of the proper proportion of country and village. This crowded state of affairs could have been produced by the pressure from enemies in the north, and the lack of agricultural lands evidently was sufficient alone to cause a migration to the south.

[65] A number of the cuts in this chapter illustrative of the Arts of the Mound-builders, are copies of those used by Dr. Charles Rau in his Catalogue of the Archæological Collection of the National Museum, Washington, Smithsonian Contribution No. 287 (1876), granted me through the courtesy of Professor Henry. A few also are from the memoir by Prof. Jos. Jones on the Aboriginal Remains of Tennessee. Smithsonian Contribution No. 259 (1876). For an able classification of these Mound Relics (a work which I could not undertake in a volume not devoted exclusively to the Mound-builders), I refer the reader to Rau’s Memoir above cited, as being altogether the most satisfactory attempt of the kind of which I have any knowledge. For a classification of works in Ohio, see Antiquities of Ohio: Report of the Committee of the State Archæological Society to the Centennial Commission of Ohio (Columbus, Ohio, 1877, 8vo). The incompleteness of the work is to be regretted. Ohio, out of its vast fund of material, certainly ought to furnish a more satisfactory contribution to the subject of archæology. The work comprises seven chapters, of which the last is the least satisfactory of all, for while bearing the title “Location of Ancient Earthworks in Ohio,” it enumerates only one hundred and sixteen out of the ten thousand mound-works in the State. Still the memoir is not without value. Its chapters on Stone Relics, Copper Relics, and Insignia and Ornaments are comparatively thorough.

[66] Ancient Monuments, p. 143. Prof. E. B. Andrews has shown that the supposed uniformity of stratification in altar mounds is a fallacy. In many instances the earth has been dumped together indiscriminately.

[67] Ancient Monuments, p. 143, the following general description is given: “The altars or basins found in these mounds are almost invariably of burned clay, although a few of stone have been discovered. They are symmetrical, but not of uniform size or shape. Some are round, others elliptical, and others square or parallelograms. Some are small, measuring barely two feet across, while others are fifty feet long by twelve or fifteen feet wide. The usual dimensions are from five to eight feet. All appear to have been modelled of fine clay brought to the spot from a distance, and they rest on the original surface of the earth. In a few instances a layer or small elevation of sand had been laid down, upon which the altar was formed. The height of the altars, nevertheless, seldom exceeds a foot or twenty inches above the adjacent level. The clay of which they are composed is usually burned hard, sometimes to the depth of ten, fifteen, and even twenty inches. This is hardly to be explained by any degree or continuance of heat, though it is manifest that in some cases the heat was intense. On the other hand, a number of these altars have been noticed which are very slightly burned; and such, it is a remarkable fact, are destitute of remains.”

[68] Charles Rau in Smithsonian Report, 1872, p. 357. Baldwin’s Ancient America, p. 41.

[69] Squier and Davis: Op. Cit., pp. 169–70. Foster: Op. Cit., pp. 188–196. Schoolcraft in vol. i, Trans. Am. Ethnol. Soc. M. C. Read in American Antiquarian, vol. i, p. 139, Jan. 1879. Dr. Clemens in Morton’s Crania Americana, p. 221. Mr. E. O. Dunning in Foster, p. 194.

[70] Description of an Ancient Sepulchral Mound near Newark, Ohio, by O. C. Marsh, F. G. S., in American Journal of Science and Arts for July, 1866. Second Series, vol. xlii.

[71] See Dr. Charles T. Jackson’s Geological Report to the United States Government, 1849. Foster and Whitney’s Report on the Geology of the Lake Superior Region, Part I. Published by authority of Congress in 1850, and substantially reproduced in Foster’s Pre-Historic Races of the U. S., chap. vii, in 1873. The most elaborate treatment is by Col. Charles Whittlesey, Ancient Mining on the Shores of Lake Superior. Published in the Smithsonian Contribution to Knowledge in 1863, vol. xiii. Swineford’s History and Review of the Mineral Resources of Lake Superior, Marquette, 1876. Containing Ancient Copper Mines of Lake Superior by Jacob Houghton.

[72] Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, p. 268. For a further account, see Mr. Henry Gillman in an article printed in Appleton’s Journal, August 9, 1873, and entitled Ancient Works at Isle Royal; also to a paper printed in the Smithsonian Report for 1873, and in the Proceedings of the Amer. Ass. for the Advancement of Science, 1875 meeting, p. 330. Also A. C. Davis in Smithsonian Report for 1874, p. 369.

[73] Ancient Mining on the Shore of Lake Superior, p. 2.

[74] “L’on trouve souvent au fond de l’eau, des pieces de cuivre tout formé, de la pesanteur de dix et vingt livres; i’en ay veu plusieurs fois entre les mains des Sauvages, et comme ils sont superstitieux, ils les gardent comme autant de divinités, ou comme des presents que les dieux qui sont au fond de l’eau leur ont faits pour estre la cause de leur bonheur; c’est pour cela, qu’ils conservent ces morceaux de cuivre envelopés parmi leurs meubles les plus pretieux, il y en a qui les gardent depuis plus de cinquante ans; d’autres les ont dans leurs familles de temps immemorial, et les cherissent comme des dieux domestiques.”—Relations des Jésuites, en l’Année 1667, p. 8. Quebec reprint, 1858. Tome iii.

[75] “En y entrant par son embouchure, que se décharge au Sault, le premier endroit que se présente où se retrouve du cuivre en abondance, est une Isle que est éloignée de quarante on cinquante lieuës, scituée vers le côté du Nord, vis a vis d’un endroit qu’on appelle Missipicoüatong. Les sauvages racontent que c’est une Isle flottante, que est quelquefois loing, quelquefois proche, selon les vents qui la poussent, et la promenent de côté et d’autre. Ils ajoûtent qu’il y a bien longtemps que quatre sauvages y furent par rencontre, s’etans égarez dans la brume, dont cette Isle est presque toujours environnée. C’étoit du temps qu’ils n’avoient point encore eu de commerce avec les François, et n’avoient aucun usage ny des chaudieres ny des haches. Ceux-cy donc voulans se preparer à manger, firent à leur ordinaire: prenant des pierres qu’ils trouvoient au bord de l’eau, les faisaient rougir dans le feu et les jettaient dans un plat d’ecorce plein d’eau pour la faire boüillir et faire cuire par cette industrie leur viande. Comme ils choisissoient ces pierres, ils trouvoient, que c’étoient presque tous morceaux de cuivre; ils se servirent donc des unes et des autres, et aprés avoir pris leur repas, ils songerent à s’embarquer au plustost, craignant les Loups Cerviers et les Lievres, qui sont en cét endroit grands comme des Chiens, et qui venoient manger leurs provisions et même leur Canot. Avant que de partir, ils se chargerent de quantité de ces pierres grosses et menuës, et même de quelques plaques de cuivre; mais ils ne furent pas bien éloignez du rivage, qu’une puissante voix se fit entendre à leurs oreilles, disant tout en colere: Qui sont ces voleurs qui m’emportent les berceaux et les divertissemens de mes enfans? Les plaques de cuivre sont les berceaux, parce que parmy les sauvages ils ne sont faits que d’un ou deux aix joints ensemble, sur lesquels ils couchent leurs enfans; et ces petits morçeaux de cuivre qu’ils enlevoient, sont les jouets et les divertissemens des enfans sauvages, qui joüent ensemble avec des petites pierres.” The voice which the savages heard was believed to be that of a spirit called Missibizi, a certain water-god. “Quoy qu’il en soit, cette voix étonnante jetta tellement la frayeur dans l’esprit de nos Voyageurs, qu’un des quatre mourut avant que d’arriver à terre; peu de temps aprés un second fut enlevé, puis le troisièma; de sorte qu’il n’en resta qu’un, lequel s’étant rendu en son Pays, raconta tout ce qui s’étoit passé, pues mourut fort peu apriés.” The Father adds that the savages never afterward could be induced to approach the island for fear of being seized by the Genii presiding over its treasures.—Relations des Jesuités l’année 1670, p. 84, tome iii. Quebec reprint, 1858.

[76] Ancient Mining, p. 22 et seq.

[77] Congrès International des Américanistes. Luxembourg. 1877, tom. i, pp. 51–2.

[78] Essai Politique (Paris, 1825–27), vol. iii, p. 114. Dr. Charles Rau has courteously furnished me the following references on ancient mining in Mexico: Clavigaro’s History of Mexico, Phil., 1817, vol. i., p. 20. Prescott’s Mexico, vol. i, p. 138; Despatches of Hernando Cortés addressed to the Emperor Charles V (trans. by Folsom, New York, 1842), p. 412. Memoirs of Bernal Diaz (trans. of Lockhart, London, 1844), vol. i, p. 36. Dr. Rau remarks: “We are forcibly led to the conclusion that the Mexicans obtained copper by the mining process.”—Letter to the Author, Aug. 24, 1878.

[79] Colonel Whittlesey in the Report of the State Archæological Society to the Centennial Commission of Ohio, Chap. IV, pl. 10, has figured several symmetrical tubes of stone from Ohio Mounds. The most perfect of these he thinks may have served “as telescopic helps for distant views.” The most general use to which most of them were applied, it is believed, was the making of signals, or possibly rude music. One of the tubes taken from the Tippet Mound near Newark, Ohio, and figured in the report, has its upper end flattened like a whistle or flute, and has a hole penetrating it just below the mouthpiece, which indicates that it may have been a musical instrument. The Huron slates were most frequently employed in the manufacture of tubes, as they were in the production of the class of objects known as ceremonial relics.

[80] Baldwin’s Ancient America, p. 42, and Dupaix, quoted on pp. 122–3.

[81] Dr. Rau has shown that division of labor and its advantages was recognized among the aborigines; that certain individuals who were qualified to manufacture particular implements devoted themselves exclusively to that work. He bases his conjecture “on the occurrence of manufactured articles of a homogeneous character in mounds or in deposits below the surface of the soil. There is little doubt, for instance, that there were persons who devoted their time chiefly to the manufacture of stone arrow-heads and of other articles produced by chipping, among which may be mentioned those remarkable large digging tools described by me several years ago, and the oval or leaf-shaped implements made of the peculiar hornstone of ‘Flint Ridge’ in Ohio.” See Stock-in-trade of an Aboriginal Lapidary, by Charles Rau, Smithsonian Report for 1877.

[82] Dr. S. S. Schoville, in the Cincinnati Quarterly Journal of Science, April, 1875, p. 164, describes the discovery of numerous mica plates in a mound on the east bank of the Little Miami River, about twenty-five miles east of Cincinnati. He states, that at the base of the mound, on a level with the surrounding country, the remains of several skeletons were found, placed with their heads together and lying in a horizontal position. “Lying upon or immediately over the cranial debris, were found plates of mica, some a foot in diameter. These plates were disposed in such a way as to cover an area somewhat larger than that occupied by the crania beneath. However, it could not definitely be determined whether the design had been to make a continuous or common roof over the faces as a group, or whether each face had a covering of its own.” The writer ventures the rather fanciful conjecture that the mica in this and many other cases served the purpose of exhibiting temporarily the features of the dead in the manner that glass is now used on caskets.

[83] See a most interesting and extensive memoir on Aboriginal Trade in North America, by Charles Rau, first published in vol. iv of the Archiv für Anthropologie (Braunschweig, 1872), and translated in Smithsonian Report for 1872, pp. 249–394.

[84] Mr. A. J. Conant in the Commonwealth of Missouri, pp. 77–8 (St. Louis, 1877), refers to ancient canals fifty feet wide and twelve feet deep observed by Dr. G. C. Swallow. He quotes a pretty full account from Geo. W. Carleton, Esq. Mr. Conant considers some of the southern bayous of artificial origin.

[85] For further material on the Mound-builders, see the documents cited throughout the chapter. No less important is Dr. Foster’s admirable work so often quoted, and which we must add has been of great service in the preparation of this chapter. A very good paper on the Mound-builders is that by Robert S. Robertson of Fort Wayne, Indiana, in the Congrès International des Américanistes Compte-Rendu de la Sec. Ses. Luxembourg, 1877, tom. i, pp. 39–50, though we do not fully agree with the author’s views as to the colonization of the Mississippi valley from the south. The classification of Mound-works by Rev. Stephen D. Peet in the same document, p. 103, is very satisfactory, and corresponds to that adopted in this chapter. The learned article by Judge Force of Cincinnati in the same document, vol. i, pp. 121–156, is full of interest. For recent mound explorations, see Appendix.

[86] Pre-Historic Times, p. 425. Also cited by Foster. In this connection I refer the reader to the argument of Mr. John H. Becker of Berlin, in the Congrès International des Américanistes, Luxembourg, 1877, tom. i, pp. 345–6: “These northern nations * * * have not quite forgotten the former existence and the exodus of these Nahua Mound-builders in and from the western prairie country. Cusick’s remarkable history of the Iroquois (Schoolcraft, vol. v) states again and again that ‘their hunters were opposed by big snakes,’ that the ‘great horned snake appeared on Lake Ontario,’ that the ‘lake serpent traversed the country, and they were compelled to build fortifications in order to save themselves from the devouring monsters,’ that ‘a snake with a human head prevented the intercourse of their several villages, as it had settled near the principal path of communication,’ also ‘that it retreats,’ etc., etc. Now, in order to understand the force of these passages, it is necessary to remind the reader that the Nahua race were perhaps even more properly and generally designated as the ‘Culhua’ the ‘Snake’ race, and one branch, remotely connected with them in blood and language, though wofully degenerated, the Snakes or Shoshones of Oregon, etc., carry the name to this very day. * * * ‘An expedition was sent towards the Mississippi River; they crossed it, reached an extensive meadow; they discovered a curious animal, a winged fish; it flew about the tree, it moved like a humming bird’ * * * the humming bird was the totem of the last tribe of Nahuas, arriving in Anahuac from Aztlan. The Cherokee tradition, told by Timberlake, is equally significant: ‘The prince of rattlesnakes lives in the glens of the mountains. His palace is guarded by obedient subjects. * * * And in the myth of the Algonquins, the god-hero Michabo is in conflict with the shining prince of serpents who lives in the lake; he destroys the reptile with a dart; clothes himself with the skin of his foe, and drives the rest of the serpents to the south.’”

[87] J. D. Baldwin’s Ancient America, p. 47.

[88] Foster, pp. 172–3, remarks: “Squier and Davis hastily stated that none of these works occupied the alluvial bottoms (an error which Mr. Squier subsequently corrected), and from this statement the most erroneous conclusions as to their antiquity have been drawn. There is nothing to indicate but that those works were constructed after the surface had assumed its present configuration, and that the climate had become essentially as it is now. That they should not occur as abundantly on the bottoms as on the river terraces is not to be wondered at, when we consider the great fluctuations of the Mississippi and its tributaries. The extreme range between low and high water of the Upper Mississippi at its mouth is thirty-five feet; that of the Missouri at its mouth about the same; and that of the Ohio at Louisville, forty-two feet. Hence, during the flood time a greater portion of the bottom lands are subject to overflow, and it would be natural for the Mound-builders to shun such situations. Where the immediate valleys lie above high water, we find their works. Of this the ‘American Bottom’ is a notable instance.”

[89] See Dr. Lapham’s communication in Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, pp. 373–5, in which he shows the possibility of finding the average increase of wood each year by measuring annual rings of growth.

[90] Sir Charles Lyell, Antiquity of Man, p. 41, says: “When I visited Marietta in 1842, Dr. Hildreth took me to one of the mounds, and showed me where he had seen a tree growing on it, the trunk of which when cut down displayed eight hundred rings of annual growth.”

[91] See Prof. Asa Gray in Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, p. 392; also Lyell’s Antiquity of Man, p. 41, where the opinion of President Harrison is quoted as follows: “We may be sure that no trees were allowed to grow so long as the earthworks were in use; and when they were forsaken, the ground, like all newly-cleared land in Ohio, would for a time be monopolized by one or two species of tree, such as the yellow locust and the black or white walnut. When the individuals which were the first to get possession of the ground had died out one after the other, they would, in many cases, instead of being replaced by other species, be succeeded, by virtue of the law which makes a rotation of crops profitable in agriculture, by other kinds, till at last, after a great number of centuries (several hundred years perhaps), that remarkable diversity of species characteristic of North America, and far exceeding what is seen in European forests, would be established.”

[92] Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, pp. 118, 119, 122, and M. Stronck, Repères chronologiques de l’histoire des Mound-builders in Congrès des Américanistes, Luxembourg, tom. i, pp. 316–18, catalogues the record of the age of trees found on mounds.

[93] Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, p. 370.

[94] American Naturalist, Jan. 1868.

[95] Second Visit to the United States, vol. i, p. 252.

[96] Dr. Brinton’s Notes on the Floridian Peninsula.

[97] From the immense heaps distributed over an area of 150 miles between Pilatka and Salt Creek Dr. Wyman made some collections of interest. The banks were composed mostly of the Ampullaria Depressa, the Paludina Multilineata and Unio Buckleyi. The bank at King Phillip’s Town, 450 feet long by 120 feet wide, and in some places eight feet thick, yielded fragments of pottery and decayed animal bones. At Black Hammock, on the St. Johns, a mound 900 feet long and from 100 to 150 in width, yielded the following: such marine shells as the strombus-gigos, pyrula carica and P. perversa. These had been shaped into hatchets, gouges and chisels. Scarcely any stone implements were found in any of the mounds examined. A chisel and twenty-five arrow-heads were collected in the vicinity of the above shell-bank. The following animal remains were found: bear, deer, raccoon, opossum, terrapin, turtle, alligator, cat-fish and garpike. But few bones of birds were found. Prof. Wyman can only explain the presence of so many of the now scarce species, the Ampullarius and Paludinas, on the supposition that they were much more plentiful and are now becoming extinct, or that the heaps where so abundantly found were made by slow accumulation, through the lapse of an indefinitely long period.—American Naturalist, vol. ii, Nos. 8 and 9, and Fifth Annual Report of Peabody Museum, pp. 22–25. Also First Report of Peabody Museum, pp. 11, 18.

[98] A small sand-mound near Cedar Keys yielded peculiarly massive skulls; the capacity being 1375 cubic centimetres, or nearly 84 cubic inches. They show no distortion, and the average thickness of eight of them through the parietal bones measured 10.5 millimetres, or 0.42 of an inch. The heaviest weighed 995 grams, and notwithstanding the loss of its organic matter, is heavier than any of the three hundred skulls in the collection (Peabody Museum).—Fourth Annual Report of Peabody Museum, p. 13. Also see Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, p. 170.

[99] Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, p. 159.

[100] Nott and Gliddon’s Types of Mankind, p. 272.

[101] C. C. Jones, Jr., Antiquities of the Southern Indians.

[102] Further consult, Second Indiana Report, p. iii; Smithsonian Report for 1870; Humphreys and Abbot’s Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi Valley, p. 89, and Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, Chap. IV.

[103] Martius: Von dem Rechtszustande unter den Ureinwohner Brasiliens, p. 80, and reprinted in his Beiträge zur Ethnographie, etc., Leipzig, 1867, quarto. “Der dermalige Zustand dieser Naturwesen beurkundet, dass die amerikanische Natur schon seit Jahrtausenden den Einfluss einer verändernden und umgestaltenden Menschenhand erfahren hat. Auf den Antillen und dem Festlande fanden die ersten Conquistadores den stummen Hund als Hausthier und auf der Jagd dienend, ebenso das Meerschweinchen in St. Domingo in einem heimischen Zustande.... Das Llama war in Peru schon seit undenklicher Zeit als Lastthier benützt worden, und kam nicht mehr im Zustand der Freiheit vor; ja sogar das Guanaco und die Vicunna scheinen damals nicht ganz wild, sondern in einer beschränkten Freiheit den Urbewohnern befreundet, gelebt zu haben, da sie, um geschoren zu werden, eingefangen, so dann aber wieder freigelassen würden.... Die Cultur dieser Pflanze (Maize) aus welcher die Peruaner auch Zucker bereiteten, ist uralt; man findet sie, und die Banane, den Baumwollenstrauch, die Quinoa- und die Mandioca-Pflanze ebenso wenig wild in America als unsere Getreidearten in Asien, Europa und Africa. Die einzige Palme, welche von den Indianern angebaut wird, hat durch diese Cultur den grossen, steinharten Saamenkern verloren, der oft in Fasern zerschmolzen, oft gänzlich aufgelöst ist. Ebenso findet man die Banane, deren Einfuhr nach America geschichtlich nicht nachgewiesen werden kann, immer ohne Saamen. Man weiss aber aus anderen Erfahrungen, welch’ lange Zeit nothwendig ist, um den Pflanzen einen solchen Stempel von der umbildenden Macht menschlichen Einflusses aufzudrücken. Gewiss, auch in America sind die dort heimischen Nutz-Pflanzen der Menschheit seit undenklichen Zeiten zinsbar unterworfen.”

[104] Brinton’s Myths of the New World, p. 37.

[105] Nott and Gliddon’s Types of Mankind, p. 352.

[106] Antiquity of Man, p. 44.

[107] Pre-Historic Man, p. 12.

[108] American Naturalist, vol. ii, p. 434, 1868. Also quoted by Foster, Pre-Historic Races, p. 77.

[109] Daniel Wilson’s Pre-Historic Man, p. 12.

[110] Vol. i, p. 200.

[111] Meigs: Trans. Am. Phil. Soc., 1828, p. 285.

[112] Antiquity of Man, p. 42.

[113] Vol. ii, p. 197.

[114] Antiquity of Man, p. 203.

[115] Extinct Mammalia of North America, p. 365: “The specimen may have been contemporary with the remains of extinct animals, with which it is said to have been found, though it appears to me equally if not more probable that it may have fallen into the formation from an Indian grave above at a comparatively recent date, and become stained like the true fossils from ferruginous infiltration.”

[116] Foster: Pre-Historic Races, p. 61. “A dozen plantation burial places and Indian mounds and camps had been exposed above for centuries; and in recent years since uninhabited by the whites (for a hundred years), the drains had cut through the surface to the depth of twenty and even forty feet of the bluff loam-beds. The probabilities are a hundred to one that this bone was not of the bluff (mastodon) formation but of the recent era.”

[117] Foster in Transactions of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, vol. i, part ii.

[118] Fontaine’s How the World was Peopled, pp. 67–69. A book with many good points, but obscure as to this particular case.

[119] On the Geology of Lower Louisiana and the Salt Deposit on the Petit Anse Island, p. 14, in Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, No. 248.

[120] Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, p. 58.

[121] Brinton’s Myths of the New World, p. 35.

[122] Vol. xxxvi, p. 198.

[123] Vol. xxxvii, p. 191.

[124] J. D. Dana: Koch’s Evidence on the Contemporaneity of Man and the Mastodon in Missouri, in the Am. Jour. of Sci. and Arts, Art. xxxv, May, 1875, gives the title of two of these pamphlets as follows: 1. Description of the Missourium or Missouri Leviathan, together with its Supposed Habits; Indian Traditions Concerning the Location from which it was Exhumed; Also, Comparisons of the Whale, Crocodile, and Missourium with the Leviathan, as described in the Forty-first Chapter of the Book of Job: by Albert Koch, 16 pp. octavo, St. Louis, 1841 (1840 on the cover, indicating that the copy is from a second edition). 2. Description of the Missourium Theristocaulodon (Koch) or Missouri Leviathan (Leviathan Missouriensis), together with its Supposed Habits and Indian Traditions; Also, Comparisons of the Whale, Crocodile, and Missourium with the Leviathan, as described in the Forty-first Chapter of the Book of Job: by Albert Koch. Fifth edition enlarged, 28 pp. octavo. Dublin, 1843. (A third edition of twenty-four pages appeared in London in 1841.)

[125] American Journal of Science and Arts, 1830, Art. xxxvi, p. 198, and copied by Mr. J. D. Dana, in his article before cited, May, 1875.

[126] Dr. Koch’s Pamphlet of 1843, pp. 13, 14, 27, copied by J. D. Dana.

[127] Transactions of St. Louis Academy of Sciences, vol. i, 1857.

[128] Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, p. 62.

[129] Smithsonian Report, 1872, p. 396, in a note to his article on North American Stone Implements.

[130] J. D. Dana in American Journal of Science and Arts, May, 1875, p. 340.

[131] Article cited, p. 344.

[132] Though the above argument by so eminent a specialist must satisfy any one that Dr. Koch’s claim, as it now stands, is valueless to science; still, it is due to the memory of the latter, to admit that he was the most indefatigable and successful collector in his department in this country. Though unscientific himself, his service to science must ever be recognized. The great Mastodon in the British Museum is a monument to his persevering research. Perhaps the disposition to acknowledge his services, has unduly biased the judgment of many in favor of his groundless claim.

[133] Pre-Historic Races, p. 67.

[134] “But it is one of those isolated cases which require further investigation before full credence can be attached to it.”—Foster’s Pre-Historic Races, p. 71.

[135] Antiquity of Man in the United States, Transactions of American Association for Advancement of Science. Chicago, 1869.

[136] Second Visit to the United States.

[137] Nott and Gliddon’s Types of Mankind, p. 336, and Lyell’s Antiquity of Man, p. 43.

[138] Tableau of New Orleans, 1852, cited by Foster, Pre-Historic Races, p. 73.

[139] Antiquity of Man, p. 43.

[140] Surface Geology, p. 92, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. ix.

[141] Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi, pp. 150 et seq., and 435.

[142] Pre-Historic Races, p. 76.

[143] Philadelphia Acad. of Natural Sciences. Proceedings, Part I, 1872. Also Foster, pp. 69–71.

[144] This letter bears date December 24, 1876, written from Waynesville, Ohio, and signed by Robert F. Furnas, M. D.

[145] Prof. Orton in Geology of Highland County in “Progress of the Ohio Geological Survey in 1870,” published 1871, and in vol. i. of State Geological Report, p. 442.

[146] Prof. Winchell remarks: “The very general interest that is being excited in this country in the problems that invest the history of the drift is my only excuse for calling your attention to the prevalence of vegetable remains in the Drift of the North-west, and to the wide divergence of high authorities on the relative position of those remains in respect to the boulder clay.”—See Proceedings, p. 56, Am. Ass. for Adv. Sci., 1875, 24th Meeting.

[147] Eleventh Annual Report of the Peabody Museum, p. 226, Cambridge, 1878. Dr. Abbott concludes his interesting report by citing a letter from Mr. Thomas Belt, dated Grant, Colorado, June 29, 1878, in which the writer reports the discovery of “a small human skull in undisturbed loess, in a railway cutting about two miles from Denver, near the watershed between the South Platte and Clear Creek. All the plains are covered with a drift deposit of granitic and quartzose pebbles, overlaid by a sandy and calcareous loam closely resembling the diluvial clay and the loess of Europe.” The skull was found at a point three and a half feet from the surface.—Ibid., p. 257.

[148] Tenth Annual Report of Peabody Museum, Cambridge, 1877, vol. ii, pp. 30–43; American Naturalist, June, 1876, p. 329.

[149] Tenth Annual Report of Peabody Museum, p. 47.

[150] Grote, The Peopling of America, American Naturalist, April, 1877.

[151] Primitive Industry, by C. C. Abbott, M.D., 1881, p. 551. A truly scientific work.

[152] Sixth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, under Dr. Hayden in 1872, p. 657.

[153] General Thomas gives the following account of this form of skull discovered by him, p. 657: “It is unlike that of any human being to-day alive on this continent; the frontal bone being low, receding, growing narrow and pinched from the brows up; the top of the head depressed in the centre. The cavity of the cranium is full seven inches long, and a scant four and a half inches wide. The orbital ridges or eyebrows are excessively developed, like those of the great Gibbon monkey. In fact the whole skull resembles that of the great Gibbon monkey. The malar or cheek bones run down very low and deep toward the lower jaw, are set very far to the front, and are not wide at top, but widen very much toward the bottom. The nose, and here is the anomaly, is much more aquiline than that of the Indian. The superior maxillary is one-third deeper and much more prominent than the Indian’s. The inferior maxillary is of uncommon prominence, depth, and power, far exceeding that of the Indian. The mouth is narrow and long, more dog-shaped than the Indian’s. The foramen magnum or aperture at base of skull, where the spinal cord enters the head, is peculiarly small. The condyloid processes are full, oblong, flat on the working surfaces, and at such an angle as to set the head upward and back more than any race we know to-day on this continent. Set one of these skulls, without the lower jaw, on the table, and a line drawn from the upper jaw perpendicularly upward would be a good inch and a half in front of the forehead. Set on the lower jaw and it would be two inches.” Mr. R. D. Guttgisal, formerly an engineer on the Mexican Central Railroad, in connection with some friends, opened a mound at Chihuahua, on the line of that railroad. The skulls resembled those I have described (so he informs me) in every particular. He especially remembers the somewhat bird-shaped head, and the excessively small foramen magnum. The bodies were not interred horizontally there, but leaning backward as if in a rocking-chair. Professor H. H. Smith, University of Pennsylvania, has one of the skulls.

[154] Professor James Orton, The Andes and the Amazons, third ed., p. 109, New York, 1876.

[155] Sir John Lubbock, alluding to the changes that have transpired in the condition of man from his first appearance in America, says: “But even if we attribute to these changes all the importance which ever has been claimed for them, they will not require an antiquity of more than three thousand years. I do not, of course, deny that the period may have been very much greater, but in my opinion, at least, it need not be greater.”—Pre-Historic Times, p. 234, London, 1865.

Доктор Фостер, приведя многие из общепризнанных доказательств древности человека в этих местах, подводит итог рассуждениям следующими словами: «Необходимо признать, что доказательства в большинстве случаев основываются на свидетельстве лишь одного наблюдателя, к тому же в том же самом отложении не происходило повторения „находок“ (за исключением гравийных отложений Колорадо и Вайоминга, которые требуют дальнейшего исследования для безоговорочного признания), подобных тем, что имеются в долине Соммы и в европейских пещерах, которые столь убедительно свидетельствуют о существовании человека как современника крупных толстокожих животных». — Фостер, «Доисторические расы» (Foster’s Pre-Historic Races), стр. 71.

[156] De Civitate Dei, lib. xvi, cap. 9. Above I have availed myself of the admirable translation by Rev. Marcus Dods, vol. ii, p. 118. Edinburgh, 1871. On the subject of Antipodes we may refer the reader to the view of Cosmas Indicopleustes, an Egyptian of the middle of the 6th century. See Draper’s Conflict between Religion and Science, p. 65, and the opinion of the Venerable Bede, cited by the same author. See further Bancroft’s Native Races of the Pacific States, vol. v, pp. 1–8, and Ogilby’s America, pp. 6–7.

[157] R. H. Major’s Prince Henry of Portugal, chap. xxi. London, 1868, 8vo. Draper’s Conflict, pp. 163–5.

[158] The narrowness of the attainments of the “educated” in Spain in the 17th century is portrayed by Buckle: “Books, unless they were books of devotion, were deemed utterly useless; no one consulted them, no one collected them; and until the 18th century, Madrid did not possess a single public library. * * * De Torres, who was himself a Spaniard, and was educated at Salamanca early in the 18th century, declares that he had studied in the university for five years before he had heard that such things as the mathematical sciences existed. So late as the year 1771, the same university publicly refused to allow the discoveries of Newton to be taught; and assigned as a reason, that the system of Newton was not so consonant with revealed religion as the system of Aristotle.”—History of Civilization in England, vol. ii, pp. 72–3. New York, 1861. Of course these remarks apply to Spain’s period of misfortune and decline, but it must also be remembered that the spirit of intolerance which alone brought about that condition was at its height about the time of the discovery of America.

[159] Mr. Bancroft has illustrated the spirit of this latter class by quoting a passage from Garcia’s Origen de Los Indios, Madrid, 1729, p. 248. It is certainly one of the most venomous and narrow-minded utterances on record. See Bancroft’s Native Races, vol. v, p. 4.

[160] Historia Antigua de la Nueva España con Noticias de los Ritos y Costumbres de los Indios y Explicacion del Calendario Mexicano, por F. Diego Duran, Escrita en el año de 1585; MS. in three vols. folio of upwards of 1000 pp. each. On p. 507, tom. iii, we find notice of December, 1579, as the date at which that stage of the work was reached. Copy in the library of Congress at Washington. From Beristain’s Biblioteca Hispano-Americana, Septentrional, tom. i, p. 442, Mexico, 1816, we quote the following: “Duran (F. Diego) á quien el Illmõ. Eguara, p. 324, de su Biblioteca dá equivocadamente el nombre de Pedro, y á quien el Jesuita Clavigero llama Fernando con igual equivocacion. Fué natural de Tezcuco, antigua corte de los Emperadores Megicanos: y Profeso el Orden de Santo Domingo, en el Convento Imperial de Megico, á 8 de Margo de 1556. Era varon Docto en Theología, y de vasta erudicion en la historia antigua de los Indios; pero molestado de enfermedades en sus años ultimos, no pudo dar á luz publica los bellos libros, que tenia compuestos, los mas amenos y gustosos, que hasta entonces se habian escrito sobre las cosas de Indias, como se explica el Illmõ. Dáila Padilla, y repetieron despues los criticos franceses Querif y Echard. El referido Arzo-Bispo añade, que el P. Juan de Torar, Jesuita Megicano, en cuyo poder paraban los manuscritos de su paisano Duran, se los dió al P. José de Acosta á quien servieron mucho para su Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias, en lo qual convienen Pinelo y D. Nicolás Antonio. Los dichos MSS. eran:” Historia de los Indios de la N. E. Antigüallas de los Indios de la N. E.

[161] “Cuanto á lo primero tendremos por principal fundamento el ser esta Nacion y Gente Indiana advenediza de estrañas y remotas regeiones, y que en su venida á poseer esta Tierra hizo un largo y prolijo camino, en el cual gastó muchos meses y años para llegar á ella, como de su relacion y pinturas se colige, y como de algunos viejos ancianos de muchos dias he procurado saber para sacar esta opinion en limpio; y dado caso que algunos cuenten algunas falsas fabulas conviene á saber, que nacieron de unas fuentes y manantiales de agua; otros, que nacieron de unas cuebas; otros, que su generacion es de los Dioses; lo cual clara y abiertamente se ve ser fabula, y que ellos mismos ignoran su origen y principio, dado caso que siempre confiessan havre venido de tierras; y asi lo he hallado pintado en sus antiguas pinturas, donde señalan grandes trabajos de hambre, sed, y desnudez, con otras innumerables afliciones que en él pasáron hasta llegar a esta tierra y poblada; con lo cual confirmo mi opinion y sospecha de que estos Naturales sean de aquellas diez Tribus de Isrrael que Salmanasar, Rey de los Asirios cautivó y transmigró de Asiria en tiempo de Ozeas, Rey de Isrrael, y en tiempo de Ozequias, Rey de Jerusalem, como se prodra ver en el cuarto Libro de los Reyes, capitulo diez y siete, donde dice que fue transladado Isrrael de su tierra á los Asirios hasta el dia de hoy, etc.; de las cuales dice Esdras en el Libro cuarto, capitulo trece, que se pasaron á vivir á una tierra remota y apartada que nunca habia sido habitada; á la cual habia largo y prolijo camino de año y medio, donde agora se hallan estas Gentes de todas las Islas y Tierra firma del mar oceano hacia la parte de occidente.”—Historia Antigua de la Nueva España, tom. i., pp. 1–2, MS.

[162] London, small quarto, 1650; we have both this and the edition of 1660 before us.

[163] Harmon L’Estrange, Kt., Americans No Jewes; or Improbabilities that the Americans are of that Race, p. 4. 1652; quarto, London.

[164] Id., p. 13.

[165] “De suerte que aviendose conservado este nombre Piru, que es lo mismo que Ophir, en aquellas tierras, y hallandose que los moradores dellas parecen a los Hebreos en muchas cosas, bien se signe que a quellos Indios, y los demas proceden de Ophir nieto de Heber de quien los Hebreos, y su lengua tomaron el nombre. Tambien se halla el nombre de Iectan padre de Ophir en la provincia que oy se llama Yucatan, en la Nueva España, que no es pequeño fundemento para provar que ya que no pusiesse aquel nombre Iectan, por no haver ido a aquella tierra, pudo ser que lo diesse su hijo Ophir.”—Origen de los Indios, p. 323. Ed., Valencia, 1607.

[166] Origen de los Indios, (Valencia, 1607), p. 485.

[167] Hist. de la Nouvelle France, lib. i, cap. iii, p. 25. Paris, 1611.

[168] Historia General de los Hechos de los Castellanos, Madrid, 1728–30, fol. decada 1, lib. i, cap. vi.

[169] Historia de la Conquista Itza, p. 27, Madrid, 1701, fol.

[170] Aunque la verdad es que ellos, por hablar mas propriamente y los otros de quien descendieron, por Generacion Natural, son de los Hijos de Noé * * * y segun lo que tenemos dicho, en otra parte, acerca de el color de estas gentes, no tendria por cosa descaminada, creer que son descendientes de los Hijos, u Nietos de Cham, tercero Hijo de Noé.—Monarquia Ind., tom. i, p. 30.

[171] Pineda in Soc. Mex. Geog. Boletin, 1852, p. 343; see tradition of Votan, this work, chap. v.

[172] Storia Ant. del Messico, tom. iv, p. 17; cited by Bancroft.

[173] Historia del origen de pentes que poblaron la America Septentrional que llaman la Nueva España con noticia de los primeros que establecieron la Monarquia, que en ella florecio de la Nacion Tolteca, y noticias que alcanzaron de la creacion del Mundo (date at end of first vol. 1755, and end of third 1780), por M. Fer. de Echevarria y Veitia, pp. 24–30, chap, i, tom. i, MS. Three vols. folio, in Library of Congress at Washington. About one-fourth of the work is published in Kingsborough’s Mex. Ant., tom. viii.

[174] Historia, cap. xii, tom. i, p. 92, MS.; of Kingsborough’s Mex. Ant., tom. viii, p. 189.

[175] Noticias Americanas, pp. 391–5, 405–7. Cited by Bancroft, Native Races, vol. v, p. 10.

[176] Native Races, vol. v, p. 11.

[177] Deserts, vol. i, p. 26. But what else could be expected of the editor of that curiosity of Americo-Germanic literature executed by some German school-boy and unearthed in the Arsenal Library at Paris, entitled Manuscript Pictographique Américain précédé d’une notice sur l’Ideographie des Peaux-Rouges, par l’Abbé Em. Domenech, Paris, 1860. Published under the auspices of the Minister of State and of the Emperor Napoleon III. See also Le Livre des Sauvages au Point de Vue de la Civilization Française, Brussels, 1861. The internal evidences of this remarkable MS. being the work of a German boy are plain to any one having the slightest knowledge of the German language. How the Abbé and the Emperor could have been so blinded to its real character we cannot imagine; however, it would be unfair to leave the impression that, because of the theory of Ophir’s colonization and because of this literary blunder, the Abbé’s work entitled Seven Years’ Residence in the Great Deserts of North America is without value. On the contrary, it contains much useful information. The following passage occurs on p. 66 of the above work: “The most careful study concerning the origin of the red-skins, made on the spot, has confirmed us in the belief that there is nothing in science to contradict the Bible, which represents Adam as the sole stock whence sprung the three great races which form the principal types of the human family.”

[178] Storia Ant. del Messico, tom. iv, p. 15. We quote the following from the translation by Cullan, London, 1807: “We do not doubt that the population of America has been very ancient, and more so than it may seem to have been to European authors: 1. Because the Americans wanted those arts and inventions, such, for example, as those of wax and oil for light, which on the one hand being very ancient in Europe and Asia, are on the other most useful, not to say necessary, and when once discovered are never forgotten. 2. Because the polished nations of the new world, and particularly those of Mexico, preserve in their traditions and in their paintings the memory of the creation of the world and of the building of the Tower of Babel, the confusion of languages and the dispersion of the people, though blended with some fables, and had no knowledge of the events which happened afterwards in Asia, in Africa, or in Europe, although many of them were so great and remarkable that they could not easily have gone from their memories. 3. Because neither was there among the Americans any knowledge of the people of the old continent, nor among the latter any account of the passage of the former to the new world.” He then cites Votan. See further on early views, Gottfried Wagner’s De Originibus Amer. Disertatio Lipsiæ, 1669; Hugo Grotius’s Dissertatio de Origine Gentium Americanorum Amstelodami, 1642; Jean De Laet’s Notæ ad Diss. H. Grotii de Originine Gent. Americ., 1643; Jean De Laet’s Responsio ad H. Grotii Diss. de Origine Gent. Americ., 1644; Poisson’s Animadrersiones in Originem Peruvianorum et Mexicanorum, Parisiis, 1644; Georgius Hornius’s De Originibus Americanis Hagæ, 1652; Rocha’s Tratado Unico y Singulare del Origin de los Indios Occidentales, del Peru, Mexico, Santa Fe, y Chile; Lima, 1681; Engel’s Essai sur Cette Question: Comment l’Amérique est-elle été Peuplée d’Hommes et d’Ammaux, Amsterdam, 1767; Corn. De Pauw’s Recherche sur l’Amérique et les Americans, Berlin, 1774; Vater’s Untersuchungen über America’s Bevölkerung aus dem alten Continent, Leipzig, 1810.