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                E T H N O G R A P H I C   S T U D I E S




                       _Printed by R. & R. Clark_
                                  FOR
                        DAVID DOUGLAS, EDINBURGH




                   T H E   L O S T   A T L A N T I S

                               AND  OTHER

                         ETHNOGRAPHIC  STUDIES

                                   BY
                 SIR  DANIEL  WILSON,  LL.D.,  F.R.S.E.
                 PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
             AUTHOR OF ‘THE PREHISTORIC ANNALS OF SCOTLAND’
        ‘PREHISTORIC MAN: THE ORIGIN OF CIVILISATION,’ ETC. ETC.

                               NEW  YORK
                          MACMILLAN  AND  CO.
                                  1892

                         _All rights reserved_




                             P R E F A C E

“THE Preface is the most troublesome part of a book,” I have often heard
my dear Father say; and now it falls to my unaccustomed pen to write a
preface for him.

I cannot undertake to define the aim of this book; I can only tell how
the last work on it was done. In my Father’s note-book I find it
described as “A few carefully studied monographs, linked together by a
slender thread of ethnographic relationship.”

Returning in June last from a brief visit to Montreal, with the first
signs of illness beginning to show, he found a bundle of proofs waiting
for him, and with the characteristic promptness which never let any duty
wait, he set to work at once to correct them. “It is my last book,” he
said, conscious that his busy brain had nearly fulfilled all its tasks;
and so through days of rapidly increasing weakness and pain he lay on
the sofa correcting proofs till the pen dropped from the hand no longer
able to hold it. His mind turned to the book in his _wandering_ thoughts
from illness, and on one of these occasions he murmured: “Sybil will
write the Preface”; and so I try to fulfil his wish. “Ask Mr. Douglas to
correct the proofs himself, and to be sure to make an index,” was one of
his last requests, thus providing for the finishing of the work which he
could not himself finish. He has passed now from this world whose
prehistoric story he so lovingly tried to decipher, and where he was
ever finding traces of the hand of God, into that other world, “where
toil shall cease and rest begin”; but where I doubt not he still goes on
learning more and more, no longer seeing through a glass darkly but in
perfect light.

The silent lips seem to speak once more in this volume—his last words
to the public; and I commit it very tenderly to those who are interested
in his favourite study of Ethnology.

                                                          SYBIL WILSON.
 BENCOSIE, TORONTO,
   _August 1892_.




                            C O N T E N T S

                                                                PAGE
      1.    THE LOST ATLANTIS                                      1

      2.    THE VINLAND OF THE NORTHMEN                           37

      3.    TRADE AND COMMERCE IN THE STONE AGE                   81

      4.    PRE-ARYAN AMERICAN MAN                               130

      5.    THE ÆSTHETIC FACULTY IN ABORIGINAL RACES             185

      6.    THE HURON-IROQUOIS; A TYPICAL RACE                   246

      7.    HYBRIDITY AND HEREDITY                               307

      8.    RELATIVE RACIAL BRAIN-WEIGHT AND SIZE                339


      INDEX                                                      403




                           THE LOST ATLANTIS
                                    I
                               EARLY IDEAS


THE legend of Atlantis, an island-continent lying in the Atlantic Ocean
over against the Pillars of Hercules, which, after being long the seat
of a powerful empire, was engulfed in the sea, has been made the basis
of many extravagant speculations; and anew awakens keenest interest with
the revolving centuries. The 12th of October 1892 has been proclaimed a
World’s holiday, to celebrate its accomplished cycle of four centuries
since Columbus set foot on the shores of the West. The voyage has been
characterised as the most memorable in the annals of our race; and the
century thus completed is richer than all before it in the
transformations that the birth of time has disclosed since the wedding
of the New World to the Old. The story of the Lost Atlantis is recorded
in the _Timæus_ and, with many fanciful amplifications, in the _Critias_
of Plato. According to the dialogues, as reproduced there, Critias
repeats to Socrates a story told him by his grandfather, then an old man
of ninety, when he himself was not more than ten years of age. According
to this narrative, Solon visited the city of Sais, at the head of the
Egyptian delta, and there learned from the priests of the ancient empire
of Atlantis, and of its overthrow by a convulsion of nature. “No one,”
says Professor Jowett, in his critical edition of _The Dialogues of
Plato_, “knew better than Plato how to invent ‘a noble lie’”; and he,
unhesitatingly, pronounces the whole narrative a fabrication. “The
world, like a child, has readily, and for the most part, unhesitatingly
accepted the tale of the Island of Atlantis.” To the critical editor,
this reception furnishes only an illustration of popular credulity,
showing how the chance word of a poet or philosopher may give rise to
endless historical or religious speculation. In the _Critias_, the
legendary tale is unquestionably expanded into details of no possible
historical significance or genuine antiquity. But it is not without
reason, that men like Humboldt have recognised in the original legend
the possible vestige of a widely-spread tradition of earliest times. In
this respect, at any rate, I purpose here to review it.

It is to be noted that even in the time of Socrates, and indeed of the
elder Critias, this Atlantis was referred to as the vague and
inconsistent tradition of a remote past; though not more inconsistent
than much else which the cultured Greeks were accustomed to receive. Mr.
Hyde Clarke, in an “Examination of the Legend,” printed in the
_Transactions of the Royal Historical Society_, arrives at the
conclusion that Atlantis was the name of the king rather than of the
dominion. But king and kingdom have ever been liable to be referred to
under a common designation. According to the account in the _Timæus_,
Atlantis was a continent lying over against the Pillars of Hercules,
greater in extent than Libya and Asia combined; the highway to other
islands and to a great ocean, of which the Mediterranean Sea was a mere
harbour. But in the vagueness of all geographical knowledge in the days
of Socrates and of Plato, this Atlantic domain is confused with some
Iberian or western African power, which is stated to have been arrayed
against Egypt, Hellas, and all the countries bordering on the
Mediterranean Sea. The knowledge even of the western Mediterranean was
then very imperfect; and, to the ancient Greek, the West was a region of
vague mystery which sufficed for the localisation of all his fondest
imaginings. There, on the far horizon, Homer pictured the Elysian plain,
where, under a serene sky, the favourites of Zeus enjoyed eternal
felicity; Hesiod assigned the abode of departed heroes to the Happy
Isles beyond the western waters that engirdled Europe; and Seneca
foretold that that mysterious ocean would yet disclose an unknown world
which it then kept concealed. To the ancients, Elysium ever lay beyond
the setting sun; and the Hesperia of the Greeks, as their geographical
knowledge increased, continued to recede before them into the unexplored
west.

In the youth of all nations, the poet and historian are one; and,
according to the tale of the elder Critias, the legend of Atlantis was
derived from a poetic chronicle of Solon, whom he pronounced to have
been one of the best of poets, as well as the wisest of men. The
elements of oral tradition are aptly set forth in the dialogue which
Plato puts into the mouth of Timæus of Locris, a Pythagorean
philosopher. Solon is affirmed to have told the tale to his personal
friend, Dropidas, the great-grandfather of Critias, who repeated it to
his son; and he, eighty years thereafter, in extreme old age, told it to
his grandson, a boy of ten, whose narrative, reproduced in mature years,
we are supposed to read in the dialogue of the _Timæus_. Even those are
but the later links in the traditionary catena. Solon himself visited
Sais, a city of the Egyptian delta, under the protection of the goddess,
Neith or Athene. There, when in converse with the Egyptian priests, he
learned, for the first time, rightly to appreciate how ignorant of
antiquity he and his countrymen were. “O Solon, Solon,” said an aged
priest to him, “you Hellenes are ever young, and there is no old man who
is a Hellene; there is no opinion or tradition of knowledge among you
which is white with age.” Solon had told them the mythical tales of
Phoroneus and Niobe, and of Deucalion and Pyrrha, and had attempted to
reckon the interval by generations since the great deluge. But the
priest of Sais replied to this that such Hellenic annals were children’s
stories. Their memory went back but a little way, and recalled only the
latest of the great convulsions of nature, by which revolutions in past
ages had been wrought: “The memory of them is lost, because there was no
written voice among you.” And so the venerable priest undertook to tell
him of the social life and condition of the primitive Athenians 9000
years before. It is among the events of this older era that the
overthrow of Atlantis is told: a story already “white with age” in the
time of Socrates, 3400 years ago. The warriors of Athens, in that elder
time, were a distinct caste; and when the vast power of Atlantis was
marshalled against the Mediterranean nations, Athens bravely repelled
the invader, and gave liberty to the nations whose safety had been
imperilled; but in the convulsion that followed, in which the
island-continent was engulfed in the ocean, the warrior race of Athens
also perished.

The story, as it thus reaches us, is one of the vaguest of popular
legends, and has been transmitted to modern times in the most obscure of
all the writings of Plato. Nevertheless, there is nothing improbable in
the idea that it rests on some historic basis, in which the tradition of
the fall of an Iberian, or other aggressive power in the western
Mediterranean, is mingled with other and equally vague traditions of
intercourse with a vast continent lying beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
Mr. Hyde Clarke, in his _Khita and Khita-Peruvian Epoch_, draws
attention to the ancient system of geography, alluded to by various
early writers, and notably mentioned by Crates of Pergamos, B.C. 160,
which treated of the Four Worlds. This he connects with the statement by
Mr. George Smith, derived from the cuneiform interpretations, that Agu,
an ancient king of Babylonia, called himself “King of the Four Races.”
He also assigns to it a relation with others, including its Inca
equivalent of _Tavintinsuzu_, the Empire of the Four Quarters of the
World. But the extravagance of regal titles has been the same in widely
diverse ages; so that much caution is necessary before they can be made
a safe basis for comprehensive generalisations. Four kings made war
against five in the vale of Siddim; and when Lot was despoiled and taken
captive by Chederlaomer, King of Elam, Tidal, King of Nations, and other
regal allies, Abraham, with no further aid than that of his trained
servants, born in his house, three hundred and eighteen in all, smote
their combined hosts, and recovered the captives and the spoil. Here, at
least, it is obvious that “the King of Nations” was somewhat on a par
with one of the six vassal kings who rowed King Edgar on the River Dee.
Certainly, within any early period of authentic history, the conceptions
of the known world were reduced within narrow bounds; and it would be a
very comprehensive deduction from such slight premises as the legend
supplies, to refer it to an age of accurate geographical knowledge in
which the western hemisphere was known as one of four worlds, or
continents. When the Scottish poet, Dunbar, wrote of America, twenty
years after the voyage of Columbus, he only knew of it as “the new-found
isle.”

The opinion, universally favoured in the infancy of physical science, of
the recurrence of convulsions of nature, whereby nations were
revolutionised, and vast empires destroyed by fire, or engulfed in the
ocean, revived with the theories of cataclysmic phenomena in the earlier
speculations of modern geology; and has even now its advocates among
writers who have given little heed to the concurrent opinion of later
scientific authorities. Among the most zealous advocates of the idea of
a submerged Atlantic continent, the seat of a civilisation older than
that of Europe, or of the old East, was the late Abbé Brasseur de
Bourbourg. As an indefatigable and enthusiastic investigator, he
occupies a place in the history of American archæology somewhat akin to
that of his fellow-countryman, M. Boucher de Perthes, in relation to the
palæontological disclosures of Europe. He had the undoubted merit of
first drawing the attention of the learned world to the native
transcripts of Maya records, the full value of which is only now being
adequately recognised. His _Histoire des Nations Civilisées_ aims at
demonstrating from their religious myths and historical traditions the
existence of a self-originated civilisation. In his subsequent _Quatre
Lettres sur le Mexique_, the Abbé adopted, in the most literal form, the
venerable legend of Atlantis, giving free rein to his imagination in
some very fanciful speculations. He calls into being, “from the vasty
deep,” a submerged continent, or, rather, extension of the present
America, stretching eastward, and including, as he deems probable, the
Canary Islands, and other insular survivals of the imaginary Atlantis.
Such speculations of unregulated zeal are unworthy of serious
consideration. But it is not to be wondered at that the vague legend, so
temptingly set forth in the _Timæus_, should have kindled the
imaginations of a class of theorists, who, like the enthusiastic Abbé,
are restrained by no doubts suggested by scientific indications. So far
from geology lending the slightest confirmation to the idea of an
engulfed Atlantis, Professor Wyville Thomson has shown, in his _Depths
of the Sea_, that while oscillations of the land have considerably
modified the boundaries of the Atlantic Ocean, the geological age of its
basin dates as far back, at least, as the later Secondary period. The
study of its animal life, as revealed in dredging, strongly confirms
this, disclosing an unbroken continuity of life on the Atlantic sea-bed
from the Cretaceous period to the present time; and, as Sir Charles
Lyell has pointed out, in his _Principles of Geology_, the entire
evidence is adverse to the idea that the Canaries, the Madeiras, and the
Azores, are surviving fragments of a vast submerged island, or
continuous area of the adjacent continent. There are, indeed, undoubted
indications of volcanic action; but they furnish evidence of local
upheaval, not of the submergence of extensive continental areas.

But it is an easy, as well as a pleasant pastime, to evolve either a
camel or a continent out of the depths of one’s own inner consciousness.
To such fanciful speculators, the lost Atlantis will ever offer a
tempting basis on which to found their unsubstantial creations. Mr. H.
H. Bancroft, when alluding to the subject in his _Native Races of the
Pacific States_, refers to forty-two different works for notices and
speculations concerning Atlantis. The latest advocacy of the idea of an
actual island-continent of the mid-Atlantic, literally engulfed in the
ocean, within a period authentically embraced by historical tradition,
is to be found in its most popular form in Mr. Ignatius Donnelly’s
_Atlantis, the Antediluvian World_. By him, as by Abbé Brasseur, the
concurrent opinions of the highest authorities in science, that the main
features of the Atlantic basin have undergone no change within any
recent geological period, are wholly ignored. To those, therefore, who
attach any value to scientific evidence, such speculations present no
serious claims on their study. There is, indeed, an idea favoured by
certain students of science, who carry the spirit of nationality into
regions ordinarily regarded as lying outside of any sectional pride,
that, geologically speaking, America is the older continent. It may at
least be accepted as beyond dispute, that that continent and the great
Atlantic basin intervening between it and Europe are alike of a
geological antiquity which places the age of either entirely apart from
all speculations affecting human history. But such fancies are wholly
superfluous. The idea of intercourse between the Old and the New World
prior to the fifteenth century, passed from the region of speculation to
the domain of historical fact, when the publication of the _Antiquitates
Americanæ_ and the _Grönland’s Historiske Mindesmærker_, by the
antiquaries of Copenhagen, adduced contemporary authorities, and
indisputably genuine runic inscriptions, in proof of the visits of the
Northmen to Greenland and the mainland of North America, before the
close of the tenth century.

The idea of pre-Columbian intercourse between Europe and America, is
thus no novelty. What we have anew to consider is: whether, in its wider
aspect, it is more consistent with probability than the revived notion
of a continent engulfed in the Atlantic Ocean? The earliest students of
American antiquities turned to Phœnicia, Egypt, or other old-world
centres of early civilisation, for the source of Mexican, Peruvian, and
Central American art or letters; and, indeed, so long as the unity of
the human race remained unquestioned, some theory of a common source for
the races of the Old and the New World was inevitable. The idea,
therefore, that the new world which Columbus revealed, was none other
than the long-lost Atlantis, is one that has probably suggested itself
independently to many minds. References to America have, in like manner,
been sought for in obscure allusions of Herodotus, Seneca, Pliny, and
other classical writers, to islands or continents in the ocean which
extended beyond the western verge of the world as known to them. That
such allusions should be vague, was inevitable. If they had any
foundation in a knowledge by elder generations of this western
hemisphere, the tradition had come down to them by the oral
transmissions of centuries; while their knowledge of their own eastern
hemisphere was limited and very imperfect. “The Cassiterides, from which
tin is brought”—assumed to be the British Isles,—were known to
Herodotus only as uncertainly located islands of the Atlantic of which
he had no direct information. When Assuryuchurabal, the founder of the
palace at Nimrud, conquered the people who lived on the banks of the
Orontes from the confines of Hamath to the sea, the spoils obtained from
them included one hundred talents of _anna_, or tin; and the same prized
metal is repeatedly named in cuneiform inscriptions. The people trading
in tin, supposed to be identical with the Shirutana, were the merchants
of the world before Tyre assumed her place as chief among the merchant
princes of the sea. Yet already, in the time of Joshua, she was known as
“the strong city, Tyre.” “Great Zidon” also is so named, along with her,
when Joshua defines the bounds of the tribe of Asher, extending to the
sea coast; and is celebrated by Homer for its works of art. The
Seleucia, or Cilicia, of the Greeks was an attempted restoration of the
ancient seaport of the Shirutana, which may have been an emporium of
Khita merchandise; as it was, undoubtedly, an important place of
shipment for the Phœnicians in their overland trade from the valley of
the Euphrates. One favoured etymology of Britain, as the name of the
islands whence tin was brought, is _barat-anna_, assumed to have been
applied to them by that ancient race of merchant princes: the
Cassiterides being the later Aryan equivalent, Gr. κασσίτεροϛ, Sansk.
_kastira_.

In primitive centuries, when ancient maritime races thus held supremacy
in the Mediterranean Sea, voyages were undoubtedly made far into the
Atlantic Ocean. The Phœnicians, who of all the nations settled on its
shores lay among the remotest from the outlying ocean, habitually traded
with settlements on the Atlantic. They colonised the western shores of
the Mediterranean at a remote period; occupied numerous favourable
trading-posts on the bays and headlands of the Euxine, as well as of
Sicily and others of the larger islands; and passing beyond the straits,
effected settlements along the coasts of Europe and Africa. According to
Strabo (i. 48), they had factories beyond the Pillars of Hercules in the
period immediately succeeding the Trojan war: an era which yearly
becomes for us less mythical, and to which may be assigned the great
development of the commercial prosperity of Tyre. The Phœnicians were
then expanding their trading enterprise, and extending explorations so
as to command the remotest available sources of wealth. The trade of
Tarshish was for Phœnicia what that of the East has been to England in
modern centuries. The Tartessus, on which the Arabs of Spain
subsequently conferred the name of the Guadalquivir, afforded ready
access to a rich mining district; and also formed the centre of valuable
fisheries of tunny and muræna. By means of its navigable waters, along
with those of the Guadina, Phœnician traders were able to penetrate far
inland; and the colonies established at their mouths furnished fresh
starting points for adventurous exploration along the Atlantic seaboard.
They derived much at least of the tin, which was an important object of
traffic, from the mines of north-west Spain, and from Cornwall; though,
doubtless, both the tin of the Cassiterides and amber from the Baltic
were also transported by overland routes to the Adriatic and the mouth
of the Rhone. It was a Phœnician expedition which, in the reign of
Pharaoh Necho, B.C. 611-605, after the decline of that great maritime
power, accomplished the feat of circumnavigating Africa by way of the
Red Sea. Hanno, a Carthaginian, not only guided the Punic fleet round
the parts of Libya which border on the Atlantic, but has been credited
with reaching the Indian Ocean by the same route as that which Vasco de
Gama successfully followed in 1497. The object of Hanno’s expedition, as
stated in the _Periplus_, was to found Liby-Phœnician cities beyond the
Pillars of Hercules. How far south his voyage actually extended along
the African coast is matter of conjecture, or of disputed
interpretation; for the original work is lost. It is sufficient for our
purpose to know that he did pursue the same route which led in a later
century to the discovery of Brazil. Aristotle applies the name of
“Antilla” to a Carthaginian discovery; and Diodorus Siculus assigns to
the Carthaginians the knowledge of an island in the ocean, the secret of
which they reserved to themselves, as a refuge to which they could
withdraw, should fate ever compel them to desert their African homes. It
is far from improbable that we may identify this obscure island with one
of the Azores, which lie 800 miles from the coast of Portugal. Neither
Greek nor Roman writers make other reference to them; but the discovery
of numerous Carthaginian coins at Corvo, the extreme north-westerly
island of the group, leaves little room to doubt that they were visited
by Punic voyagers. There is therefore nothing extravagant in the
assumption that we have here the “Antilla” mentioned by Aristotle. While
the Carthaginian oligarchy ruled, naval adventure was still encouraged;
but the maritime era of the Mediterranean belongs to more ancient
centuries. The Greeks were inferior in enterprise to the Phœnicians;
while the Romans were essentially unmaritime; and the revival of the old
adventurous spirit with the rise of the Venetian and Genoese republics
was due to the infusion of fresh blood from the great northern home of
the sea-kings of the Baltic.

The history of the ancient world is, for us, to a large extent, the
history of civilisation among the nations around the Mediterranean Sea.
Its name perpetuates the recognition of it from remote times as the
great inland sea which kept apart and yet united, in intercourse and
exchange of experience and culture, the diverse branches of the human
family settled on its shores. Of the history of those nations, we only
know some later chapters. Disclosures of recent years have startled us
with recovered glimpses of the Khita, or Hittites, as a great power
centred between the Euphrates and the Orontes, but extending into Asia
Minor, and about B.C. 1200 reaching westward to the Ægean Sea. All but
their name seemed to have perished; and they were known only as one
among diverse Canaanitish tribes, believed to have been displaced by the
Hebrew inheritors of Palestine. Yet now, as Professor Curtius has
pointed out, we begin to recognise that “one of the paths by which the
art and civilisation of Babylonia and Assyria made their way to Greece,
was along the great high-road which runs across Asia Minor”; and which
the projected railway route through the valley of the Euphrates seeks to
revive. For, as compared with Egypt, and the earliest nations of Eastern
Asia, the Greeks were, indeed, children. It was to the Phœnicians that
the ancients assigned the origin of navigation. Their skill as seamen
was the subject of admiration even by the later Greeks, who owned
themselves to be their pupils in seamanship, and called the pole-star,
the Phœnician star. Their naval commerce is set forth in glowing
rhetoric by the prophet Ezekiel. “O Tyrus, thou that art situate at the
entry of the sea, a merchant of the people of many isles. Thy borders
are in the midst of the seas. The inhabitants of Zidon and Arvad were
thy mariners. Thy wise men, O Tyrus, were thy pilots. All the ships of
the sea, with their mariners, were in thee to occupy thy merchandise.”
But this was spoken at the close of Phœnician history, in the last days
of Tyre’s supremacy.

Looking back then into the dim dawn of actual history, with whatever
fresh light recent discoveries have thrown upon it: this, at least,
seems to claim recognition from us, that in that remote era the eastern
Mediterranean was a centre of maritime enterprise, such as had no equal
among the nations of antiquity. Even in the decadence of Phœnicia, her
maritime skill remained unmatched. Egypt and Palestine, under their
greatest rulers, recognised her as mistress of the sea; and, as has been
already noted, the circumnavigation of Africa—which, when it was
repeated in the fifteenth century, was considered an achievement fully
equalling that of Columbus,—had long before been accomplished by
Phœnician mariners. Carthage inherited the enterprise of the mother
country, but never equalled her achievements. With the fall of Carthage,
the Mediterranean became a mere Roman lake, over which the galleys of
Rome sailed reluctantly with her armed hosts; or coasting along shore,
they “committed themselves to the sea, and loosed the rudder bands, and
hoisted up the mainsail to the winds”; or again, “strake sail, and so
were driven,” after the blundering fashion described in the voyage of
St. Paul. To such a people, the memories of Punic exploration or
Phœnician enterprise, or the vague legends of an Atlantis beyond the
engirdling ocean, were equally unavailing. The narrow sea between Gaul
and Britain was barrier enough to daunt the boldest of them from
willingly encountering the dangers of an expedition to what seemed to
them literally another world.

Seeing then that the first steps in navigation were taken in an age
lying beyond all memory, and that the oldest traditions assign its
origin to the remarkable people who figure alike in early sacred and
profane history—in Joshua and Ezekiel, in Dius and Menander of Ephesus,
in the Homeric poems and in later Greek writings,—as unequalled in
their enterprise on the sea: what impediments existed in B.C. 1400 or
any earlier century that did not still exist in A.D. 1400, to render
intercourse between the eastern and the western hemisphere impossible?
America was no further off from Tarshish in the golden age of Tyre than
in that of Henry the Navigator. With the aid of literary memorials of
the race of sea-rovers who carved out for themselves the Duchy of
Normandy from the domain of Charlemagne’s heir, and spoiled the Angles
and Saxons in their island home, we glean sufficient evidence to place
the fact beyond all doubt that, after discovering and colonising Iceland
and Greenland, they made their way southward to Labrador, and so, some
way along the American coast. How far south their explorations actually
extended, after being long assigned to the locality of Rhode Island, has
anew excited interest, and is still a matter of controversy. The
question is reviewed on a subsequent page; but its final settlement does
not, in any degree, affect the present question. Certain it is that,
about A.D. 1000, when St. Olaf was introducing Christianity by a
sufficiently high-handed process into the Norse fatherland, Leif, the
son of Eric, the founder of the first Greenland colony, sailed from
Ericsfiord, or other Greenland port, in quest of southern lands already
reported to have been seen, and did land on more than one point of the
North American coast. We know what the ships of those Norse rovers were:
mere galleys, not larger than a good fishing smack, and far inferior to
it in deck and rigging. For compass they had only the same old
“Phœnician star,” which, from the birth of navigation, had guided the
mariners of the ancient world over the pathless deep. The track pursued
by the Northmen, from Norway to Iceland, and so to Greenland and the
Labrador coast, was, doubtless, then as now, beset by fogs, so that
“neither sun nor stars in many days appeared”; and they stood much more
in need of compass than the sailors of the “Santa Maria,” the “Pinta,”
and the “Nina,” the little fleet with which Columbus sailed from the
Andalusian port of Palos, to his first discovered land of “Guanahani,”
variously identified among the islands of the American Archipelago. Yet,
notwithstanding all the advantages of a southern latitude, with its
clearer skies, we have to remember that the “Santa Maria,” the only
decked vessel of the expedition, was stranded; and the “Pinta” and
“Nina,” on which Columbus and his party had to depend for their homeward
voyage, were mere coasting craft, the one with a crew of thirty, and the
other with twenty-four men, with only _latine_ sails. As to the compass,
we perceive how little that availed, on recalling the fact that the
Portuguese admiral, Pedro Alvares de Cabral, only eight years later,
when following on the route of Vasco de Gama, was carried by the
equatorial current so far out of his intended course that he found
himself in sight of a strange land, in 10° S. lat., and so accidentally
discovered Brazil and the new world of the west, not by means of the
mariner’s compass, but in spite of its guidance. It is thus obvious that
the discovery of America would have followed as a result of the voyage
of Vasco de Gama round the Cape, wholly independent of that of Columbus.
What befell the Portuguese admiral of King Manoel, in A.D. 1500, was an
experience that might just as readily have fallen to the lot of the
Phœnician admiral of Pharaoh Necho in B.C. 600, to the Punic Hanno, or
other early navigators; and may have repeatedly occurred to
Mediterranean adventurers on the Atlantic in older centuries. On the
news of de Cabral’s discovery reaching Portugal, the King despatched the
Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci, who explored the coast of South America,
prepared a map of the new-found world, and thereby wrested from Columbus
the honour of giving his name to the continent which he discovered.

When we turn from the myths and traditions of the Old World to those of
the New, we find there traces that seem not unfairly interpretable into
the American counterpart of the legend of Atlantis. The chief seat of
the highest native American civilisation, is neither Mexico nor Peru,
but Central America. The nations of the Maya stock, who inhabit Yucatan,
Guatemala, and the neighbouring region, were peculiarly favourably
situated; and they appear to have achieved the greatest progress among
the communities of Central America. They may not unfitly compare with
the ancient dwellers in the valley of the Euphrates, from the grave
mounds of whose buried cities we are now recovering the history of ages
that had passed into oblivion before the Father of History assumed the
pen. Tested indeed by intervening centuries their monuments are not so
venerable; but, for America’s chroniclings, they are more prehistoric
than the disclosures of Assyrian mounds. The cities of Central America
were large and populous, and adorned with edifices, even now magnificent
in their ruins. Still more, the Mayas were a lettered people, who, like
the Egyptians, recorded in elaborate sculptured hieroglyphics the
formulæ of history and creed. Like them, too, they wrote and ciphered;
and appear, indeed, to have employed a comprehensive system of computing
time and recording dates, which, it cannot be doubted, will be
sufficiently mastered to admit of the decipherment of their ancient
records. The Mayas appear, soon after the Spanish Conquest, to have
adopted the Roman alphabet, and employed it in recording their own
historical traditions and religious myths, as well as in rendering into
such written characters some of the ancient national documents. Those
versions of native myth and history survive, and attention is now being
directed to them. The most recent contribution from this source is _The
Annals of the Cakchiquels_, by Dr. D. G. Brinton, a carefully edited and
annotated translation of a native legal document or _titulo_, in which,
soon after the Conquest, the heir of an ancient Maya family set forth
the evidence of his claim to the inheritance. Along with this may be
noted another work of the same class: _Titre Généalogique des Seigneurs
de Totonicapan. Traduit de l’Espagnol par M. de Charencey._ These two
works independently illustrate the same great national event. In one, a
prince of the Cakchiquel nation, tells of the overthrow of the Quiché
power by his people; and in the other a Quiché seignior, one of the
“Lords of Totonicapan,” describes it from his own point of view. Both
were of the same Maya stock, in what is now the State of Guatemala. Each
nation had a capital adorned with temples and palaces, the splendour of
which excited the wonder of the Spaniards; and both preserved traditions
of the migration of their ancestors from Tula, a mythical land from
which they came across the water.

Such traditions of migration meet us on many sides. Captain Cook found
among the mythological traditions of Tahiti, a vague legend of a ship
that came out of the ocean, and seemed to be the dim record of ancestral
intercourse with the outer world. So also, the Aztecs had the tradition
of the golden age of Anahuac; and of Quetzalcoatl, their instructor in
agriculture, metallurgy and the arts of government. He was of fair
complexion, with long dark hair, and flowing beard: all, characteristics
foreign to their race. When his mission was completed, he set sail for
the mysterious shores of Tlapallan; and on the appearance of the ships
of Cortes, the Spaniards were believed to have returned with the divine
instructor of their forefathers, from the source of the rising sun.

What tradition hints at, physiology confirms. The races of America
differ less in physical character from those of Asia, than do the races
either of Africa or Europe. The American Indian is a Mongol; and though
marked diversities are traceable throughout the American continent, the
range of variation is much less than in the eastern hemisphere. The
western continent appears to have been peopled by repeated migrations
and by diverse routes; but when we attempt to estimate any probable date
for its primeval settlement, evidence wholly fails. Language proves
elsewhere a safe guide. It has established beyond question some
long-forgotten relationship between the Aryans of India and Persia and
those of Europe; it connects the Finn and Lapp with their Asiatic
forefathers; it marks the independent origin of the Basques and their
priority to the oldest Aryan intruders; it links together widely diverse
branches of the great Semitic family. Can language tell us of any such
American affinities, or of traces of Old World congeners, in relation to
either civilised Mayas and Peruvians, or to the forest and prairie races
of the northern continent?

With the millions of America’s coloured population, of African blood and
yet speaking Aryan languages, the American comparative philologist can
scarcely miss the significance of the warning that linguistic and
ethnical classifications by no means necessarily imply the same thing.
Nevertheless, without overlooking this distinction, the ethnical
significance of the evidence which comparative philology supplies cannot
be slighted in any question relative to prehistoric relations between
the Old World and the New. What then can philology tell us? There is one
answer, at the least, which the languages of America give, that fully
accords with the legend, “white with age,” that told of an
island-continent in the Atlantic Ocean with which the nations around the
Mediterranean once held intercourse. None of them indicates any trace of
immigration within the period of earliest authentic history. Those who
attach significance to the references in the _Timæus_ to political
relations common to Atlantis and parts of Libya and Europe; or who, on
other grounds, look with favour on the idea of early intercourse between
the Mediterranean and the western continent, have naturally turned to
the Eskuara of the Basques. It is invariably recognised as the surviving
representative of languages spoken by the Allophyliæ of Europe before
the intrusion of Aryans. The forms of its grammar differ widely from
those of any Semitic, or Indo-European tongue, placing it in the same
class with Mongol, East African, and American languages. Here,
therefore, is a tempting glimpse of possible affinities; and Professor
Whitney, accordingly, remarks in his _Life and Growth of Languages_,
that the Basque “forms a suitable stepping-stone from which to enter the
peculiar linguistic domain of the New World, since there is no other
dialect of the Old World which so much resembles in structure the
American languages.” But this glimpse of possible relationship has
proved, thus far, illusory. In their morphological character, certain
American and Asiatic languages have a common agglutinative structure,
which in the former is developed into their characteristic polysynthetic
attribute. With this, the Eskuarian system of affixes corresponds. But
beyond the general structure, there is no such evidence of affinity,
either in the vocabularies or grammar, as direct affiliation might be
expected to show. Elements common to the Anglo-American of the
nineteenth century and the Sanskrit-speaking race beyond the Indus, in
the era of Alexander of Macedon, are suggested at once by the
grammatical structure of their languages; whereas there is nothing in
the resemblance between the Basque and any of the North American
languages that is not compatible with a “stepping-stone” from Asia to
America by the islands of the Pacific. The most important of all the
native American languages in their bearing on this interesting
inquiry—those of Central America,—are only now receiving adequate
attention. Startling evidence may yet reward the diligence of students;
but, so far as language furnishes any clue to affinity of race, no
American language thus far discloses such a relationship, as, for
example, enabled Dr. Pritchard to suggest that the western people of
Europe, to whom the Greeks gave the collective name of Kέλται, and whose
languages had been assumed by all previous ethnologists as furnishing
evidence that they were precursors of the Aryan immigrants, in reality
justified their classification in the same stock.

But while thus far, the evidence of language is, at best, vague and
indefinite in its response to the inquiry for proofs of relationship of
the races of America to those of the Old World; physiological
comparisons lend no confirmation to the idea of an indigenous native
race, with special affinities and adaptation to its peculiar
environment, and with languages all of one class, the ramifications from
a single native stem. So far as physical affinities can be relied upon,
the man of America, in all his most characteristic racial diversities,
is of Asiatic origin. His near approximation to the Asiatic Mongol is so
manifest as to have led observers of widely different opinions in all
other respects, to concur in classing both under the same great
division: the Mongolian of Pickering, the American Mongolidæ of Latham,
the Mongoloid of Huxley. Professor Flower, in an able discussion of the
varieties of the human species, addressed to the Anthropological
Institute of Great Britain in 1885, unhesitatingly classes the Eskimo as
the typical North Asiatic Mongol. In other American races he notes as
distinctive features the characteristic form of the nasal bones, the
well-developed superciliary ridge, and retreating forehead; but the
resemblance is so obvious in many other respects, that he finally
includes them all among the members of the Mongolian type. If, then, the
American Mongol came originally from Asia, or sprung from the common
stock of which the Asiatic Mongol is the typical representative, within
any such period as even earliest Phœnician history would embrace, much
more definite traces of affinity are to be looked for in his language
than mere correspondence in the agglutination characteristic of a very
widely diffused class of speech. But we, thus far, look in vain for
traces of a common genealogy such as those which, on the one hand,
correlate the Semitic and Aryan families of Asia and Europe with parent
stocks of times anterior to history, and on the other, with
ramifications of modern centuries. We have, moreover, to deal mainly
with the languages of uncivilised races. To the continent north of the
Gulf of Mexico, the grand civilising art of the metallurgist remained to
the last unknown; and in Mexico, it appears as a gift of recent origin,
derived from Central America. The Asiatic origin of the art of
Tubal-cain has, indeed, been pretty generally assumed, both for Central
and Southern America; but by mere inference. In doing so, we are carried
back to some mythic Quetzalcoatl: for neither the metallurgist nor his
art was introduced in recent centuries. Assuming, for the sake of
argument, the dispersion of a common population of Asia and America,
already familiar with the working of metals, and with architecture,
sculpture and other kindred arts, at a date coeval with the founding of
Tyre, “the daughter of Sidon,” what help does language give us in favour
of such a postulate? We have great language groups, such as the
Huron-Iroquois, extending of old from the St. Lawrence to North
Carolina; the Algonkin, from Hudson Bay to South Carolina; the Dakotan,
from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains; the Athabascan, from the
Eskimo frontier, within the Arctic circle, to New Mexico; and the Tinné
family of languages west of the Rocky Mountains, from the Youkon and
Mackenzie rivers, far south on the Pacific slope. With those, as with
the more cultured languages, or rather languages of the more cultured
races, of Central and Southern America, elaborate comparisons have been
made with vocabularies of Asiatic languages; but the results are, at
best, vague. Curious points of agreement have, indeed, been
demonstrated, inviting to further research; but as yet the evidence of
relationship mainly rests on correspondence in structure. The
agglutinative suffixes are common to the Eskimo and many American Indian
tongues. Dr. H. Rink describes the polysynthetic process in the Eskimo
language as founded on radical words, to which additional or imperfect
words, or affixes, are attached; and on the inflexion, which, for
transitive verbs, indicates subject as well as object, likewise by
addition. But, while Professor Flower unhesitatingly characterises the
Eskimo as belonging to the typical North Asiatic Mongols; he, at the
same time, speaks of them as almost as perfectly isolated in their
Arctic home “as an island population.” Nevertheless, the same structure
is common to their language and to those of the great North American
families already named. All alike present, in an exaggerated form, the
characteristic structure of the Ural-Altaic or Turanian group of Asiatic
languages.

Race-type corresponds in the Old and New World. A comparison of
languages by means of the vocabularies of the two continents, yields no
such correspondence. All the more, therefore, is the American student of
comparative philology stimulated to investigate the significance of the
polysynthetic characteristic found to pertain to so many—though by no
means to all—of the languages of this continent. The relationship which
it suggests to the agglutinative languages of Asia, furnishes a subject
of investigation not less interesting to American students, alike of the
science of language, and of the whole comprehensive questions which
anthropology embraces, than the relations of the Romance languages of
Europe to the parent Latin; or of Latin itself, and all the Aryan
languages, ancient and modern, not only to Sanskrit and Zend, but to the
indeterminate stock which furnished the parent roots, the grammatical
forms, and that whole class of words still recognisable as the common
property of the whole Aryan family. Sanskrit was a dead language three
thousand years ago; the English language, as such, cannot claim to have
endured much more than fourteen centuries, yet both partake of the same
common property of numerals and familiar terms existing under certain
modifications in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Slavonic, Celtic, German,
Anglo-Saxon, and in all the Romance languages. Thus far the American
philologist has been unable to show any such genealogical relationship
pervading the native languages; or to recover specific evidence of
affinities to languages, and so to races of other continents. There are,
indeed, linguistic families, such as some already referred to,
indicating a common descent among widely dispersed tribes; but this has
its chief interest in relation to another aspect of the question.

Professor Max Müller has drawn attention to the tendency of the
languages of America towards an endless multiplication of distinct
dialects. Those again have been grouped by the synthetic process of
Hervas into eleven families: seven for the northern continent, and four
for South America. But we are as yet only on the threshold of this
important branch of research. In two papers contributed by M. Lucien
Adam to the _Congrès International des Americanistes_, he gives the
results of a careful examination of sixteen languages of North and South
America; and arrives at the conclusion that they belong to a number of
independent families as essentially distinct as they would have been
“had there been primitively several human pairs.” Dr. Brinton, one of
the highest authorities on any question connected with native American
languages, contributed a paper to the _American Antiquarian_ (Jan.
1886), “On the Study of the Nahuatl Language.” This language, which is
popularly known as Aztec, he strongly commends to the study of American
philologists. It is one of the most completely organised of Indian
languages, has a literature of considerable extent and variety, and is
still in use by upwards of half a million of people. It is from this
area, southward through Central America, and in the great seat of native
South American civilisation, that we can alone hope to recover direct
evidence of ancient intercourse between the Old and the New World. But,
here again, the complexities of language seem to grow apace. In Dr.
Brinton’s _Notes on the Mangue, an extinct Language formerly spoken in
Nicaragua_, he states, as a result of his later studies, that the belief
which he once entertained of some possible connection between this
dialect and the Aymara of Peru, has not been confirmed on further
examination. This, therefore, tends to sustain the prevailing opinion of
scholars that there is no direct affiliation between the languages of
North and South America. All this is suggestive either of an idea, such
as that which Agassiz favoured in his system of natural provinces of the
animal world, in relation to different types of man, on which he based
the conclusion that the diverse varieties of American man originated in
various centres, and had been distributed from them over the entire
continent; or we must assume immigration from different foreign centres.
Accepting the latter as the more tenable proposition, I long ago
sketched a scheme of immigration such as seemed to harmonise with the
suggestive, though imperfect evidence. This assumed the earliest current
of population, in its progress from a supposed Asiatic cradleland, to
have spread through the islands of the Pacific, and reached the South
American continent before any excess of population had diffused itself
into the inhospitable northern steppes of Asia. By an Atlantic oceanic
migration, another wave of population occupied the Canaries, Madeiras,
and the Azores, and so passed to the Antilles, Central America, and
probably by the Cape Verdes, or, guided by the more southern equatorial
current, to Brazil. Latest of all, Behring Strait and the North Pacific
Islands may have become the highway for a migration by which certain
striking diversities among nations of the northern continent, including
the conquerors of the Mexican plateau, are most easily accounted for.

It is not necessary to include in the question here discussed, the more
comprehensive one of the existence of man in America contemporary with
the great extinct animals of the Quaternary Period; though the
acknowledged affinities of Asiatic and American anthropology, taken in
connection with the remoteness of any assignable period for migration
from Asia to the American continent, renders it far from improbable that
the latest oscillations of land may here also have exercised an
influence. The present soundings of Behring Strait, and the bed of the
sea extending southward to the Aleutian Islands, entirely accord with
the assumption of a former continuity of land between Asia and America.
The idea to which the speculations of Darwin, founded on his
observations during the voyage of the ‘Beagle’ gave rise, of a
continuous subsidence of the Pacific Ocean, also favoured the
probability of greater insular facilities for trans-oceanic migration at
the supposed period of the peopling of America from Asia. But more
recent explorations, and especially those connected with the
‘Challenger’ expedition, fail to confirm the old theory of the origin of
the coral islands of the Pacific; and in any view of the case, we must
be content to study the history of existing races, alike of Europe and
America, apart from questions relating to palæocosmic man. If the vague
legend of the lost Atlantis embodies any trace of remotest historical
tradition, it belongs to a modern era compared with the men either of
the European drift, or of the post-glacial deposits of the Delaware and
the auriferous gravels of California. When resort is had to comparative
philology, it is manifest that we must be content to deal with a more
recent era than contemporaries of the Mastodon, and their congeners of
Europe’s Mammoth and Reindeer periods, notwithstanding the fact that the
modern representatives of the latter have been sought within the
American Arctic circle.

Such evidence as a comparison of languages thus far supplies, lends more
countenance to the idea of migration through the islands of the Pacific,
than to such a route from the Mediterranean as is implied in any
significance attached to the legend of Atlantis. As to the Behring
Strait route, present ethnology and philology point rather to an
overflow of Arctic American population into Asia. Gallatin was the first
to draw attention to certain analogies in the structure of Polynesian
and American languages, as deserving of investigation; and pointed out
the peculiar mode of expressing the tense, mood, and voice of the verb,
by affixed particles, and the value given to place over time, as
indicated in the predominant locative verbal form. Such are to be looked
for with greater probability among the languages of South America; but
the substitution of affixed particles for inflections, especially in
expressing the direction of action in relation to the speaker, is common
to the Polynesian and the Oregon languages, and has analogies in the
Cherokee. The distinction between the inclusive and exclusive pronoun
_we_, according as it means “you and I,” or “they and I,” etc., is as
characteristic of the Maori as of the Ojibway. Other observations of
more recent date have still further tended to countenance the
recognition of elements common to the languages of Polynesia and
America; and so to point to migration by the Pacific to the western
continent.

But this idea of a migration through the islands of the Pacific receives
curious confirmation from another source. In an ingenious paper on “The
Origin of Primitive Money,”[1] originally read at the meeting of the
British Association at Montreal in 1884, Mr. Horatio Hale shows that
there is good reason for believing that the most ancient currency in
China consisted of disks and slips of tortoise shell. The fact is stated
in the great Chinese encyclopædia of the Emperor Kang-he, who reigned in
the early years of the eighteenth century; and the Chinese annalists
assert that metal coins have been in use from the time of Fuh-he, about
B.C. 2950. Without attempting to determine the specific accuracy of
Chinese chronology, it is sufficient to note here that the most ancient
form of Chinese copper cash is the disk, perforated with a square hole,
so as to admit of the coins being strung together. This, which
corresponds in form to the large perforated shell-disks, or native
currency of the Indians of California, and with specimens recovered from
ancient mounds, Mr. Hale regards as the later imitation in metal of the
original Chinese shell money. A similar shell-currency, as he shows, is
in use among many islanders of the Pacific; and he traces it from the
Loo-Choo Islands, across the vast archipelago, through many island
groups, to California; and then overland, with the aid of numerous
disclosures from ancient mounds, to the Atlantic coast, where the
Indians of Long Island were long noted for its manufacture in the later
form of wampum. “The natives of Micronesia,” says Mr. Hale, who, it will
be remembered, records the results of personal observation, “in
character, usages, and language, resemble to a certain extent the
nations of the southern and eastern Pacific groups, which are included
in the designation of Polynesia, but with some striking differences,
which careful observers have ascribed, with great probability, to
influences from north-eastern Asia. They are noted for their skill in
navigation. They have well-rigged vessels, exceeding sixty feet in
length. They sail by the stars, and are accustomed to take long
voyages.” To such voyagers, the Pacific presents no more formidable
impediments to oceanic enterprise than did the Atlantic to the Northmen
of the tenth century.

Throughout the same archipelago, modern exploration is rendering us
familiar with examples of remarkable stone structures and colossal
sculptured figures, such as those from Easter Island now in the British
Museum. Rude as they undoubtedly are, they are highly suggestive of an
affinity to the megalithic sculptures and cyclopean masonry of Peru.
Monuments of this class were noted long ago by Captain Beechy on some of
the islands nearest the coasts of Chili and Peru. Since then the
megalithic area has been extended by their discovery in other island
groups lying towards the continent of Asia.

Another subsidiary class of evidence of a different kind, long since
noted by me, gives additional confirmation to this recovered trail of
ancient migration through the islands of the Pacific to the American
continent. The practice to which the Flathead Indians of Oregon and
British Columbia owe their name, the compressed skulls from Peruvian
cemeteries, and the widely diffused evidence of the prevalence of such
artificial malformation among many American tribes, combine to indicate
it as one of the most characteristic American customs. Yet the evidence
is abundant which shows it not only as a practice among rude Asiatic
Mongol tribes of primitive centuries; but proves that it was still in
use among the Huns and Avars who contended with the Barbarians from the
Baltic for the spoils of the decaying Roman empire. Nor was it merely
common to tribes of both continents. It furnishes another link in the
chain of evidence of ancient migration from Asia to America; as is
proved by its practice in some of the islands of the Pacific, as
described by Dr. Pickering,[2] and since abundantly confirmed by the
forms of Kanaka skulls. By following up the traces of this strange
custom, perpetuated among the tribes on the Pacific coasts both of
Northern and Southern America to our own day, we thus once more retrace
the steps of ancient wanderers, and are carried back to centuries when
the Macrocephali of the Euxine attracted the observant eye of
Hippocrates, and became familiar to Strabo, Pliny, and Pomponius Mela.

But the wanderings among the insular races of the Pacific are not
limited to such remote eras. Later changes are also recorded by other
evidence. The direct relationship of existing Polynesian languages is
not Mongol but Malay; but this is the intrusive element of a time long
subsequent to the growth of characteristic features which still
perpetuate traces of Polynesian and American affinities. The number and
diversity of the languages of the continent of America, and their
essentially native vocabularies, prove that the latter have been in
prolonged process of development, free from contact with languages which
appear to have been still modelling themselves according to the same
plan of thought in many scattered islands of the Pacific.

The remarkable amount of culture in the languages of some of the
barbarous nations of North America, traceable, apparently, to the
important part which the orator played in their deliberative assemblies,
has not unnaturally excited surprise: but in any attempt to recover the
history of the New World by the aid of philology we must deal with the
languages of its civilised races. Among those the Nahuatl or Aztec has
been appealed to; and the Mayas have been noted as a lettered people
whose hieroglyphic records, and later transcripts of written documents,
are now the object of intelligent investigation both by European and
American philologists. The Maya language strikingly contrasts, in its
soft, vocalic forms, with the languages of nations immediately to the
north of its native area. It is that which, according to Stephens, was
affirmed to be still spoken by a living race in a region beyond the
Great Sierra, extending to Yucatan and the Mexican Gulf. Others among
the cultured native languages which seem to invite special study are the
Aymara and the Quichua. Of these, the latter was the classical language
of South America, wherein, according to its native historians, the
Peruvian chroniclers and poets incorporated the national legends. It may
be described as having occupied a place under Inca rule analogous to
that of the Norman French in England from the eleventh to the thirteenth
century. To those ancient, cultured languages of the seats of an
indigenous civilisation, and with a literature of their own, attention
is now happily directed. The students of American ethnology begin to
realise that the buried mounds of Assyria are not richer in discoveries
relative to the ancient history of Asia than are the monuments, the
hieroglyphic records, and the languages of Central America and Peru, in
relation to a native social life which long flourished as a product of
their own West. To this occidental Assyria we have to look for an answer
to many inquiries, especially interesting to the intrusive occupants of
the western continent. If its architecture and sculpture, and the
hieroglyphic records with which they are enriched, are modifications of
a prehistoric Asiatic civilisation, it is here that the evidence is to
be looked for; and if the arts of the sculptor and architect were
brought to the continent of America by wanderers from an Asiatic
fatherland, then those of the potter and of the metallurgist will also
prove to be an inheritance from the old Asiatic hive of the nations.

From the evidence thus far adduced it appears that ethnically the
American is Mongol, and by the agglutinative element in many of the
native languages may be classed as Turanian. The Finnic hypothesis of
Rask, however much modified by later reconsideration of the question of
the origin of the Aryans, as well as the European melanochroic Metis of
Huxley, pertains to a prehistoric era of which the Finns and the Basques
are assumed to be survivals; and to that elder era, rather than to any
date within the remotest limits of authentic history, the languages of
America seem to refer us in the search for any common origin with those
of the eastern hemisphere. But a zealous comparative philologist,
already referred to, has sought for linguistic traces of relationship
between the Old and the New World which, if confirmed, would better
harmonise with the traditions of intercourse between the maritime
nations of the eastern Mediterranean and a continent lying outside of
the Pillars of Hercules. In his investigations he aims at determining
the relations of the Aztec or Nahuatl culture and language to those of
Asia. Humboldt long ago claimed for much of the former an Old World
derivation. It seems premature to attempt to deduce any comprehensive
results from the meagre data thus far gathered. But the author of _The
Khita and Khita-Peruvian Epoch_, in tracing the progress of his Sumerian
race, assigns an interval of 4000 years since their settlement in
Babylonia and India. In like manner, on the assumption of their
migration from a common Asiatic centre, which the division of Western
and Eastern Sumerian in pronouns and other details is thought to
indicate, Peru, it is conceived, may have been reached by a migratory
wave of earlier movement, from 4000 to 5000 years ago. Mr. Hyde Clarke
indeed conceives that it is quite within compass that the same great
wave of migration which passed over India and Babylonia, continued to
propagate its centrifugal force, and that by its means Peru was reached
within the last 3000 years. But, whatever intercourse may possibly have
then been carried on between the Old and the New World, it must be
obvious, on mature reflection, that so recent a date for the peopling of
South America from Asia is as little reconcilable with the very remote
traces of linguistic affinity thus far adduced, as it is with any
fancied relationship with a lost Atlantis of the elder world. The
enduring affinities of long-parted languages of the Old World tell a
very different tale. With the comparative philologist, as with the
archæologist, time is more and more coming to be recognised as an
all-important factor.

But, leaving the estimate of centuries out of consideration, in the
researches into the origin of the peculiar native civilisation of
America here referred to, the recently deciphered Akkad is accepted as
the typical language of the Sumerian class. This is assumed to have
started from High Asia, and to have passed on to Babylonia; while
another branch diffused itself by India and Indo-China, and thence, by
way of the islands of the Pacific, reached America. Hence, in an
illustrative table of Sumerian words arranged under four heads, as
Western, Indo-Chinese, Peruvian, and Mexican, etc., it is noted that
“while in some cases a root may be traced throughout, it will be seen
that more commonly the western and American roots or types, cross in the
Indo-Chinese region.” But another and older influence, related to the
Agaw of the Nile region, is also traced in the Guarani, Omagua, and
other languages of South America, indicating evidences of more remote
relations with the Old World, and with the African continent. This is
supposed to have been displaced by a Sumerian migration by which the
Aymara domination was established in Peru, and the Maya element
introduced into Yucatan. Those movements are assumed to belong to an era
of civilisation, during which the maritime enterprise of the Pacific may
have been carried on upon a scale unknown to the most adventurous of
modern Malay navigators, notwithstanding the essentially maritime
character by which the race is still distinguished. All this implies
that the highway to the Pacific was familiar to both continents; and
hence a second migration is recognised, in certain linguistic relations,
between the Siamese and other languages of Indo-China, and the Quichua
and Aztec of Peru and Mexico. But the problem of the origin of the races
of the western continent, and of the sources of its native civilisation,
is still in that preliminary stage in which the accumulation of
materials on which future induction may be based is of more value than
the most comprehensive generalisations.

The vastness of the American twin continents, with their Atlantic and
Pacific seaboard reaching from the Arctic well-nigh to the Antarctic
circle, furnishes a tempting stimulus to theories of migration on the
grandest scale, and to the assumption of comprehensive schemes of
international relation in prehistoric centuries. But they are not more
substantial than the old legend of Atlantis. The best that can be said
of them is that here, at any rate, are lines of research in the
prosecution of which American ethnologists may employ their learning and
acumen encouraged by the hope of yet revealing a past not less
marvellous, and possessing a more personal interest, than all which
geology has recovered from the testimony of the rocks. But before such
can be more than dimly guessed at, the patient diligence of many
students will be needed to accumulate the needful materials. Nor can we
afford to delay the task. The Narraganset Bible, the work of Eliot, the
apostle of the Indians, is the memorial of a race that has perished;
while other nations and languages have disappeared since his day, with
no such invaluable record of their character. Mr. Horatio Hale published
in the _Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_, in 1883, a
paper on the “Tutelo Tribe and Language,” derived from Nikonha, the last
survivor of a once powerful tribe of North Carolina. To Dr. Brinton, we
owe the recent valuable notes on the Mangue, another extinct language.
On the North-western Canadian prairies the buffalo has disappeared, and
the Indian must follow. On all hands, we are called upon to work
diligently while it is yet time, in order to accumulate the materials
out of which the history of the western hemisphere is to be evolved.

It accords with the idea of Polynesian genealogy, that indications
suggestive of grammatical affinity have been noted in languages of South
America, in their mode of expressing the tense of the verb; in the
formation of causative, reciprocal, potential, and locative verbs by
affixes; and in the general system of compound word structure. The
incorporation of the particle with the verbal root, appears to embody
the germ of the more comprehensive American holophrasms. Such affinities
point to others more markedly Asiatic; for analogies recognised between
the languages of the Deccan and those of the Polynesian group in
relation to the determinative significance of the formative particles on
the verbal root, reappear in some of the characteristic peculiarities of
American languages. On this subject, the Rev. Richard Garnett remarked,
in a communication to the Philological Society, that most of the native
American languages of which we have definite information, bear a general
analogy alike to the Polynesian family and to the languages of the
Deccan, in their methods of distinguishing the various modifications of
time; and he adds: “We may venture to affirm, in general terms, that a
South American verb is constructed precisely as those in the Tamil and
other languages of Southern India; consisting, like them, of a verbal
root, a second element defining the time of the action, and a third
denoting the subject or person.”

So far it becomes apparent that the evidence, derived alike from
language and from other sources, points to the isolation of the American
continent through unnumbered ages. The legend of the lost Atlantis is
true in this, if in nothing else, that it relegates the knowledge of the
world beyond the Atlantic, by the maritime races of the Mediterranean,
to a time already of hoar antiquity in the age of Socrates, or even of
Solon. But at a greatly later date the Caribbean Sea was scarcely more a
mystery to the dwellers on the shores of the Ægean, than was the Baltic
or the North Sea. Herodotus, indeed, expressly affirms his disbelief in
“a river, called by the barbarians, Eridanus, which flows into a
northern sea, and from which there is a report that amber is wont to
come.” Nevertheless, we learn from him of Greek traders exchanging
personal ornaments and woven stuffs for the furs and amber of the North.
They ascended the Dneiper as far as Gerrhos, a trading-post, forty days’
journey inland; and the tokens of their presence there have been
recovered in modern times. Not only hoards of Greek coins, minted in the
fifth century B.C., but older golden gryphons of Assyrian workmanship
have been recovered during the present century, near Bromberg in Posen,
and at Kiev on the Dneiper. As also, afar on the most northern island of
the Azores, hoards of Carthaginian coins have revealed traces of the old
Punic voyager there; if still more ancient voyagers from Sidon, Tyre, or
Seleucia, did find their way in some forgotten century to lands that lay
beyond the waste of waters which seemed to engirdle their world: similar
evidence may yet be forthcoming among the traces of ancient native
civilisation in Central or Southern America.

But also the carving of names and dates, and other graphic memorials of
the passing wayfarer, is no mere modern custom. When the sites of
Greenland settlements of the Northmen of the tenth century were
discovered in our own day, the runic inscriptions left no room for doubt
as to their former presence there. By like evidence we learn of them in
southern lands, from their runes still legible on the marble lion of the
Piræus, since transported to its later site in the arsenal of Venice. At
Maeshowe in Orkney, in St. Molio’s Cave on the Clyde, at Kirk Michael in
the Isle of Man, and on many a rock and stone by the Baltic, the
sea-rovers from the north have left enduring evidence of their
wanderings. So was it with the Roman. From the Moray Firth to the Libyan
desert, and from the Iberian shore to the Syrian valleys, sepulchral,
legionary, and mythological inscriptions, as well as coins, medals,
pottery, and works of art, mark the footprints of the masters of the
world. In Italy itself Perusinian, Eugubine, Etruscan, and Greek
inscriptions tell the story of a succession of races in that beautiful
peninsula. It was the same, through all the centuries of Hellenic
intellectual rule, back to the unrivalled inscription at Abbu Simbel.
This was cut, says Dr. Isaac Taylor,[3] “when what we call Greek history
can hardly be said to have commenced: two hundred years before
Herodotus, the Father of History, had composed his work; a century
before Athens began to rise to power. More ancient even than the epoch
assigned to Solon, Thales, and the seven wise men of Greece: it must be
placed in the half-legendary period at which the laws of Dracon are said
to have been enacted”;—the period, in fact, from which the legend of
Atlantis was professedly derived. Yet there the graven characters
perpetuate their authentic bit of history, legible to this day, of the
son of Theokles, sailing with his company up the Nile, when King
Psamatichos came to Elephantina. So it is with Egyptians, Assyrians,
Phœnicians, and with the strange forgotten Hittites, whose vast empire
has vanished out of the world’s memory. The lion of the Piræus, with its
graven runes, is a thing of yesterday, compared with the inscribed lion
from Marash, with its Hittite hieroglyphs, now in the museum at
Constantinople; for the Hittite capital, Ketesh, was captured by the
Egyptian Sethos, B.C. 1340. All but the name of this once powerful
people seemed to have perished. Yet the inscribed stones, by which they
were to be restored to their place in history, remained, awaiting the
interpretation of an enlightened age.

If then, traces of the lost Atlantis are ever to be recovered in the New
World, it must be by some indubitable memorial of a like kind. Old as
the legend may be, it is seen that literal graphic memorials—Assyrian,
Phœnician, Khita, Egyptian, and Greek,—still remain to tell of times
even beyond the epoch assigned to Solon. The antiquaries of New England
have sought in vain for runic memorials of the Northmen of the tenth
century; and the diligence of less trustworthy explorers for traces of
ancient records has been stimulated to excess, throughout the North
American continent, with results little more creditable to their honesty
than their judgment. What some chance disclosure may yet reveal, who can
presume to guess? But thus far it appears to be improbable that within
the area north of the Gulf of Mexico, evidences of the presence of
Phœnician, Greek, or other ancient historic race will now be found.
Certain it is that, whatever transient visits may have been paid to
North America by representatives of Old World progress, no long-matured
civilisation, whether of native or foreign origin, has existed there.
Through all the centuries of which definite history has anything to
tell, it has remained a world apart, secure in its isolation, with
languages, arts, and customs essentially native in character. The
nations of the Maya stock appear to have made the greatest progress in
civilisation of all the communities of Central America. They dwelt in
cities adorned with costly structures dedicated to the purposes of
religion and the state; and had political government, and forms of
social organisation, to all appearance, the slow growth of many
generations. They had, also, a well-matured system of chronology; and
have left behind them graven and written records, analogous to those of
ancient Egypt, which still await decipherment. Whether this culture was
purely of native growth, or had its origin from the germs of an Old
World civilisation, can only be determined when its secrets have been
fully mastered. The region is even now very partially explored. The
students of American ethnology and archæology are only awakening to some
adequate sense of its importance. But there appears to have been the
centre of a native American civilisation whence light was slowly
radiating on either hand, before the vandals of the Spanish Conquest
quenched it in blood. The civilisation of Mexico was but a borrowed
reflex of that of Central America; and its picture-writing is a very
inferior imitation of the ideography of the Maya hieroglyphics.

A tendency manifests itself anew to trace the metallurgy, the letters,
the astronomical science, and whatever else marks the quickening into
intellectual life of this American leading race, to an Asiatic or other
Old World origin. The point, however, is by no means established; nor
can any reason be shown why the human intellect might not be started on
the same course in Central America, as in Mesopotamia or the valley of
the Nile. If we assume the primary settlement of Central America by
expeditions systematically carried on under the auspices of some ancient
maritime power of the Mediterranean, or of an early seat of Iberian or
Libyan civilisation, then they would, undoubtedly, transplant the arts
of their old home to the New World. But, on the more probable
supposition of wanderers, either by the Atlantic or the Pacific, being
landed on its shores, and becoming the undesigned settlers of the
continent, it is otherwise; and the probabilities are still further
diminished if we conceive of ocean wanderers from island to island of
the Pacific, at length reaching the shores of the remote continent after
the traditions of their Asiatic fatherland had faded from the memory of
later generations. The condition of metallurgy as practised by the
Mexicans and Peruvians exhibited none of the matured phases of an
inheritance from remote generations, but partook rather of the tentative
characteristics of immature native art.

We are prone to overestimate the facilities by which the arts of
civilisation may be transplanted to remote regions. It is not greatly
more difficult to conceive of the rediscovery of some of the essential
elements of human progress than to believe in the transference of them
from the eastern to the western hemisphere by wanderers from either
Europe or Asia. Take the average type of emigrants, such as are annually
landed by thousands at New York. They come from the most civilised
countries of Europe. Yet, how few among them all could be relied upon
for any such intelligent comprehension of metallurgy, if left entirely
to their own resources, as to be found able to turn the mineral wealth
of their new home to practical account; or for astronomical science,
such as would enable them to construct a calendar, and start afresh a
systematic chronology. As to letters, the picture-writing of the Aztecs
was the same in principle as the rude art of the northern Indians; and I
cannot conceive of any reason for rejecting the assumption of its native
origin as an intellectual triumph achieved by the labours of many
generations. Every step is still traceable, from the rude picturings on
the Indian’s grave-post or rock inscription, to the systematic
ideographs of Palenque or Copan. Hieroglyphics, as the natural outgrowth
of pictorial representation, must always have a general family likeness;
but all attempts to connect the civilisation of Central and Southern
America with that of Egypt fail, so soon as a comparison is instituted
between the Egyptian calendar and any of the native American systems of
recording dates and computing time. The vague year of 365 days, and the
corrected solar year, with the great Sothic Cycle of 1460 years, so
intimately interwoven with the religious system and historical
chronology of the Egyptians, abundantly prove the correction of the
Egyptian calendar by accumulated experience, at a date long anterior to
the resort of the Greek astronomer, Thales, to Egypt. At the close of
the fifteenth century, the Aztecs had learned to correct their calendar
to solar time; but their cycle was one of only fifty-two years. The
Peruvians also had their recurrent religious festivals, connected with
the adjustment of their sacred calendar to solar time; but the
geographical position of Peru, with Quito, its holy city, lying
immediately under the equator, greatly simplified the process by which
they regulated their religious festivals by the solstices and equinoxes.
The facilities which their equatorial position afforded for determining
the few indispensable periods in their calendar were, indeed, a doubtful
advantage, for they removed all stimulus to progress. The Mexican
calendar is the most remarkable evidence of the civilisation attained by
that people. Humboldt unhesitatingly connected it with the ancient
science of south-eastern Asia. But instead of its exhibiting any such
inevitable accumulation of error as that which gave so peculiar a
character to the historical chronology of the Egyptians, its computation
differed less from true solar time than the unreformed Julian calendar
which the Spaniards had inherited from pagan Rome. But though this
suffices to show that the civilisation of Mexico was of no great
antiquity, it only accords with other evidence of its borrowed
character. The Mexicans stood in the same relation to Central America as
the Northern Barbarians of the third and fourth century did to Italy;
and the intruding Spaniard nipped their germ of borrowed civilisation in
the bud. So long as the search for evidences either of a native or
intruded civilisation is limited to the northern continent of America,
it is equivalent to an attempt to recover the traces of Greek and Roman
civilisation in transalpine Europe. The Mexican calendar stone is no
more than the counterpart of some stray Greek or Roman tablet beyond the
Alps; or rather, perhaps, of some Mæsogothic product of borrowed art.

We must await, then, the intelligent exploration of Central America,
before any certain conclusion can be arrived at relative to the story of
the New World’s unknown past. On the sculptured tablets of Palenque,
Quiriqua, Chichenitza, and Uxmal, and on the colossal statues at Copan
and other ancient sites, are numerous inscriptions awaiting the
decipherment of the future Young or Champolion of American palæography.
The whole region was once in occupation by a lettered race, having the
same written characters and a common civilisation. If they owed to some
apostle from the Mediterranean the grand invention of letters, which, as
Bacon says, “as ships, pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages
so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations and inventions,
the one of the other:” then, we may confidently anticipate the recovery
of some graphic memorial of the messenger, confirming the oft-recurring
traditions of bearded white men who came from beyond the sea, introduced
the arts of civilisation, and were reverenced as divine benefactors. It
cannot be that Egyptian, Assyrian, Hittite, Phœnician, and other most
ancient races, are still perpetuated by so many traces of their
wanderings in the Old World; that the Northmen’s graphic runes have
placed beyond all question their pre-Columbian explorations; and yet
that not a single trace of Mediterranean wanderers to the lost Atlantis
survives. In Humboldt’s _Researches_, a fragment of a reputed Phœnician
inscription is engraved. It was copied by Ranson Bueno, a Franciscan
monk, from a block of granite which he discovered in a cavern in the
mountain chain, between the Orinoco and the Amazon. Humboldt recognised
in it some resemblance to the Phœnician alphabet. We must remember,
however, what rudely traced Phœnician characters are; and as to their
transcriber, it may be presumed that he had no knowledge of Phœnician.
Humboldt says of him: “The good monk seemed to be but little interested
about this pretended inscription,” though, he adds, he had copied it
very carefully.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The lost Atlantis, then, lies still in the future. The earlier studies
of the monuments and prehistoric remains of the American continent
seemed to point conclusively to a native source for its civilisation.
From quipu and wampum, pictured grave-post and buffalo robe, to the most
finished hieroglyphs of Copan or Palenque, continuous steps appear to be
traceable whereby American man developed for himself the same wondrous
invention of letters which ancient legend ascribed to Thoth or Mercury;
or, in less mythic form, to the Phœnician Cadmus. Nor has the generally
accepted assumption of a foreign origin for American metallurgy been
placed as yet on any substantial basis. Gold, as I believe, was
everywhere the first metal wrought. The bright nugget tempted the
savage, with whom personal ornaments precede dress. It was readily
fashioned into any desired shape. The same is true, though in a less
degree, of copper; and wherever, as on the American continent, native
copper abounds, the next step in metallurgy is to be anticipated. With
the discovery of the economic use of the metals, an all-important step
had been achieved, leading to the fashioning of useful tools, to
architecture, sculpture, pictorial ornamentation, and so to ideography.
The facilities for all this were, at least, as abundant in Central and
Southern America as in Egypt. The progress was, doubtless, slow; but
when the Neolithic age began to yield to that of the metallurgist, the
all-important step had been taken. The history of this first step is
embodied in myths of the New World, no less than of the Old. Tubal-cain,
Dædalus, Hephæstus, Vulcan, Vœlund, Galant, and Wayland the Saxon
smith-god, are all legendary variations of the first mastery of the use
of the metals; and so, too, the New World has Quetzalcoatl, its divine
instructor in the same priceless art.

It forms one of the indisputable facts of ancient history that, long
before Greece became the world’s intellectual leader, the eastern
Mediterranean was settled by maritime races whose adventurous enterprise
led them to navigate the Atlantic. There was no greater impediment to
such adventurous mariners crossing that ocean in earliest centuries
before Christ, than at any subsequent date prior to the revival of
navigation in the fifteenth century. It would not, therefore, in any
degree, surprise me to learn of the discovery of a genuine Phœnician, or
other inscription; or, of some hoard of Assyrian gryphons, or shekels of
the merchant princes of Tyre “that had knowledge of the sea,” being
recovered among the still unexplored treasures of the buried empire of
Montezuma, or the long-deserted ruins of Central America. Such a
discovery would scarcely be more surprising than that of the Punic
hoards found at Corvo, the most westerly island of the Azores. Yet it
would furnish a substantial basis for the legend of Atlantis, akin to
that which the runic monuments of Kingiktorsoak and Igalikko supplied in
confirmation of the fabled charms of a Hesperian region lying within the
Arctic circle; and of the first actual glimpses of the American mainland
by Norse voyagers of the tenth century, as told in more than one of
their old Sagas. But until such evidence is forthcoming, the legendary
Atlantis must remain a myth, and pre-Columbian America be still credited
with a self-achieved progress.

-----

[1] _Popular Science Monthly_, xxviii. 296.

[2] _Races of Man_ (Bohn), p. 445.

[3] _The Alphabet_, ii. 10.




                                   II
                       THE VINLAND OF THE NORTHMEN


THE idea that the western hemisphere was known to the Old World, prior
to the ever-memorable voyage of Columbus four centuries ago, has
reproduced itself in varying phases, not only in the venerable Greek
legend of the lost Atlantis; and the still vaguer myth of the Garden of
the Hesperides on the far ocean horizon, the region of the setting sun;
but in mediæval fancies and mythical epics. The Breton, in _The Earthly
Paradise_ of William Morris—

          Spoke of gardens ever blossoming
    Across the western sea, where none grew old,
    E’en as the books at Micklegarth had told;
    And said moreover that an English knight
    Had had the Earthly Paradise in sight;
    And heard the songs of those that dwelt therein;
    But entered not; being hindered by his sin.

A legend of mediæval hagiology tells of the Island of St. Brandon, the
retreat of an Irish hermit of the sixth century. Another tale comes down
to us from the time of the Caliph Walid, and the invincible Musa, of the
“Seven Islands” whither the Christians of Gothic Spain fled under the
guidance of their seven bishops, when, in the eighth century, the
peninsula passed under the yoke of the victorious Saracens. The
Eyrbyggja Saga has a romantic story of Biorn Ashbrandsson, who narrowly
escapes in a tempest raised by his enemy, with the aid of one skilled in
the black art. After undergoing many surprising adventures, he is
finally discovered by voyagers, “in the latter days of Olaf the Saint,”
in a strange land beyond the ocean, the chief of a warlike race speaking
a language that seemed to be Irish. Biorn warned the voyagers to depart,
for the people had evil designs against them. But before they sailed, he
took a gold ring from his hand, and gave it to Gudleif, their leader,
along with a goodly sword; and commissioned him to give the sword to
Kiartan, the son of Thurid, wife of an Iceland thane at Froda, of whom
he had been enamoured; and the gold ring to his mother. This done, he
warned them that no man venture to renew the search for what later
commentators refer to as White Man’s Land. In equally vague form the
fancy of lands beyond the ocean perpetuated itself in an imaginary
island of Brazil that flitted about the charts of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries with ever-varying site and proportions, till it
vanished in the light of modern exploration.

A more definite character has been given to the tale of Madoc, a Welsh
prince of the twelfth century. Southey wove into an elaborate epic this
legend of the son of Owen Gwyneth, king of North Wales, who, _circa_
A.D. 1170, sailed into the unknown west in search of a resting-place
beyond reach of his brother Yorwerth, then ridding himself of all rivals
to the throne. He found a home in the New World, returned to Wales for
additional colonists to join the pioneer band; and setting sail with
them, vanished beyond the western horizon, and was heard of no more. The
poet, while adapting it to the purpose of his art, was not without faith
in the genuineness of the legend which he amplified into his epic; and
notes in the preface appended to it: “Strong evidence has been adduced
that he (Prince Madoc) reached America; and that his posterity exist
there to this day on the southern branch of the Missouri, retaining
their complexion, their language, and in some degree, their arts.” But
later explorations have failed to discover any “Welsh Indians” on the
Missouri or its tributaries.

A small grain of fact will suffice at times for the crystallisation of
vague and visionary fancies into a well-credited tradition. Before the
printing-press came into play, with its perpetuation of definite
records, and prosaic sifting of evidence, this was no uncommon
occurrence; but even in recent times fancy may be seen transmuted into
accepted fact.

When exploring the great earthworks of the Ohio valley, in 1874, I found
myself on one occasion in a large Welsh settlement, a few miles from
Newark, where a generation of native-born Americans still perpetuate the
language of their Cymric forefathers, and conduct their religious
services in the Welsh tongue. My attention was first called to this by
the farmer, who had invited me to an early dinner after a morning’s
digging in a mound on “The Evan’s Farm,” preceding our repast with a
long Welsh grace. From him I learned that the district had been settled
in 1802 by a Welsh colony; and that in two churches in neighbouring
valleys—one Calvinistic Congregational and another Methodist,—the
entire services are still conducted in their mother tongue. Such a
perpetuation of the language and traditions of the race, in a quiet
rural district, only required time and the confusion of dates and
genealogies by younger generations, to have engrafted the story of
Prince Madoc on the substantial basis of a genuine Welsh settlement.
Southey’s epic was published in 1805, within three years after this
Welsh immigration to the Ohio valley. The subject of the poem naturally
gave it a special attraction for American readers; and it was speedily
reprinted in the United States, doubtless with the same indifference to
the author’s claim of copyright as long continued to characterise the
ideas of literary ethics beyond the Atlantic. But the idea of a Welsh
Columbus of the twelfth century was by no means received with universal
favour there. Southey quoted at a long-subsequent date a critical
pamphleteer who denounced the author of _Madoc_ as having “meditated a
most serious injury against the reputation of the New World by
attributing its discovery and colonisation to a vagabond Welsh prince;
this being a most insidious attempt against the honour of America, and
the reputation of Columbus!”

It is inevitable that America should look back to the Old World when in
search of some elements of civilisation, and for the diversities of race
and language traceable throughout the western hemisphere. The early
students of the sculptured monuments and hieroglyphic records of Mexico,
Central America, and Peru, naturally turned to Egypt as their probable
source; though mature reflection has dissipated much of the reasoning
based on superficial analogies. The gradations from the most primitive
picture-writing of the Indian savage to ideography and abbreviated
symbolism, are so clearly traceable in the various stages of progress,
from the rude forest tribes to the native centres of civilisation in
Central and Southern America, that no necessity remains for assuming any
foreign source for their origin.

That the world beyond the Atlantic had remained through unnumbered
centuries apart from Europe and the old East, until that memorable year
1492, is indisputable; and there was at one time a disposition to resent
any rivalry with the grand triumph of Columbus; as though patriotic
spirit and national pride demanded an unquestioning faith in that as the
sole link that bound America to the Old World. But the same spirit
stimulated other nations to claim precedence of Spain and the great
Genoese; and for this the Scandinavian colonists of Iceland had every
probability in their favour. They had navigated the Arctic Ocean with no
other compass than the stars; and the publication in 1845, by the Danish
antiquaries, of the _Grenlands Historiske Mindesmærker_ recalled minute
details of their settlements in the inhospitable region of the western
hemisphere to which they gave the strange misnomer of Greenland. But the
year 1837 may be regarded as marking an epoch in the history of
ante-Columbian research. The issue in that earlier year of the
_Antiquitates Americanæ, sive scriptores septentrionales rerum
ante-Columbiarum in America_, by the Royal Society of Northern
Antiquaries, under the editorship of Professor Charles Christian Rafn,
produced a revolution, alike in the form and the reception of
illustrations of ante-Columbian American history. The publication of
that work gave a fresh interest to the vaguest intimations of a dubious
past; while it superseded them by tangible disclosures, which, though
modern in comparison with such mythic antiquities as the Atlantis of
Plato’s _Dialogues_, nevertheless added some five centuries to the
history of the New World. From its appearance, accordingly, may be dated
the systematic aim of American antiquaries and historians to find
evidence of intercourse with the ancient world prior to the fifteenth
century.

This influence became manifest in all ways; and abundant traces of the
novel idea are to be found in the popular literature of the time. It
seemed as though the adventurous spirit of the early Greenland explorers
had revived, as in the days of the first Vinlanders, as told in the Saga
of Eric the Red: “About this time there began to be much talk at
Brattahlid, to the effect that Vinland the Good should be explored; for
it was said that country must be possessed of many good qualities. And
so it came to pass that Karlsefne and Snorri fitted out their ship for
the purpose of going in search of that country.” Only the modern
Vinlanders who follow in their wake have had for their problem to—

    Sail up the current of departed time
    And seek along its banks that vanished clime
    By ancient Scalds in Runic verse renowned,
    Now like old Babylon no longer found.[4]

The indomitable race that emerged from the Scandinavian peninsula, and
the islands and shores of the Baltic, and overran and conquered the
deserted Roman world, supplied the maritime energy of Europe from the
fifth to the tenth century; and colonised northern Italy with the
element to which we must assign the rise of its great maritime
republics, including the one that was to furnish the discoverer of
America in the fifteenth century. Genoese and Spaniards could not have
made for themselves a home either in Greenland or Iceland. Had the
Northmen of the tenth century been less hardy, they would probably have
prosecuted their discoveries, and found more genial settlements, such as
have since then proved the centres of colonisation for the
Anglo-American race. But of their actual discovery of some portion of
the mainland of North America, prior to the eleventh century, there can
be no reasonable doubt. The wonder rather is that after establishing
permanent settlements both in Iceland and Greenland, their southern
explorations were prosecuted with such partial and transient results.
The indomitable Vikings were conquering fresh territories on the coasts
and islands of the North Sea, and giving a new name to the fairest
region of northern Gaul wrested by the Northmen from its Frank
conquerors. The same hardy supplanters were following up such
acquisitions by expeditions to the Mediterranean that resulted in the
establishment of their supremacy over ancient historic races there, and
training leaders for later crusading adventure.

The voyage from Greenland, or even from Iceland, to the New England
shores was not more difficult than from the native fiords of the
Northmen to the Atlantic seaboard, or to the coasts and islands of the
Mediterranean. Everywhere they left their record in graven runes. At
Maeshowe in the Orkneys, on Holy Island in the Firth of Clyde, and at
Kirk Michael, Kirk Andreas, and Kirk Braddon, on the Isle of Man; or as
the relic of a more ancient past, on the marble lion of the Piræus, now
at the arsenal of Venice: their runic records are to be seen graven in
the same characters as those which have been recovered during the
present century from their early settlements beyond the Atlantic.
Numerous similar inscriptions from the homes of the Northmen are
furnished in Professor George Stephens’ _Old Northern Runic Monuments_,
which perpetuate memorials of the love of adventure of those daring
rovers, and the pride they took in their expeditions to remote and
strange lands. Intensified at a later stage by religious fervour, the
same spirit emboldened them as leaders in the Crusades; and some of
their runic inscriptions tell of adventurous pilgrimages to the Holy
Land. An Icelandic rover is designated on his rune-stone _Rafn
Hlmrckfari_ as a successful voyager to Ireland. Norwegian and Danish
bautastein frequently preserve the epithet of _Englandsfari_ for the
leaders of expeditions to the British Isles, or more vaguely refer to
their adventures in “the western parts.” King Sigurd of Norway proudly
blazoned the title of _Jórsolafari_ as one who had achieved the
pilgrimage to Jerusalem; and the literate memorials of the Northmen of
Orkney, recovered in 1861, on the opening of the famous Maeshowe
Tumulus, include those of a band of Crusaders, or Jerusalem-farers, who,
in 1153, followed Earl Ragnvald to the Holy Land.

The inscribed rune-stones brought from the sites of the ancient Norse
colonies in Greenland, and now deposited in the Royal Museum of Northern
Antiquities, at Copenhagen, are simple personal or sepulchral
inscriptions. But they are graven in the northern runes, and as such
constitute monuments of great historical value: furnishing indisputable
evidence of the presence of European colonists beyond the Atlantic
centuries before that memorable 12th of October 1492, on which the eyes
of the wistful gazers from the deck of the “Santa Maria” were gladdened
with their first glimpse of what they believed to be the India of the
far east: the Cipango in search of which they had entered on their
adventurous voyage.

The colonies of Greenland, after being occupied, according to Norwegian
and Danish tradition, from the tenth to the fifteenth century, were
entirely forgotten. The colonists are believed to have been exterminated
by the native Eskimo. The very locality chosen for their settlements was
so completely lost sight of that, when an interest in their history
revived, and expeditions were sent out to revisit the scene of early
Norse colonisation beyond the Atlantic, much time was lost in a
fruitless search on the coast lying directly west from Iceland. Towards
the middle of the seventeenth century, an oar drifted to the Iceland
coast, a relic, as was believed, of the long-lost colony of Greenland,
bearing this inscription in runic characters: OFT VAR EK DASA DUR EK DRO
THICK—_Oft was I weary when I drew thee_; but it was not till the close
of the century that the traditions of the old Greenlanders began to
excite attention. Many a Norse legend pictured the enviable delights of
the fabled Hesperian region discovered within the Arctic circle, yet
meriting by the luxuriance of its fertile valleys its name of Greenland;
and the fancies and legendary traditions that gradually displaced the
history of the old colony, had been interwoven by the poet Montgomery
with the tale of self-sacrificing labours of Moravian Missionaries, in
the cantos of his _Greenland_ epic, long before the _Antiquitates
Americanæ_ issued from the Copenhagen press.

The narrations of ancient voyagers, and their explorations in the New
World, as brought to light in 1835 by the Copenhagen volume on
pre-Columbian America, were too truthful in their aspect to be slighted;
and too fascinating in their revelations of a long-forgotten intercourse
between the Old World and the New, to be willingly subjected to
incredulous analysis. From the genuine literary memorials of older
centuries, sufficient evidence could be gleaned to place beyond
question, not only the discovery and colonisation of Greenland by Eric
the Red,—apparently in the year 985,—but also the exploration of
southern lands, some of which must have formed part of the American
continent. The manuscripts whence those narratives are derived are of
various dates, and differ widely in value; but of the genuineness and
historical significance of the oldest of them, no doubt can be
entertained. The accounts which some of them furnish are so simple, and
devoid of anything extravagant or improbable, that the internal evidence
of truthfulness is worthy of great consideration. The exuberant fancy of
the Northmen, which revels in their mythology and songs, would have
constructed a very different tale had it been employed in the invention
of a southern continent, or earthly Paradise fashioned from the dreams
of Icelandic and Greenland rovers.

The narrative attaches itself to genuine Icelandic history; and
furnishes a coherent, and seemingly unexaggerated account of a voyage
characterised by nothing that is supernatural; and little that is even
romantic. Eric Thorvaldsson, more commonly referred to as Erikr Rauthi,
or Eric the Red, a banished Icelandic jarl, made his way to the
Greenland coast and effected a settlement at Igalikko, or Brattalid, as
it was at first called, from whence one of the runic inscriptions now in
the Copenhagen museum was taken. Before the close of the century, if not
in the very year A.D. 1000, in which St. Olaf was introducing
Christianity into Norway, Leif, or Leiv Ericson, a son of the first
coloniser of Greenland, appears to have accidentally discovered the
American mainland. The story, current in Norwegian and Icelandic
tradition, and repeated with additions and variations in successive
Sagas, most frequently ascribes to Leif an actual exploratory voyage in
quest of southern lands already reported to have been seen by Bjarni
Herjulfson. But the Sagas from whence the revived story of Vinland is
derived are of different dates, and very varying degrees of credibility.
Of those, the narrative in which the name of Bjarni Herjulfson first
appears occurs in a manuscript of the latter part of the fourteenth
century; and exhibits both amplifications and inconsistencies abundantly
justifying its rejection as an authority for depriving Leif Ericson of
the honour of the discovery of the North American continent. He was on
his way from Norway to Greenland when he was driven out of his course,
and so reached the mainland of the New World in that early century; even
as, five centuries later, the Portuguese admiral, Pedro Alvarez Cabral,
when on his way to the Cape, was driven westward to the coast of Brazil,
and so to the discovery of the southern continent. For later generations
the tale of the old Vinland explorers—whose goodly land of the vine,
and of fertile meads of grain, had faded away as a dream,—naturally
gathered around it exaggerations and legendary fable; but such terms are
wholly inapplicable to the original Saga. The story of Thorfinn’s
expedition to effect a settlement on the new-found land, within three or
four years after Leif Ericson’s reported discovery, is a simple,
consistent narrative, rendered attractive by natural and highly
suggestive incidents, but entirely free from mythical or legendary
features. This is obviously the basis of the varying and inconsistent
tales of later Sagas. The year 1003 is the date assigned to the
expedition in which Thorfinn set out, with three ships and a
considerable company of adventurers, and effected a temporary settlement
of Vinland. Voyaging southward, he first landed on a barren coast where
a great plain covered with flat stones stretched from the sea to a lofty
range of ice-clad mountains. To this he gave the name of Helluland, from
_hella_, a flat stone. The earlier editor, having the requirements of
his main theory in view, found in its characteristics evidence
sufficient to identify it with Newfoundland; but Professor Gustav Storm
assigns reasons for preferring Labrador as more probable.[5] The next
point touched presented a low shore of white sand, and beyond it a level
country covered with forest, to which the name of Markland, or woodland,
was given. This, which, so far as the description can guide us, might be
anywhere on the American coast, was assumed by the editor of the
_Antiquitates Americanæ_ to be Nova Scotia; but, according to Professor
Storm, can have been no other country than Newfoundland. The voyagers,
after two more days at sea, again saw land; and of this the
characteristic that the dew upon the grass tasted sweet, was accepted as
sufficient evidence that Nantucket, where honey-dew abounds, is the
place referred to. Their further course shoreward, and up a river into
the lake from which it flowed, has been assumed to have been up the
Pacasset River to Mount Hope Bay. There the voyagers passed the winter.
After erecting temporary booths, their leader divided them into two
parties, which alternately proceeded on exploring excursions. One of his
followers, a southerner,—_sudrmadr_, or German, as he is assumed to
have been,—having wandered, he reported on his return the discovery of
wine-trees and grapes; and hence the name of Vineland, given to the
locality.

This land of the vine, discovered by ancient voyagers on the shores of
the New World, naturally awakened the liveliest interest in the minds of
American antiquaries and historical students; nor is that interest even
now wholly a thing of the past. Is this “Vinland the Good” a reality?
Can it be located on any definite site? Montgomery’s _Greenland_ epic
was published in 1819; and the poet, with no American or Canadian pride
of locality to beguile him in his interpretation of the evidence,
observes in one of the notes to his poem: “Leif and his party wintered
there, and observed that on the shortest day the sun rose about eight
o’clock, which may correspond with the forty-ninth degree of latitude,
and denotes the situation of Newfoundland, or the River St. Lawrence.”
The reference here is to the sole data on which all subsequent attempts
to determine the geographical location of Vinland have been based; and
after upwards of sixty years of speculation and conjecture, Professor
Gustav Storm in his _Studier over Vinlandsreiserne_, arrives at a nearly
similar conclusion. Vinland cannot have lain farther north than 49°. How
far southward of this its site may be sought for is matter of
conjecture; but all probabilities are opposed to its discovery so far
south as Rhode Island.

Professor Rafn, however, arrived at very different results; and found
abundant confirmation in the sympathetic responses of the Rhode Island
antiquaries. The famous Dighton Rock was produced, with its assumed
runic inscription. The Newport Round Tower was a still more satisfactory
indication of permanent settlement by its supposed Norse builders; and
“The Skeleton in Armour,” on which Longfellow founded his ballad
romance, was accepted without hesitation as a glimpse of one of the
actual colonists of Vinland in the eleventh century. Professor Rafn
accordingly summed up the inquiry, and set forth the conclusions arrived
at, in this definite fashion. “It is the total result of the nautical,
geographical, and astronomical evidence in the original documents, which
places the situations of the countries discovered beyond all doubt. The
number of days’ sail between the several newly-found lands, the striking
description of the coasts, especially the sand-banks of Nova Scotia; and
the long beaches and downs of a peculiar appearance on Cape Cod (the
_Kialarnes_ and _Furdustrandir_ of the Northmen,) are not to be
mistaken. In addition hereto we have the astronomical remark that the
shortest day in Vinland was nine hours long, which fixes the latitude of
41° 24′ 10″, or just that of the promontories which limit the entrance
to Mount Hope Bay, where Leif’s booths were built, and in the district
around which the old Northmen had their head establishment, which was
named by them _Hóp_, or the Creek.”

The Dighton Rock runes erelong fell into woeful discredit; and as for
the Newport Round Tower, it has been identified as “The Old Stone Mill”
built there by Governor Benedict Arnold, who removed from Providence to
Newport in 1653. Though therefore no longer to be accredited to the
Northmen, it is of very respectable architectural antiquity, according
to New World reckoning. Nevertheless, in spite of such failure of all
confirmatory evidence, the general summary of results was presented by
Professor Rafn in such absolute terms, and the geographical details of
the assumed localities were so confidently accredited by the members of
the Rhode Island Historical Society, that his conclusions were accepted
as a whole without cavil. In reality, however, when we revert to the
evidence from which such definite results were derived, it proves vague,
if not illusory. The voyagers crossed over from Greenland to Helluland,
which we may assume without hesitation to have been the inhospitable
coast of Labrador. They then pursued a south-western course, in a voyage
in all of four days, subdivided into two nearly equal parts, until they
landed on a coast where wild grapes grew, and which accordingly they
named the Land of the Vine. To Icelandic or Greenland voyagers, the
vine, with its clusters of grapes, however unpalatable, could not fail
to prove an object of special note. But there is no need to prolong the
four days’ run, and land the explorers beyond Cape Cod, in order to find
the wild grape. It grows in sheltered localities in Nova Scotia; and so
in no degree conflicts with the later deductions based on the same
astronomical evidence of the length of the shortest day, which have
induced subsequent investigators to adopt conclusions much more nearly
approximating to those suggested by the poet Montgomery fully sixteen
years before the issue of Professor Rafn’s learned quarto from the
Copenhagen press.

The topographical details which have to be relied upon in any attempt to
identify the precise locality are little less vague than those of the
astronomical data from which the editor of the _Antiquitates Americanæ_
assumed to compute his assigned latitude. The voyagers, after their
first wintering, pursued their course southward; and again approaching
the shore, made their way up a river, to a lake from whence it flowed.
The land was wooded, with wild “wheat” in the low meadows, and on the
high banks grape-bearing vines. The aspect of this strange land was
tempting to voyagers from the north, so they erected booths, and
wintered there. From the mouth of the St. Lawrence southward to Rhode
Island, the coast is indented with many an estuary, up any of which the
old voyagers may have found their way into lake or expanded basin, with
overhanging forest trees, meadow flats, and other features sufficiently
corresponding to all that we learn from the old Saga of the temporary
settlement of Thorfinn and his fellow-voyagers. Fresh claimants
accordingly enter the lists to contend for the honours that pertain to
the landing-place of those first Pilgrim Fathers. New Englanders above
all not unnaturally cherish the pleasant fancy that they had for their
precursors the hardy Vikings, who, resenting the oppression of King
Harold the fair-haired, sailed into the unknown west to find a free home
for themselves. The fancy had a double claim on the gifted musician Ole
Bull. Himself a wanderer from the Scandinavian fatherland, he started
the proposition which was to give an air of indisputable reality to the
old legend; and which culminated in the erection, on Boston Common, in
1888, of a fine statue of Leif Ericson.

“South of Greenland is Helluland; next is Markland; from thence is not
far to Vinland the Good.” So reads the old Saga; and with the rearing of
the statue of its finder, it seemed incumbent on some loyal son of the
Commonwealth to demonstrate the site of the good land within the area of
Massachusetts. In the following year, accordingly, Professor Eben Norton
Horsford, of Cambridge, undertook the search, and was able to identify
to his entire satisfaction the site of Leif’s, or Karlsefne’s booths, in
his own neighbourhood on the Charles river. First appeared in 1889 _The
Problem of the Northmen_; and in the following year, in choicest
typography, and amplitude of attractive illustrations, _The Discovery of
the Ancient City of Norumbega, at Watertown on the River Charles_. There
the ephemeral booths of the old winterers in Vinland had left enduring
traces after a lapse of more than eight centuries. The discoverer,
resolved to arrest “Time’s decaying fingers,” which had thus far been
laid with such unwonted gentleness on the pioneer relics, has marked the
spot with a memorial tower, and an elaborately inscribed tablet, one
clause of which runs thus: “=River, The Charles, discovered by Leif
Erikson 1000 a.d. Explored by Thorwald, Leif’s Brother, 1003 a.d.
Colonised by Thorfinn Karlsefni 1007 a.d. First Bishop Erik Gnupson 1121
a.d.=”

The entire evidence has been readduced with minutest critical accuracy
in _The Finding of Wineland the Good: the History of the Icelandic
Discovery of America_, by the late gifted Arthur Middleton Reeves. His
verdict is thus briefly stated: “There is no suggestion in Icelandic
records of a permanent occupation of the county; and after the
exploration at the beginning of the eleventh century, it is not known
that Wineland was ever again visited by Icelanders, although it would
appear that a voyage thither was attempted in the year 1121, but with
what result is not known.”[6] In the Codex Frisianus is an apt heading
which might, better than a more lengthy inscription, have given
expression to the pleasant fancy that the footprints of Leif Ericson’s
followers had been recovered on the banks of the Charles river, “FUNDIT
VINLAND GOTHA”—Vineland the Good found! Maps old and new illustrate the
topography of the newly-assigned site; and among the rest, one which
specially aims at reproducing the most definite feature of the old
narrative is thus titled:—“River flowing through a lake into the sea;
Vinland of the Northmen; site of Leif’s houses.” To his own
satisfaction, at least, it is manifest that the author has identified
the site.

But a great deal more than Leif’s booths is involved. It is the
discovery of the ancient city of Norumbega, of which also the inscribed
tablet makes due record; including the statement, set forth more fully
in the printed text, that the name is only an Indian transmutation of
“Norbega, the ancient form of Norvega, Norway, to which Vinland was
subject!” The name, though probably unfamiliar to most modern readers,
was once as well known as that of Utopia, or El Dorado. One of Sir John
Hawkins’ fellow-voyagers claimed to have seen the city of Norumbega
still standing in 1568: a gorgeous Indian town outvying the capital of
Montezuma, and resplendent in pearls and gold. Hakluyt proposed its
recolonisation; Sir Humphrey Gilbert went in search of it; and it
figures both as a city and a country on maps familiar to older
generations than the founders of New England. Above all, Milton has
given it a place in the Tenth Book of his _Paradise Lost_. When the
Divine Creator is represented as readapting this world to a fallen
race—

    Some say he bid his Angels turn askance
    The poles of Earth twice ten degrees and more
    From the sun’s axle. . . . . . . . .
    . . . . . Now from the north
    Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore,
    Bursting their brazen dungeon, arm’d with ice,
    And snow, and hail, and stormy gust and flaw,
    Boreas . . .

which seems to imply very Icelandic and Arctic associations of the
Miltonic muse. But the gentle New England poet, Whittier, who had sung
of his Christian knight in vain quest of the marvellous city, thus
writes in sober prose to its modern discoverer: “I had supposed that the
famed city of Norumbega was on the Penobscot when I wrote my poem some
years ago; but I am glad to think of it as on the Charles, in our own
Massachusetts.” This work of rearing anew on the banks of the river
Charles the metropolis of Vinland the Good may be best entrusted to the
poets of New England.

All praise is due to the enthusiastic editors of the _Antiquitates
Americanæ_ for their reproduction of the original records on which the
history and the legends of Vinland rest. They found only too willing
recipients of the theories and assumptions with which they supplemented
the genuine narrative; nor has the uncritical spirit of credulous
deduction wholly ceased. In the untimely death of Professor Munch, the
historian of Norway, the University of Christiana lost a ripe and
acutely critical scholar in the very flower of his years. But in Dr.
Gustav Storm a successor has been found not unworthy to fill his place,
and represent the younger generation of Northern antiquaries, who have
now taken in hand, in a more critical spirit, yet with no less
enthusiasm, the work so well begun by Rafn, Finn Magnusen, and
Sveinbiorn Egilsson. In the same year in which Leif Ericson’s statue was
set up in Boston, and all the old enthusiasm for the identification of
the lost Vinland was revived, there appeared in the _Mémoires de la
Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord_ a series of _Studies on the
Vineland Voyages_, from the pen of Professor Storm, embodying a critical
analysis of the evidence relating to the Vinland voyages, which is
treated still more fully in his _Studier over Vinlandsreiserne, Vinlands
Geografi og Ethnographi_. The whole is now available, along with
valuable additions, including photographic facsimiles illustrative of
the original MSS., in Reeves’ _Finding of Wineland the Good_.[7] The
evidence has to be gleaned from two independent series of narratives:
the one the Icelandic Sagas and other embodiments of the Vinland
tradition; the other the more amplified, but less reliable narratives of
Norwegian chroniclers. The earliest Icelandic accounts are derived
directly or indirectly from Ari froði, more particularly referred to on
a later page, whose date as an author is given as about 1120; thereby
marking the transmission of the narrative to a younger generation before
it was committed to writing. Ari froði, _i.e._ the learned, derived the
story from his paternal uncle Thorkell Gellisson of Helgufell, who lived
in the latter half of the eleventh century; and so was a contemporary of
Adam of Bremen, who, when resident at the Danish Court, about the year
1070, obtained the information relating to the Northern regions which he
embodied in his _Descriptio insularum aquilonis_. Ari’s uncle, Thorkell,
is said to have spoken, when in Greenland, with a man who, in the year
985, had accompanied Erik the Red on his expedition from Iceland; so
that the authority is good, if the narrative were sufficiently ample;
but unfortunately, though Ari’s notes of what he learned from his uncle
are still extant in the _Libellus Islandorum_, they are exceedingly
meagre. The Vinland explorations had no such importance for the men of
that age as they possess for us, and are accordingly dealt with as a
very secondary matter. Professor Gustav Storm, in his _Studies on the
Vineland Voyages_, notes that Thorkell seems to have told his nephew
most about the colonisation of Greenland. In Professor Storm’s
_Studies_, and in the exhaustive _Finding of Wineland the Good_, by
Arthur Middleton Reeves, the entire bearings of the evidence, and the
relative value of the various ancient authorities, are discussed with
minute care; and lead alike to the inevitable conclusion that any
assignment of a site for the lost Vinland, either on Rhode Island, or on
any part of the New England coast, is untenable. The deductions of
Professor Rafn from the same evidence were accepted as a final verdict,
until the too eager confirmation of his Rhode Island correspondents
brought them into discredit. Now when we undertake an unbiassed review
of them, it is manifest that too much weight has been attached to his
estimate of distances measured by the vague standard of a day’s sail of
a rude galley dependent on wind and tide. This Professor Rafn assumed as
equivalent to twenty-four geographical miles. But very slight
consideration suffices to show that, with an indefinite starting-point,
and only a vague indication of the direction of sailing, with the
unknown influences of wind and tide, any such arbitrary deduction of a
definite measurement from the log of the old Northmen is not only
valueless, but misleading.

A reconsideration of the evidence furnished by the references to the
fauna and flora of the different points touched at, shows that others of
Professor Rafn’s deductions are equally open to correction. Helluland, a
barren region, of large stone slabs, with no other trace of life than
the Arctic fox, presented the same aspect as Labrador still offers to
the eye of the voyager. But there is no need to traverse the entire
Canadian and New England coasts before a region can be found answering
to the descriptions of a forest-clad country, of numerous deer, or even
of the vine, as noted by the old explorers from Greenland. To the eye of
the Greenlander, the Markland, or forest-clad land, lay within sight no
farther south than Newfoundland or Cape Breton. To those who are
accustomed to associate the vine with the Rhine land, or the plains of
Champagne, it sounds equally extravagant to speak of the Maritime
Provinces, or of the New England States, as “Vinland the Good.” But
numerous allusions of voyagers and travellers of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries refer with commendation to the wild grapes of
North America. Jacques Cartier on making his way up the St. Lawrence, in
his second voyage, gave to the Isle of Orleans the name of the Isle de
Bacchus, because of the many wild vines found there; though he notes
that, “not being cultivated nor pruned, the grapes are neither so large
nor so sweet as ours”—that is, those of France. Lescarbot, in like
manner, in 1606, records the grape vine as growing at Chuakouet, or
Saco, in Maine, and in the following year they are noted as abundant
along the banks of the river St. John in New Brunswick.

To voyagers from Iceland or Greenland many portions of the coast of Nova
Scotia would present the aspect of a region clothed with forest, and, as
such, “extremely beautiful.” Deer are still abundant both there and in
Newfoundland; and as for the grapes gathered by Leif Ericson, or those
brought back to Thorvald by Hake and Hekia, the swift runners, at their
more northern place of landing, the wild vine is well known at the
present time in sheltered localities of Nova Scotia. Having therefore
carefully studied the earliest maps and charts, of which reduced copies
are furnished in the _Mémoires_, and reviewed the whole evidence with
minute care, Professor Storm thus unhesitatingly states the results:
“Kjalarnes, the northern extremity of Vinland, becomes Cape Breton
Island, specially described as low-lying and sandy. The fiord into which
the Northmen steered, on the country becoming _fjorthskorit_, _i.e._
‘fiord-indented,’ may have been one of the bays of Guysborough, the
county of Nova Scotia lying farthest to the north-east; possibly indeed
Canso Bay, or some one of the bays south of it. Therefore much further
to the south in Nova Scotia must we seek the mouth of the river where
Karlsefn made his abortive attempt at colonisation. . . . The west coast
of northern Vinland is characterised as a region of uninhabited forest
tracks, with few open spots, a statement admirably agreeing with the
topographical conditions distinguishing the west coast of Cape Breton
Island, which in a modern book of travels is spoken of as ‘an unexplored
and trackless land of forests and mountains.’ Hence to the south of this
region search has to be made for the mouth of the streamlet where
Thorvald Eriksson was killed.” Various points, accordingly, such as
Salmon river, or one of the rivers flowing into Pictou harbour, are
suggested as furnishing features of resemblance and inviting to further
research.

Here, then, is the same problem submitted to the historical antiquaries
of Nova Scotia which those of Rhode Island took up upwards of half a
century ago, with unbounded zeal, and very surprising results. Nor is
there a “Dighton Rock” wanting; for Nova Scotia has its inscribed stone,
already interpreted as graphic runes, replete with equally suggestive
traces of the Northmen of the tenth century. The inscribed rock at
Yarmouth has long been an object of curious interest. So far back as
1857 I received from Dr. J. G. Farish a full-sized copy of the
inscription, with the following account of it: “The inscription, of
which the accompanying sketch is an exact copy,

[Illustration: Inscription, Yarmouth Rock, Nova Scotia.]

was discovered forty-five years ago, at Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. The rock
on which the characters are engraved is about two feet in diameter, of
an irregular hemispherical shape, with one naturally smooth surface. It
lies on the shore of a small inlet, at high-water mark, and close to the
bank, on which it may formerly have rested. The stone has been split
where a very thin vein of quartz once traversed it, but the
corresponding half could never be found. The tracing has been done with
a sharp-pointed instrument carried onward, by successive blows of a
hammer or mallet, the effect of which is plainly visible. The point of
the instrument barely penetrated the layer of quartz, which is almost as
thin as the black marks of the sketch. The inscription has been shown to
several learned gentlemen,—one intimately acquainted with the
characters of the Micmac and Millicet Indians who once inhabited this
country; another, familiar with the Icelandic and other Scandinavian
languages; but no person has yet been able to decipher it.” Again, in
1880, I received from Mr. J. Y. Bulmer, Secretary of the Nova Scotia
Historical Society, a photograph of the Yarmouth rock, with an
accompanying letter, in which he remarks: “I am directed by the council
of the Nova Scotia Historical Society to forward to you a photographic
view of a stone found near the ocean, in Yarmouth county, N.S., and
having an inscription which, if not runic or Phœnician, is supposed by
many to be the work of man. As ancient remains are most likely to be
preserved by calling attention to all such works and inscriptions, we
thought it best to forward it to you, where it could be examined by
yourself and others likely to detect a fraud, or translate an
inscription. The stone is now—or was one hundred years ago,—near, or
in fact on, the edge of the sea. It has since been removed to Yarmouth
for preservation. It was found near Cape Sable, a cape that must have
been visited by nearly every navigator, whether ancient or modern.”

The earlier description of Dr. Farish is valuable, as it preserves an
account of the rock while it still occupied its original site. He
speaks, moreover, definitely as to the period when it first attracted
attention; and which, though more recent than the “one hundred years” of
my later correspondent, or a nearly equivalent statement in the
_Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_, that “it has been
known for nearly an hundred years,” is sufficiently remote to remove all
idea of fraud, at least by any person of the present generation. The
description given by Dr. Farish of the apparent execution of the
inscription by means of a sharp-pointed instrument—meaning thereby no
doubt a metallic tool,—and a hammer or mallet, clearly points to other
than native Indian workmanship, whatever may have been the date of its
execution. As will be seen from the accompanying copy, it is in
arbitrary linear characters bearing no resemblance to the abbreviated
symbols familiar to us in Indian epigraphy; and at the same time it may
be described as unique in character. Having been known to people
resident in its vicinity for many years before the attention of students
of the early monuments of the continent was invited to it, it appears to
be beyond suspicion of purposed fraud. I did not attempt any solution of
the enigma thus repeatedly submitted to my consideration; but it was
this graven stone that was referred to when, in the inaugural address to
the section of History and Archæology of the Royal Society of Canada, in
1882, the remark was made: “I know of but one inscription in Canada
which seems to suggest the possibility of a genuine native record.”

On nearly every recurrence of an inscription in any linear form of
alphabetic character brought to light in the western hemisphere, the
first idea has been to suggest a Phœnician origin; and this is, no
doubt, implied in the statement of its runic decipherer, in the
_Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_, that “the glyphs
have been at various times copied and sent abroad to men of learning who
have made more or less attempts at deciphering them, more than one
savant seeing traces of Semitic origin.” But latterly with the reported
discovery of any linear inscription on the eastern seaboard, the
temptation has been to refer it to the Northmen of the eleventh century.
To this accordingly the allusions of both of my Nova-Scotian
correspondents pointed. But the characters of the Scandinavian futhork
are sufficiently definite to satisfy any one familiar with Scottish and
Manx runic inscriptions, or with Professor George Stephens’ ample
illustrations of them as they are found in the native home of the
Northmen, that it is vain to look to either for a key to the graven
legend on the Yarmouth rock. The presence of the Northmen, not only in
Iceland and Greenland, but as transient visitors on some portion of the
North American mainland, now rests on satisfactory historical evidence.
In Greenland they left indisputable literate records of their
colonisation of the region to which they gave the inapt name it still
retains. The runic inscriptions brought to Copenhagen in 1831 not only
determine the sites of settlements effected by the companions and
successors of Eric, but they serve to show the kind of evidence to be
looked for, alike to the north and the south of the St. Lawrence, if any
traces yet survive of their having attempted to colonise the old
Markland and Vinland, whether the latter is recovered in Nova Scotia or
New England. Their genuine memorials are not less definite than those
left by the Romans in Gaul or Britain; and corresponding traces of them
in the assumed Vinland, and elsewhere in the United States, have been
perseveringly, but vainly, sought for. One unmistakably definite
Scandinavian inscription, that of the “Huidœrk,” professedly found on
the river Potomac, does not lay claim to serious criticism. It was
affirmed to have been discovered in 1867 graven on a rock on the banks
of the Potomac; but to any student familiar with the genuine examples
figured in the _Antiquitates Americanæ_, it will be readily recognised
as a clever hoax, fabricated by the correspondent of the _Washington
Union_ out of genuine Greenland inscriptions. It reads thus: =hir
huilir syasy fagrharrdr avstfirthingr iki a kildi systr thorg samfethra
halfthritgr gleda gvd sal henar=. To this are added certain
symbols, suggested it may be presumed by the Kingiktorsoak inscription,
from which the translator professes to derive the date A.D. 1051.

In the interval between the dates of the two communications previously
referred to, a rubbing of the inscription on the Yarmouth rock was
forwarded to Mr. Henry Phillips jr., of Philadelphia. It appears to have
been under consideration by him at intervals for nine years, when at
length it was made the subject of a paper read before the American
Philosophical Society, and printed in its _Proceedings_ in 1884. After a
description of the locality, and the discovery of the inscribed stone on
its original site, “about the end of the last century, by a man named
Fletcher,” Mr. Phillips states the reasons which sufficed to satisfy him
that the inscription is a genuine one. He then proceeds thus: “Having
become imbued with a belief that no deception was intended, or
practised, I entered upon the study of the markings with a mind totally
and entirely free from prejudice. So far from believing that the
inscription was a relic of the pre-Columbian discovery of America, I had
never given any credence to that theory.” Thus, not only entirely
unbiassed, but, as he says, “somewhat prejudiced against the
authenticity of any inscription on this continent purporting to emanate
from the hardy and intrepid Norsemen,” he proceeded to grapple with the
strange characters. “As in a kaleidoscope, word after word appeared in
disjointed form, and each was in turn rejected, until at last an
intelligible word came forth, followed by another and another, until a
real sentence with a meaning stood forth to my astonished gaze:
_Harkussen men varu_—Hako’s son addressed the men.” On reverting to the
old Vinland narrative this seemed all unexpectedly to tally with it, for
Mr. Phillips found that in the expedition of Thorfinn Karlsefne, in
1007, one named Haki occurs among those who accompanied him. Still more
noteworthy, as it appears, though overlooked by him, this oldest record
of a European visitor to the Nova-Scotian shores, if actually referable
to Hake, the fellow-voyager of Thorfinn, was no Northman, but a Scot!
For Thorfinn himself, the old Saga, as reproduced in the _Antiquitates
Americanæ_, claims a comprehensive genealogy in which his own Scottish
ancestry is not overlooked. In the summer of 1006, according to the
narrative of the “settlement effected in Vinland by Thorfinn,” “there
arrived in Greenland two ships from Iceland; the one was commanded by
Thorfinn, having the very significant surname of Karlsefn (_i.e._ who
promises, or is destined to be an able or great man), a wealthy and
powerful man, of illustrious lineage, and sprung from Danish, Norwegian,
Swedish, Irish and Scottish ancestors, some of whom were kings of royal
descent. He was accompanied by Snorre Thorbrandson, who was also a man
of distinguished lineage. The other ship was commanded by Bjarne
Grimolfson, of Breidefiord, and Thorhall Gamlison, of Austfiord. They
kept the festival of Yule at Brattalid. Thorfinn became enamoured of
Gudrida, and obtained the consent of her brother-in-law, Leif, and their
marriage was celebrated during the winter. On this, as on former
occasions, the voyage to Vinland formed a favourite theme of
conversation, and Thorfinn was urged both by his wife and others to
undertake such a voyage. It was accordingly resolved on in the spring of
1007.” This later narrative distinctly sets forth an organised scheme of
permanent settlement in the tempting land of the vine. Thorvald, who was
in command of one of the three ships fitted out for the expedition, was
married to Freydisa, a natural daughter of Eric the Red. “On board this
ship was also a man of the name of Thorhall, who had long served Eric as
a huntsman in summer, and as house-steward in winter, and who had much
acquaintance with the uncolonised parts of Greenland. They had in all
160 men. They took with them all kinds of live stock, it being their
intention to establish a colony, if possible.” Then follows the notice
of their observations of the characteristic features, and of the fauna
and flora of Helluland, Markland, and subsequent points; to the last of
which, characterised by “trackless deserts and long beaches with sands,”
they gave the name of Furdustrandir. After passing this, the
characteristic feature is noted that the land began to be indented by
inlets, or bays. Then follows the notice of Hake, the Scot, to whom Mr.
Phillips conceives the Yarmouth inscription may be due. The reference,
accordingly, with its accompanying description of the country, has a
special claim to notice here. “They had,” says the Saga, “two Scots with
them, Haki and Hekia, whom Leif had formerly received from the Norwegian
King, Olaf Tryggvason,” it may be assumed as slaves carried off in some
marauding expedition to the British Islands. The two Scots, man and
woman, it is added, “were very swift of foot. They put them on shore
recommending them to proceed in a south-west direction, and explore the
country. After the lapse of three days they returned, bringing with them
some grapes and ears of wheat, which grew wild in that region. They
continued their course until they came to a place where the firth
penetrated far into the country. Off the mouth of it was an island past
which there ran strong currents, which was also the case further up the
firth. On the island there was an immense number of eider ducks, so that
it was scarcely possible to walk without treading on their eggs. They
called the island Straumey (Stream Isle), and the firth Straumfiordr
(Stream Firth). They landed on the shore of this firth, and made
preparations for their winter residence. The country was extremely
beautiful,” as we may readily imagine a sheltered nook of Nova Scotia to
have appeared to voyagers fresh from Iceland and the Greenland shores.
It may be well to note here that the incident of the discovery of the
vine and the gathering of grapes reappears in different narratives under
varying forms. It was a feature to be specially looked for by all later
voyagers in search of the Vinland of the first expedition, that set out
in search for the southern lands of which Bjarni Herjulfson is reported
to have brought back an account to Greenland. Nor is the discovery of
the vine by successive explorers along the American seaboard in any
degree improbable, though it can scarcely be doubted that some of the
later accounts are mere amplifications of the original narrative. It is,
at any rate, to be noted that the scene of Haki the Scot’s discovery,
was not the Hóp, identified by the Rhode Island Historical Society with
their own Mount Hope Bay. As for Thorhall and his shipmates, they turned
back, northward, in search of Vinland, and so deserted their
fellow-voyagers before the scene of attempted colonisation was reached,
and were ultimately reported to have been wrecked on the Irish coast.

Such is the episode in the narrative of ancient explorations of the
North American shores by voyagers from Greenland, in which Mr. Phillips
was gratified by the startling conformity, as it seemed to him, of the
name of Haki, with the Harkussen of his runes; though, it must be
admitted, the identity is far from complete. If, however, there were no
doubt as to the inscription being a genuine example of Northern runes,
the failure to refer them to Hake, or any other specific member of an
exploring party, would be of little moment. Here, at any rate, was
evidence which, if rightly interpreted, was calculated to suggest a
reconsideration of the old localisation of Vinland in the state of Rhode
Island; and to this other evidence pointed even more clearly. Reassured,
accordingly, by a study of the map, which shows the comparatively
trifling distance traversed by the assumed voyagers from Greenland, when
compared with that from their remote European fatherland, Mr. Phillips
submitted his interpretation to the American Philosophical Society “as
worthy of consideration, if not absolutely convincing.” To the
topographer of the maritime coasts of Canada, a genuine runic
inscription which proved that Norse voyagers from Greenland did actually
land on the shores of Nova Scotia, in A.D. 1007, and leave there a
literate record of their visit, would be peculiarly acceptable. But
whatever be the significance of the Yarmouth inscription, it fails to
satisfy such requirements. It neither accords with the style, or usual
formula of runic inscriptions; nor, as will be seen from the
accompanying facsimile, is it graven in any variation of the familiar
characters of the Scandinavian futhork. The fascinating temptation has
to be set aside; and the Hake or Harkussen of its modern interpreter
must take rank with the illusory Thorfinn discovered by the Rhode Island
antiquaries on their famed Dighton Rock, which still stands by the banks
of the Taunton river.

It is indeed vain for us to hope for evidence of the same definite kind
as that which establishes beyond question the presence of the Northmen
on the sites of their long-settled colonies in Greenland. Their visits
to the Canadian seaboard were transitory; and any attempt at settlement
there failed. Yet without the definite memorials of the old Norse
colonists recovered in the present century on the sites of their
Greenland settlements, it would probably have proved vain to identify
them now. The coast of Nova Scotia is indented with inlets, and
estuaries of creeks and rivers, suggesting some vague resemblance to the
Hóp, or creek of the old Sagas. Whether any one of them presents
adequate features for identification with the descriptions furnished in
their accounts has yet to be ascertained. But there is every motive to
stimulate us to a careful survey of the coast in search of any probable
site of the Vinland of the old Northmen. Slight as are the details
available for such a purpose, they are not without some specific
definiteness, which the Rhode Island antiquaries turned to account, not
without a warning to us in their too confident assumption of results.
Dr. E. B. Tylor, in his address to the section of anthropology at the
Montreal meeting of the British Association, after referring to the
Icelandic records of the explorations of the hardy sea-rovers from
Greenland, as too consistent to be refused belief as to the main facts,
thus proceeded: “They sailed some way down the American coast. But where
are we to look for the most southerly points which the Sagas mention as
reached in Vineland? Where was Keel-ness where Thorvald’s ship ran
aground, and Cross-ness where he was buried when he died by the
Skræling’s arrow? Rafn, in the _Antiquitates Americanæ_, confidently
maps out these places about the promontory of Cape Cod, in
Massachusetts, and this has been repeated since from book to book. I
must plead guilty to having cited Rafn’s map before now, but when with
reference to the present meeting I consulted our learned editor of
Scandinavian records at Oxford, Mr. Gudbrand Vigfusson, and afterwards
went through the original passages in the Sagas with Mr. York Powell, I
am bound to say that the voyages of the Northmen ought to be reduced to
more moderate limits. It appears that they crossed from Greenland to
Labrador (Helluland), and thence sailing more or less south and west, in
two stretches of two days each, they came to a place near where wild
grapes grew, whence they called the country Vineland. This would,
therefore, seem to have been somewhere about the Gulf of St. Lawrence,
and it would be an interesting object for a yachting cruise to try down
from the east coast of Labrador a fair four days’ sail of a Viking ship,
and identify, if possible, the sound between the island and the ness,
the river running out of the lake into the sea, the long stretches of
sand, and the other local features mentioned in the Sagas.” A fresh
stimulus is thus furnished to Canadian yachtsmen to combine historical
exploration with a summer’s coasting trip, and go in search of the lost
Vinland. The description of the locality that furnished the data from
which the members of the Rhode Island Historical Society satisfied
themselves as to the identity of their more southern site on the
Pacasset river, has to be kept in view in any renewed inquiry. At the
same time it must not be overlooked that the oldest and most trustworthy
narrative, in the Saga of Eric the Red, with the credited, and probably
genuine story of the voyage of Karlsefne, are expanded, in the
Grænlendingathàttr, into five voyages, with their incidents recast with
modifications and additions. The expedition of Leif Ericson, and his
accidental discovery of Vinland, and the subsequent attempt at
colonisation of Karlsefne, in company with Thorvald and Freydisa, are
the only adventures accredited by the oldest tradition. In the latter
narrative it is stated that “they sailed for a long time, until they
came at last to a river which flowed down from the land into a lake, and
so into the sea. There were great bars at the mouth of the river, so
that it could only be entered at the height of the flood tide. Karlsefn
and his men sailed into the mouth of the river, and called it Hóp,”
_i.e._ a land-locked bay. “They found self-sown wheat fields wherever
there were hollows, and where there was hilly ground there were vines.”
Subsequent descriptions are obviously based on this account. But to
whatever extent the description of the locality where Thorvald, the
brother of Leif Ericson, was killed by a Skræling may have been
suggested by that narrative, the localities are different. It was
apparently in the spring of A.D. 1004 that Karlsefne set out on his
colonising expedition. The voyagers sailed along Furdustrandir, a long,
low sandy coast, till they came to where the land was indented with
creeks and inlets. There they steered into the Straumsfjord, to a spot
where Karlsefne and his companions spent the winter of A.D. 1005; and
where, therefore, we may assume the observations to have been made that
determined the length of the day in Vinland at the winter solstice. The
narrative of noteworthy incidents is accompanied with topographical
details that have to be kept in view in any attempt at recovering traces
of the locality. There, if it could be identified, we have to look for a
promontory answering to the Krossanes, or promontory of the crosses: the
spot where Thorvald was buried; and as would seem to be implied, where a
cross was set up at the grave mound. The style of such a sepulchral
memorial of the Northmen at a little later date is very familiar to us.
The discovery on some hitherto unheeded spot of the Nova-Scotian coast
of a bautastein, graven like those recovered on the sites of the old
Greenland colony, would be an invaluable historical record. It might be
expected to read somewhat in this fashion: _Leif sunr Erikr rautha
raisti krus thana eftir Thorvald brothur sina_. But there is slight
ground for imagining that the transient visitors from Greenland to the
Canadian shores left any more lasting memorial of the tragic event that
reappears in successive versions of the narrative of their presence
there, than a wooden grave-post, or uninscribed headstone.

One other element in the characteristic features of the strange land
visited by the Greenland explorers is the native population, and this
has a specific interest in other respects, in addition to its bearing on
the determination of a Nova-Scotian site for “Vineland the Good.” They
are designated Skrælings (Skrælingjar), and as in this the Greenland
voyagers applied the same name to the natives of Vinland as to the
Greenland Eskimo, it has been assumed that both were of the same race.
But the term “skræling” is still used in Norway to express the idea of
decrepitude, or physical inferiority; and probably was used with no more
definite significance than our own word “savage.” The account given in
the Saga of the approach of the Skrælings would sufficiently accord with
that of a Micmac flotilla of canoes. Their first appearance is thus
described: “While looking about one morning, they observed a great
number of canoes. On exhibiting friendly signals the canoes approached
nearer to them, and the natives in them looked with astonishment at
those they met there. These people were sallow-coloured and ill-looking,
had ugly heads of hair, large eyes and broad cheeks.” The term
_skræling_ has usually been interpreted “dwarf,” and so seemed to
confirm the idea of the natives having been Eskimo; but, as already
stated, the word, as still used in Norway, might mean no more than the
inferiority of any savage race. As to the description of their features
and complexion, that would apply equally well to the red Indian or the
Eskimo, and so far as the eyes are spoken of, rather to the former than
the latter. More importance may be attached to the term _hudhkeipr_
applied to their canoes, which is more applicable to the kayak, or
skin-boat, than to the birch-bark canoe of the Indian; but the word was
probably loosely used as applicable to any savage substitute for a keel,
or built boat.

This question of the identification of the Skrælings, or natives,
whether of Nova Scotia or New England, is one of considerable
ethnographic significance. The speculations relative to the possible
relationship of the Eskimo to the post-glacial cave-dwellers of the
Dordogne valley, and their consequent direct descent from palæolithic
European man, confer a value on any definite evidence bearing on their
movements in intermediate centuries. On the other hand, the approximate
correspondence of the Huron-Iroquois of Canada and the state of New York
to the Eskimo in the dolichocephalic type of skull common to both, gives
an interest to any evidence of the early presence of the latter to the
south of the St. Lawrence. In their western migrations the Eskimo
attract the attention of the ethnographer as the one definite ethnic
link between America and Asia. They are met with, as detached and
wandering tribes, across the whole continent, from Greenland to Behring
Strait. Nevertheless, they appear to be the occupants of a diminishing
rather than an expanding area. This would accord with the idea of their
area extending over the Canadian maritime provinces, and along the New
England coast, in the eleventh century; and possibly as indicating the
early home, from which they were being driven northward by the
Huron-Iroquois or other assailants, rather than implying an overflow
from their Arctic habitat. Seal hunting on the coast of Newfoundland,
and fishing on its banks and along the shores of Nova Scotia, would even
now involve no radical change in the habits of the Eskimo. It was with
this hyperborean race that the Scandinavian colonists of Greenland came
in contact 800 years ago, and by them that they were exterminated at a
later date. If it could be proved that the Skrælings of the eleventh
century, found by the Northmen on the American mainland, were Eskimo, it
would furnish the most conclusive evidence that the red Indians—whether
Micmac, Millicet, or Hurons,—are recent intruders there.

In any process of aggression of the native American race on the older
area of the Eskimo, some intermixture of blood would naturally follow.
The slaughter of the males in battle, and the capture of women and
children, everywhere leads to a like result; and this seems the simplest
solution of the problem of the southern brachycephalic, and the northern
dolichocephalic type of head among native American races. When the sites
of the ancient colonies of Greenland were rediscovered and visited by
the Danes, they imagined they could recognise in the physiognomy of some
of the Eskimo who still people the shores of Davis Straits, traces of
admixture between the old native and the Scandinavian or Icelandic
blood. Of the Greenland colonies the Eskimo had perpetuated many
traditions, referring to the colonists under the native name of
_Kablunet_. But of the language that had been spoken among them for
centuries, the fact is highly significant that the word _Kona_, used by
them as a synonym for woman, is the only clearly recognised trace. This
is worthy of note, in considering the distinctive character of the
Eskimo language, and its comparison with the Indian languages of the
North American continent. It has the feature common to nearly all the
native languages of the continent north of the Mexican Gulf in the
composite character of its words; so that an Eskimo verb may furnish the
equivalent to a whole sentence in other tongues. But what is specially
noteworthy is that, while the Huron-Iroquois, the Algonkin, and other
Indian families of languages have multiplied widely dissimilar dialects,
Dr. Henry Rink has shown that the Eskimo dialects of Greenland or
Labrador differ slightly from those of Behring Strait; and the congeners
of the American Eskimo, who have overflowed into the Aleutian Islands,
and taken possession of the north-eastern region of Asia, perpetuate
there nearly allied dialects of the parent tongue.[8] The Alaskan and
the Tshugazzi peninsulas are in part peopled by Eskimo; the Konegan of
Kudjak Island belong to the same stock; and all the dialects spoken in
the Aleutian Islands, the supposed highway from Asia to America, betray
in like manner the closest affinities to the Arctic Mongolidæ of the New
World. They thus appear not only to be contributions from the New World
to the Old, but to be of recent introduction there. If the cave-dwellers
of Europe’s palæolithic era found their way as has been suggested, in
some vastly remote age, either by an eastern or a western route to the
later home of the Arctic Eskimo, it is in comparatively modern centuries
that the tide of migration has set westward across the Behring Strait,
and by the Aleutian Islands, into Asia.

The reference to the Skrælings in the first friendly intercourse of
Thorfinn Karlsefne and his companions with the natives, and their
subsequent hostile attitude, ending in the death of Thorvald Ericson,
has given occasion to this digression. But the question thus suggested
is one of no secondary interest. If we could certainly determine their
ethnical character the fact would be of great significance; and coupled
with any well-grounded determination of the locality where the fatal
incident occurred, would have important bearings on American ethnology.
The description of the sallow, or more correctly, swarthy coloured,
natives with large eyes, broad cheek-bones, shaggy hair, and forbidding
countenances is furnished in the Saga, and then the narrative thus
proceeds: “After the Skrælings had gazed at them for a while, they rowed
away again to the south-west past the cape. Karlsefne and his company
had erected their dwelling-houses a little above the bay, and there they
spent the winter. No snow fell, and the cattle found their food in the
open field. One morning early, in the beginning of 1008, they descried a
number of canoes coming from the south-west past the cape. Karlsefne
having held up the white shield as a friendly signal, they drew nigh and
immediately commenced bartering. These people chose in preference red
cloth, and gave furs and squirrel skins in exchange. They would fain
also have bought swords and spears, but these Karlsefne and Snorre
prohibited their people from selling to them. In exchange for a skin
entirely gray the Skrælings took a piece of cloth of a span in breadth,
and bound it round their heads. Their barter was carried on in this way
for some time. The Northmen then found that their cloth was beginning to
grow scarce, whereupon they cut it up in smaller pieces, not broader
than a finger’s breadth, yet the Skrælings gave as much for these
smaller pieces as they had formerly given for the larger ones, or even
more. Karlsefne also caused the women to bear out milk soup, and the
Skrælings relishing the taste of it, they desired to buy it in
preference to everything else, so they wound up their traffic by
carrying away their bargains in their bellies. Whilst this traffic was
going on it happened that a bull, which Karlsefne had brought along with
him, came out of the wood and bellowed loudly. At this the Skrælings got
terrified and rushed to their canoes, and rowed away southwards. About
this time Gudrida, Karlsefne’s wife, gave birth to a son, who received
the name of Snorre. In the beginning of the following winter the
Skrælings came again in much greater numbers; they showed symptoms of
hostility, setting up loud yells. Karlsefne caused the red shield to be
borne against them, whereupon they advanced against each other, and a
battle commenced. There was a galling discharge of missiles. The
Skrælings had a sort of war sling. They elevated on a pole a
tremendously large ball, almost the size of a sheep’s stomach, and of a
bluish colour; this they swung from the pole over Karlsefne’s people,
and it descended with a fearful crash. This struck terror into the
Northmen, and they fled along the river.”

It was thus apparent that in spite of the attractions of the forest-clad
land, with its tempting vines, there was little prospect of peaceful
possession. The experience of these first colonisers differed in no
degree from that of the later pioneers of Nova Scotia or New England.
Freydisa, the natural daughter of Eric, whom Thorvald had wedded, is
described as taunting the men for their cowardice in giving way before
such miserable caitiffs as the Skrælings or savage natives, and vowing,
if she had only a weapon, she would show better fight. “She accordingly
followed them into the wood. There she encountered a dead body. It was
Thorbrand Snorrason. A flat stone was sticking fast in his head. His
naked sword lay by his side. This she took up, and prepared to defend
herself. She uncovered her breasts and dashed them against the naked
sword. At this sight the Skrælings became terrified, and ran off to
their canoes. Karlsefne and the rest now came up to her and praised her
courage. But Karlsefne and his people became aware that, although the
country held out many advantages, still the life that they would have to
lead here would be one of constant alarm from the hostile attacks of the
natives. They therefore made preparations for departure with the
resolution of returning to their own country.” To us the attractions of
a Nova-Scotian settlement might seem worth encountering a good many such
assaults rather than retreat to the ice-bound shores of Greenland. But
it was “their own country”; their relatives were there. Nor to the hardy
Northmen did its climate, or that of Iceland, present the forbidding
aspect which it would to us. So they returned to Brattalid, carrying
back with them an evil report of the land; and, as it seems, also
bringing with them specimens of its natives. For, on their homeward
voyage, they proceeded round Kialarnes, and then were driven to the
nort-west. “The land lay to larboard of them. There were thick forests
in all directions as far as they could see, with scarcely any open
space. They considered the hills at Hope and those which they now saw as
forming part of one continuous range. They spent the third winter at
Streamfirth. Karlsefne’s son Snorre was now three years of age. When
they sailed from Vinland they had southerly wind, and came to Markland,
where they met with five Skrælings. They caught two of them (two boys),
whom they carried away along with them, and taught them the Norse
language, and baptized them; these children said that their mother was
called Vethilldi and their father Uvaege. They said that the Skrælings
were ruled by chieftains (kings), one of whom was called Avalldamon, and
the other Valdidida; that there were no houses in the country, but that
the people dwelled in holes and caverns.”

Thus ended the abortive enterprise of Thorfinn and his company to found,
in the eleventh century, a colony of Northmen on the American mainland.
The account the survivors brought back told indeed of umbrageous
woodland and the tempting vine. But the forest was haunted by the fierce
Skrælings, and its coasts open to assault from their canoes. To the race
that wrested Normandy from the Carlovingian Frank, and established its
jarldoms in Orkney, Caithness, and Northumbria, such a foe might well be
deemed contemptible. But the degenerate Franks, and the Angles of
Northumbria, tempted the Norse marauder with costly spoils; and only
after repeated successful expeditions awakened the desire to settle in
the land and make there new homes. Alike to explorers seeking for
themselves a home, and to adventurers coveting the victors’ spoils, the
Vinland of the Northmen offered no adequate temptation, and so its
traditions faded out of memory, or were recalled only as the legend of a
fabulous age. At the meeting of the British Association at Montreal in
1884 Mr. R. G. Halliburton read a paper entitled “A Search in British
North America for lost Colonies of Northmen and Portuguese.” Documents
were quoted by him showing that from A.D. 1500 to 1570 commissions were
regularly issued to the Corte Reals and their successors. Cape Breton
was colonised by them in 1521; and when Portugal became annexed to Spain
in 1680, and Terra Nova passed with it to her rule, she sent colonists
to settle there. The site which they occupied, Mr. Halliburton traced to
Spanish Harbour (Sydney), Cape Breton, and this he claimed to be the
earliest European settlement in North America. For, as for the
Northmen’s reputed explorations and attempt at settlement, his verdict
is thus briefly summed up: “When we can discover Greenland’s verdant
mountains we can also hope to find the vine-clad hills of Vineland the
Good.” That, however, is too summary a dismissal of evidence which, if
vague, is to every appearance based on authorities as seemingly
authentic and trustworthy as those on which many details of the history
of early centuries rest. It would manifestly be unwise to discountenance
further inquiry by any such sweeping scepticism, or to discourage the
hope that local research may yet be rewarded by evidence confirmatory of
the reputed visit of Thorfinn and his fellow-explorers to some
recognisable point on the Nova-Scotian coast.

The diligent research of scholars familiar with the Old Norse, in which
the Sagas are written, is now clearing this inquiry into reputed
pre-Columbian discovery and colonisation of much misapprehension. The
extravagant assumptions alike of earlier Danish and New England
antiquaries in dealing with the question were provocative of an undue
bias of critical scepticism. The American historian Bancroft gave form
to this tendency when he affirmed that “the story of the colonisation of
America by Northmen rests on narratives mythological in form and obscure
in meaning; ancient, yet not contemporary.” If the historian had adduced
in evidence of this the story of the Eyrbyggja Saga, and the later
amplifications of reputed voyages to “White Man’s Land,” and to
“Newland,” his language would have been pardonable. Of the later
fictitious Sagas are the Landvætta-sögur; Stories of the
guardian-spirits of the land; and the Saga of Halfdan Eysteinsson, from
which we learn that “Raknar brought the deserts of Heluland under his
rule, and destroyed all the giants there”; or again we have the Saga of
“Barthar Snæfellsass,” or the Snow-fell God, and the King Dumbr of
Dumbshaf. But all such mythical Sagas belong to later Icelandic and
Norwegian literature, and have no claim to historical value.

The genuine documentary evidence of Vinland is recoverable from
manuscripts of earlier date, and a widely different character. Had
Bancroft been familiar with the early Icelandic Sagas he could never
have spoken of them as mythological. They are, on the contrary,
distinguished by their presentation of events in an extremely simple and
literal manner; equally free from rhetorical embellishment and the
extravagances of the romancer. But the occupation of the new-found land
was brief; and as the tale of its explorers faded from the memory of
younger generations, fancy toyed with the legend of a sunny land of the
Vine, with its self-sown fields of ripened grain. At a later date
Greenland itself vanished from the ken of living men; and romance
sported with the fancies suggested by its name as a fertile oasis of
green pastures walled in by the ice and snows of its Arctic zone.

The first authentic reference, now recoverable, to Vinland the Good has
already been referred to. It occurs in a passage in the _Iselandinga
Vók_, by Ari Thorgilsson, the oldest Icelandic historiographer. Ari,
surnamed froði, or the learned, was born A.D. 1067, and survived till
1148. The earliest manuscript of the Saga of Eric the Red dates as late
as A.D. 1330. It is contained in the Arna Magnæan Codex, commonly known
as _Hauks Vók_. Hauk Erlendsson, to whom the preservation of this copy
of the original Saga is due, and by whom part of it appears to have been
written, has appended to the manuscript a genealogy, in which he traces
his descent from the son of Karlsefne, born in Vinland. Two versions of
the narrative have been preserved, differing only in slight details; and
of those Reeves says: “They afford the most graphic and succinct
exposition of the discovery; and, supported as they are throughout by
contemporary history, appear in every respect most worthy of
credence.”[9] The simple, unadorned narrative bears out the idea that it
is a manuscript of information derived from the statements of the actual
explorers. The later story of Barni Herjulfson,—an obvious
amplification of the original narrative, with a change of names, and
many spurious additions,—occurs in the Flatey Book, a manuscript
written before the close of the fourteenth century, when the Northmen of
the Scandinavian fatherland were reawakening to an interest in the
memories or traditions of early voyages to strange lands beyond the
Atlantic Ocean, and fashioning them into legend and romance.

The poet, William Morris, represents the Vikings of the fourteenth
century following the old leadings of Leif Ericson in search of the
earthly paradise:—

                  That desired gate
    To immortality and blessed rest
    Within the landless waters of the West.

The time chosen is that of England’s Edward III., and, still more, of
England’s Chaucer. But in reality all memory of the land which lay
beyond the waters of the Atlantic had faded as utterly from the minds of
Europe’s mariners, in that fourteenth century, as in the older days when
Plato restored a lost Atlantis to give local habitation to his ideal
Republic. When the idea revived in the closing years of the fifteenth
century, not as a philosophic dream, but as a legitimate induction of
science, the reception which it met with from the embodied wisdom of
that age, curiously illustrates the common experience of the pioneers in
every path of novel discovery.

To Columbus, with his well-defined faith in the form of the earth which
gave him confidence to steer boldly westward in search of the Asiatic
Cipango: the existence of a continent beyond the Atlantic was no mere
possibility. So early, at least, as 1474 he had conceived the design of
reaching Asia by sailing to the West; and in that year he is known to
have expounded his plans to Paolo Toscanelli, the learned Florentine
physician and cosmographer, and to have received from him hearty
encouragement. Assuming the world to be a sphere, he fortunately erred
alike in under-estimating its size, and in over-estimating the extent to
which the continent of Asia stretched eastward. In this way he
diminished the distance between the coasts of Europe and Asia; and so,
when at length he sighted the new-found land of the West, so far from
dreaming of another ocean wider than the Atlantic between him and the
object of his quest, he unhesitatingly designated the natives of
Guanahani, or San Salvador, “Indians,” in the confident belief that this
was an outlying coast of Asiatic India. Nor was his reasoning unsound.
He sought, and would have found, a western route to that old east by the
very track he followed, had no American continent intervened. It was not
till his third voyage that the great Admiral for the first time beheld
the new continent,—not indeed the Asiatic mainland, nor even the
northern continent,—but the embouchures of the Orinoco river, with its
mighty volume of fresh water, proving beyond dispute that it drained an
area of vast extent, and opened up access far into the interior of a new
world.

Columbus had realised his utmost anticipations, and died in the belief
that he had reached the eastern shores of Asia. Nor is the triumph in
any degree lessened by this assumption. The dauntless navigator, pushing
on ever westward into the mysterious waters of the unexplored Atlantic
in search of the old East, presents one of the most marvellous examples
of intelligent faith that science can adduce. To estimate all that it
implied, we have to turn back to a period when his unaccomplished
purpose rested solely on that sure and well-grounded faith in the
demonstrations of science.

In the city of Salamanca there assembled in the Dominican convent of San
Esteban, in the year 1487, a learned and orthodox conclave, summoned by
Prior Fernando de Talavera, to pronounce judgment on the theory
propounded by Columbus; and to decide whether in that most catholic of
Christian kingdoms, on the very eve of its final triumph over the
infidel, it was a permissible belief that the Western World had even a
possible existence. Columbus set before them the scientific
demonstration which constituted for himself indisputable evidence of an
ocean highway across the Atlantic to the continent beyond. The clerical
council included professors of mathematics, astronomy, and geography, as
well as other learned friars and dignitaries of the Church: probably as
respectable an assemblage of cloister-bred pedantry and orthodox
conservatism as that fifteenth century could produce. Philosophical
deductions were parried by a quotation from St. Jerome or St. Augustine;
and mathematical demonstrations by a figurative text of Scripture; and
in spite alike of the science and the devout religious spirit of
Columbus, the divines of Salamanca pronounced the idea of the earth’s
spherical form to be heterodox; and declared a belief in antipodes
incompatible with the historical traditions of the Christian faith:
since to assert that there were inhabited lands on the opposite side of
the globe would be to maintain that there were nations not descended
from Adam, it being impossible for them to have passed the intervening
ocean.

It may naturally excite a smile to thus find the very ethnological
problem of this nineteenth century thus dogmatically produced four
centuries earlier to prove that America was an impossibility. But in
reality this ethnological problem long continued in all ways to affect
the question. Among the various evidences which Columbus adduced in
confirmation of his belief in the existence of a continent beyond the
Atlantic, was the report brought to him by his own brother-in-law, Pedro
Correa, that the bodies of two dead men had been cast ashore on the
island of Flores, differing essentially from any known race, “very
broad-faced, and diverse in aspect from Christians”; and, in truth, the
more widely they differed from all familiar Christian humanity, the more
probable did their existence appear to the men of that fifteenth
century. Hence Shakespeare’s marvellous creation of his Caliban. Upwards
of a century and half had then elapsed since Columbus returned with the
news of a world beyond the Western Ocean; yet still to the men of
Shakespeare’s day, the strange regions of which Columbus, Amerigo
Vespucci, Gomara, Lane, Harriot, and Raleigh wrote, seemed more fitly
occupied by Calibans, and the like rude approximations to humanity, than
by men and women in any degree akin to ourselves. Othello indeed only
literally reproduces Raleigh’s account of a strange people on the Caoro,
in Guiana. He had not, indeed, himself got sight of those marvellous
Ewaipanoma, though anxious enough to do so. Their eyes, as reported,
were in their shoulders, and their mouths in the middle of their
breasts. But the truth could not be doubted, since every child in the
provinces of Arromaia and Canuri affirmed the same. The founder of
Virginia, assuredly one of the most sagacious men of that wise
Elizabethan era, and with all the experience which travel supplies,
reverts again and again to this strange new-world race, as to a thing of
which he entertained no doubt. The designation of Shakespeare’s Caliban,
is but an anagram of the epithet which Raleigh couples with the specific
designation of those monstrous dwellers on the Caoro. “To the west of
Caroli,” he says, “are divers nations of Cannibals, and of those
Ewaipanoma without heads.” Of “such men, whose head stood in their
breasts,” Gonsalo, in _The Tempest_, reminds his companions, as a tale
which every voyager brings back “good warrant of”; and so it was in all
honesty that Othello entertained Desdemona with the story of his
adventures:—

    Of moving accidents by flood and field . . .
    And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
    The Anthropophagi and men whose heads
    Do grow beneath their shoulders.

The idea of an island-world lying in some unexplored ocean, apart from
the influences which affect humanity at large, with beings,
institutions, and a civilisation of its own, had been the dream of very
diverse minds. When indeed we recall what the rude Norse galley of Eric
the Red must have been; and what the little “Pinta” and the “Nina” of
Columbus—the latter with a crew of only twenty-four men,—actually
were; and remember, moreover, that the pole-star was the sole compass of
the earlier explorer; there seems nothing improbable in the assumption
that the more ancient voyagers from the Mediterranean, who claimed to
have circumnavigated Africa, and were familiar with the islands of the
Atlantic, may have found their way to the great continent which lay
beyond. Vague intimations, derived seemingly from Egypt, encouraged the
belief in a submerged island or continent, once the seat of arts and
learning, afar on the Atlantic main. The most definite narrative of this
vanished continent is that already referred to as recorded in the
_Timæus_ of Plato, on the authority of an account which Solon had
received from an Egyptian priest. According to the latter the
temple-records of the Nile preserved the traditions of times reaching
back far beyond the infantile fables of the Greeks. Yet, even these
preserved some memory of deluges and convulsions by which the earth had
been revolutionised. In one of them the vast Island of Atlantis—a
continent larger than Libya and Asia conjoined,—had been engulfed in
the ocean which bears its name. This ocean-world of fancy or tradition,
Plato revived as the seat of his imaginary commonwealth; and it had not
long become a world of fact when Sir Thomas More made it anew the seat
of his famous Utopia, the exemplar of “the best state and form of a
public weale.” “Unfortunately,” as the author quaintly puts it, “neither
we remembered to inquire of Raphael, the companion of Amerike Vespuce on
his third voyage, nor he to tell us in what part of the new world Utopia
is situate”: and so there is no reason why we should not locate the seat
of this perfect commonwealth within the young Canadian Dominion, so soon
as it shall have merited this by the attainment of such Utopian
perfectibility in its polity.

But it is not less curious to note the tardiness with which, after the
discovery of the New World had been placed beyond question, its true
significance was comprehended even by men of culture, and abreast of the
general knowledge of their time. Peter Giles, indeed, citizen of
Antwerp, and assumed confidant of “Master More,” writes with
well-simulated grief to the Right Hon. Counsellor Hierome Buslyde, “as
touching the situation of the island, that is to say, in what part of
the world Utopia standeth, the ignorance and lack whereof not a little
troubleth and grieveth Master More”; but as he had allowed the
opportunity of ascertaining this important fact to slip by, so the like
uncertainty long after mystified current ideas regarding the new-found
world. Ere the “Flowers of the Forest” had been weeded away on Flodden
Hill, the philosophers and poets of the liberal court of James IV. of
Scotland had learned in some vague way of the recent discovery; and so
the Scottish poet, Dunbar, reflecting on the King’s promise of a
benefice still unfulfilled, hints in his poem “Of the world’s
instabilitie,” that even had it come “fra Calicut and the new-found
Isle” that lies beyond “the great sea-ocean, it might have comen in
shorter while.” Upwards of twenty years had passed since the return of
the great discoverer from his adventurous voyage; but the _Novus Orbis_
was then, and long afterwards continued to be, an insubstantial fancy;
for after nearly another twenty years had elapsed, Sir David Lindsay, in
his _Dreme_, represents Dame Remembrance as his guide and instructor in
all heavenly and earthly knowledge; and among the rest, he says:—

    She gart me clearly understand
    How that the Earth tripartite was in three;
    In Afric, Europe, and Asie;

the latter being in the Orient, while Africa and Europe still
constituted the Occident, or western world. Many famous isles situated
in “the ocean-sea” also attract his notice; but “the new-found isle” of
the elder poet had obviously faded from the memory of that younger
generation.

Another century had nearly run its course since the eye of Columbus
beheld the long-expected land, when, in 1590, Edmund Spenser crossed the
Irish Channel, bringing with him the first three books of his _Faerie
Queen_; in the introduction to the second of which he thus defends the
verisimilitude of that land of fancy in which the scenes of his “famous
antique history” are laid:—

        Who ever heard of th’ Indian Peru?
      Or who in venturous vessel measured
        The Amazon, huge river, now found true?
    Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever view?

      Yet all these were, when no man did them know,
        Yet have from wisest ages hidden been;
      And later times things more unknowne shall show.
        Why then should witless man so much misween
      That nothing is but that which he hath seen?
        What if within the moon’s fair shining sphere;
      What if in every other star unseen,
        Of other worlds he happily should hear?
    He wonder would much more; yet such to some appear.

Raleigh, the discoverer of Virginia, was Spenser’s special friend, his
“Shepherd of the Ocean,” the patron under whose advice the poet visited
England with the first instalment of the Epic, which he dedicated to
Queen Elizabeth, “to live with the eternity of her Fame.” Yet it is
obvious that to Spenser’s fancy this western continent was then scarcely
more substantial than his own Faerie land. In truth it was still almost
as much a world apart as if Raleigh and his adventurous crew had sailed
up the blue vault of heaven, and brought back the story of another
planet on which it had been their fortune to alight.

Nor had such fancies wholly vanished long after the voyage across the
Atlantic had become a familiar thing. It was in 1723 that the
philosophical idealist, Berkeley,—afterwards Bishop of
Cloyne,—formulated a more definite and yet not less visionary Utopia
than that of Sir Thomas More. He was about to organise “among the
English in our Western plantations” a seminary which was designed to
train the young American savages, make them Masters of Arts, and fit
instruments for the regeneration of their own people; while the new
Academy was to accomplish no less for the reformation of manners and
morals among his own race. In his fancy’s choice he gave a preference,
at first for Bermuda, or the Summer Islands, as the site of his college;
and “presents the bright vision of an academic home in those fair lands
of the West, whose idyllic bliss poets had sung, from which Christian
civilisation might be made to radiate over this vast continent with its
magnificent possibilities in the future history of the race of man.” It
was while his mind was preoccupied with this fine ideal “of planting
Arts and Learning in America” that he wrote the well-known lines:—

    There shall be sung another golden age,
      The rise of empire and of arts;
    The good and great inspiring epic rage,
      The wisest heads and noblest hearts.

    Not such as Europe breeds in her decay:
      Such as she bred when fresh and young,
    When heavenly flame did animate her clay,
      By future poets shall be sung.

    Westward the course of empire takes its way;
      The four first acts already past,
    A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
      Time’s noblest offspring is the last.

The visionary philosopher followed up his project so far as to transport
himself—not to the Summer Islands of which Waller had sung,—but to
that same Rhode Island which Danish and New England antiquaries were at
a later date to identify, whether rightly or not, as the Vinland of the
Icelandic Sagas. One of these ancient chroniclers had chanced to note
that, on the shortest day of the year in Vinland, they had the sun above
the horizon at _eykt_ and _dagmat_; that is at their regular evening and
morning meal. Like our own term breakfast, the names were significant
and allusive. The old Icelandic poet, Snorro Sturluson, author of the
Edda and the Sagas of the Norwegian Kings, has left on record that at
his Icelandic home eykt occurred at sunset on the first day of winter.
Professor Rafn hailed this old record as the key to the latitude of
Vinland. The Danish King, Frederick VI., sympathising in researches that
reflected back honour on their Norse ancestry, called in the aid of the
Astronomer Royal; and Professor Rafn felt authorised forthwith to
instruct the Rhode Island antiquaries that the latitude of the long-lost
Vinland was near Newport, in Narragansett Bay. Their response, with the
authenticating engravings of the world-famous Newport stone mill, and
the runes of Thorfinn on Dighton Rock, in Rafn’s learned quarto volume,
have been the source of many a later comment, both in prose and rhyme.

But all this lay in a still remote future when, in 1728, Berkeley landed
at Rhode Island with projects not unsuited to the dream of a Vinland the
Good, where a university was to be reared as a centre of culture and
regeneration for the aborigines of the New World. The indispensable
prerequisite of needful funds had been promised him by the English
Government; but the promised grant was never realised. Meanwhile he
bought a farm, the purposed site perhaps of his beneficent centre of
intellectual life for the Island state, and sojourned there for three
years in pleasant seclusion, leaving behind him kindly memories that
endeared him to many friends. He planned, if he did not realise many
goodly Utopias; speculated on space and time, and objective idealism;
and then bade farewell to Rhode Island, and to his romantic dream of
regenerated savages and a renovated world. Soon after his return home
the practical fruits of his quiet sojourn beyond the Atlantic appeared
in the form of his _Alciphron: or the Minute Philosopher_; in which, in
the form of a dialogue, he discusses the varied forms of speculative
scepticism, at the very period when Pope was embodying in his _Essay on
Man_ the brilliant, but superficial philosophy which constituted the
essence of thought for men of the world in his age. It is in antithesis
to such speculations that Berkeley there advances his own theory,
designed to show that all nature is the language of God, everywhere
giving expressive utterance to the Divine thought.

So long as the American continent lay half revealed in its vague
obscurity, as a new world lying beyond the Atlantic, and wholly apart
from the old, it seemed the fitting site for imaginary Vinlands,
Utopias, Summer Islands, and earthly paradises of all sorts: the scenes
of a realised perfectibility beyond the reach of Europe “in her decay.”
Nor was the refined metaphysical idealist the latest dreamer of such
dreams. In our own century, Southey, Coleridge, and the little band of
Bristol enthusiasts who planned their grand pantisocratic scheme of
intellectual communism, created for themselves, with like fertile fancy,
a Utopia of their own, “where Susquehana pours his untamed stream”; and
many a later dreamer has striven after like ideal perfectibility in
“peaceful Freedom’s undivided dale.”

-----

[4] Montgomery, James, _Greenland_, Canto IV.

[5] _Mem. des Antiq. du Nord_, N.S., 1888, p. 341.

[6] _The Finding of Wineland the Good_, p. 6.

[7] _The Finding of Wineland the Good: the History of the Icelandic
Discovery of America_, edited and translated from the earliest records,
by Arthur Middleton Reeves.

[8] _Vide_ Dr. Brinton, _Races and Peoples_, p. 215 note.

[9] Arthur Middleton Reeves, _Finding of Wineland the Good_, p. 28.




                                  III
                   TRADE AND COMMERCE IN THE STONE AGE


THE term “Stone Period” or “Stone Age” was suggested in the early years
of the present century by the antiquaries of Denmark as the fitting
designation of that primitive era in western Europe—with its
corresponding stage among diverse peoples in widely severed regions and
ages,—when the use of metals was unknown. That there was a period in
the history of the human race, before its Tubal-cains, Vulcans, Vœlands,
or other Smith-gods appeared, when man depended on stone, bone, ivory,
shells, and wood, for the raw material out of which to manufacture his
implements and weapons, is now universally admitted; and is confirmed by
the abundant disclosures of the drift and the caves. The simple, yet
highly suggestive classification, due to Thomsen of Copenhagen, was the
first scientific recognition of the fact, now established by evidence
derived from periods of vastly greater antiquity than the Neolithic age
of Denmark. The accumulated experience of many generations was required
before men mastered the useful service of fire in the smelting of ores
and the casting of metals. Nevertheless it seems probable that the
knowledge of fire, and its useful service on the domestic hearth, are
coeval with the existence of man as a rational being. The evidence of
its practical application to the requirements for warmth and cooking
carry us back to the age of cave implements, including some among the
earliest known examples of man’s tool-making industry. In connection
with this subject, Sir John Evans draws attention to some curious
indications of the antiquity of the use of flint by the
fire-producer.[10] He refers to the ingenious derivation of the word
_silex_ as given by Vincent of Beauvais, in the _Speculum Naturæ_,
“Silex est lapis durus, sic dictus eo quod ex eo ignis exsiliat,” and he
recalls a more remarkable reminiscence of the evoking of fire in the
Neolithic if not in the Palæolithic period. Pliny informs us (lib. vii.
cap. 56), that it was Pyrodes, the son of Cilix, who first devised the
way to strike fire out of flint; “A myth,” says Sir John Evans, “which
seems to point to the use of silex and pyrites (from πῦρ) rather than of
steel.” In reality the flint and pyrites lie together in the same lower
strata of the chalk. As the ancient flint-miners sunk their pits in
search of the levels where the flint abounds they would meet with
frequent nodules of pyrites. The first grand discovery of the
fire-producer may have resulted from the use of the pyrites as a mere
hammer-stone to break up the larger flints.

But whatever was the source of this all-important discovery, it dates
among the earliest manifestations of human intelligence. Nodules of iron
pyrites have been found in the caves of France and Belgium, among
remains pertaining to the Palæolithic age, and are among the most
interesting disclosures of the greatly more modern, though still
prehistoric age of the barrows and cairns of the Allophylian period of
Britain, and of Western Europe generally. Sir R. C. Hoare records the
finding, among the contents of a cinerary urn, in a Wiltshire barrow,
“chipped flints prepared for arrow heads, a long piece of flint, and a
_pyrites_, both evidently smoothed by usage.”[11] More recent explorers,
apprised of the significance of such discoveries, have noted the
presence of nodules of pyrites, accompanying the personal ornaments and
weapons occurring in graves of the same age: deposited there either as
tokens of regard, or more probably with a vague idea of their utility to
the dead in the life beyond the grave. In a communication to the Society
of Antiquaries of Scotland on a group of stone cists disclosed, in 1879,
on the farm of Teinside, Teviotdale, Lord Rosehill thus describes part
of the contents of one of them. “It was filled with dark-coloured earth,
mixed with charcoal; and closely intermingled in every part with
fragments of bones which had been exposed to the action of fire.” A
broken urn lay about ten inches from the top. “Close to the urn was a
rounded piece of metallic-looking substance, which appears to be
‘radiated iron pyrites,’ and which,” adds Lord Rosehill, “I have myself
discovered in several interments.”[12] More recently, in 1883, Major
Colin Mackenzie reported to the same Society the discovery of a cist and
urn in the Black Isle, Ross-shire.[13] He thus proceeds: “Whilst
gathering together the broken pieces of the urn, a round-nosed
flint-flake or scraper, chipped at the edges, was found amongst the
debris, and proved to have a bluish tinge, as if it had been subjected
to the action of fire. Close beside it there was found a round piece of
iron pyrites, flat on one side, in shape somewhat like the half of an
egg, divided lengthways, only smaller. Dr. Joseph Anderson at once
recognised this as forming, along with the solitary flint, nothing less
than a prehistoric ‘strike-light’ apparatus.”[14] No flint is procurable
in the locality; and after the closest search, no other flint implement
or flake was found on the site. In communicating this interesting
discovery to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Major Mackenzie
reviewed the disclosures of this class in Great Britain, so far as they
had been noted by Hoare, Borlase, Bateman, Greenwell and Evans,
furnishing a tabulated statement of eleven examples, chiefly found in
barrows, and ranging over an area extending from Cornwall to Ross-shire;
and to those additions have since been made. He draws attention to their
occurrence in localities which produce neither pyrites nor flint. But
with the former, at least, this need not surprise us. The prized and
easily transported pyrites may be looked for in any ancient barrow or
sepulchral deposit, and has probably in many cases passed unnoted before
its significance was understood. Now that this is fully appreciated, it
is seen to have been in use from the early stages of primitive art: the
very dawn of science; and doubtless the pyrites and flint found in
localities remote from those where they occur as natural products are in
most cases due to primitive barter.

The old Promethean myth represents the fire-bringer interposing on
behalf of a degraded race of beings whose helpless lot had been preceded
by the Hesiodic Golden, Silver, and Bronze ages, as well as by an Heroic
age of such demigods as the Titan son of Iapetus. By a reverse process
of evolution from the lower to higher stages, the anthropoid, or Caliban
of archæological science, becomes the tool-maker, the tool-user, and in
the same primitive stage, the fire-maker. But the service of fire is
required by man under the most varied conditions of life. The stone lamp
with its moss wick, and the stone kettle, are important implements in
the snow-hut of the Eskimo. On those he depends, not only for cooking,
but for his supply of water from melted snow; and without the lighted
taper of his stone lamp the indoor life of the long, unbroken Arctic
night would be passed in a rayless dungeon. He has inherited the
knowledge of the palæolithic fire-maker, from whom, indeed, some have
claimed for him direct genealogical descent; and he generally treasures
among his most useful appliances a piece of quartz, and a nodule of
pyrites, which constitute his flint and steel. At the remote extreme of
the southern continent the same precious bequest is in use by the
Fuegians and Patagonians of Tierra del Fuego, the name of which is a
memorial of its fire-using savages. The Fuegian makes a hearth of clay
in the bottom of his rudely constructed bark canoe, on which he
habitually keeps a fire burning. He prepares a tinder of dried moss or
fungus, which is readily ignited by the spark struck from a flinty stone
by means of a pyrites. The invaluable discovery is shared by the lowest
races. The Australian, the Andaman Islander, and other rudest tribes of
the Old and the New World, have mastered the same great secret, and turn
it to useful account.

The tradition may have been perpetuated from generation to generation
from the remotest dawn of human reason, or it may have been rediscovered
independently among diverse races. But wherever the value of the pyrites
in evoking the latent spark of the flint was known, it would be a
coveted prize and a valuable object of barter. The story of the old
fire-makers is recorded still in the charcoal ashes of many an ancient
hearth; for charcoal is one of the most indestructible of substances
when buried. In the famous Kent’s Hole limestone cavern at Torbay,
Devonshire, explorers have systematically pursued research backward from
the specifically dated stalagmitic record of “Robert Hodges, of Ireland,
Feb. 20, 1688,” through Saxon, Roman, British, and Neolithic strata, to
the deposit where human remains lay embedded alongside of those of the
woolly rhinoceros, the mammoth, the fossil horse, the hyæna and
cave-bear. There also lay, not only the finished implements, but the
flakes and flint cores that revealed the workshop of the primitive
tool-maker, and the charcoal that preserved the traces of his ancient
fire. So, too, in the Cromagnon rock-shelter of the Perigord, in an
upper valley of the Garonne, repeated layers of charcoal, interspersed
with broken bones and other culinary remains of the ancient
cave-dwellers, tell of the knowledge and use of fire in western Europe’s
Reindeer and Mammoth ages by palæolithic man. Compared with such
disclosures of primeval arts, the discoveries on which the Danish
archæologists based their systematising of prehistoric remains belong,
geologically speaking, to modern eras. Denmark is underlaid essentially
by Upper Cretaceous rocks, the _Etage Danien_ of most French writers,
and the _Faxoe Kelke_ of German geologists. Drift clays and gravels
overlie the cretaceous rocks in many places, with more recent deposits
of sands, gravels, etc. These latter are of Neolithic age, containing
bones only of existing mammals. Palæolithic deposits, with bones of
extinct species, do not appear to have been recognised in Denmark; nor
is there any trace of the presence of palæolithic man. Hence the field
alike of Danish antiquarian research and of archæological speculation
was greatly circumscribed. But thus precluded from the study of
primitive arts in that vague palæolithic dawn which lies outside of the
speculations of the historian, and beyond resort to classical
authorities for evidence in the interpretation of local disclosures, the
Danish antiquary escaped the temptation to many misleading assumptions
which long perplexed the archæologists of France and England; and so his
limited range has tended to facilitate the investigations into
subsequent disclosures relative to an ampler antiquity of man and his
arts.

Within the old Roman provinces of Western Europe, the Latin conquerors
were not only accredited with whatever showed any trace of Hellenic or
Roman art, but with the sole skill in working in iron. The Dane and
Northman were assumed to have followed in their wake with bronze, as
with runes and other essentially non-classical products; though still
the beautiful leaf-shaped sword and other choicest relics of the Bronze
age were not infrequently ascribed to the Romans. But philologists had
not yet assigned a place to the Celtic in the Aryan family of languages.
The Celt was not only assumed to be the barbarous precursor, alike of
Roman and Dane, but to be the primeval man of Western Europe. Hence when
the first hoards of palæolithic flint implements were accidentally
discovered in Sussex and Kent, their Celtic or British origin was
assumed without question. But the known historic position of the
Northman on Scandinavian soil prevented the crude application of the
term “Danish” to every bronze relic found there; and as no Roman
conqueror had trodden the soil of Denmark, the ethnology as well as the
archæology of the region was left unaffected by misleading complexities
that resulted from the presence of the Romans in Gaul and Britain. The
absence of remains of palæolithic man still further simplified the
problem; while the geology of the Danish peninsula favoured the
neolithic tool-maker. Flint abounds there in amorphous nodules or
blocks, and the nuclei, or cores, from which a succession of flakes have
been struck, are of frequent occurrence among the relics of the Danish
Stone age. Flint is no less abundant throughout the regions of France
and England on either side of the English Channel; and there,
accordingly, alike in the caves and the river-drift, the rude, massive
flint implements of the Palæolithic era abound.

The natural cleavage of flint, as also of the obsidian found in volcanic
localities in the Old and New World, so readily adapts both materials to
the manufacture of knives, lances, and arrow heads, that they appear to
have been turned to account by the tool-maker from the dawn of rudest
art. But it must not be overlooked that obsidian is limited to volcanic
regions, and flint is no more universally available than bronze or iron.
In some countries it is rare; in still more it is entirely wanting; and
yet its peculiar aptitude for tool-making appears to have been
recognised at the earliest period; so that implements and weapons of
flint, alike of the Palæolithic and the Neolithic age, abound in many
localities where the raw material of the tool-maker is unknown.

It was only natural that the systematic study and classification of the
manufactures of the ancient workers in flint should be first carried out
in regions such as the Danish peninsula, geologically related to the
Cretaceous period, and abounding in the material which most readily
adapts itself to the requirements of an implement-maker ignorant of the
arts of metallurgy. But the same inexhaustible store of raw material was
available to the “Flint-folk,” whose implements have become so familiar
by reason of more recent disclosures, of France and England, belonging
to a period when the climate, the physical geography, and the whole
animal life of Western Europe, contrasted in every respect with anything
we have knowledge of in remotest historic times. Those rude examples of
primitive art lie alongside of the unwrought flint in such profusion
that the examples of them already accumulated in the museums of Europe
and America amount to many thousands. But now that attention has been
thus widely drawn to their character and significance, it is found that
implements of the same class not only abound in regions geologically
favourable to their production, but they occur in nearly every country
in Europe, and on widely scattered localities in Asia and Africa, where
no such natural resources were available for their manufacture.

The earliest known type of primitive flint implements, illustrative of a
class now very familiar to archæologists, was accidentally recovered
from the quaternary gravel beds of the Thames valley, in the heart of
Old London, before the close of the seventeenth century. It is a
well-made spear-pointed implement, with an unusually tapering point,
while the butt-end is broad and roughly fashioned, so that it could be
used in the hand without any haft as a spade or hoe. The deposit in
which it lay would now be accepted as unquestionable evidence of its
Palæocosmic age; but at the date of its discovery, the Celtic era was
regarded as that to which all oldest traces of European man pertained.
This interesting relic is accordingly described in the Sloane Catalogue
of the British Museum as “a British weapon, found with elephant’s tooth,
opposite to Black Mary’s, near Gray’s Inn Lane.” In 1797, another and
highly interesting discovery of the same class was communicated to the
Society of Antiquaries of London by one of its members, Mr. John
Frere.[15] In this case a large number of palæoliths were found lying at
a depth of twelve feet from the surface, in a gravelly soil containing
fresh-water shells and bones of great size. Subsequent excavations in
the same locality, at Hoxne, Suffolk, confirm the presence there of the
bones of the mammoth, as well as of the fossil horse and the deer. Mr.
Frere was so strongly impressed with the evidence of antiquity that he
inclined to assign the implements to a remote age, “even beyond that of
the present world.” By this, however, he probably meant no more than M.
Boucher de Perthes, when, so recently as 1847, he entitled his volume
devoted to the corresponding discoveries in the valley of the Somme,
_Antiquités Celtiques et Antédiluviennes_. The antiquity of man, as now
understood, was then unthought of; and the word “antediluvian” sufficed
as a vague expression of remote indefinite antiquity for which
pre-Celtic would then have been accepted as an equivalent. Mr. Frere
speaks of the flint implements as “evidently weapons of war fabricated
and used by a people who had not the use of metals.” He further adds:
“The manner in which they lie would lead to the persuasion that it was a
place of their manufacture, and not of their accidental deposit; and the
numbers of them were so great that the man who carried on the brick-work
told me that before he was aware of their being objects of curiosity he
had emptied baskets full of them into the ruts of the adjoining
road.”[16]

When, in December 1886, Mr. J. Allan Brown communicated to the same
Society an analogous discovery near Ealing, Middlesex, English
archæologists had become so familiar with the idea of the antiquity of
palæolithic man, and the arts of his epoch, that the existence of
pre-Celtic races in Britain was accepted as a mere truism. It was not,
therefore, any matter of surprise to be told of the discovery of a
palæolithic workshop floor of the Drift period, near Ealing. It lay
about a hundred feet above the present bed of the Thames; and here, six
feet below the surface, on an ancient sloping bank of the river, an area
of about forty feet square disclosed nearly six hundred unabraded worked
flints, including neatly finished spear heads from five to six inches in
length. Alongside of these lay roughly wrought axes, chipped on one or
both sides to a cutting edge, and some of them unfinished. There were
also flint flakes, some with serrated edges, and well-finished knives,
borers, drills, chisels, etc. Waste flakes and chippings, as well as
cores, or partially worked blocks of flint, were also observed in
sufficient numbers to leave no doubt that here, in the place of their
manufacture, lay buried beneath the accumulations of unnumbered
centuries industrial products of the skilled artizans of the British
Islands contemporary with the long-extinct quaternary fauna.[17]

The types of flint implements, found at Hoxne in 1797, correspond to
other palæoliths recovered from rolled gravel and clay of the glacial
drift in the valleys of the Thames, the Somme, and the Seine. In their
massive and artless rudeness they seem to realise for us some fit ideal
of the primitive fabricator in his first efforts at tool-making. But the
Ealing find accords with the more extended discoveries of this class. In
reality, the manufactures of palæolithic man, as a whole, are less
artless than many examples of modern Indian flint-work. Not a few of the
stone axes have had their shape determined by that of the water-worn
stones out of which they were fashioned, and so required much less skill
than was necessarily expended in chipping the flint nodule into the
rudest of pointed implements. Any close-grained rock, admitting of
grinding and polish, was available for fashioning the larger weapons and
domestic implements, alike among the men of the Neolithic age and the
native races of the American continent in modern centuries. For many of
the simpler requirements of the tool-user, any apt stone chip or
water-worn pebble sufficed; and scarcely anything can be conceived of
more rude or artless than some of the stone weapons and implements in
use among savage tribes at the present day. Professor Joseph Leidy
describes a scraper employed by the Shoshone Indians in dressing
buffalo-skins, consisting of a thin segment of quartzite, so devoid of
manipulative skill that, he says, had he noticed it among the strata of
indurated clays and sandstone, instead of seeing it in actual use, he
would have regarded it as an accidental spawl.[18] Dr. Charles C.
Abbott, in his _Primitive Industry of the Native Races_, furnishes
illustrations of pointed flakes, or arrow tips, triangular arrow heads,
spear heads, and other stone implements, only a little less rude and
shapeless.[19] Of a similar character is the blade of a war-club in use
among the Indians of the Rio Frio, in Texas.[20] Nothing so rude has
been ascribed to artificial origin among the disclosures of the drift,
though corresponding implements may have escaped notice; for were it not
that the chipped piece of trachyte of the Texas war-club is inserted in
a wooden haft of unmistakable human workmanship, the blade would
scarcely suggest the idea of artificial origin. Mere rudeness,
therefore, is no certain evidence of the first artless efforts of man to
furnish himself with tools.

Until we arrive at the period of neolithic art, with its perforated
hammers, grooved axes, net-sinkers, gouges, adzes, and numerous other
ground and polished implements, fashioned of granite, diorite, trap, and
other igneous rocks, the forms of implements are few and simple,
dependent to a large extent on the natural cleavage of the flint. The
commoner examples of neolithic art, recovered in thousands from ancient
Scandinavian, Gaulish, and British graves, from the lake-dwellings of
Switzerland, the Danish and British shell mounds, the peat mosses of
Denmark and Ireland, and from numerous other depositories of prehistoric
industrial art, are scarcely distinguishable from the flint knives,
scrapers, spears, and arrow heads, or the chisels and axes, manufactured
by the American Indians at the present day. The material available in
certain localities, such as the claystone of the Haida and Babeen
Indians, and the argillite of the old implement-makers of New Jersey,
the obsidian of Mexico, or the quartz, jasper, and greenstone of many
Canadian centres, give a specific character to the implements of the
various regions; but, on the whole, the arts of the Stone period of the
most diverse races and eras present striking analogies, scarcely less
suggestive of the operation of a tool-making instinct than the work of
the nest-builders, or the ingenious art of the beaver. But the massive
and extremely rude implements of the river-drift and caves present
essentially different types, controlled indeed, like the productions of
later artificers, by the natural cleavage and other essential properties
of the material in which the flint-worker wrought, but with some
characteristic differences, suggestive of habits and conditions of life
in which the artificer of the Mammoth or Reindeer period differed from
the tool-maker of Europe’s Neolithic age, or the Indian savage of modern
centuries.

The tool-bearing drift-gravel of France and England presents its relics
of primitive art intermingled with countless amorphous unwrought flints.
Both have been subjected to the violent action of floods, to which the
present condition of such geological deposits is due; and many contents
of the caves, though subjected to less violence, are the results of
similar causes. But, along with numerous implements of the rude drift
type, the sheltered recesses of the caves have preserved, not only the
smaller and more delicate flint implements, but carefully wrought tools
and weapons of bone, horn, and ivory. Some, at least, of those
undoubtedly belong to the Palæolithic age, and therefore tend to verify
conclusions, not only as to the mechanical ingenuity, but also as to the
intellectual capacity of the earliest tool-makers. The large almond and
tongue-shaped flint implements are so massive as to have effectually
resisted the violence to which they, along with other contents of the
rolled gravels in which they occur, were subjected; whereas it is only
in the favouring shelter of the caves, or in rare primitive sepulchral
deposits, that delicate trimmed flakes and the more perishable
implements of bone and ivory, or horn, have escaped destruction.

The palæolithic implements to which Boucher de Perthes directed
attention so early as 1840, were recovered from drift-gravel beds, where
amorphous flint nodules, both whole and fractured, abound in countless
numbers; and this tended to suggest very reasonable doubts as to the
artificial origin of the rude implements lying in close proximity to
them. Nor was this incredulity lessened by the significance assigned by
him to other contents of the same drift-gravel. For so far was Boucher
de Perthes from overlooking the endless variety of fractured pieces of
flint recoverable from the drift beds, that his narrative is
supplemented by a series of plates of _L’Industrie Primitive_, the
larger number of which present chipped flints so obviously the mere
products of accidental fracture or of weathering, that they contributed
in no slight degree to discredit the book on its first appearance.
Others of them, however, show true flakes, scrapers, and fragments
probably referable to smaller implements of the same class, such as
would be recognised without hesitation as of artificial origin if found
alongside of undoubted flint implements in a cave deposit, or in any
barrow, cist, or sepulchral urn. In so far as they belong to the true
Drift, and not to the Neolithic or the Gallo-Roman period, they tend to
confirm the idea that the large almond and tongue-shaped implements are
not the sole relics of palæolithic art.

But now that adequate attention has been given to the stone implements
of the Drift-folk, or the men of the Mammoth and Reindeer ages, it
becomes apparent that they are by no means limited to such localities.
On the contrary, sites of native manufactories of flint implements, with
abundant remains of the fractured debris of the ancient tool-makers’
workshop, some of which are described on a later page, have been
discovered remote from any locality where the raw material could be
procured. Until the gun flint was superseded by the percussion cap, the
material for its manufacture was procured by sinking shafts through the
chalk until the beds of flint suited for the purpose were reached. In
this the modern flint-worker only repeated the practice of the primitive
tool-maker. A group of ancient flint pits at Cissbury, near Worthing,
has been brought into prominent notice by the systematic explorations of
Colonel A. Lane Fox. They occur in and around one of the aboriginal
hill-forts of Sussex, the name of which has been connected with Cissa,
the son of Ella, who is referred to by Camden as “Saxon king of those
parts.” But any occupation of the old hill-fort as a Saxon stronghold
belongs to very recent times when compared with that of the
flint-workers, whose pits have attracted the notice of modern explorers.
Colonel Lane Fox describes Cissbury Hill Fort as a great flint arsenal.
Here within its earthen ramparts the workmen who fashioned the arms of
the Stone age excavated for the beds of native flint in the underlying
chalk, and industriously worked it into every variety of weapon. “In one
place a collection of large flakes might be seen, where evidently the
first rough outline of a flint implement had been formed. In another
place a quantity of small flakes showed where a celt had been brought to
perfection by minute and careful chipping.”[21] In other excavations the
pounders, or stone hammers, were found, with a smooth rounded end by
which they were held in the hand, and the other bruised and fractured in
the manufacture of the flint implements that abound on the same
site.[22] Twenty-five pits were explored; and from these hundreds of
worked flints were recovered in every stage of workmanship: chips,
flakes, cores, balls, and finished knives; drills, scrapers, spear
heads, and axes or celts. In fact, Colonel Lane Fox sums up his general
statement of details with the remark that “Cissbury has produced
specimens of nearly every type known to have been found among flint
implements, from the Drift and Cave up to the Surface period.”[23] But
this “Woolwich” of the flint age occupied an altogether exceptional
position, with the raw material immediately underlying the military
enclosure, not improbably constructed on purpose to defend the primitive
arsenal and workshop, and so render its garrison independent of all
foreign supplies.

Other flint pits point to the labours of the industrious miner, and the
probable transport of the raw material to distant localities where the
prized flint could only be procured from traders, who bartered it for
other needful supplies. An interesting group of flint pits of this
latter class has been subjected to careful exploration by the Rev. Canon
Greenwell, with the ingenious inference already noted, of the traces of
a left-handed workman among the flint-miners of the Neolithic age. This
was based on the relative position and markings of two picks fashioned
from the antlers of the red deer, corresponding to others of the ancient
miners’ tools found scattered through the long-deserted shafts and
galleries of the flint pits.

The shallow depressions on the surface, which guide the explorer to
those shafts of the ancient workmen, are analogous to others that reveal
the funnel-shaped excavations hereafter described, on Flint Ridge, the
sites of ancient flint pits of the American arrow-makers. In France,
Germany, and Switzerland, as well as in Great Britain, many localities
are no less familiar, on which the refuse flakes, and chippings of flint
and other available material, show where they have been systematically
fashioned into implements. The Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland has acquired numerous interesting additions to its collections
of objects of this class by encouraging systematic research. From the
sands at Colvin and Findhorn, Morayshire; Little Ferry, Sutherlandshire;
and from Burghhead, Drainie, and Culbin sands, Elginshire, nearly seven
thousand specimens have been recovered, consisting chiefly of flint
flakes and chippings; but also including several hundred arrow heads,
knives, and scrapers, many of them unfinished or broken.

Thus, in various localities, remote from native sources of flint, a
systematic manufacture of implements appears to have been carried on.
There can, therefore, be scarcely any hesitation in inferring, from the
evidence adduced, first a trade in the raw material brought from the
distant localities of the flint mines; and then a local traffic in the
manufactured implements, as was undoubtedly the case among the American
aborigines at no remote date. This aspect of primitive interchange, both
of the raw material and the products of industrial skill, in so far as
it is illustrated in the practice of the American Indian tribes, merits
the most careful study, as a help to the interpretation of the
archæological evidence pertaining to prehistoric times. To the
superficial observer, stone is of universal occurrence; and it seems,
therefore, needless to inquire where the implement-maker of any Stone
age procured the rough block out of which he fashioned his weapon or
tool. Only when copper, bronze, and iron superseded the crude material
of the Stone age has it been supposed to be needful to determine the
sources of supply. But that is a hasty and wholly incorrect surmise. The
untutored savage is indeed greatly limited in his choice of materials.
We are familiar with the shell-workers of the Caribbees and the Pacific
Islands, and the horn and ivory workers of Arctic regions; but where the
resources of an ample range could be turned to account, the primitive
workman learned at a very early date to select by preference such stones
as break with a conchoidal fracture. Only where such could not be had,
the most available chance-fractured chip or the apt water-worn stone was
turned to account. Rude implements are accordingly met with fashioned of
trap, sienite, diorite, granite, and other igneous rocks, as well as
from quartzite, agate, jasper, serpentine, and slate. Some of those
materials were specially favoured by the neolithic workmen for certain
classes of their carefully finished weapons and implements, such as
perforated hammers, large axes, gouges, and chisels. But the natural
cleavage of the flint, and the sharp edge exposed by every fracture,
adapt it for fashioning the smaller knives, lance and arrow heads, in a
way no other material except obsidian equals. Hence flint appears to
have been no less in request among ancient tool-makers than copper, tin,
and iron in the later periods of metallurgic art.

The fact that tin is a metal of rare occurrence, though found in nearly
inexhaustible quantities in some regions, has given a peculiar
significance to certain historical researches, apart from the special
interest involved in the processes of the primitive metallurgist, and
the widely diffused traces of workers in bronze. The comparative rarity
of flint, and its total absence in many localities, suggest a like
inquiry into the probable sources of its supply in regions remote from
its native deposits. The flint lance or arrow head, thrown by an enemy,
or wrested from the grasp of a vanquished foe, would, as in the case of
improved weapons of war in many a later age, first introduce the prized
material to the notice of less favoured tribes. As the primitive
tool-maker learned by experience the greater adaptability of flint than
of most other stones for the manufacture of his weapons and implements,
it may be assumed that it became an object of barter in localities
remote from those where it abounds; and thus, by its diffusion, it may
have constituted a recognised form of _pecunia_ ages before the barter
of pastoral tribes gave rise to the peculiar significance attached to
that term.

One piece of confirmatory evidence of trade in unwrought flint is the
frequent occurrence of numerous flint flakes among the prized gifts
deposited with the dead. Canon Greenwell describes, among the contents
of a Yorkshire barrow in the parish of Ganton, a deposit of flint flakes
and chippings numbering one hundred and eighteen, along with a few
finished scrapers and arrow heads;[24] and smaller deposits of like kind
are repeatedly noted by him. Still more, he describes their occurrence
under circumstances which suggest the probability of the scattering of
flint flakes, like an offering of current coin, by the mourners, as the
primitive grave was covered in and the memorial mound piled over the
sacred spot. Flints and potsherds, he says, occur more constantly, and
even more abundantly than bones; and this presents to his mind a
difficult problem, in considering which he refers to an analogous
practice of a very diverse age. The maimed rites at poor Ophelia’s grave
are familiar to the reader of _Hamlet_. The priest replies to the demand
of Laertes for more ample ceremony at his sister’s burial:—

          But that great command o’ersways the order,
    She should in ground unsanctified have lodged
    Till the last trumpet; for charitable prayers,
    Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her.

The flints and potsherds, Canon Green well remarks, “occur at times in
very large quantities, the flints generally in the shape of mere
chippings and waste pieces, but often as manufactured articles, such as
arrow points, knives, saws, drills and scrapers, etc.” He further notes
that they are found distributed throughout the sepulchral mound, “in
some instances in such quantities as to suggest the idea that the
persons who were engaged in throwing up the barrow, scattered them from
time to time during the process.” Assuredly whatever motive actuated
those who contributed such objects while the sepulchral mound was in
progress of erection, they were not designed as any slight to the manes
of the dead. In districts remote from those where the flint abounds,
flakes and chips of the prized material must have been in constant
demand to replenish the sheaf of arrows, and replace the lost or broken
lance, knife, and scraper. The trader would barter the raw material for
furs and other equivalents, or the industrious miner would carry off an
adequate supply for his own future use. Such small objects, possessing a
universally appreciable value, would be as available for current change
as the African cowrie, the Ioqua shells of the Pacific coast, or the
wampum-beads of the tribes to the east of the Rocky Mountains. If this
assumption be correct, the scattering of flint flakes, while the mound
was being piled over the grave, was a form of largess not less
significant than any later tribute of reverence to the dead.

The sources whence such supplies of raw material of the old flint-worker
were derived, have been sufficiently explored to furnish confirmatory
evidence of some, at least, of the deductions suggested by other
indications thus far noted. The archæologists of Europe are now familiar
with many localities which have been the quarries and workshops, as well
as the settled abodes, of palæolithic and neolithic man; nor are such
unknown in America, though research has to be greatly extended before
definite conclusions can be accepted relative to the earliest presence
of man on the western continent. Flint and stone implements of every
variety of form, and nearly every degree of rudeness, abound in the soil
of the New World. But in estimating the true significance of such
evidence, it has to be borne in remembrance that its indigenous
population has not even now abandoned the arts of their Stone period.
Implements have already been referred to still in use among the
Shoshone, Texas, and other living tribes, ruder than any yet recovered
from the river-drift of France or England; whilst others, more nearly
resembling the palæolithic types of Europe, have been met with, some of
them imbedded in the rolled gravels, or glacial drift, and associated
with bones of the mastodon and other fossil mammals. But the evidence as
to palæolithic origin has been, at best, doubtful. An imperfect flint
knife, now in the Museum of the University of Toronto, was recovered
from a depth of upwards of fourteen feet, among rolled gravel and
gold-bearing quartz of the Grinnel Leads in Kansas Territory. Flint
implements from the auriferous gravel of California were produced at the
Paris Exposition of 1855. According to the Geological Survey of Illinois
for 1866, stone axes and flint spear heads were obtained from a bed of
local drift near Alton, underlying the loess, and at the same depth as
bones of the mastodon. Similar discoveries have been repeatedly noted in
Southern States. The river Chattahoochee, in Georgia, in its course down
the Nacoochee valley, flows through a rich auriferous region. Explorers
in search for gold have made extensive cuttings through the underlying
drift-gravel, down to the slate rock upon which it rests; and during one
of these excavations, at a depth of nine feet, intermingled with the
gravel and boulders of the drift, three large implements were found,
nearly resembling the rude flint hatchets of the drift type. Examples of
this class, however, though repeatedly noted, have been too isolated to
admit of their use for any such comprehensive inductions as the
disclosures of the glacial drift of north-western Europe have justified.
The evidence hitherto adduced, when implements of this class have been
of flint, has failed to establish their palæolithic age, notwithstanding
their recovery from ancient gravels. Implements of flint occur in great
abundance throughout vast areas of the American continent. With the fact
before us that even now the Stone period of its aborigines has not
wholly passed away, careful observation is required in determining the
probable age of stray specimens buried even at considerable depths.

But disclosures of an actual American implement-bearing drift appear at
length to have been met with in the valley of the Delaware. These show
the primitive tool-maker resorting to a granular argillite, the cleavage
of which adapted itself to the requirements of his rude art. Professor
Shaler, in a report on the age of the Delaware gravel beds, describes
this formation as occurring from Virginia northward to Labrador, though
it is only in New Jersey and Delaware that the accompanying evidences of
human art have been thus far recovered. The New Jersey drift is made up
of transported material, including boulders and smaller fragments of
granitic, hypogene, sandstone, and limestone rocks, along with
water-worn pebbles of the same granular argillite as the characteristic
stone implements recovered from it, to which, from their peculiar shape,
the name of “turtle-back celts” has been given. There is little true
clay in the deposit to give coherence to the mass. The type of pebble is
subovate, or discoidal, suggesting its form to be due to the action of
running water; and it seems probable that the stone was not quarried out
of the living rock, but that the pebbles thus reduced to a convenient
form were turned to account by the tool-maker. The researches of Dr.
Abbott have been rewarded by the discovery in the drift-gravel of
numerous examples of this peculiar type of implement, for which the one
material appears to have been used, notwithstanding the varied contents
of the drift-gravel in which they occur. As in the case of the French
and English river-drift, the fractured material is found in every stage
of disintegration. Professor Shaler says: “Along with the
perfect-looking implements figured by Dr. Abbott, which are apparently
as clearly artificial as the well-known remains of the valley of the
Somme, there are all grades of imperfect fragments, down to the pebbles
that are without a trace of chipping.” But more recent discoveries in
the Delaware valley point to remains of a still earlier age than those
described by Dr. Abbott. These naturally attracted attention to the
region; for there, for the first time, the American archæologist saw a
promise of disclosures corresponding in character to those of the
European drift-gravels. A systematic and prolonged series of
investigations accordingly carried out by Mr. Hilborne T. Cresson, under
the direction of the Peabody Museum, have resulted in fresh disclosures
of early American man. The Naaman’s Creek rock-shelter, carefully
explored by him, is situated in the State of Delaware, immediately to
the south of Mason and Dixon’s line. There in underlying deposits,
claimed to be of Post-Glacial age, rudely chipped points and other
implements, all of argillite, were found; and at a higher level, others
of argillite, but intermingled with bone implements, and fragments of
rude pottery, and alongside of these, implements fashioned of quartzite
and jasper. The antiquity assigned to the Delaware implements, as
determined by the age of the tool-bearing gravel, is much greater than
that of the Trenton gravels previously referred to; but though remains
of fifteen different species of animals, including fragments of a human
skull, were recovered from the cave or rock-shelter, they include none
but existing fauna. But the evidence of antiquity is based most
confidently on the discovery of palæoliths _in situ_ in the true
Philadelphia red gravel. Professor G. F. Wright remarks, in discussing
the relative ages of the Trenton and Philadelphia red gravel, that both
he and Professor Lewis came to the same conclusion: assigning the
deposition of the red gravel to a period when the ice had its greatest
extension, and when there was considerable local depression of the land.
“During this period of greatest ice-extension and depression, the
Philadelphia Red Gravel and Brick Clay were deposited by the ice-laden
floods which annually poured down the valley in the summer season. As
the ice retreated towards the headwaters of the valley, the period was
marked also by a re-elevation of the land to about its present height,
when the later deposits of gravel at Trenton took place. Dr. Abbott’s
discoveries at Trenton prove the presence of man on the continent at
that stage of the Glacial epoch. Mr. Cresson’s discoveries prove the
presence of man at a far earlier stage. How much earlier will depend
upon our interpretation of the general facts bearing on the question of
the duality of the Glacial epoch,”[25]—a branch of the inquiry which it
is not necessary to discuss here. It is sufficient to note that this
argillite—an altogether inferior material to the flint, or hornstone of
later tool-makers,—appears, thus far, to be a characteristic feature of
American palæolithic art. The locality of the native rock is still
undetermined; but implements fashioned of it have been found in great
numbers along the escarpments facing the river Delaware. Professor
Shaler describes the material as a curious granular argillite, the like
of which, he says, “I do not know in place.” Should the native rock be
hereafter identified, with traces of the manufactured celts in its
vicinity, it may help to throw light on the age and history of the
primitive American implement-makers.

The flint of the cretaceous deposits does not occur in America. True
chalk is all but unknown among the cretaceous strata of the continent,
although it has been found in the form of a somewhat extensive bed in
Western Kansas. In Texas, the cretaceous limestones contain in places
hornstone nodules distributed through them, like the flint nodules in
the upper chalk beds of Europe. But though, so far, differing in origin,
the hornstone and flint are practically identical; and the chert, or
hornstone, which abounds in the chert-layers of the corniferous
formation, of common occurrence in Canada, is simply a variety of flint,
consisting essentially, like the substance to which that name is
specifically applied, of amorphous silica, and with a similar cleavage.
This Devonian formation is made up chiefly of limestone strata, parted
in many places by layers of chert which vary in thickness from half an
inch to three or four inches. The limestones are more or less
bituminous, and frequently contain chert nodules. Most of their fossils
are silicified. The formation underlies a considerable portion of
South-western Ontario. Out-crops occur at Port Dover, Port Colborne,
Kincardine, Woodstock, St. Mary’s, and other localities. At a point
which I have explored more than once near Port Dover, implements occur
in considerable numbers, along with fractured or imperfect specimens,
mingled with flakes and chippings, evidently indicative of a spot where
their manufacture was carried on. At this, and some others of the
localities here named, Canadian flint pits may be looked for. Among
other objects illustrative of primitive native arts in the Museum of the
University of Toronto, is a block of flint or brown chert, from which
flakes have been struck off for the use of the native arrow-maker. This
flint core was found in a field on Paisley Block, in Guelph Township,
along with a large flake, a scraper, and fourteen arrow heads of various
sizes, all made from the same material. Alongside of them lay a flint
hammer-stone bearing marks of long use. All of those objects are now in
the University Museum, and appear to indicate the site of an aboriginal
workshop, with one of the tools of the ancient arrow-maker, who there
fashioned his implements and weapons, and traded with them to supply the
need of the old Huron or Petun Indians of Western Canada. The Spider
Islands in Lake Winnipeg, near its outlet, have been noted by Dr. Robert
Bell, as a favourite resort of the old workers in flint, where they
could trade the products of their industry with parties of Indians
passing in their canoes. “I have found,” he says, “a considerable number
of new flint implements, all of one pattern, in a grave near one of
those sites of an old factory”; the body of a man—presumably the old
arrow-maker,—had been buried there in a sitting posture, surrounded
with the latest products of his industrious skill.

In 1875 I devoted several weeks to a careful study of some of the
principal groups of ancient earthworks in the Ohio valley, and visited
Flint Ridge to examine a group of native flint pits in the old Shawnee
territory. The Shawnees were formerly a numerous and powerful tribe of
Indians; but they took part, in 1763, in the conspiracy of Pontiac, and
were nearly exterminated in a battle fought in the vicinity of their old
quarries. From these it is probable that the older race of
Mound-Builders of the Ohio valley procured the material from which they
manufactured many of their implements, including some of those used in
the construction of their great earthworks.

Flint Ridge, as the locality is called, a siliceous deposit of the
Carboniferous age, extends through the State of Ohio, from Newark to New
Lexington. It has been worked at various points in search of the prized
material; and the ancient pits can still be recognised over an extensive
area by the funnel-shaped hollows, or slighter depressions where the
accumulated vegetable mould of many winters has nearly effaced the
traces of the old miners. The chert, or hornstone, of this locality
accords with that from which the implements recovered from the mounds
appear to have been chiefly made. One fact which such disclosures place
beyond doubt, namely, that the so-called Mound-Builders had not advanced
beyond the stage of flint or stone implements, is of great significance.
Their numbers are proved by the extent of their earthworks in many
localities in the Ohio valley; and the consequent supply of implements
needed by them as builders must have involved a constant demand for the
flint-miners and tool-makers. The great earthworks at Newark are among
the most extensive structures of this class, covering an area of several
miles, and characterised by the perplexing element of elaborate
geometrical figures, executed on a gigantic scale by a people still in
the primitive stage of stone implements, and yet giving proof of skill
fully equalling, in the execution of their geometrical designs, that of
the scientific land-surveyor. On this special aspect of the question, it
may be well to revert to notes written immediately after a careful
survey of the Newark earthworks, so as to suggest more clearly their
extent and the consequent number of workmen and of tools in demand for
their execution. The sacred enclosures have to be classed apart from the
military works of the Mound-Builders. Their elaborate fortifications
occupy isolated heights specially adapted for defence, whereas the broad
river-terraces have been selected for their religious works. There, on
the great unbroken levels, they form groups of symmetrical enclosures,
square, circular, elliptical, and octagonal, connected by long parallel
avenues, suggesting analogies with the British Avebury, the Breton
Carnac, or even with the temples and sphinx-avenues of the Egyptian
Karnak and Luxor; but all wrought of earth, with the simple tools made
from quartzite, chert, or hornstone, derived from quarries and flint
pits, such as those of Flint Ridge, the localities of which have been
identified.

For a time the tendency among American archæologists was to exaggerate
the antiquity of those works, and to overestimate the artistic skill of
their builders. But it now appears that some vague memories of the race
have been perpetuated. The traditions of the Delawares preserved the
remembrance of the Talligew or Tallegewi, a powerful nation whose
western borders extended to the Mississippi, over whom they, in
conjunction with the fierce warrior race of Wyandots or Iroquois,
triumphed. The old name of the Mound-Builders is believed to survive, in
modified form, in that of the Alleghany Mountains and River; and the
Chatta-Muskogee tribes, including the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and
other southern Indians of the same stock, are supposed to represent the
ancient race. The broad fertile region stretching southward from the
Appalachian Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico must have attracted settlers
from earliest times. It was latterly occupied by various tribes of this
Chatta-Muskogee stock; but intermingled with others speaking essentially
different languages, and supposed to be the descendants of the older
occupants of the region on whom the Tallegewi intruded when driven out
of the Ohio valley. The Cherokees preserved a tradition of having come
from the upper Ohio. They have been classed by the Washington
ethnologists as a distant branch of the Iroquois stock; but Mr. Hale,
finding their grammar mainly Huron-Iroquois, while their vocabulary is
largely derived from another source, ingeniously infers that one portion
of the despairing Talligewi may have cast in their lot with the
conquering race, as the Tlascalans did with the Spaniards in their war
against the Aztecs. Driven down the Mississippi till they reached the
country of the Choctaws, they, mingling with friendly tribes, became the
founders of the Cherokee nation. Among the older native tribes were the
Catawbas and the Natchez. They were sun-worshippers, maintained a
perpetual fire, and regarded the great luminary as a goddess, and the
mother of their race. It is probable that in their religious rites some
memory survived of the more elaborate worship of the old occupants of
the Ohio valley; for the Natchez claimed that in their prosperity they
numbered five hundred towns, and their northern borders extended to the
Ohio.

De Soto traversed the Chatta-Muskogee region, when, in 1540, he
discovered the Mississippi. He found there a numerous population lodged
in well-constructed dwellings, and with their council-houses surmounting
lofty mounds. De Soto and later travellers noted their extensive fields
of maize, beans, squashes, and tobacco, and their well-finished flint
implements. They were Mound-Builders; and though no longer manifesting
in extended geometrical earthworks the special characteristic of the old
race, it is assumed that in them we recover traces of the vanished
people of the Ohio valley.

With this assignment of the Mound-Builders to an affinity with Indian
nations still represented by existing tribes, the vague idea of some
strange prehistoric American race of remote antiquity vanishes; and the
latter tendency has been rather to underestimate their distinctive
peculiarities. Some of these seem to separate them from any Indian tribe
of which definite accounts have been preserved; and foremost among them
is the evidence of comprehensive design, and of scientific skill in the
construction of their sacred enclosures. The predominant impression
suggested by the great military earthworks of the Mound-Builders is that
of a people co-operating under the guidance of approved leaders, with a
view to the defence of large communities. Elaborate fortifications are
erected on well-chosen hills or bluffs, and strengthened by ditches,
mounds, and complicated approaches; but the lines of earthwork are
everywhere adapted to the natural features of the site. The sacred
enclosures are, on the contrary, constructed on the level river-terraces
with elaborate artificiality of design, but on a scale of magnitude not
less imposing than that of the largest hill-forts. On first entering the
great circle at Newark, and looking across its broad trench at the lofty
embankment overshadowed with tall forest trees, my thoughts reverted to
the Antonine vallum, which by like evidence still records the presence
of the Roman masters of the world in North Britain 1700 years ago. But
after driving over a circuit of several miles, embracing the remarkable
earthworks of which that is only a single feature, and satisfying myself
by personal observation of the existence of parallel avenues which have
been traced for nearly two miles and of the grand oval, circles, and
octagon, the smallest of which measures upwards of half a mile in
circumference, all idea of mere combined labour is lost in the higher
conviction of manifest skill, and even science. The octagon indeed is
not a perfect figure. Its angles are not coincident, but the sides are
very nearly equal; and the enclosure approaches so closely to an
accurate figure that its error is only demonstrated by actual survey.
Connected with it by parallel embankments 350 feet long, is a true
circle, measuring 2880 feet in circumference; and distant nearly a mile
from this, but connected with it by an elaborate series of earthworks,
is the great circular structure previously referred to. Its actual form
is an ellipse; the different diameters of which are 1250 feet and 1150
feet respectively; and it encloses an area of upwards of 30 acres. At
the entrance the enclosing embankment curves outward on either side for
a distance of 100 feet, leaving a level way between the ditches, 80 feet
wide, and at this point it measures about 30 feet from the bottom of the
ditch to the summit. The area of the enclosure is almost perfectly
level, so that during rain-floods the water stands at a uniform height
nearly to the edge of the ditch.

The skulls of the Mound-Builders have been appealed to for indications
of the intellectual capacity of the ancient race; but mounds and
earthworks were habitually resorted to at long subsequent dates as
favourite places of interment; so that skulls derived from modern graves
are ascribed to the ancient race; and much difficulty has been found in
agreeing on a typical mound skull. Even after making allowance for
modifications due to artificial malformation, and eliminating those
derived from superficial interments, a very noticeable diversity is
found in the comparatively few undoubtedly genuine mound skulls, which
may lend some countenance to the idea of the presence of two essentially
distinct races among the ancient settlers in the Ohio valley.[26] It
seems to accord with the unmistakable traces of intellectual progress of
a kind foreign to the attainments of any known race of the North
American continent, thus found in association with arts and methods of
work not greatly in advance of those of the Indian savage. The only
satisfactory solution of the problem seems to present itself in the
assumption of the existence among them of a theocratic order, like the
priests of ancient Egypt, the Brahmins of India, or the Incas of Peru,
under whom the vanished race of the Ohio valley—Tallegewi, Muskogees,
Natchez, Alleghans, or other American aborigines,—executed their vast
geometrical earthworks with such mathematical accuracy.

The contents of the earthworks of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys show
that the copper, found in a pure metallic condition at various points
around Lake Superior, was not unknown to their constructors. But in this
they had little advantage over the Iroquois and Algonkin tribes, in
whose grave mounds copper axes and spear heads occasionally occur. It is
even possible that working parties were despatched from time to time to
the ancient copper mines on the Kewenaw peninsula, on Lake Superior, to
bring back supplies of the prized malleable rock, which could be bent
and hammered into shape in a way that no other stone was susceptible of.
But the labours of the native miners were inadequate to provide supplies
that could in any degree suffice to displace the flint or quartzite of
the implement-maker. One use, however, has been suggested for the
copper, in relation to the labours of the flint-workers. Mr. George
Ercol Sellers, whose researches among the workshops of the ancient
tool-makers have thrown much light on their processes, was led, from
careful observation of some of their unfinished work, to the opinion
that copper was in special request in the operations of the
flint-flaker. After referring to the well-known use of horn or
bone-flakers, he thus proceeds: “From the narrowness of the cuts in some
of the specimens, and the thickness of the stone where they terminate, I
have inclined to the belief that, at the period they were made, the
aborigines had something stronger than bone to operate with, as I have
never been able to imitate some of their deep heavy cuts with it; but I
have succeeded by using a copper point, which possesses all the
properties of the bone, in holding to its work without slipping, and has
the strength for direct thrust required.”[27] No copper tool, however,
was recovered by Mr. Sellers among the vast accumulations of implements
and waste chips, hereafter described, on the sites of the ancient
workers’ industrious operations, though some of those found elsewhere
may have been used for such a purpose.

The evidence that the ancient dwellers in the Ohio valley were still in
their Stone age is indisputable. But to a people apparently under the
guidance of an order or cast far in advance of themselves in some
important branches of knowledge, and by whom the utility of the metals
was beginning to be discerned—though they had not yet mastered the
first step in metallurgy by the use of fire,—their speedy advance
beyond the neolithic stage was inevitable. But an open valley,
accessible on all sides, was peculiarly unfavourable for the first
transitional stage of a people just emerging from barbarism. Their
numbers, it is obvious, were considerable; and agriculture must have
been carried out on a large scale to furnish the means of subsistence
for a settled community. They had entered on a course which, if
unimpeded, must have inevitably tended to develop the higher elements of
social life and political organisation. But their duration as a settled
community appears to have been brief. Some faint tradition of the
irruption of the northern barbarians of the New World survives. The
Iroquois, that indomitable race of savage warriors, swept through the
valley with desolating fury; the dawn of civilisation on the northern
continent of America was abruptly arrested; and the present name of the
great river along the banks and on the tributaries of which the
memorials of the Tallegewi abound, is one conferred on it by their
supplanters, who were equally successful in thwarting the aims of France
to introduce the higher forms of European civilisation there.

Some singularly interesting information relative to the traces of the
ancient flint-workers in the Ohio valley, is furnished by Mr. Sellers.
His observations were made when that region still remained, to a large
extent, undisturbed by civilised intruders on the deserted Indian
settlements. He notes many places along the banks of the Ohio and its
tributaries, at an elevation above the spring floods except at rare
intervals of violent freshets, where the flaking process of the old
flint-workers had been extensively carried on, and where cores and waste
chips abound. “At one of those places, on the Kentucky side of the
river,” he says, “I found a number of chert blocks, as when first
brought from the quarry, from which no regular flakes had been split;
some had a single corner broken off as a starting-point. On the sharp
right-angled edge of several I found the indentations left by small
flakes having been knocked off, evidently by blows, as a preparation for
seating the flaking tool. Most of the localities referred to are now
under cultivation. Before being cleared of the timber and subjected to
the plough, no surface relics were found, but on the caving and wearing
away of the river banks, many spear and arrow heads and other stone
relics were left on the shore. After the land had been cleared, and the
plough had loosened the soil, one of the great floods that occur at
intervals of some fifteen or twenty years, would wash away the loose
soil, leaving the great flint workshops exposed.” There, accordingly, he
notes among the materials thus brought to light, the cores or nuclei
thrown aside, caches stored with finished and unfinished implements and
flakes, the tools and wastage, vast accumulations of splinters, etc.,
all serving to illustrate the processes of the ancient flint-workers.

The depth at which some accumulations occur, overlaid by the growth of
the so-called primeval forest, points to them as contemporary with, if
not in some cases older than, the earthworks of the Mound-Builders. The
extent, indeed, to which some are overlaid by subsequent accumulations
suggests a remote era. In 1853 Mr. Sellers first visited the site of one
of those ancient work-yards, on the northern bank of the Saline river,
about three miles above its junction with the Ohio. The region was then
covered with dense forest, with the exception of a narrow strip along
the bank of the river, which had been cleared in connection with
recently opened coal works. But at a later date, in sinking a cistern,
about 200 yards from the river bank, the excavation was made through a
mass of flint chips. Subsequently heavy rains, after ploughing, exposed
some spears and arrow points. “But it was not until the great flood of
the winter of 1862 and 1863 that overflowed this ridge three or four
feet with a rapid current, that the portion under cultivation on the
river bank was denuded, exposing over six acres of what at first
appeared to be a mass of chips or stone rubbish, but amongst it were
found many hammer-stones, celts, grooved axes, cores, flakes, almost
innumerable scrapers and other implements, and many tynes from the buck
or stag, all of which bore evidence of having been scraped to a point.
On exposure to the air they fell to pieces.” The actual site of the
quarry appears to have been subsequently identified. “The greater number
of cores, scattered flakes, finished and unfinished implements, are of
the chert from a depression in a ridge three miles to the south-east,
where there are abundant indications of large quantities having been
quarried.” But the same great work-yard of the ancient Mound-Builders
furnished evidence of other sources of supply. Mr. Sellers noted the
finding “a few cores of the white chert from Missouri, and the red and
yellow jasper of Kentucky and Tennessee,” but he adds, “the flakes of
these have mostly been found in nests or small caches, many of which
have been exposed; and in every case the flakes they contained were more
or less worked on their edges; whereas the flakes from the neighbouring
chert preserved their sharp edges as when split from the mass. These
cache specimens with their worked serrated edges would, if found singly,
be classed as saws or cutting implements. But here where found in mass,
evidently brought from a distance, to a place where harder chert of a
much better character for cutting implements abounds, they tell a
different story.” The material was better adapted for the manufacture of
certain classes of small implements much in demand, and the serrated
edge is simply the natural result of the mode of working of this species
of chert and of the jasper.

The fine-grained quartzite was also in request, especially for the
manufacture of the largest class of implements, including hoes and
spades, equally needed by the primitive agriculturist, and by the
navvies to whose industrious toil the vast earthworks of the Ohio valley
are due. The site of the old quartzite quarry appears to be about eight
miles from the banks of Saline river; but there are many other
localities scattered over the region extending from southern Illinois to
the Mississippi, where the same substitute for chert or hornstone
occurs. Some of the quartzite hoes or spades measure sixteen inches in
length, with a breadth of from six to seven inches, and evince
remarkable dexterity and skill in their manufacture. Here, accordingly,
it becomes apparent that there was a time in the history of this
continent, before its existence was revealed to the race that now
peoples the Ohio valley, when that region was the scene of busy native
industry; and its manufacturers quarried and wrought the chert, jasper,
and quartzite, and traded the products of their skill over an extensive
region. But the germs of an incipient native civilisation were trodden
out by the inroads of savage warriors from the north; and the towns and
villages of the industrious community were replaced by what appeared to
La Salle, the discoverer and first explorer of Ohio river, as the
primeval forest.

It throws an interesting light on the industrial processes of the
ancient flint-workers to learn that, even in a region where the useful
chert abounded, they went far afield in search of other materials
specially adapted for some classes of implements. They were
unquestionably a settled community, in a higher stage than any of the
tribes found in occupation of that or any neighbouring region when first
visited by Europeans. But many tribes, both of the Northern and Southern
States, habitually travelled far distances to the sea coast, where still
the ancient shell mounds attest their presence. The routes thus annually
pursued by the Indians of the interior of Pennsylvania, for example,
were familiar to the early surveyors, and some of their trails
undoubtedly marked the footprints of many generations. In traversing
those routes, as well as in their autumnal encampments on the coast,
opportunities were afforded of selecting suitable materials for their
implements from localities remote from their homes. The lines of those
old trails have accordingly yielded numerous examples of the wayfarers’
weapons and tools, as well as of unfinished implements. We are apt to
think of a people in their Stone period as merely turning to account
materials lying as accessible to all as the loose stones employed as
missiles by the vagrant schoolboy. But such an idea is manifestly
inapplicable, not only to the arts of communities like those by whom the
earthworks of the Ohio valley were constructed, but to many far older
workers in flint or stone. The Indian arrow-maker and the pipe-maker, it
is manifest, often travelled great distances for the material best
suited to their manufactures; and the use of flint or hornstone for
slingstones, lance and arrow heads, as well as for knives, scrapers,
axes, and other domestic and agricultural tools, must have involved a
constant demand for fresh supplies. It might be assumed, therefore,
apart from all direct evidence, that a regular system of quarrying for
the raw material both of the pipe and the implement-maker was pursued;
and that by trade or barter the pipestone of divers qualities, and the
chert or hornstone, the quartzite, jasper, and other useful minerals,
were thus furnished to tribes whose homesteads and hunting-grounds
yielded no such needful supplies. But the same region which abounds in
such remarkable evidences of the ingenious arts of a vanished race, also
furnishes traces of the old miners, by whose industry the flint was
quarried and roughly chipped into available forms for transport to
distant localities, or for barter among the Mound-Builders in the region
traversed by the great river. At various points on Flint Ridge, Ohio,
and localities far beyond the limits of that state, as at Leavenworth,
300 miles south of Cincinnati, where the gray flint abounds, evidences
of systematic quarrying illustrate the character and extent of this
primitive commerce. Funnel-shaped pits occur, in many cases filled up
with the accumulated vegetable mould of centuries, or only traceable by
a slight depression in the surface of the ground. When cleared out, they
extend to a depth of from four or five, to nearly twenty feet. On
removing the mould, the sloping sides of the pit are found to be covered
with pieces of fractured flint, intermingled with unfinished or broken
implements, and with others partially reduced to shape. The largest hoes
and spades hitherto noted appear to have been fashioned of quartzite,
but those of most common occurrence in Ohio and Kentucky are made of the
gray flint or chert, which abounds in the Flint Ridge pits in blocks
amply sufficing for the manufacture of tools upwards of a foot in
length, such as may be assumed to have been employed in the construction
of the great earthworks. But the transportation of the unwrought blocks
of hornstone to the work-yards in the valley would have involved great
labour in the construction of roads, as well as of sledges or waggons
suited to such traffic. In lieu of this, the accumulated waste chips in
the quarries show the amount of labour that was expended there in order
to facilitate the transport of the useful material. Suitable flakes and
chips were no doubt also carried off to be turned to account for
scrapers, knives, and other small implements. Partially shaped disks and
other pieces of all sizes abound in the pits, but the finer
manipulation, by means of which small arrow heads, lances, drills,
scrapers, etc., were fashioned, was reserved for leisure hours at home,
and for the patient labour of the skilled tool-maker, for whose use the
raw material was chiefly quarried.

In the tool-bearing drift of France and England the large characteristic
flint implements occur in beds of gravel and clay abounding in flakes
and chips in every stage of accidental fracture, to some of which M.
Boucher de Perthes assigned an artificial origin and very fanciful
significance. But if the palæolithic flint-worker in any case quarried
for his material before the latest geological reconstruction of the beds
of rolled gravel, the fractured flints may include traces of primeval
quarrying as well as of the tool-maker’s labours; for the rolled gravel
beds occur in river-valleys best adapted to the habitat of post-glacial
man.

In a report furnished to the Peabody Museum of Archæology, by Mr. Paul
Schumacher, he contributes some interesting evidence relative to the
stone-workers of Southern California. The Indians of the Pacific coast,
south of San Francisco, not only furnished themselves with chisels,
axes, and the like class of implements, but with pots for culinary
purposes, made of steatite, usually of a greenish-gray colour. In 1876,
Mr. Schumacher discovered various quarries of the old pot-manufacturers,
with their tools and unfinished articles lying there. The softer stone
had been used for pots, while the close-grained darker serpentine was
chiefly employed in making the weights for digging sticks, cups, pipes,
and ornaments. “I was struck,” he says, “on examining the locality
through a field-glass, by the discovery of so many silver-hued mounds,
the debris of pits, the rock quarries and open-air workshops, so that I
believed I had found the main factory of the ollas of the California
aborigines.”[28] He also discovered the slate quarry, where the rock had
been broken off in irregular blocks, from which pieces best adapted for
chisels were selected and fashioned into the forms specially useful in
making the steatite pots. A venerable Spanish lady told Mr. Schumacher
that she recollected her mother telling her how the Indians had brought
_ollas_ in canoe-loads from the islands in Santa Barbara Channel to the
mainland, and there exchanged them for such necessities as the islanders
were in need of. This tradition was subsequently confirmed by an old
Mexican guide. Similar evidence of systematic industry with the
accompanying trade, or barter, meets the explorer at many points from
the Gulf of Mexico northward to beyond the Canadian lakes. The pyrulæ
from the Mexican Gulf are of frequent occurrence in northern ossuaries
and grave mounds, while corresponding southern sepulchral deposits
disclose the catlinite of the Couteau des Prairies and the native copper
of the Lake Superior mines. Obsidian is another prized material only to
be found _in situ_ in volcanic regions, but met with in manufactured
forms in many diverse regions, remote from the obsidian quarries.

The routes of ancient traffic, determined in part by the geographical
contour of the regions through which they pass, are familiar to the
historical students in the Old World. The ancient lines traversed by the
traders between the Persian Gulf and the Levant; the routes of caravans
by way of the oases, across the centre of the Arabian peninsula to the
Red Sea; the lines of access by road and river from the Baltic to the
Danube; and from the British Isles and the North Sea, by the valley of
the Rhone, to the Mediterranean: are all indicated by a variety of
evidence. The geography of Central Africa appears to have been familiar
to the Arabian traders from remote ages. Similar well-trodden routes,
and traverses by lake and river, are well known to the investigators of
American antiquity. The great trail across Pennsylvania to the
Mississippi; the route by the great lakes and by portage to the Hudson
valley, and so to the Atlantic; from Lake Ontario, by the Humber and
Lake Simcoe, to the Georgian Bay; from Lake Superior, by the
Mitchipicotten river, to the Hudson Bay; and by the Mississippi and its
tributaries to the Gulf of Mexico: are all demonstrated by abundant
traces of the interchange of the products of widely severed regions, as
disclosed in ancient burial mounds, and deposits assignable to remote
periods and to long-extinct races. West of the Rocky Mountains the
trails from the Pacific coast to the interior, and through the passes of
that lofty range, have been recovered. Owing to the bold contours of the
region, in the abrupt descent from the western slope of the Rocky
Mountains to the Pacific, the routes of travel are more strictly defined
by the physical geography of the country than in the long stretches of
the continent to the east of that mountain range. An interchange of
commodities between the tribes of the coast and the interior appears to
have been carried on from remote times. Dr. Dawson’s own personal
observations in British Columbia have satisfied him that trading
intercourse was prosecuted by the coast tribes with those of the
interior, along the Fraser River Valley; Bella Coola Valley, from head
of Benetinck Arm; Skeena River; Stiking River; and Chilkoot Pass, from
the head of Lynn Canal. By the second of the above routes oolacten oil
was carried far into the interior; and the old trail leading from Bella
Coola and Fraser river is chiefly associated by the inland Indians with
this traffic. The habitual traffic engendered by the local advantages of
some of the tribes on the northern Pacific coast has manifestly
developed some peculiarities which distinguish them from other Indians
of the northern continent. The Bilqula, a people inhabiting a limited
tract in the vicinity of Dean Inlet and Benetinck Arms, by reason of
their geographical position have held command of the most important
natural pass and trade route from the ocean to the interior between the
Skeena and the Fraser rivers, a distance of upwards of 400 miles. From
remotest times embraced in the native traditions a route has been
traversed by way of the Bella Coola river, thence northward to the
Salmon river, and then along the north side of the Blackwater river to
the Upper Fraser. Dentalium shells and other prized objects of barter
were carried over this route; but the article of chief value brought
from the coast was the oil of the Oolacten or Candle Fish; and hence
this thoroughfare is commonly known among the Tinné of the interior as
the “Grease Trail.”

Along this and other long-frequented trails the broken implements, flint
and obsidian chips, and other traces of the natives by whom they have
been traversed, not only afford proof of their presence there, but at
times disclose indications of the regions they have visited in going to
or returning from the interior. Dr. G. M. Dawson informs me that, while
travelling along various Indian trails and routes in British Columbia,
west of Fraser river, and between lats. 52° and 54°, chips and flakes of
obsidian were not unfrequently observed. The Tinné Indians stated that
the material was obtained from a mountain near the headwaters of the
Salmon river (about long. 125° 40′, lat. 52° 40′), which was formerly
resorted to for the purpose of procuring this prized material. The
Indian name of this mountain is _Bece_, and Dr. Dawson further notes the
suggestive fact that this word is the same with the Mexican (Aztec?)
name for “knife.” Mr. T. C. Weston, of the Geological Survey, also
noted, in 1883, the finding of a flake of obsidian in connection with a
layer of buffalo-bones, occurring in alluvium, and evidently of
considerable antiquity, near Fort M’Leod, Alberta. The nearest source of
such a material is the Yellowstone Park region. Those regions, it is
obvious, were visited by native explorers, not merely to supply their
own wants, but for the purpose of securing coveted objects available for
trade or barter. Dr. Dawson reports to me as the result of observations
founded on repeated visits to the region, in the work of the Geological
Survey: That all the coast tribes of British Columbia are born traders,
and possess in a high degree the mental characteristics generally
attributed to the Jews. Those holding possession of the above routes
regarded trade with the neighbouring inland tribes as a valuable
monopoly, and were ready to fight for it. They also traded among
themselves, and certain localities were well known as the source of
commodities. Thus the Haida Indians regularly purchased oolacten oil
from the Tshimsians, who caught the oolacten at the mouth of the Nass
and Stiking rivers, giving in exchange cedar canoes, for the manufacture
of which they were celebrated. Through the agency of the Tshimsians they
also procured from the inland Indians the large mountain sheep horns,
from which they executed elaborately carved spoons and other implements.
Cumshewa, in Queen Charlotte Islands, was, again, noted for Indian
tobacco, an undetermined native plant, which was an article of trade all
along the coast.

Copper was not unknown to the native tribes on the Pacific coast, and
rich supplies of the native metal appear to have been partially worked,
by the tribes along the shores of Lake Superior from a remote date. The
ancient mines have been disclosed, in the process of turning their
resources to account by the enterprise of civilised settlers; and
abundant evidence has been recovered to show that the native copper of
the Keweenaw peninsula, Ontonagon, Isle Royale, and other points on Lake
Superior, was worked extensively by its ancient miners, and undoubtedly
formed a valuable object of traffic throughout the region watered by the
Mississippi and its tributaries, and along the whole eastern routes to
the seaboard. But, with the imperfect resources of the native miners, it
was a costly rarity, procurable only in small quantities by barter with
the tribes settled on the shores of Lake Superior. Axe blades, spear
heads, knives, gorgets, armlets, tubes and beads, all fashioned out of
the native copper solely with the hammer, have been recovered from
ancient grave mounds and ossuaries in the valleys of the St Lawrence,
the Hudson, the Ohio, the Mississippi, and their tributaries; and to the
west of the Rocky Mountains, copper implements again occur manufactured
from metal derived from some native source on the Pacific slope. The
copper was, no doubt, recognised as a malleable rock, differing from all
others in its ductility, so that it could be fashioned, with the aid of
a hammer-stone, to any desired form. By this means the ancient miners of
Lake Superior provided themselves with the most suitable tools for their
mining operations, and were probably the manufacturers of most of the
widely diffused copper implements. But for general purposes, both of
industry and war, American man had to be content with the more abundant
chert, hornstone, and quartzite.

The source from whence the tribes on the Pacific obtained the coveted
metal has not yet been ascertained; but it was obviously procured only
in small quantities, insufficient to be turned to account for economic
uses. Among a curious collection of objects illustrative of the arts of
the Haida Indians, now in the Museum of the Geological Survey at Ottawa,
is a large copper ring, or torque, which appears to have been handed
down for successive generations, from chief to chief, as a prized
heirloom; and, it may be assumed, as a symbol of official rank. The
ring, or necklet, is composed of three twisted bars, or strands of
hammered copper, each tapering at both ends, and is fashioned with
remarkable skill, if due allowance be made for the imperfect tools of
the native artificer. This unique relic seems to show the accumulated
metallic wealth of the tribe fashioned into a symbol of official rank;
not improbably with mysterious virtues ascribed to it, which passed with
it to its official custodian. A block of native copper now in the
National Museum at Washington is described by the Père Charlevoix as a
sacred object of veneration by the Indians of Lake Superior, on which a
young maiden had been offered in sacrifice.[29] But it is beyond
question that throughout the region north of the Mexican Gulf the native
manufacturer resorted mainly to the abundant hornstone, chert,
quartzite, and the like materials of the Stone period. These were in
universal demand, and must have been industriously collected in the
localities where they abound, and disposed of by a regular system of
exchange for furs, wampum, or other objects of barter. Mr W. H. Dall, in
his report on _The Tribes of the Extreme North-West_, notes the absence
in the Aleutian Islands of any stone, such as serpentine, fit for making
the celts or adzes, recovered by him from the shell mounds. “They were,”
he says, “probably imported from the continental Innuit at great cost,
and very highly valued”; and on a subsequent page he adds: “The
intertribal traffic I have referred to is universal among the
Innuit.”[30]

The occurrence of well-stored caches in some of the ancient mounds of
the Ohio valley, as well as their repeated discovery in other
localities, accords with the idea of systematised industrial labour, and
the storing away of the needful supplies for agricultural and domestic
operations, and for war. Messrs. Squier and Davis, in their _Ancient
Monuments of the Mississippi Valley_, describe one of the mounds opened
by them within the great earthwork on the North Fork of Point Creek, in
which, according to their estimate, about four thousand hornstone disks
were disposed in regular order, in successive rows overlapping each
other. In 1864, I had an opportunity of examining some specimens
retained in the possession of Dr. Davis. They were mostly disks
measuring about six inches long and four wide, more or less oval, or
broad spear-shaped, and fashioned out of a fine gray flint with
considerable uniformity of character. Mr. Squier assumed that the
deposit was a religious offering; but subsequent disclosures of a like
character confirm the probability that it was a hoard of material stored
for the tool-maker.[31]

In other, though rarer cases, the cache has been found containing
finished implements. In digging a cellar at Trenton, New Jersey, a
deposit of one hundred and twenty finished stone axes was brought to
light, at a depth of about three feet below the surface. Another
discovery of a like character was made when digging for the construction
of a receiving vault of the Riverview Cemetery, near Taunton; and
similar deposits are recorded as repeatedly occurring in the same
state.[32] In two instances all the specimens were grooved axes. In
another, fifty porphyry celts were found deposited in systematic order.
Mr. Charles Rau has given the subject special attention, and in a paper
entitled “Ancient Aboriginal Trade in North America,” he furnishes
evidence of addiction to certain manufactures, such as arrow heads, hoes
and other digging tools, spear heads, chisels, etc., by skilled native
craftsmen.[33] Deposits closely corresponding to the one reported by Mr.
Squier as the sole contents of one of the mounds, in “Clark’s Work,”
Ohio, have been subsequently discovered in Illinois, Wisconsin, and
Kentucky. One of the Illinois deposits contained about fifteen hundred
leaf-shaped or rounded disks of flint arranged in five horizontal
layers. Another, said to have contained three thousand five hundred
specimens, was discovered at Fredericksburg, in the same state. A
smaller, but more interesting hoard was accidentally brought to light in
1868, when some labourers in opening up a new street, at East St. Louis,
in the same State of Illinois, came upon a collection of large flint
tools all of the hoe and shovel type. There were about fifty of the
former and twenty of the latter, made of a yellowish-brown flint, and
betraying no traces of their having been used. Near by them lay several
large unworked blocks of flint and greenstone, and many chippings and
fragments of flint.[34] Deposits of a like character, but varying both
in the number and diversity of their contents, and, in general, showing
no traces of use, have been discovered in other states to the east of
the Mississippi. In the _Smithsonian Report_ for 1877, Mr Rau prints a
curious account of “The Stock in Trade of an Aboriginal Lapidary.” In
the spring of the previous year Mr. Keenan presented to the National
Museum at Washington a collection of jasper ornaments, mostly
unfinished, which had been found in Lawrence County, Mississippi. They
were brought to light in ploughing a cotton field, where a deposit was
exposed, lying about two and a half feet below the natural surface. It
included four hundred and sixty-nine objects, of which twenty-two were
unwrought jasper pebbles; one hundred and one were beads of an elongated
cylindrical shape, and a few of them partially perforated. Others were
ornaments of various forms, including two animal-shaped objects. The
whole were made of jasper of a red or reddish colour, occasionally
variegated with spots or streaks of pale yellow, but nearly all were in
an unfinished state, and so fully bore out the idea of their being the
stock in trade of some old native workman, who finished them in
sufficient numbers to meet the demands of his customers.[35]

From time to time fresh disclosures prove the extent to which such
systematic industry was carried on. The various collections thus brought
to light were unquestionably the result of prolonged labour, and were,
for the most part, undoubtedly stored for purposes of trade. In some
cases they may have been accumulated in the arsenal of the tribe in
readiness for war. But whether we recognise in such discoveries the
store of the trader, or the military arsenal, they indicate ideas of
provident foresight altogether distinct from the desultory labours of
the Indian savage in the preparation of his own indispensable supply of
implements for the chase or for war.

But there were also, no doubt, home-made weapons and implements,
fashioned with patient industry out of the large rolled serpentine,
chalcedony, jasper, and agate pebbles, gathered from the sea coast and
river beds, or picked up wherever they chanced to occur. When camping
out on the Neepigon river, with Indian guides from the Saskatchewan, I
observed them carefully collecting pieces of a metamorphic rock,
underlying the syenite cliffs, which, I learned from one of them, was
specially adapted for pipes. This they would carry a distance of fully
800 miles before reaching their lodges on the prairie. Dr. Robert Bell
described to me a pipe made of fine green serpentine, of a favourite
Chipewyan pattern, which he saw in the possession of an Indian on Nelson
river. Its owner resisted all attempts to induce him to part with it,
assigning as a reason of its special value that it had been brought from
Reindeer Lake distant several hundred miles north of Frog Portage, on
Churchill river. The diverse forms in which various tribes shape the
tobacco pipe are highly characteristic. In some cases this is partly due
to the texture and degrees of hardness of the material employed; but the
recovery of pipes of nearly all the very diverse tribal patterns, made
from the beautiful catlinite, or red pipestone of the Couteau des
Prairies, leaves little room for doubt that the stone was transported in
rough blocks and bartered by its quarriers to distant tribes. This
flesh-coloured rock has suggested the Sioux legend of its origin in the
flesh of the antediluvian red men, who perished there in the great
deluge. It is soft, of fine texture, and easily wrought into minutely
varied forms of Indian art, and so was coveted by the pipe-makers of
widely severed tribes. Hence red pipestone pipes of many ingenious forms
of sculpture have been recovered from grave mounds down the Mississippi,
eastward to the Atlantic seaboard, and westward beyond the Rocky
Mountains. This prized material appears to have circulated among all the
Plain tribes. Pipes made of it were to be found in recent years
preserved as cherished possessions among both the Sioux and the
Blackfoot tribes. Dr. George M. Dawson found in 1874 part of an ancient
catlinite pipe on Pyramid Creek, about lat. 49°, long. 105°.

A very different material was in use among the Assiniboin Indians,
limiting the art of the pipe sculptor to the simplest forms. It is a
fine marble, much too hard to admit of minute carving, but susceptible
of a high polish. This is cut into pipes of graceful form, and made so
extremely thin as to be nearly transparent, so that when lighted the
glowing tobacco presents a singular appearance in a dark lodge. Another
favourite stone is a coarse species of jasper, also too hard for any
elaborate ornamentation. But the choice of materials is by no means
limited to those of the locality of the tribe. I have already referred
to my Indian guides carrying away with them pieces of the pipestone rock
on Neepigon river; and Paul Kane, the artist, during his travels, when
on Athabaska river, near its source in the Rocky Mountains, observed his
Assiniboin guides select a favourite bluish jasper from among the
water-worn stones in the bed of the river, to carry home for the purpose
of pipe manufacture, although they were then fully 500 miles from their
lodges.

The favourite material of the Chippewas was a dark, close-grained schist
obtained at some points on Lake Huron. It is easily carved, and many of
their pipes are decorated with groups of human figures and animals,
executed with much spirit. Pabahmesad, an old Chippewa pipe-maker of
unusual skill, pursued his craft on Great Manitoulin Island, on Lake
Huron, in comparatively recent years. The peculiar style of his
ingenious carvings may be detected on pipes recovered from widely
scattered localities, for his fame as a pipe sculptor was great. He was
generally known among his people as _Pwahguneka_, the pipe-maker. He
obtained his materials from the favourite resorts of different tribes,
using the black pipestone of Lake Huron, the white pipestone procured on
St. Joseph’s Island, and the catlinite or red pipestone of the Couteau
des Prairies. But the most varied and elaborate in device of all the
peculiar native types of pipe sculpture are those executed by the
Chimpseyan or Babeen and the Clalam Indians, of Vancouver Island and the
neighbouring shores along Charlotte Sound. They are carved out of a soft
blue claystone or slate, from which also bowls, platters, and other
utensils are made, decorated with native legendary symbols and other
devices. But the most elaborate carving is reserved for their pipes,
which are not less varied and fanciful in design than the details of
Norman ecclesiastical sculpture. The same easily carved claystone was in
great request among the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands for
their idols, and for ornamental gorgets and utensils of various kinds.
Thus the available materials of different localities are seen to modify
the forms alike of implements, weapons, and articles designed for
personal ornament or domestic use, and were sought for and transported
to many distant points, with the same object as the tin and copper which
played so important a part in the commercial exchanges of nations at the
dawn of history.

In regions where flint or hornstone is not available, the quartzite
appears to have been most commonly resorted to. I have in my possession
some spear heads measuring from seven to nine inches long, which were
dug up on an old Indian trail at Point Oken, lying to the north of Lake
St. John, Quebec; and implements of the like material are common
throughout eastern Canada. The same widely diffused material was no less
freely resorted to by the tribes on the Pacific coast. The arrow heads
found throughout the Salish country of southern British Columbia are
chiefly formed of quartzite, though chert is also used. The quartzite
occurs in so many localities that it is difficult to trace its special
source. But near the east end of Marble Cañon, and at the Big Bock
Slide, about six miles above Spence’s Bridge, on Thompson river, chips
occur in considerable quantities, suggestive of one of the chosen
localities resorted to for quarrying and manufacture.

The old arrow-makers evidently derived pleasure from the selection of
attractive materials for some of their choicest specimens of handiwork.
The true crystalline quartz was prized for small arrow heads, some of
which are equally pleasing in material, form, and delicacy of finish.
But the material most usually employed in eastern Canada, as well as
that previously referred to as in request by the old workers of the Ohio
valley for their largest implements, is a gneissoid rock of
comparatively common occurrence, which chips off with a broad facet when
sharply struck, and leaves an acute edge and point. Mr. Seller’s
valuable paper on the ancient workshops of Ohio and Pennsylvania also
contains an account of his own experience relative to the flaking and
chipping of flint implements.[36] In this communication he remarks:
“Most of the arrow points found within my reach in Philadelphia,
Delaware, and Chester Counties, Pennsylvania, were chipped from massive
quartz, from the opaque white to semi-transparent, and occasionally
transparent.” He further describes his first chance discovery of one of
the native work-places. He was in company with two scientific
mineralogists, when, as he writes, “we came to a place where (judging
from the quantities of flakes and chips) arrow points had been made.
After much diligent search, only one perfect point was found. There were
many broken ones, showing the difficulty in working the material. Mr.
Lukins, a scientific mineralogist, collected a quantity of the best
flakes to experiment with, and, by the strokes of a light hammer,
roughed out one or two very rude imitations.” Major J. H. Long traversed
the continent westward to the Rocky Mountains, as head of the United
States Military Topographical Department; and from him Mr. Sellers
derived information of the habits of the rude western tribes long before
they had been brought into direct contact with any civilised settlers.
“He said that flakes prepared for points and other implements seemed to
be an object of trade or commerce among the Indian tribes that he came
in contact with; that there were but few places where chert or quartzite
was found of sufficient hardness, and close and even grain, to flake
well, and at those places there were men very expert at flaking.”[37]

Mr. Sellers had known Catlin, the artist and traveller, in his youth,
while he was still an expert worker in wood and ivory in the service of
the elder Catlin, a musical instrument maker in Philadelphia; and from
him he learned much relative to the modes of operation and the sources
of material of the Indian workers in stone. “He considered making flakes
much more of an art than the shaping them into arrow or spear points,
for a thorough knowledge of the nature of the stone to be flaked was
essential, as a slight difference in its quality necessitated a totally
different mode of treatment. The principal source of supply for what he
termed home-made flakes was the coarse gravel bars of the rivers, where
large pebbles are found. Those most easily worked into flakes for small
arrow points were chalcedony, jasper, and agate. Most of the tribes had
men who were expert at flaking, and who could decide at sight the best
mode of working. Some of these pebbles would split into tolerably good
flakes by quick and sharp blows, striking on the same point. Others
would break by a cross fracture into two or more pieces. These were
preferred, as good flakes could be split from their clean fractured
surface, by what Mr. Catlin called ‘impulsive pressure,’ the tool used
being a shaft or stick of between two and three inches in diameter,
varying in length from thirty inches to four feet, according to the
manner of using them. These were pointed with bone or buckhorn.” It is
thus apparent that among rude tribes of modern centuries, as in the
prehistoric dawn, exceptional aptitude and skill found recognition as
readily as in any civilised community. There were the quarriers and the
skilled workmen, on whose joint labours the whole community largely
depended for the indispensable supply of all needful tools.

In the summer of 1854, when civilisation had made very slight inroads on
the western wilderness, I visited a group of Chippewa lodges on the
south-west shore of Lake Superior, where they still maintained many of
their genuine habits. Their aged chief, Buffalo, was a fine specimen of
the uncorrupted savage, dressed in native attire, and wearing the collar
of grizzly bear’s claws as proof of his triumph over the fiercest object
of the chase. Their weapons were partly of iron, derived from the
traders. But they had also their stone-tipped arrows; and one Indian was
an object of interest to a group of Indian boys as he busied himself in
fashioning a water-worn pebble into an edged tool. He held an oval
pebble between the finger and thumb, and used it with quick strokes as a
hammer. But he was only engaged on the first rough process, and I did
not see the completion of his work. No doubt, the leisure of all was
turned more or less to account in supplying themselves with their
ordinary weapons and missiles. But Catlin’s free intercourse with the
wild western tribes familiarised him with the regular sources of general
supply. “The best flakes,” he said, “outside of the homemade, were a
subject of commerce, and came from certain localities where the chert of
the best quality was quarried in sheets or blocks, as it occurs in
almost continuous seams in the intercalated limestones of the coal
measures. These seams are mostly cracked or broken into blocks that show
the nature of the cross fracture, which is taken advantage of by the
operators, who seemed to have reduced the art of flaking to almost an
absolute science, with division of labour; one set of men being expert
in quarrying and selecting the stone, others in preparing the blocks for
the flakers.”[38] But suitable and specially prized material were
sometimes sought on different sites, and disseminated from them by the
primitive trader. Along eastern Labrador and in Newfoundland arrow heads
are mostly fashioned out of a peculiar light-gray translucent quartzite.
Dr. Bell informs me that near Chimo, south of Ungava Bay, is a spot
resorted to by the Indians from time immemorial for this favourite
material; and arrows made of it are not uncommon even in Nova Scotia.
Among the tribes remote from the sea coast, where no exposed rock
furnished available material for the manufacture of their stone
implements, the chief source of supply was the larger pebbles of the
river beds. From these the most suitable stones were carefully selected,
and often carried great distances. Those most easily worked into flakes
for small arrow heads are chalcedony, jasper, agate, and quartz; and the
finer specimens of such weapons are now greatly prized by collectors.
The coast tribes both of the Atlantic and the Pacific found similar
sources of supply of the stones best suited for their implements in the
rolled gravel of the beach, and this appears to have been the most
frequent resort of the Micmacs and other tribes of the Canadian Maritime
Provinces.

I have already referred to information derived from Dr. G. M. Dawson and
Dr. Robert Bell, to both of whom I have been indebted for interesting
results of their own personal observations as members of the Canadian
Geological Survey. Collectors are familiar with the elongated flat
stones, with two or more holes bored through them, variously styled
gorgets, implements for fashioning sinew into cord, etc. They are made
of a grayish-green clay slate, with dark streaks; and the same material
is used in the manufacture of personal ornaments, ceremonial objects,
and occasionally for smooth spear heads and knives. Relics fashioned of
this peculiar clay slate are found throughout Ontario, from Lakes Huron
and Erie to the Ottawa valley. A somewhat similar stone occurs in situ
at various points, but Dr. Bell believes he has satisfactorily
identified the ancient quarry at the outlet of Lake Temagamic, nearly
100 miles north of Lake Nipissing. No clay slate procured from any other
locality corresponds so exactly to the favourite material. The site is
accessible by more than one canoe route; and quantities of the rock from
different beds lie broken up in blocks of a size ready for
transportation. Dr. Bell found on the shore of Lake Temissaming a large
unfinished spear head, chipped out of this clay slate, and ready for
grinding. When the region is settled and the land cleared, sites will
probably be discovered where the aboriginal exporters reduced the rough
blocks to forms convenient for transport.

Dr. Bell has described to me specimens of narrow and somewhat long spear
points, of local manufacture, made from smoky chert found on or near the
Athabaska, in Mackenzie river basin; and an arrow head of brown flint
from the mouth of Churchill river, Hudson Bay. The flint implements of
Rainy river and Lake of the Woods are of brownish flint and chert, such
as are found in the drift all over the region to the south-westward of
Hudson Bay; and are mostly derived from the Devonian rocks. Worn pebbles
of this kind occur in the drift as far south as Lake Superior. A branch
of Kinogami river is called by the Indians Flint river (_Pewona sipi_)
from the abundance of the favourite material they find in the river
gravel and shingle. The finest flint implements of Canada are those of
the north shore of Lake Huron, made from material corresponding to a
very fine-grained quartzite, approximating to chalcedony, found among
the Huronian rocks of that region.

Along the western coast of the Province of Nova Scotia a high ridge of
trap rock extends, with slight interruption, from Briar Island to Cape
Blomidon. Here the strong tidal rush of the sea undermines the cliff,
and the winter frosts split it up, so that every year the shore is
strewn with broken fragments from the cliff, exposing a variety of
crystalline minerals, such as jasper, agate, etc. The beach gravel is
also interspersed with numerous rounded pebbles derived originally from
the same source. I am indebted to Mr. George Patterson, of New Glasgow,
N.S., for some interesting notes on this subject. The pebbles of this
beach seem to have been one of the chief sources of supply for the
Indian implement-makers of Nova Scotia. Few localities have hitherto
been noticed in the Maritime Provinces marked by any such large
accumulation of chips as would suggest the probability of manufacture
for the purpose of trade; though chips and finished implements
occasionally occur together on the sites of Indian villages or
encampments, suggestive of individual industry and home manufacture. But
Mr. Patterson informs me that one place at Bauchman’s Beach, in the
county of Lunenburg, furnishes abundant traces of an old native
workshop. There, until recently, could be gathered agate, jasper, and
other varieties of the fine-grained crystalline minerals from the trap,
sometimes in nodules, rounded and worn, as they occur at the base of the
ocean-washed cliffs. At times they showed partial traces of working; but
more frequently they were split and broken, bearing the unmistakable
marks of the hammer. Along with those were cores and large quantities of
flakes, or chips, with arrow heads, more or less perfectly formed. At
one time they might have been gathered in large quantities; but recent
inroads of the sea have swept away much of the old beach, and strewed
the products of the Indian stone-workers where they may be stored for
the wonder of men of other centuries. It is curious, indeed, to reflect
on the memorials of ages so diverse from those with which the
palæontologist deals, that are now accumulating in the submarine strata
in process of formation, for the instruction of coming generations,
should our earth last so long. The world will, doubtless, have grown
wiser before that epoch is reached. But it will require some
discrimination, even in so enlightened an age, to read aright the
significance of this mingling of relics of rudest barbarism with all the
products of modern civilisation that are being strewn along the great
ocean highways between the Old and the New World.

A curious illustration of the possible confusion of evidence is shown by
the discovery in 1884 of a large stone lance head of the Eskimo type,
deeply imbedded in the tissues of a whale taken at the whaling station
on Ballast Point, near the harbour of San Diego, California.[39] In the
Museum of the University of Edinburgh is the skeleton of a whale,
stranded in the ancient estuary of the Forth in a prehistoric age, when
the ocean tides reached the site which had been elevated into dry land
long ages before the Roman invaders of Caledonia made their way over it.
Alongside of the buried whale lay a rude deerhorn implement of the old
Caledonian whaler; and had the San Diego whale sunk in deep waters off
the Pacific coast, it would have perpetuated a similar memorial of
rudest savage life, in close proximity, doubtless, to evidences of
modern civilisation. Such, though in less striking form, is the process
of intermingling the arts of the American Stone age with products of
modern skill and refinement, that is now in progress off the Lunenburg
coast of Nova Scotia. The inroads of the sea have not, however, even now
effaced all traces of the old arrow-makers of Bauchman’s Beach.
Specimens of their handiwork may still be gathered along the shore. To
this locality it is obvious that the inland tribes resorted from remote
Indian villages for some of their most indispensable supplies.
Implements of the same materials also occur at sites on the northern
coast; but the larger number found there are made of quartzite, felsite,
or of hard, slaty stone, such as occurs in the metamorphic rocks of the
mountain ranges in the interior of the Province.

From what has thus been set forth, some general inferences of a
comprehensive character are suggested. It is scarcely open to doubt that
at a very early stage in the development of primitive mechanical art,
the exceptional aptitude of skilled workmen was recognised and brought
into use for the general benefit. Co-operation and some division of
labour in the industrial arts, necessary to meet the universal demand
for tools and weapons, appear also to have been recognised from a very
remote period in the social life of the race. There were the quarriers
for the flint, the obsidian, the shale, the pipestones, the favourite
minerals, and the close-grained igneous rocks, adapted for the variety
of implements in general use. There were also the traders by whom the
raw material was transported to regions where it could only be procured
by barter; as appears to be demonstrated by the repeated discovery, not
only of flint and stone implements, alike in stray examples, and in
well-furnished caches; but also of work-places, remote from any
flint-producing formation, strewn with the chips, flakes, and imperfect
or unfinished implements of the tool-makers. It thus becomes obvious
that the men of the earliest Stone age transported suitable material for
their simple arts from many remote localities, and purchased the
services of the skilled workman with the produce of the chase, or
whatever other equivalent they could offer in exchange. The further
archæological search is extended, the evidence of social co-operation
and systematised industry among the men of the Palæolithic era, as well
as among those of later periods prior to the dawn of metallurgic skill,
becomes more apparent. Nor is it less interesting to note that there was
no more equality among the men of those primitive ages, than in later
civilised stages of social progress. Diversities in capacity and
consequent moral force asserted themselves in the skilled handicraftsmen
of the Palæolithic dawn, much as they do in the most artificial states
of modern society. As a natural concomitant to this, and an invaluable
element of co-operation, the prized flint flakes appear to have
furnished a primitive medium of exchange, more generally available as a
currency of recognised value than any other substitute for coined money.
The principles on which the wealth of nations and the whole social
fabric of human society depend, were thus already in operation ages
before the merchants of Tyre, or the traders of Massala, had learned to
turn to account the mineral resources of the Cassiterides; or that
vaguer and still more remote era before the ancient Atlantis had
vanished from the ken of the civilised dwellers around the Mediterranean
Sea.

-----

[10] _Ancient Stone Implements_, p. 14.

[11] Hoare’s _South Wilts_, p. 195.

[12] _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_, viii. 137.

[13] _Ibid._ N.S. vii. 356.

[14] _Ibid._ N.S. xii. 436.

[15] _Archæologia_, xiii. 204.

[16] _Archæologia_, xiii. 224, 225; pl. xiv. xv.

[17] _Athenæum_, Dec. 18, 1886.

[18] _U.S. Geological Survey_, 1872, p. 652.

[19] _Primitive Industry_, Figs. 241, 254, 292, 295, etc.

[20] Evans’ _Stone Implements_, Fig. 94.

[21] _Archæologia_, xlii. 72.

[22] _Ibid._ p. 68.

[23] _Ibid._ p. 68.

[24] _British Barrows_, p. 166.

[25] _Palæolithic Man in Eastern and Central North America_, pp. 152,
153.

[26] Vide _Prehistoric Man_, 3rd ed. ii. 132.

[27] _Smithsonian Reports_, Part I. 1885, p. 880.

[28] _Report of the Peabody Museum_, ii. 262.

[29] _Prehistoric Man_, 3d ed. vol. ii. p. 223.

[30] _Tribes of the Extreme North-West_, pp. 81, 82.

[31] _Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge_, 158.

[32] Abbott’s _Primitive Industry_, p. 33.

[33] _Smithsonian Report_, 1872.

[34] _Ibid._ 1868, p. 402.

[35] _Smithsonian Report_, 1877, p. 293.

[36] _Smithsonian Report_, 1885, Part I. p. 873.

[37] _Smithsonian Report_, 1885, Part I. p. 873.

[38] _Smithsonian Report_, Part I. 1885, p. 874.

[39] _Science_, iii. 342.




                                   IV
                         PRE-ARYAN AMERICAN MAN


THE department of American ethnology, notwithstanding its many
indefatigable workers, is still to a large extent a virgin soil. The
western hemisphere is rich in materials for ethnical study, but there is
urgent demand for diligent labourers to rescue them for future use. On
all hands we see ancient nations passing away. The prairie tribes are
vanishing with the buffalo; the Flathead Indians of diverse types and
stranger tongues; and, more interesting than either, the ingenious
Haidahs of the Queen Charlotte Islands: are all diminishing in numbers,
giving up their distinctive customs, and confusing their mythic and
legendary traditions with foreign admixtures; while some are destined to
speedy extinction.

When, in 1846, the artist, Paul Kane, entered on his exploratory travels
among the tribes of the North-West, the Flathead Indians of Oregon and
British Columbia embraced populous settlements of Cowlitz, Chinook,
Newatee, and other nations. Now the researches of the American Bureau of
Ethnology are stimulated by the disclosure that of the Clatsop and
Chinook tribes there are only three survivors who speak the former
language, and only one with a knowledge of the latter. Of the Klaskanes,
in like manner, only one is known to survive; and from a like solitary
representative of the Tuteloes the language of a vanished race has
recently been rescued. With all the native tribes who have been brought
into near relations with the intruding white race their languages and
customs are undergoing important modifications. Other elements of
confusion and erasure are also at work. A large influx of Chinese
complicates the ethnological problem; and it cannot be wisely left to
the efforts of individuals, carried on without concert, and on no
comprehensive or systematic plan, to rescue for future study the
invaluable materials of American ethnology. To the native languages
especially the inquirer into some of the curious problems involved in
the peopling of this continent must look for a key to the mystery.

The intelligent inquirer cannot fail to be rewarded for any time he may
devote to a consideration of the condition and relative status of the
aborigines, north of the Gulf of Mexico, not only as studied from
existing native tribes, or from those known since the discovery of
America in 1492, but in so far as we can determine their earlier
condition with the aid of archæological evidence. The student of the
history of the North American nations cannot indeed altogether overlook
the undoubted fact that Columbus was not the first of European voyagers
within the Christian era to enter on the colonisation of the western
hemisphere; whatever value he may attach to the legends and traditions
of more ancient explorers.

The part played by the Scandinavian stock in European history proves
their abundant aptitude to have been the organisers of a Northland of
their own in the New World. The Northmen lingered behind, in their first
home in the Scandinavian peninsula, while Goth, Longobard, Vandal,
Suevi, Frank, Burgundian, and other tribes from the Baltic first wasted
and then revolutionised the Roman world. But they were nursing a
vigorous youth, which ere long, as pagan Dane, and then as Norman,
stamped a new character on mediæval Europe. Their presence in the New
World rests on indubitable evidence; but the very definiteness of its
character in their inhospitable northern retreat helps to destroy all
faith in any mere conjectural fancies relative to their settlement on
points along the Atlantic seaboard which they are supposed to have
visited.

Runic inscriptions on the Canadian and New England seaboard would, if
genuine, give an entirely novel aspect to our study of Pre-Columbian
American history, with all its possibilities of older intercourse with
the eastern hemisphere. But it is the same whether we seek for traces of
colonisation in the tenth or the fifteenth century, in so far as all
native history is concerned. They equally little suffice to furnish
evidence of relationship, in blood, language, arts or customs, between
any people of the eastern hemisphere and the native American races. We
are indeed invited from time to time to review indications suggestive of
an Asiatic or other old-world source for the American aborigines; and in
nearly every system of ethnical classification they are, with good
reason, ranked as Mongolidæ; but if their pedigree is derived from an
Asiatic stock, the evidence has yet to be marshalled which shall place
on any well-established basis the proofs of direct ethnical affinity
between them and races of the eastern hemisphere. The ethnological
problem is, here as elsewhere, beset by many obscuring elements.
Language, at best, yields only remote analogies, and thus far American
archæology, though studied with unflagging zeal, has been able to render
very partial aid.

It cannot admit of question that the compass of American
archæology,—including that of the semi-civilised and lettered races of
Central and Southern America,—is greatly circumscribed in comparison
with that of Europe. But the simplicity which results from this has some
compensating elements in its direct adaptation to the study of man, as
he appears on the continent unaffected by the artificialities of a
forced civilisation, and with so little that can lend countenance to any
theory of degeneracy from a higher condition of life. In the modern
alliance between archæology and geology, and the novel views which have
resulted as to the antiquity of man, the characteristic disclosures of
primitive art, alike among ancient and modern races, have given a
significance to familiar phases of savage life undreamt of till very
recently. The student who has by such means formed a definite conception
of primeval art, and realised some idea of the condition and
acquirements of the savage of Europe’s Post-Pliocene era, turns with
renewed interest to living races seemingly perpetuating in arts and
habits of our own day what gave character to the social life of the
prehistoric dawn. This phase of primitive art can still be studied on
more than one continent, and in many an island of the Pacific and the
Indian ocean; but nowhere is the apparent reproduction of such initial
phases of the history of our race presented in so comprehensive an
aspect as on the American continent. There man is to be found in no
degree superior in arts or habits to the Australian savage; while
evidence of ingenious skill and of considerable artistic taste occur
among nomads exposed to the extremest privations of an Arctic climate;
and with no more knowledge of metallurgy than is implied in occasionally
turning to account the malleable native copper, by hammering it into the
desired shape; or, in their intercourse with Arctic voyagers and
Hudson’s Bay trappers, acquiring by barter some few implements and
weapons of European manufacture. The arts of the patient Eskimo,
exercised under the stimulus of their constant struggle for existence
amid all the hardships of a polar climate, have, indeed, not only
suggested comparisons between them and the artistic cave-dwellers of
Central Europe in its prehistoric dawn; but have been assumed to prove
an ethnical affinity, and direct descent, altogether startling when we
fully realise the remote antiquity thereby assigned to those Arctic
nomads, and the unchanging condition ascribed to them through all the
intervening ages of geographical and social revolution.

But whatever may be the value ultimately assigned to the Eskimo
pedigree, a like phenomenon of unprogressive humanity, perpetuating
through countless generations the same rudimentary arts, everywhere
presents itself, and seems to me to constitute the really remarkable
feature in North American ethnology and archæology. We find, not only in
Canada but throughout the whole region northward from the Gulf of
Mexico, diversified illustrations of savage life; but nearly all of them
unaffected by traces of contact with earlier civilisation. From the
northern frontiers of Canada the explorer may travel through widely
diversified regions till he reach the cañons of Mexico and the ruined
cities of Central America; and all that he finds of race and art, of
language or native tradition, is in contrast to the diversities of the
European record of manifold successions of races and of arts. There
within the Arctic circle the Eskimo constructs his lodge of snow, and
successfully maintains the battle for life under conditions which
determine to a large extent the character of his ingenious arts and
manufacture. Immediately to the south are found the nomad tribes of
forest and prairie, with their téepees of buffalo-skin, or their
birch-bark wigwams and canoes: wandering hunter tribes of the great
North-West; type of the red Indian of the whole northern continent. The
Ohio and Mississippi valleys abound with earthworks and other remains of
the vanished race of the Mound-Builders: of old the dwellers there in
fortified towns, agriculturalists, ingenious potters, devoted to the use
of tobacco, expending laborious art on their sculptured pipes, and with
some exceptionally curious skill in practical geometry; yet, they too,
ignorant of almost the very rudiments of metallurgy, and only in the
first stage of the organised life of a settled community. The modifying
influences of circumstances must be recognised in the migratory or
settled habits of different tribes. The Eskimo are of necessity hunters
and fishers, yet they are not, strictly speaking, nomads. In summer they
live in tents, constantly moving from place to place, as the exigencies
of the reindeer-hunting, seal-hunting, or fishing impel them. But they
generally winter in the same place for successive generations, and
manifest as strong an attachment to their native home as the dwellers in
more favoured lands. Their dwelling-houses accommodate from three or
four to ten families; and the same tendency to gather in communities
under one roof is worthy of notice wherever other wandering tribes
settle even temporarily. A drawing, made by me in 1866, of a birch-bark
dwelling which stood among a group of ordinary wigwams on the banks of
the Kaministiquia, shows a lodge of sufficiently large dimensions to
accommodate several families of a band of Chippewas, who had come from
the far West to trade their furs with the Hudson’s Bay factor there. The
Haidahs, the Chinooks, the Nootkas, the Columbian and other Indian
tribes to the west of the Rocky Mountains, all use temporary tents or
huts in their frequent summer wanderings; but their permanent dwellings
are huge structures sufficient to accommodate many families, and
sometimes the whole tribe. They are constructed of logs or split planks,
and in some cases, as among the Haidahs of Queen Charlotte Islands, they
are elaborately decorated with carving and painting.

The gregarious habits thus manifested by many wandering tribes, whenever
circumstances admit of their settling down in a permanent home, may be
due mainly to the economy of labour which experience has taught them in
the construction of one common dwelling, instead of the multiplication
of single huts or lodges. But far to the southward are the ancient
pueblos, the casas grandes, the cliff dwellings, of a race not yet
extinct: timid, unaggressive, living wholly on the defensive, gathered
in large communities like ants or bees; industrious, frugal, and
manifesting ingenious skill in their pottery and other useful arts; but,
they too, in no greatly advanced stage. Still farther to the south we
come at length to the seats of an undoubted native American
civilisation. The comparative isolation of Central America, and the
character of its climate and productions, all favoured a more settled
life; with, as genuine results, its architecture, sculpture, metallurgy,
hieroglyphics, writing, and all else that gives so novel a character to
the memorials of the Central American nations. But great as is their
contrast with the wild tribes of the continent, the highest phases of
native civilisation will not compare with the arts of Egypt, in
centuries before Cadmus taught letters to the rude shepherds of Attica,
or the wolf still suckled her cubs on the Palatine hill.

If this is a correct reading of American archæology, its bearings are
significant in reference to the whole history of American man. In Europe
the student of primitive antiquity is habitually required to
discriminate between products of ingenious skill belonging to periods
and races widely separated alike by time and by essentially diverse
stages of progress in art. For not only do its Palæolithic and Neolithic
periods long precede the oldest written chronicles; but even its Aryan
colonisation lies beyond any record of historic beginnings. The
civilisation which had already grown up around the Mediterranean Sea
while the classic nations were in their infancy, extended its influences
not only to what was strictly regarded as transalpine Europe, but beyond
the English Channel and the Baltic, centuries before the Rhine and
Danube formed the boundary of the Roman world. Voltaire, when treating
of the morals and spirit of nations, says: “It is not in the nature of
man to desire that which he does not know.” But it is certainly in his
nature, at any rate, to desire much that he does not possess; and the
cravings of the rudest outlying tribes of ancient Europe must have been
stimulated by many desires of which those of the New World were
unconscious till the advent of Europeans in the fifteenth century
brought them into contact with a long-matured civilisation.

The archæology of the American continent is, in this respect, at least,
simple. Its student is nowhere exposed to misleading or obscuring
elements such as baffle the European explorer from the intermingling of
relics of widely diverse eras, or even such a succession of arts of the
most dissimilar character as Dr. Schliemann found on the site of the
classic Ilium. The history of America cannot repeat that of Europe. Its
great river-valleys and vast prairies present a totally different
condition of things from that in which the distinctive arts, languages,
and nationalities of Europe have been matured. The physical geography of
the latter with its great central Alpine chain, its highlands, its
dividing seas, its peninsulas, and islands, has necessarily fostered
isolation; and so has tended to develop the peculiarities of national
character, as well as to protect incipient civilisation and immature
arts from the constant erasures of barbarism. The steppes of Asia in
older centuries proved the nurseries of hordes of rude warriors,
powerful only for spoliation. The evidence of the isolation of the
nations of Europe in early centuries is unmistakable. Scarcely any
feature in the history of the ancient world is more strange to us now
than the absence of all direct intercourse between countries separated
only by the Alps, or even by the Danube or the Rhine. “The geography of
Greek experience, as exhibited by Homer, is limited, speaking generally,
to the Ægean and its coasts, with the Propontis as its limit in the
north-east; with Crete for a southern boundary; and with the addition of
the western coast of the peninsula and its islands as far northwards as
the Leucadian rock. The key to the great contrast between the outer
geography and the facts of nature lies in the belief of Homer that a
great sea occupied the space where we know the heart of the European
continent to lie.”[40] To the early Romans the Celtic nations were known
only as warlike nomads whose incursions from beyond the Alpine frontier
of their little world were perpetuated in the half-legendary tales of
their own national childhood. To the Greek even of the days of Herodotus
no more was known of the Gauls or Germans than the rumours brought by
seamen and traders whose farthest voyage was to the mouth of the Rhone.

It is, indeed, difficult for us now, amid the intimate relations of the
modern world, and the interchange of products of the remotest east and
west, to realise a condition of things when the region beyond the Alps
was a mystery to the Greek historian, and the very existence of the
river Rhine was questioned; or when, four centuries later, the nations
around the Baltic, which were before long to supplant the masters of the
Roman world, were so entirely unknown to them that, as Dr. Arnold
remarks, in one of his letters: “The Roman colonies along the Rhine and
the Danube looked out on the country beyond those rivers as we look up
at the stars, and actually see with our own eyes a world of which we
know nothing.” Yet such ignorance was not incompatible with indirect
intercourse; and was so far from excluding the barbarians beyond the
Alps or the Baltic from all the fruits of the civilisation which grew up
around the Mediterranean Sea, that the elements of the oldest runic
epigraphy of the Goths and Scandinavians are traced to that source; and
the stamp of Hellenic influence is apparent in the later runic writing.
Moreover the elucidation of European archæology has owed its chief
impediment to the difficulty of discriminating between arts of diverse
eras and races of northern Europe, intermingled with those of its
Neolithic and Bronze periods; or of separating them from the true
products of Celtic and classic workmanship.

It is altogether different with American archæology. Were there any
traces there of Celtic, Roman, or mediæval European art, the whole
tendency of the American mind would be to give even an exaggerated value
to their influence. Superficial students of the ruins of Mexico and
Central America have misinterpreted characteristics pertaining to what
may not inaptly be designated instincts common to the human mind in its
first efforts at visible expression of its ideas; and have recognised in
them fancied analogies with ancient Egyptian art, or with the mythology
and astronomical science of the East. Had, indeed, the more advanced
nations of the New World borrowed the arts of Egypt, India, or Greece,
the great river highways and the vast unbroken levels of the northern
continent presented abundant facilities for their diffusion, with no
greater aid than the birch-bark canoe of the northern savage. The copper
of Lake Superior was familiar to nations on the banks of the
Mississippi, the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, and the Delaware. Nor was the
influence of southern civilisation wholly inoperative. Reflex traces of
the prolific fancy of the Peruvian potter may be detected in the rude
ware of the mounds of Georgia and Tennessee; and the conventional art of
Yucatan reappears in the ornamentation of the lodges of the Haidahs of
Queen Charlotte’s Islands, and in the wood and ivory carvings of the
Tawatin and other tribes of British Columbia. Already, moreover, the
elaborate native devices which give such distinctive character to the
ivory and claystone carvings of the Chimpseyan and Clalam Indians, have
been largely superseded by reproductions of European ornamentation, or
literal representations of houses, shipping, horses, fire-arms, and
other objects brought under the notice of the native artist in his
intercourse with white men. We are justified, therefore, in assuming
that no long-matured civilisation could have existed in any part of the
American continent without leaving, not only abundant evidence of its
presence within its own area, but also many traces of its influence far
beyond. Yet it cannot be said of the vanished races of the North
American continent that they died and made no sign. Their memorials are
abundant, and some of their earthworks and burial mounds are on a
gigantic scale. But they perpetuate no evidence of a native civilisation
of elder times bearing the slightest analogy to that of Europe through
all its historic centuries. The western hemisphere stands a world apart,
with languages and customs essentially its own; and with man and his
arts embraced within greatly narrower limits of development than in any
other quarter of the globe, if we except Australia. The evolutionist
may, indeed, be tempted by the absence not only of the anthropoid apes,
but by all but the lowest families of the _Primates_, to regard man as a
recent intruder on the American continent. But in this, as in the
archæologist’s deductions, the term “recent” is a relative one. To
whatever source American man may be referred, his relations to the
old-world races are sufficiently remote to preclude any theory of
geographical distribution within the historic period.

It is not, therefore, adequate time that is wanting for the growth of a
native American civilisation. The only satisfactory indication of the
affiliation of the American races to those of Asia or Europe, or of
Africa, must be sought for in their languages. But any trace of this
kind, thus far observed, is at best obscure and remote. The resemblance
in physical traits points to affinity with the Asiatic Mongol, and the
agglutinate characteristics common to many languages of the continent,
otherwise essentially dissimilar, is in harmony with this. But Asiatic
affinities are only traceable remotely, not demonstrable on any definite
line of descent; and all the evidence that language supplies points to a
greatly prolonged period of isolation. The number of languages spoken
throughout the whole of North and South America has been estimated to
considerably exceed twelve hundred; and on the northern continent alone,
more than five hundred distinct languages are spoken, which admit of
classification among seventy-five ethnical groups, each with essential
linguistic distinctions, pointing to its own parent stock. Some of those
languages are merely well-marked dialects, with fully developed
vocabularies. Others have more recently acquired a dialectic character
in the breaking up and scattering of dismembered tribes, and present a
very limited range of vocabulary, suited to the intellectual
requirements of a small tribe, or band of nomads. The prevailing
condition of life throughout the whole North American continent was
peculiarly favourable to the multiplication of such dialects, and their
growth into new languages, owing to the constant dismemberment of
tribes, and the frequent adoption into their numbers of the refugees
from other fugitive broken tribes, leading to an intermingling of
vocabularies and fresh modifications of speech.

But, by whatever means we seek to account for the great diversity of
speech among the communities of the New World, it is manifest that
language furnishes no evidence of recent intrusion, or of contact for
many generations with Asiatic or other races. On any theory of origin
either of race or language, a greatly prolonged period is indispensable
to account for the actual condition of things which presents such a
tempting field for the study of the ethnologist. Among the various races
brought under notice, the Huron-Iroquois of Canada and the neighbouring
states most fitly represent the North American race east of the Rocky
Mountains. Their language, subdivided into many dialects, furnishes
indications of migrations throughout the greater portion of that area
eastward between the Mississippi and the Atlantic seaboard, and its
affinities have been sought for beyond the American continent. Mr.
Horatio Hale, an experienced philologist familiar with the races and
languages most nearly akin to those of the New World, in his _Indian
Migrations, as evidenced by Language_, after remarking that there is
nothing in the languages of the American Indians to favour the
conjecture of an origin from Eastern Asia, thus proceeds: “But in
Western Europe one community is known to exist, speaking a language
which in its general structure manifests a near likeness to the Indian
tongues. Alone of all the races of the old continent the Basques or
Euskarians, of northern Spain and south-western France, have a speech of
that highly complex and polysynthetic character which distinguishes the
American languages.” But to this he has to add the statement that “there
is not, indeed, any such positive similarity in words or grammar as
would prove a direct affiliation. The likeness is merely in the general
cast and mould of speech, but this likeness is so marked as to have
awakened much attention.”[41]

Assuming the affinity thus based on a general likeness in cast and mould
of speech to be well founded, there need be no surprise at the lack of
any positive similarity in words or grammar; for, used only as a test of
the intervening time since Basque and Red Indian parted, it points to
representatives of a prehistoric race that occupied Europe before the
advent of Celtic or other Aryan pioneer, long prior to the historic
dawn. And if the intervening centuries between that undetermined date
and the close of the fifteenth century, when intercourse was once more
renewed between the Iberian peninsula and the transatlantic continent,
sufficed for the evolution of all the classic, mediæval, and renaissance
phases of civilisation in Europe, what was man doing through all those
centuries in this New World? A period of time would appear to have
transpired ample enough for the development of a native civilisation;
but neither the languages nor the arts of the Indian nations found in
occupation of the northern continent reveal traces of it; nor does
archæology disclose to us evidence of civilised precursors. Whatever
their origin may have been, the Red Indian appears to have remained for
unnumbered centuries excluded by ocean barriers from all influence of
the historic races. But on this very account an inquiry into the history
of the nations of the American continent, in so far as this may be
recoverable from archæological or other evidence, may simplify important
ethnical problems, and contribute results of some value in reference to
the condition and progress of primeval man elsewhere.

In Europe man can be studied only as he has been moulded by a thousand
external influences, and by the intermixture of many dissimilar races.
The most recent terms of ethnological classification, the Xanthocroi and
Melanochroi, are based on the assumed interblending of widely dissimilar
races in times long anterior to any definite chronology. There was a
time, as is assumed, when the sparsely peopled areas of Europe were
occupied by a population still imperfectly represented by the Finns, the
Lapps, and the Basques. Those are supposed to be surviving fragments of
a once homogeneous population in prehistoric centuries. On this the
great Aryan migration intruded in successive waves of Celtic, Slavic,
Hellenic and Teutonic invaders, not without considerable intermixture of
blood. Such is the great ethnical revolution by which it is assumed that
Europe was recolonised from the same source from whence India and Persia
derived their ancient civilised and lettered races. The Finnic
hypothesis, and the once favoured idea of an Asiatic cradleland for the
whole so-called Aryan races, have been greatly modified by later
research. Community of language is no longer accepted as necessarily
involving a common ethnic origin. But the results in no way affect the
general conclusion as to the displacement of a succession of barbarous
races by the historic races of Europe long before the Christian era.

The year 1492 marks the beginning of an analogous ethnical revolution by
which the Aryan, or Indo-European stock intruded, in ever-increasing
numbers, on the aboriginal populations of the New World. The disparity
between the first Celtic or other Aryan immigrants into Europe and the
aborigines whom they encountered there was probably less than that which
separated the first American colonists from the Red Indian savages whom
they displaced. In both cases it was the meeting of cultured races with
rude nomads whom they were prone to regard with an aversion or contempt
very different from the repellent elements between conquering and
subject nations in near equality to each other. The disparity, for
example, between the native Briton and the intruding Saxon, or between
the later Anglo-Saxon and the intruding Dane or Northman, was
sufficiently slight to admit of ready intermixture, ultimately, in spite
of their bitter antagonism. Nor was even the civilised Roman separated
by any such gulf from the Gaul or German who bowed to the Imperial yoke,
and exchanged their independence for Roman citizenship. But other
elements have also to be kept in view. The pioneers of emigration are
not, as a rule, the most cultured members of the intruding race; while
the disparity in the relative numbers of the sexes inevitably resulting
from the conditions under which any extensive migration takes place
forms an effective counterpoise to very wide ethnical differences. In
every case of extensive immigration, with the excess of males and
chiefly of hardy young adventurers, the same result is inevitable. On
the American continent it has already produced a numerous race of
half-breeds, descendants of white and Indian parentage, apart from that
other and not less interesting “coloured race,” now numbering upwards of
six millions in the United States alone, the descendants of European and
African parentage. In the older provinces of Canada, the remnants of the
aboriginal Indian tribes have been gathered on suitable reserves; and on
many of these, so far are they from hastening to extinction, that during
the last quarter of a century the returns of the Indian Department show
a steady numerical increase. In the United States, under less favourable
circumstances, similar results are beginning to be recognised. In a
report on “Indian Civilisation and Education,” dated Washington,
November 24, 1877, it is set forth as more and more tending to assume
the aspect of an established fact, “that the Indians, instead of being
doomed to extinction within a limited period, are, as a rule, not
decreasing in numbers; and are, in all probability, destined to form a
permanent factor; an enduring element of our population.” Wherever the
aborigines have been gathered together upon suitable reserves, and
trained to industrious habits, as among the Six Nation Indians, settled
on the Grand river, in the Province of Ontario; or where they have
mingled on terms of equality with the white settlers, as within the old
Hudson’s Bay territory on the Red river, they have after a time showed
indications of endurance. It is not a mere intermingling of white and
Indian settlers, but the increase of the community by the growth of a
half-breed population; and when this takes place under favourable
circumstances, as was notably the case so long as the hunter tribes of
the prairies and the trappers of the Hudson’s Bay Company shared the
great North-West as a common hunting-ground, the results are altogether
favourable to the endurance of the mixed race. On a nearly similar
footing we may conceive of the admixture of the earliest Aryans with the
Allophylians of Europe, resulting in some of the most noticeable types
of modern European nationalities. The growth in the territory of the
Hudson’s Bay Company of a numerous half-breed population, assuming the
status of farming hunters, distinct alike from the Indians and the
Whites, is a fact of singular interest to the ethnologist. It has been
the result of alliances, chiefly with Indian Cree women, by the fur
trappers of the region. But these included two distinct elements: the
one a Scottish immigration, chiefly from the Orkney Islands; the other
that of the French Canadians, who long preceded the English as hunters
and trappers in the North-West. The contrasting Scottish and French
paternity reveals itself in the hybrid offspring; but in both cases the
half-breeds are a large and robust race, with greater powers of
endurance than the pure-blood Indian. They have been described to me by
more than one trustworthy observer as “superior in every respect, both
mentally and physically,” and this is confirmed by my own experience.
The same opinion has been expressed by nearly all who have paid special
attention to the hybrid races of the New World. D’Orbigny, when
referring to the general result of this intermingling of races says:
“Among the nations in America the product is always superior to the two
types that are mixed.” Henry, a traveller of the last century, who spent
six years among the North American Indians, notes the confirmatory
assurance given to him by a Cristineaux chief, that “the children borne
by their women to Europeans were bolder warriors and better hunters than
themselves.” Finally, of the hardy race of the Arctic circle Dr. Kane
says: “The half-breeds of the coast rival the Esquimaux in their powers
of endurance.” There is also a fine race in Greenland, half Danes; and
Dr. Rae informs me that numerous half-breed Eskimo are to be met with on
the Labrador coast. They are taller and more hardy than the pure-blooded
Eskimo; so that he always gave the preference to them as his guides. The
Danish half-breeds are described by Dr. Henry Rink, in his _Tales and
Traditions of the Eskimo_, as dating back to the earliest times of the
colonisation of Greenland. The mixed marriages, he says, “have generally
been rich in offspring. The children for the most part grow up as
complete Greenlanders”; but the distinction between them and the native
Eskimo is unmistakable, although individuals of the hybrid offspring
represent the mixture of European and native blood in almost every
possible proportion.

From the conquest of Mexico in 1520, and of Peru in 1534, this admixture
of races of the Old and the New World has been going on in varying ratio
according to the relative circumstances under which they meet. In Mexico
and in the more civilised portions of South America the half-breeds are
estimated to constitute fully one-fifth of the whole population, while
the so-called “coloured people,” the descendants of European and African
parentage, now number not less than fifteen millions throughout the
mainland and the Islands of North and South America.

Throughout the northern, southern, and western states of America, on the
Pacific slope, and in Canada, the growth of a mixed race of White and
Indian blood has everywhere taken place in the first period of
settlement, when the frontier backwoodsman and the hunter were brought
into contact with the native tribes. Along the borders of every frontier
state a nearly exclusive male population is compelled to accept the
services of the Indian women in any attempt at domestic life. The
children grow up to share in perfect equality the rude life of their
fathers. The new generation presents a mixed race of hardy trappers,
mingling the aptitudes of both races in the wild life of the frontier.
With the increase of population, and the more settled life of the
clearing, the traces of mixed blood are lost sight of; but it is to a
large extent only a repetition of what appears to have marked the advent
of the Aryan immigrants into Europe. The new, but more civilised race
predominated. Literal extermination, no doubt, did its work, and the
aborigines to a large extent perished. But no inconsiderable remnant
finally disappeared by absorption into the general stock; not without
leaving enduring evidence of the process in the Melanochroi, or dark
whites—the Iberians, or Black Celts, as they are sometimes styled,—of
Western Europe; as well as in the allied type, not only of the
Mediterranean shores, but of Western Asia and Persia. A process has thus
been going on on the American continent for four centuries, which cannot
fail to beget new types in the future; even as a like process is seen to
have produced them under analogous conditions in ancient Europe.

Viewed in this aspect, the archæology and ethnology of the New World
presents in some important respects a startling analogy to pre-Aryan
Europe. Assuredly the status of the Allophylian races of Europe can
scarcely have been inferior to that of some, at least, of the aborigines
of America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Probably the
Aryan pioneers were fully equal to its first European immigrants. But if
the ethnical characteristics of American man are simple, and the aspect
of his social life appears to realise for us a living analogy to that of
Europe’s Neolithic, if not in some respects to that of its Palæolithic
era, the question of his antiquity acquires a new interest; for it thus
becomes apparent that man may remain through countless ages in the wild
hunter stage, as unprogressive as any other denizen of the wilderness
propagating its species and hunting for its prey. But the whole question
of the antiquity of man has undergone a marvellous revolution. The
literature of modern geology curiously illustrates its progress, from
the date of the publication of Dean Buckland’s _Reliquiæ Diluvianæ_, in
1823, to the final edition of Sir Charles Lyell’s _Principles of
Geology_, in 1872, and the latest embodiment of his conclusions on the
special question involved in his _Antiquity of Man_.

The determination of a Palæolithic period for Europe, with its rude
implements of flint or stone, chipped into shape without the aid of any
grinding or polishing process, and belonging to an era when man was
associated with animals either extinct or known only throughout the
historic period in extreme northern latitudes, has naturally stimulated
the research of American archæologists for corresponding traces on this
continent. Nor is the anticipation of the possible recovery of the
traces of man’s presence in post-glacial, or still earlier epochs in
unhistoric areas, limited to either continent. If it be accepted as an
established fact that man has existed in Europe for unnumbered ages,
during which enormous physical changes have been wrought; upheaval and
denudation have revolutionised the face of the continent; the deposition
of the whole drift formation has been effected; the river-valleys of
Southern England and the north of France have been excavated, and the
British Islands detached from the neighbouring continent: it cannot be
regarded as improbable that evidence may yet be found of the early
presence of man in any region of the globe. Nevertheless some of the
elements already referred to tend to mark with a character of their own
the investigations alike of the archæologist and the geologist into the
earliest traces of human art in what we have learned habitually to speak
of as a New World. In Europe the antiquary, familiar already with
ancient historic remains, had passed by a natural transition to the
study of ruder examples of primitive art in stone and bronze, as well as
to the physical characteristics of races which appeared to have
preceeded the earliest historic nations. The occupation of the British
Islands, for example, successively by Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons,
Danes, and Normans, was so familiar to the popular mind that the problem
of a sequence of neolithic, bronze, and the ruder iron implements with
their correlated personal ornaments, pottery, etc., was universally
solved by referring them to Celtic, Roman, and Scandinavian art.
Erroneous as this interpretation of the evidence proves to have been, it
had, nevertheless, sufficient accordance with truth to prepare the way
for the ultimate reception of more accurate inductions. The fact of the
occurrence of successive phases of art, and their indication of a
succession of races, were undoubted; and researches directed to the
solution of the problem of European archæology were unhesitatingly
followed up through mediæval, classical, Assyrian and Egyptian remains,
to the very threshold of that prehistoric dawn which forms the
transitional stage between geological and historical epochs. A
significant fact, in its bearing on the recent disclosures of the
river-drift in France and England, is that some of the most
characteristic flint implements, such as a large spear head found along
with the remains of a fossil elephant in Gray’s Inn Lane, London, and
implements of the same type obtained from the drift of the Waveney
Valley, in Surrey, underlying similar fossil remains, had been brought
under the notice of archæologists upwards of a century before the idea
of the contemporaneous existence of man and the mammals of the Drift
found any favour; and they were unhesitatingly assigned to a Celtic
origin. The first known discovery of any flint implement in the
quaternary gravels of Europe is the one already noted which stands
recorded in the Sloane catalogue as “A British weapon found, with
elephant’s tooth, opposite to black Mary’s, near Grayes Inn Lane.”

A just conception of the comprehensiveness even of historical antiquity
was long retarded in Europe by an exclusive devotion to classical
studies; but the relations of America to the Old World are so recent,
and all else is so nearly a blank, that for it the fifteenth century is
the historic dawn, and everything dating before the landing of Columbus
has been habitually assigned to the same vague antiquity. Hence
historical research has been occupied for the most part on very modern
remains, and the supreme triumph long aimed at has been to associate the
hieroglyphics of Central America, and the architectural monuments of
Peru, with those of Egypt. But we have entered on a new era of
archæological and historical inquiry. The palæolithic implements of the
French Drift have only been brought to light in our own day; and, though
upwards of half a century has elapsed since the researches of Mr. J.
MacEnery were rewarded by the discovery of flint implements of the
earliest type in the same red loam of the Devonshire limestone caves
which embedded bones of the mammoth, tichorhine rhinoceros, cave-bear
and other extinct mammals, it is only recently that the full
significance of such disclosures has been recognised.

America was indeed little behind Europe in the earlier stages of cavern
research. A cabinet of the British Museum is filled with fossil bones
obtained by Dr. Lund and M. Claussen from limestone caverns in Brazil,
embedded in a reddish-coloured loam, under a thick stalagmitic flooring,
and including, along with remains of genera still inhabiting the
American continent, those of extinct monkeys. Human bones were also
found in the same caves, but superficially, and seemingly of the present
Indian race. But a fresh interest and significance have been given to
such researches by the novel aspect of prehistoric archæology in Europe.
The relations now established between the earliest traces of European
man and the geological aspects of the great Drift formation, have
naturally led to the diligent examination of corresponding deposits of
the continent of America, in the hope of recovering similar traces
there. Until recently, however, any supposed examples of American
palæolithic art have been isolated and unsatisfactory. Colonel Charles
C. Jones, in his _Antiquities of the Southern Indians_, notes the
discovery in the Nacoochee valley, in the State of Georgia, of flint
implements from the gravel and boulders of the drift, and in material,
manner of construction, and appearance closely resembling the rough
hatchets belonging to the Drift type. Other more or less trustworthy
examples of a like kind have been reported; among which may be noted a
large specimen, now in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland, found at Lewiston, in the State of New York, at a great depth,
when sinking a well. Implements of neolithic character, and even of
modern type, have been produced, not only from Kansas and California
gold-diggings, but from the volcanic tufa of the Pacific coast, overlaid
by repeated volcanic deposits. In a terrace of modified drift, near
Little Falls, Minnesota, an accumulation of quartz chips have been
found; the supposed refuse of an ancient workshop. More definitely,
Professor Aughey reports the discovery of rudely chipped flint arrow
heads in the loess of the Missouri valley, beneath the bones of the
mastodon; and the loess gravels of Ohio and Indiana, belonging
unquestionably to the last glacial age, have disclosed what seem to be
genuine palæoliths, pointing to the presence of the rational tool-maker
during the close of the quaternary epoch of the North American
continent.

Some of those assumed illustrations of American palæolithic art cannot
be accepted. One implement, for example, from the Californian
gravel-drift, is a polished stone plummet perforated at one end, and not
only modern in character, but as a genuine discovery in the gold-bearing
gravels, tending to discredit the palæolithic origin assigned to ruder
implements found under similar circumstances. But the most startling
examples of this class are of minor importance when compared with
reported discoveries of human remains in the Californian drift. In 1857,
Dr. C. F. Winslow produced a fragment of a human skull found eighteen
feet below the surface in the “pay drift” at Table Mountain, associated
with remains of the mastodon and fossil elephant. From beds underlying
the lava and volcanic tufa of California, from time to time other
evidences of the assumed ancient presence of man and traces of his art
are produced. But the manifestly recent character of some of the latter
prove the disturbance of these deposits by subsequent influences. In
1869 Professor J. D. Whitney exhibited, at the Chicago meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, a complete human
skull, recovered at a depth of 130 feet in the auriferous gravel of
Calaveras County, California, underlying five successive beds of lava
and volcanic tufa, and vouched for its geological antiquity. The gravel
which adhered to the relic found imbedded in it is referred by him to
the Pliocene age; and Dr. J. W. Foster remarks of it, in his
_Prehistoric Races of the United States_: “This skull, admitting its
authenticity, carries back the advent of man to the Pliocene epoch, and
is therefore older than the stone implements of the drift-gravel of
Abbeville and Amiens, or the relics furnished by the cave-dirt of
Belgium and France.” In reality, however, the authenticity of the skull
as a pliocene relic cannot be admitted. Like that of Guadaloupe, those
found by Dr. Lund in the Brazil caves, and other fossil skulls of the
American continent, it proved, according to the trustworthy report of
Dr. Wyman, to be of the ordinary Indian type; though to some minds that
only confirms the genuineness of the discovery. A human skull recovered
from the delta of the Mississippi at New Orleans, and estimated by Dr.
Dowler—on what, “to avoid all cavil,” he claimed to be extremely
moderate assumptions,—as not less than 57,000 years old, is grouped
with others found by Dr. Lund in one of the Brazil caves, at Logoa
Santa, and thus commented on: “Numerous species of animals have been
blotted from creation since American humanity’s first appearance. The
form of these crania, moreover, proves that the general type of races
inhabiting America at that inconceivably remote era was the same which
prevailed at the Columbian discovery”;[42] and so the authors of _Types
of Mankind_ arrived at the conclusion that with such evidence of the
native American type having occupied the continent in geological times,
before the formation of the Mississippi alluvia, science may spare
itself the trouble of looking elsewhere for the origin of the American
race! The high authority of Professor Agassiz was adduced at the time in
support of this and other equally crude assumptions; but they have
ceased to receive the countenance of men of science.

Meanwhile the progress of European discovery has familiarised us with
the idea of the rude primeval race of its Palæolithic era, so designated
in reference to their characteristic implements recovered from the
river-drift of France and England, and from the sedimentary
accumulations of their rock shelters and limestone caves. That flint and
stone implements of every variety of form abound in the soil of the New
World, has been established by ample proof; and if mere rudeness could
be accepted as evidence of antiquity, many of them rival in this respect
the rudest implements of the European drift. But it has to be kept in
view that the indigenous tribes of America have scarcely even now
abandoned the manufacture of implements of obsidian, flint, and stone,
or of bone and ivory. So striking, indeed, is the analogy between the
simple arts of the palæolithic cave-men of Southern France, and those
still practised by the Eskimo, that Professor Boyd Dawkins inferred from
this conclusive evidence of a pedigree for the Arctic aborigines little
less ancient than that which Dr. Dowler long ago deduced from his
discovery in the delta of the Mississippi. The implements and
accumulated debris of the ancient hunters of the Garonne, the
contemporaries of the mammoth and other extinct mammals, and of the
reindeer, musk-sheep, cave-bear, and other species known only within the
historic period in extreme northern latitudes, undoubtedly suggest
interesting analogies with the modern Eskimo. Only under similar
climatic conditions to those in which they now live, could such
accumulations of animal remains as have been found in the caves of the
valley of the Vésère be possible in places habitually resorted to by
man. But such analogies form a very slender basis on which to found the
hypothesis that the race of the Mammoth and Reindeer period in the
remote Post-Pliocene era of Southern France has its living
representatives within the Arctic circle of the American continent.

The students of modern archæology have become familiar with startling
disclosures; and the supposed identification of living representatives
of the race of the pleistocene river beds or cave deposits is too
fascinating a one to be readily abandoned by its originator. The men of
the River-Drift era are assumed to have been a race of still older and
ruder savages than the palæolithic cave-men, who were more restricted in
their range, and considerably in advance of them in the variety and
workmanship of their weapons and implements. The elder ruder race has
vanished; but the cave-race of that indefinite but vastly remote era of
pliocene, or post-pliocene Europe, is imagined to still survive within
the Arctic frontiers of Canada.

In discussing the plausible hypothesis which thus aims at recovering in
the hyperboreans of America the race that before the close of Europe’s
Pleistocene age, hunted the mammoth, the musk-sheep, and the reindeer in
the valleys of the Garonne, Professor Dawkins reviewed the manners and
habits of the Eskimo as a race of hunters, fishers, and fowlers,
accumulating round their dwellings vast refuse heaps similar to those of
the ancient cave-men. Both were ignorant of the metallurgic arts, were
excluded to a large extent by a like rigorous climate from access to
stone or flint; while they habitually turned to account the available
material, resulting from the spoils of the chase: bone, ivory, and
deer’s horn, in the manufacture of all needful tools. The implements and
weapons thus common to both do unquestionably prove that their manner of
life was in many respects similar. Professor Dawkins also notes, what
can scarcely seem surprising in any people familiar with the working in
bone, namely, the use at times by the Eskimo of fossil mammoth ivory for
the handles of their stone scrapers, and adds: “It is very possible that
this habit of the Eskimos may have been handed down from the late
pleistocene times.” But what strikes him as “the most astonishing bond
of union between the cave-men and the Eskimo is the art of representing
animals”; and, after noting those familiar to both, along with the
correspondence in their weapons, and habits as hunters, he says: “All
these points of connection between the cave-men and the Eskimos can, in
my opinion, be explained only on the hypothesis that they belong to the
same race.”[43]

As to the ingenious imitative art of the Cro-Magnon cave-dwellers, it is
by no means peculiar to them and the modern Eskimo; but, on the
contrary, is common to many savage races; though by no modern savage
people has a like degree of artistic ability been shown. Professor
Dawkins says truly of the cave-man: “He possessed a singular talent for
representing the animals he hunted; and his sketches reveal to us that
he had a capacity for seeing the beauty and grace of natural form not
much inferior to that which is the result of long-continued civilisation
in ourselves, and very much higher than that of his successors in Europe
in the Neolithic age. The hunter who was both artist and sculptor, who
reproduced, with his imperfect means, at one time foliage, at another
the quiet repose of a reindeer feeding, has left behind him the proof of
a decided advance in culture, such as might be expected to result from
the long continuance of man on the earth in the hunter state of
civilisation.”[44] All this is correct in reference to the art of the
Vézère carvers and draughtsmen; but it would be gross exaggeration if
applied to such conventional art as the Eskimo arrow-straightener which
Professor Dawkins figures, with its formal row of reindeer and their
grotesque accessories. The same criticism is equally applicable to
numerous other specimens of Eskimo art, and to similar Innuit, or
western Eskimo representations of hunting scenes, such as those figured
by Mr. William H. Dall, in his _Alaska_, which he describes as “drawings
analogous to those discovered in France in the caves of Dordogne.”[45]

The identity, or near resemblance between harpoons, fowling spears,
marrow spoons, and scrapers, of the ancient cave-race of pleistocene
France, and implements of the modern Eskimo, is full of interest; as is
much also of a like kind between savage races of our own day in the most
widely severed regions of the globe; but it is a slender basis on which
to found such far-reaching deductions. The old race that lived on the
verge of the great glaciers in Southern France gave the preference to
bone and ivory over flint or stone, because the climatic conditions
under which they lived rendered those most accessible to them; and we
see in the familiar types of flint arrow heads, stone hammers, and the
like primitive tools of savage man, both in ancient and modern times,
how naturally the workman, with the same materials and similar
necessities, shapes his few and simple weapons and implements into like
form. As to the absence of pottery, alike among the ancient
cave-dwellers and the modern Eskimo, in which another element of
resemblance is traced, it proves no more than that both had to work
under climatic conditions which rendered clay, adequate fuel, and nearly
all other appliances of the potter, even less available than flint and
stone.

But the caves of the Vézère have furnished examples not only of skulls,
but of complete skeletons of an ancient race of cave-dwellers, whether
that of the ingenious draughtsmen and reindeer hunters or not; and had
those, or the underlying debris, yielded traces of the Eskimo type of
head, there would then be good reason for attaching an exceptional value
to any evidence of correspondence in arts and habits. But the cerebral
capacity of this Cro-Magnon race amply accords with the artistic skill,
and the sense of beauty and grace of natural form, ascribed to the
ancient draughtsmen; and their well-developed skulls and large bones
present the most striking contrast to the stunted Eskimo. The strongly
marked physiognomy of the former bears no resemblance to the debased
Mongolian type of the latter. No doubt it may be argued with sufficient
plausibility that in the slow retreat of the palæolithic race, whether
eastward by the river-valleys of Europe, and across the steppes of Asia,
to Behring Strait; or over submerging continents, since engulfed in the
ocean; and in the vast æons of their retreat to their latest home in
another hemisphere, on the verge of the pole, any amount of change may
have modified the physical characteristics of the race. But if so, the
evidence of their pedigree is no longer producible. The Eskimo may be
related by descent to the men of the French Reindeer period, as we
ourselves may be descendants of palæolithic man; but, as Professor
Geikie has justly remarked: “When anthropologists produce from some of
the caves occupied by the reindeer hunters a cranium resembling that of
the living Eskimo, it will be time enough to admit that the latter has
descended from the former. But, unfortunately for the view here referred
to, none of the skulls hitherto found affords it any support.”[46] In
truth, the plausible fancy that the discoveries of the last twenty-five
years have tended to confirm the identification of the cave-men with the
Eskimo, only requires the full appreciation of all that it involves, in
order that it shall take its place with that other identification with
the red man of the present day of “Dr. Dowler’s sub-cypress Indian who
dwelt on the site of New Orleans 57,000 years ago.”

The received interpretation of the imperfect record which remains to us
of the successive eras of geological change with the accompanying
modifications of animal life, down to the appearance of man, and the
deciphering of geological chroniclings as a coherent disclosure of the
past history of the earth, are largely due to Sir Charles Lyell. In 1841
he visited America, and then estimated with cautious conservatism some
of the evidences adduced for the assumed antiquity of American man. But
subsequent observations led him to modify his views; and at length, in
1863, he “read his recantation” of earlier opinions; and—so far at
least as Europe is concerned,—gave the full weight of his authority to
the conclusions relative to the antiquity of man based on the discovery
of flint implements associated with bones of extinct mammalia at
Abbeville and in the valley of the Thames. The peculiar geological
conditions accompanying the earliest evidence of the presence of
palæolithic man in Europe proved, when rightly interpreted, to be no
less convincing than the long-familiar sequence of more recent
archæological indices by which antiquarian speculation has proceeded
step by step back towards that prehistoric dawn in which geology and
archæology meet on common ground. The chalk and the overlying
river-drift, abounding with flint nodules, left no room for question as
to the source of the raw material from which the primitive implements
were manufactured. The flint is still abundant as ever, in nodules of a
size amply sufficient for furnishing the largest palæoliths, in the
localities both of France and England where such specimens of primitive
art have been recovered by thousands. But there also other disclosures
tell no less conclusively of many subsequent stages of progress, alike
in prehistoric and historic times.

Sir John Evans, in his _Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain_,
purposely begins with the more recent implements, including those of the
Australian and other modern savage races, and traces his way backward,
“ascending the stream of time,” and noting the diverse examples of
ingeniously fashioned and polished tools of the Neolithic age which
preceded that palæolithic class, of vast antiquity and rudest
workmanship, which now constitute the earliest known works of man; if
they are not, indeed, examples of the first infantile efforts of human
skill. But alike in Britain, and on the neighbouring continent, a
chronological sequence of implements in stone and metal, with pottery,
personal ornaments, and other illustrations of progressive art, supplies
the evidence by means of which we are led backward—not without some
prolonged interruptions, as we approach the Palæolithic age,—from
historic to the remotest prehistoric times.

The relative chronology of the European drift may be thus stated: first,
and most modern, the superficial deposits of recent centuries with their
mediæval traces of Frank and Gaul; and along with those, the tombs, the
pottery, and other remains of the Roman period, scarcely perceptibly
affected in their geological relations by nearly the whole interval of
the Christian era; next, in the alluvium, seemingly embedded by natural
accumulation at an average depth of fifteen feet, occur remains of a
European Stone period, corresponding in many respects to those of the
pfahlbauten, or pile villages of the Swiss Lakes; and, underlying such
accumulations exceeding in their duration the whole historical period,
we come at length to the tool-bearing drift, imbedding, along with the
fossil remains of many extinct mammals, the implements of palæolithic
man, fashioned seemingly when the rivers were only beginning the work of
excavating the valleys which give their present contour to the
landscapes of France and England.

There, as elsewhere, we recognise progression from the most artless
rudeness of tool manufacture, belonging to an epoch when the process of
grinding flint or stone to an edge appears to have been unknown; through
various stages of the primitive worker in stone, bone, ivory, and the
like natural products; and then the discovery and gradual development of
the metallurgic arts. Yet at the same time it must not be lost sight of
that mere rudeness of workmanship is no evidence of antiquity. Nothing
can well be conceived of more artless than some of the stone implements
still in use among savage tribes of America. Moreover, it is to be noted
that it is not amid the privations of an Arctic winter, with its
analogies so suggestive of a condition of life corresponding to that of
the men of Europe’s Palæolithic age, but in southern latitudes, with a
climate which furnishes abundant resources for savage man, that the
crudest efforts at tool-making now occur. In a report of the _United
States Geological Survey_ for 1872, Professor Joseph Leidy furnishes an
interesting account of numerous implements, rude as any in the Drift,
observed by him while engaged on a survey at the base of the Unitah
Mountains in Southern Wyoming. “In some places,” he remarks, “the stone
implements are so numerous, and at the same time are so rudely
constructed, that one is constantly in doubt when to consider them as
natural or accidental, and when to view them as artificial.”[47] But
with these, others are mingled of fine finish. The Shoshones who haunt
the region seem to be incapable of such skill as the latter imply; and
express the belief that they were a gift of the Great Spirit to their
ancestors. Yet many are fresh in appearance; though others are worn and
decomposed on the surface, and may, as Professor Leidy assumes, have
lain there for centuries. The tendency is now, even among experienced
archæologists, to assume that they are actually palæolithic. Mr. Thomas
Wilson remarks, in his _Report_ of 1887: “Dr. Leidy did not know these
implements to be what they really were, that is implements of the
Palæolithic period.”[48] But in view of Dr. Leidy’s whole narrative, his
assumption seems to be more consistent with the observed data. In the
same narrative he describes a stone scraper, or _teshoa_, as the
Shoshones call it, employed by them in the dressing of buffalo-skins,
but of so simple a character that he says, “had I not observed it in
actual use, and had noticed it among the materials of the buttes, or
horizontal strata of indurated clays and sandstone, I would have viewed
it as an accidental spawl.” When illustrating the characteristics of a
like class of stone implements and weapons of Great Britain, Sir John
Evans figures and describes an axe, or war-club, procured from the
Indians of Rio Frio in Texas. Its blade is a piece of trachyte, so
rudely chipped that it would scarcely attract attention as of artificial
working, but for the club-like haft, evidently chopped into shape with
stone tools, into which it is inserted. Nothing ruder has been brought
to light in any drift or cave deposit.[49] Another modern Texas
implement, in the Smithonnia collections at Washington,[50] is a
rudely-fashioned flint blade, presenting considerable resemblance to a
familiar class of oval implements of the river-drift.

So far, therefore, as unskilled art and the mere rudeness of workmanship
are concerned, it might be assumed that the aborigines of America are
thus presented to our study in their most primitive stage. They had
advanced in no degree beyond the condition of the European savage of the
River-Drift period, when, at the close of the fifteenth century, they
were brought into contact with modern European culture; and nothing in
their rude arts seemed to offer a clue to their origin, or any evidence
of progression. So far as anything could be learned from their work,
they might have entered on the occupation of the northern continent,
subsequent to the visits of the Northmen in the tenth century; and,
indeed, American archæologists generally favour the opinion that the
_Skrælings_, as the Northmen designated the New England natives whom
they encountered, were not Red Indians but Eskimo. But whatever may have
been the local distribution of races at that date, geological evidence,
which has proved so conclusive in relation to European ethnology, has at
length been appealed to by American investigators, with results which
seem to establish for their continent also its primeval Stone period,
and remote prehistoric dawn.

The _Report of the Peabody Museum of American Archæology and Ethnology_
for 1877, gave the first publicity to a communication from Dr. Charles
C. Abbott, setting forth the data from which he was led to assume that
man existed on the American continent during the formation of the great
glacial deposit which extends from Labrador as far south as Virginia.
The scene of his successful research is in the valley of the Delaware,
near Trenton, New Jersey. Though the relative antiquity of the Trenton
gravel beds is modern compared with some subsequent disclosures, his
discoveries have a special interest as foremost among those of
implement-bearing gravels in the New World. In the gravel, deposited by
the Delaware river in the process of excavating the valley through which
its course now lies, Dr. Abbott’s diligent search has been rewarded by
finding numerous specimens of rudely chipped implements of a peculiar
type, to which he has given the name of “turtle-back celts.” They are
fashioned of a highly indurated argillite, with a conchoidal fracture,
and have been recovered at depths varying from five to upwards of twenty
feet below the overlying soil, in the undisturbed gravel of the bluff
facing the Delaware river, as well as in railway cuttings and other
excavations.

Here, to all appearance, intelligent research had at length been
rewarded by the discovery of undoubted traces of the American
palæolithic man; and Dr. Abbott, not unnaturally, gave free scope to his
fancy, as he realised to himself the preoccupation of the river valley
with “the village sites of pre-glacial man.” There is a fascination in
such disclosures which, especially in the case of the original
discoverer, tempts to extreme views; and both in France and England, at
the present time, the more eager among the geologists and archæologists
devoted to this inquiry are reluctantly restrained from assuming as a
scientific fact the existence of man in Southern England and in France
under more genial climatic influences, prior to the great Ice age which
wrought such enormous changes there. The theory which Dr. Abbott formed
on the basis of the evidence first presented to him by the disclosures
of the Trenton gravel may be thus stated. Towards the close of the great
Ice age, the locality which has rewarded his search for specimens of
palæolithic art marked the termination of the glacier on the Atlantic
coast. Here, at the foot of the glacier, a primitive people, in a
condition closely analogous to that of the Eskimo of the present day,
made their home, and wandered over the open sea in the vicinity, during
the accumulation of the deposit from the melting glacier. But this
drift-gravel was modified by subsequent action. According to Dr.
Abbott’s conclusions, it was deposited in open water, on the bed of a
shallow sea. But the position of the large boulders, and the absence of
true clay in the mass, suggest that it has undergone great changes since
its original deposition as glacial debris; and if this is to be
accounted for by subsequent action of water, the unpolished surfaces of
the chipped implements are inconsistent with such a theory of their
origin. Huge boulders, of the same character as those which abound in
the underlying gravel, occur on the surface; and their presence there
was referred to by Dr. Abbott as throwing light upon “the occurrence of
rude implements identical with those found in the underlying gravels,
inasmuch as the same ice-raft that bore the one, with its accompanying
sand and gravel, might well gather up also stray relics of this
primitive people, and re-deposit them where they are now found.”
Accordingly, seeking in fancy to recall this ancient past, he says in
his first report: “In times preceding the formation of this gravel bed,
now in part facing the Delaware river, there were doubtless localities,
once the village sites of pre-glacial man, where these rude stone
implements would necessarily be abundant,” and he accordingly asks “May
not the ice in its onward march, gathering in bulk every loose fragment
of rock and particle of soil, have held them loosely together, and,
hundreds of miles from their original site, left them in some one
locality such as this, where the river has again brought to light rude
implements that characterise an almost primitive people? But, assuming
that the various implements fashioned by a strictly pre-glacial people
have been totally destroyed by the crushing forces of the glacier, and
that the specimens now produced were not brought from a distance, may
they not be referred to an early race that, driven southward by the
encroaching ice, dwelt at the foot of the glacier, and during their
sojourn here these implements were lost?”[51]

The opinions thus set forth in the first published account of Dr.
Abbott’s discoveries, have since been considerably modified, in so far
as the geological age of the tool-bearing gravel of the Delaware valley
is concerned. In his earlier publications he assumed, as no longer
questionable, the existence of inter-glacial, if not pre-glacial, man on
the continent. In his more matured views, as set forth in his _Primitive
Industry_, he speaks of “having been seriously misled by the various
geological reports that purport to give, in proper sequence, the
respective ages of the several strata of clay, gravel, boulders, and
sand, through which the river has finally worn its channel to the ocean
level”;[52] so that he has probably ascribed too great an antiquity to
the peculiar class of stone implements brought to light in the
river-gravels of New Jersey. Dr. Abbott, accordingly, states as his more
matured conclusion, confirmed by the reports of some of the most
experienced geological observers, on whose judgment he relies, that the
Trenton gravel, in which alone the turtle-back celts have thus far been
found, is a post-glacial river deposit, made at a time when the river
was larger than at present; and is the most recent of all the formations
of the Delaware.[53] Here, however, the term “recent” is employed
altogether relatively; and although Dr. Abbott no longer claims in the
discovery of the stone implements of the gravel beds near Trenton, New
Jersey, evidence of the existence of man on the American continent
before the close of the Glacial period, he still refers the Trenton
gravel tool-makers to an era which, at the lowest computation, precedes
by thousands of years the earliest historical glimpses of Assyria,
Egypt, or wherever among the most ancient nations of the Old World the
beginnings of history can be traced.

The disclosures of Dr. Abbott claim a special importance among the
fruits of archæological investigation on the American continent, not
only from the fact that they furnish the first well-authenticated
results of systematic research based on the scientific analogies of
European archæology, but these later results have included the remains
of man himself. When Dr. Usher of Mobile contributed to _The Types of
Mankind_ an account of the discovery of a human skeleton at New Orleans,
found under circumstances from which the existence of man in the delta
of the Mississippi was deduced well nigh sixty thousand years ago, it
was scarcely calculated to win the reader’s acceptance of that
assumption when it was added that “the type of the cranium was, as might
have been expected, that of the aboriginal American race.” Nor is this
the only example of skull of a strictly modern Indian type from which
the inference has been drawn that the same unchanging form has prevailed
from the era of pre-glacial American man till now. Three human crania
found in the Trenton gravel are now in the Peabody Museum at Cambridge
(Harvard). All are of the same type, but it differs essentially from
that of the Red Indian skull. They are of small size, oval, and present
a striking contrast to all other skulls in the Peabody collection. Their
value is due to the fact of their discovery in the implement-bearing
gravel, in proximity to the characteristic examples of what are assumed
to be palæolithic celts. For it is well for us to bear in remembrance
that the evidences of the antiquity of man in Europe do not rest on any
number of chance disclosures. It is a simple procedure to dig into a
Celtic or Saxon barrow, and find there the implements and pottery of its
builders lying alongside of their buried remains. But archæologists have
learned to recognise the palæolithic implements as not less
characteristic of certain post-pliocene deposits than the palæontology
of the same geological formation. The river-drift and cave deposits are
characterised by traces of contemporaneous life, as shown in the
examples of primitive art from which they receive the name of the
tool-bearing drift or gravel; just as older geological formations have
their characteristic animal and vegetable fossils. The specific
character of the tool-bearing gravel of the French Drift having been
determined, geologists and archæologists have sought for flint
implements in corresponding English strata, as they would seek for the
fossils of the same period, and with like success. Palæolithic
implements have been recovered in this manner in Suffolk, Bedford,
Hartford, Kent, Middlesex, Surrey, and other districts in the south of
England. So entirely indeed has the man of the Drift passed beyond the
province of the archæologist, that in 1861 Professor Prestwich followed
up his _Notes on Further Discoveries of Flint Implements in Beds of
Post-Pleiocene Gravel and Clay_, with a list of forty-one localities
where gravel and clay pits or gravel beds occur, as some of the places
in the south of England where he thought flint implements might also by
diligent search possibly be found; and subsequent discoveries confirmed
his anticipations. It has been by the application of the same principle
to the drift and river-valley gravels of the New World that a like
success has been achieved. The result of a careful study of the
tool-bearing gravel of the Delaware may be thus summarised from recent
reports of trustworthy scientific observers. The Trenton gravel is a
post-glacial river deposit, made at a time when the river was larger
than its present volume. It represents apparently the latest of the
surface deposits of the upper Delaware valley;[54] and Dr. Abbott
remarks of it: “The melting of a local glacier in the Cattskill
Mountains would probably result, at the headwaters of the Delaware, in a
continued flood of sufficient volume, if supplemented by the action of
floating ice, to form the Trenton gravels.”[55] But these gravels are
now recognised as the youngest of the series of ancient
implement-bearing deposits. Underneath lies the older Columbia gravel,
which has also yielded—though in much fewer numbers,—palæoliths of
primitive types. The researches of Mr. Hilborne T. Cresson in the State
of Delaware have already been referred to; and from those results, as
well as from similar disclosures in Ohio and Indiana, it is no longer
doubted that reliable traces have been recovered of American man
contemporary with the mammoth and the mastodon; and—like the old
cave-dwellers of Cro-Magnon,—a hunter of the reindeer in the valley of
the Delaware.

American archæologists have undoubtedly been repeatedly deceived by the
misleading traces of comparatively modern remains in deposits of some
geological antiquity; as in instances already referred to in the
California gravel beds. In these, indeed, ground and polished
instruments of stone, including a “plummet” of highly polished syenite,
“an exhibition of the lapidary’s skill superior to anything yet
furnished by the Stone age of either continent,”[56] are produced from
time to time from the same post-pliocene formation where the remains of
the elephant and mastodon abound. Dr. Abbott did not overlook the danger
to which the archæologist is thus exposed on a continent which, so far
as its aborigines are concerned, has scarcely yet emerged from its Stone
age. He accordingly remarked in his original report: “The chance
occurrence of single specimens of the ordinary forms of Indian relics,
at depths somewhat greater than they have usually reached, even in
constantly cultivated soils, induced me, several years since, to
carefully examine the underlying gravels, to determine if the common
surface-found stone implements of Indian origin were ever found therein,
except in such manner as might easily be explained, as in the case of
deep burials by the uprooting of large trees, whereby an implement lying
on the surface, or immediately below it, might fall into the gravel
beneath, and subsequently become buried several feet in depth; and
lastly, by the action of the water, as where a spring, swollen by spring
freshets, cuts for itself a new channel, and carrying away a large body
of earth, leaves its larger pebbles, and possibly stone implements of
late origin, upon the gravel of the new bed of the stream.” But there is
little difficulty in separating chance-buried neolithic or modern
implements from the genuine palæolithic celts or hatchets abundantly
present in the undisturbed gravel beds, from which they have been taken
on their first exposure.

Professor Henry C. Lewis, of the Pennsylvania Geological Survey, states
that “at the localities on the Pennsylvania Railroad, where extensive
exposures of these gravels have been made, the deposit is undoubtedly
undisturbed. No implement could have come into this gravel except at a
time when the river flowed upon it, and when they might have sunk
through the loose and shifting material. All the evidence points to the
conclusion that at the time of the Trenton gravel flood, Man, in a rude
state, with habits similar to those of the river-drift hunter of Europe,
and probably under a climate similar to that of more northern regions,
lived upon the banks of the ancient Delaware, and lost his stone
implements in the shifting sands and gravel of the bed of that
stream.”[57] To this Dr. Abbott adds: “At just such a locality as
Trenton, where the river widens out, traces of man, had he existed
during the accumulation of the gravel, would be most likely to occur.
This is true not only because there is here the greatest mass of the
gravel, and the best opportunities for examining it in section, but the
locality would be one most favourable for the existence of man at the
time. The higher ground in the immediate vicinity was sufficiently
elevated to be free from the encroachments of the ice and water, and the
climate, soil, and fauna are all such as to make it possible for man to
exist at this time in this locality.”[58] In 1878 the tusk of a mastodon
was found under partially stratified gravel at a depth of fourteen feet;
and Dr. Abbott states that, within a few yards of this, palæolithic
implements have been gathered, one at the same and three at greater
depths. Now that an intelligent interest has been awakened in the
subject, numerous labourers are enlisted in its elucidation. To this a
coherent unity has been given by the archæologists of the Peabody Museum
at Harvard, and the curators of the National Museum at Washington. The
results of a systematic inquiry by the latter into the localities and
numbers of examples of supposed palæolithic works of art already
recovered, have disclosed abundant confirmatory evidence. Special
attention was invited to the occurrence of surface-finds, as well as to
the depth and the geological indications of age in those recovered from
excavations or chance exposures under the surface. Of the superficial
examples the proof of the occurrence of stone implements of palæolithic
types over widely diffused areas, from New England to Texas, is
abundant. Much caution is required in the conclusions derived from such
implements found exposed, or in superficial deposits, on a continent
where weapons and implements of stone are still in frequent use. But
after the elimination of all doubtful examples, abundant evidence
remains of the presence of man on the American continent in a
Palæolithic as well as an early Neolithic age. An interesting _résumé_
of recent evidence is embodied in the “Results of an Inquiry as to the
Existence of Man in North America during the Palæolithic Period of the
Stone Age,” by Mr. Thomas Wilson of the National Museum at
Washington.[59]

It may still be a question whether the Palæolithic age of the New World
is equally remote with that of the eastern hemisphere. The date
approximately assigned thus far to the American Palæolithic era is,
geologically speaking, recent; and on that very account adapts itself to
other favoured assumptions, such as the supposed Eskimo pedigree derived
from the race of Europe’s Reindeer period. This chimes in with the old
idea of the American antiquary that the _Skrælings_ referred to in the
Eric Saga were Eskimo, as is far from improbable, though the assumption
rests on no definite evidence. Dr. Abbott accordingly reproduces the
statement of Professor Dawkins, in confirmation of the revived belief.
“We are without a clue to the ethnology of the river-drift man, who most
probably is as completely extinct at the present time as the woolly
rhinoceros or the cave-bear; but the discoveries of the last twenty
years have tended to confirm the identification of the cave-man with the
Eskimo.” Such a fanciful hypothesis once accepted as fact, its
application to American ethnology is easy; and so Dr. Abbott proceeds to
appeal unhesitatingly to evidence sufficient “to warrant the assertion
that the palæolithic man on the one hand, and the makers of the
argillite spear points on the other, stand in the relationship of
ancestor and descendant; and if the latter, as is probable, is in turn
the ancestor of the modern Eskimo: then does it not follow that the
River-drift and Cave-man of Europe, supposing the relationship of the
latter to the Eskimo to be correct, bear the same close relationship to
each other as do the American representatives of these earliest of
people?”[60]

Such an appeal to European archæology can scarcely fail to suggest some
very striking contrasts thereby involved. As the thoughtful student
dwells on all the phenomena of change and geological revolution which he
has to encounter in seeking to assign to the man of the European Drift
his place in vanished centuries, his mind is lost in amazement at the
vista of that long-forgotten past. Yet inadequate as the intermediate
steps may appear, there are progressive stages. Amid all the
overwhelming sense of the vastness of the period embraced in the changes
which he reviews, the mind rests from time to time at well-defined
stations, in tracking the way backward, through ages of historical
antiquity, into the night of time, and so to that dim dawn of mechanical
skill and rational industry in which the first tool-makers plied their
ingenious arts. But, so far as yet appears, it is wholly otherwise
throughout the whole western continent, from the Gulf of Mexico
northward to the pole. North America has indeed a Copper age of its own
very markedly defined; for the shores and islands of Lake Superior are
rich in pure native copper, available for industrial resources without
even the most rudimentary knowledge of metallurgic arts. But the tools
and personal ornaments fashioned out of this more workable material are
little, if at all, in advance of the implements of stone; and, with this
exception, the primitive industry of North America manifests wondrously
slight traces of progression through all the ages now assigned to man’s
presence on the continent.

The means available for forming some just estimate of the character of
native American art are now abundant. In the National Museum at
Washington; the Peabody Museum at Cambridge, Mass.; the Peabody Academy
at Salem; the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia; the American
Antiquarian Society at Worcester, Mass.; and in various Historical
Societies and University Museums throughout the States; the student of
American archæology has the means of obtaining a comprehensive view of
the native arts. At the Centennial Exposition of Philadelphia in 1876,
the various States vied with one another in producing an adequate
representation of the antiquities specially characteristic of their own
localities; and numerous valuable reports, of the Smithsonian
Institution, the United States Geographical Surveys, the Geological
Survey of Canada, and the Geological Surveys of various States, have
furnished data for determining the prehistoric chroniclings of the
northern continent.

One of the latest publications of this class is Dr. Abbott’s own volume,
entitled _Primitive Industry: or Illustrations of the Handiwork in
Stone, Bone, and Clay of the native Races of the Northern Atlantic
Seaboard of America_. It is a most instructive epitome of North American
archæology. Notwithstanding the limits set in the title, works in metal
as well as in stone are included; and what are the results? Twenty-one
out of its twenty-three chapters are devoted to the detailed
illustrations of stone and flint axes, celts, hammers, chisels,
scrapers, drills, knives, etc. Fish-hooks, fish-spears, awls or bodkins,
and other implements of bone, pottery, pipes both in stone and clay, and
personal ornaments, receive the like detailed illustration; but nearly
all are in the rudest stage of rudimentary art. An advance upon this is
seen in the pottery of some southern states. That of the Mound-Builders
appears to have shown both more artistic design and better finish. The
carving in bone, ivory, and slate-stone of various western tribes, as
well as of the extinct Mound-Builders, was also of a higher character.
But taking them at their highest, they cannot compare in practical skill
or variety of application with the industrial arts of Europe’s Neolithic
age; and we look in vain for any traces of higher progress. For well
nigh four centuries, this continent has been familiar to European
explorers and settlers. During some considerable portion of that time,
by means of agricultural operations, and all the incidents consequent on
urban settlement, its virgin soil has been turned up over
ever-increasing areas. For nearly forty years I have myself watched,
with the curious interest of one previously familiar with the minute
incidents of archæological research in Britain, the urban excavations,
railway cuttings, and other undesigned explorations of Canadian soil.
Within the same period, both in Canada and the United States, extensive
canal, railway, and road-works have afforded abundant opportunities for
research; and a widespread interest in American antiquities has tended
to confer an even exaggerated importance on every novel discovery. And
with what result? Dr. Abbott, in crowning such explorations with his
interesting and valuable discovery of the turtle-back celts and other
implements of the Delaware gravel, has epitomised the prehistoric record
of the northern continent. The further back we date the presence of man
in America, the more marvellous must his unprogressive condition appear.
Whatever may be the ampler disclosures relative to the palæolithic or
primeval race, it does not seem probable that this northern continent
will now yield any antiquities suggestive of an extinct era of native
art and civilisation. Here we cannot hope to find a buried Ilium, or
Tadmor in the Wilderness. Everywhere the explorer wanders, and the
agriculturist follows, turning up the soil, or digging deeper as he
drains and builds; but only to disturb the grave of the savage hunter.
The Mound-Builders of its great river-valleys have indeed left there
their enduring earthworks, wrought at times in regular geometrical
configuration on a gigantic scale, strangely suggestive of some
overruling and informing mind guiding the hand of the earthworker. But
their mounds and earthworks disclose only implements of bone and flint
or stone, with here and there an equally rude tool of hammered native
copper. The crudest metallurgy of Europe’s Copper age was unknown to
their builders. The art of Tubal-cain, the primitive worker in brass and
iron, had not dawned on the mind of any native artificer. Only the
ingeniously carved tobacco pipe, or the better-fashioned pottery, gives
the slightest hint of even such progress beyond the first infantile
stage of the tool-maker as is shown in the artistic carvings of the
cave-men contemporary with the mammoth and the reindeer of post-glacial
France.

The civilisation of Central and Southern America is a wholly distinct
thing; and, as I think, not without some suggestive traces of Asiatic
origin; but the attempts to connect it with that of ancient Egypt,
suggested mainly by the hieroglyphic sculpturing on their columns and
temples, find their confutation the moment we attempt to compare the
Egyptian calendar with that either of Mexico or Peru. Traces of worship
of the sun, the earliest of all forms of natural religion, have
undoubtedly been recovered among widely scattered tribes of North
America; but there is no evidence that it was accompanied with any
definite mensuration of the solar year, or the construction of a
calendar. The changes of the seasons sufficed for the division of the
year, not only into summer and winter, but into the diverse aspects of
the seasons from month to month; as is shown in the names given to the
“moons” in various native vocabularies. It was otherwise on the southern
continent, and among the civilised nations of Central America. But the
interblending of the science of astronomy with the religious rites of
the State produced the wonted results; and this was peculiarly the case
in Peru, with its equatorial site for the temple of the Sun-God; and his
seeming literal presence on his altar at recurrent festivals. There
accordingly, even as in ancient Egypt, the divine honours paid to the
heavenly bodies was an impediment to the progress of astronomical
observation. Eclipses were regarded with the same superstitious dread as
among the rudest savage nations; and the conservatism of an established
national creed must have proved peculiarly unfavourable to astronomical
science. The impediments to Galileo’s observations were trifling
compared with those which must have beset the Inca priest who ventured
to question the diurnal revolution of the sun round the earth, or to
solve the awful mystery of an eclipse by so simple an explanation as the
interposition of the moon between the sun and the earth. The Mexican
Calendar Stone, which embodies evidence of greater knowledge, was
believed by Humboldt to indicate unmistakable relations to the ancient
science of South-Eastern Asia. It is of more importance here to note the
shortness of the Mexican cycle, and the small amount of error in their
deviation from true solar time, as compared with the European calendar
at the time when the Spaniards first intruded on Montezuma’s rule. That
the Spaniards were ten days in error, as compared with the Aztec
reckoning, only demonstrates the length of time during which error had
been accumulating in the reformed Julian calendar of Europe; and so
tends to confirm the idea that the civilisation of the Mexicans was of
no very great antiquity.

The whole evidence supplied by Northern archæology proves that in so far
as it had any civilisation of foreign origin, it must have been derived
from the South, where alike in Central and in Southern America, diverse
races, and a native civilisation replete with elements of progress, have
left behind them many enduring memorials of skill and ingenuity. But the
extremely slight and very partial traces of its influence on any people
of the northern continent would of itself suffice to awaken doubts as to
its long duration. The civilisation of Greece and Rome did indeed
exercise no direct influence on transalpine Europe; but long centuries
before the Romans crossed the Alps, as the disclosures of the lake
villages, the crannoges, the kitchen middens, and the sepulchral mounds
of Central and Northern Europe prove, the nations beyond their ken were
familiar with weaving, and with the ceramic and metallurgic arts; were
far advanced as agriculturists, had domesticated animals, acquired
systems of phonetic writing, and learned the value of a currency of the
precious metals.

Midway between North America with its unredeemed barbarism, and the
southern seats of a native American civilisation, Mexico represents, as
I believe, the first contact of the latter with the former. A gleam of
light was just beginning to dawn on the horizon of the northern
continent. The long night of its Dark Ages was coming to a close, when
the intrusion of the Spaniards abruptly arrested the incipient
civilisation, and began the displacement of its aborigines and the
repetition of the Aryan ethnical revolution, which had already
supplanted the autochthones of prehistoric Europe.

The publication in 1848 of the first volume of the _Smithsonian
Contributions to Knowledge_, devoted to the history and explorations of
the ancient monuments of the Mississippi valley, gave a wonderful
stimulus to archæological research in the United States. For a time,
indeed, much credulous zeal was devoted to the search for buried cities,
inscribed records, and the fancied recovery, in more or less modified
form, in northern areas, of the civilisation of the Aztecs; not
unmingled with dreams of Phœnician, Hebrew, Scandinavian, and Welsh
remains. The history of some of its spurious productions is not without
interest; but its true fruits are seen in numerous works which have
since issued from the American press, devoted to an accurate record of
local antiquities. So thoroughly has this already been carried out, that
it may now be affirmed that, to all appearance, the condition of the
Indian tribes to the north of Mexico, as shown in the rude arts of a
Stone age, scarcely at all affected in its character by their use of the
native copper of Lake Superior, represents what prevailed throughout the
whole northern continent in all the centuries—however prolonged,—since
the hunters in the Delaware valley fashioned and employed their
turtle-back celts.

The condition of the nations of North America at the period of its
discovery, at the close of the fifteenth century, may be described as
one of unstable equilibrium; and nothing in its archæological records
points to an older period of any prolonged duration of settled progress.
The physical geography of the continent presents in many respects such a
contrast to that of Europe, as is seen in the steppes of Northern Asia,
though with great navigable rivers, which only needed the appliances of
modern civilisation to make them for the New World what the Euphrates
and the Tigris were to Southern Asia, and the Nile to Africa, in ancient
centuries. Those vast tablelands, the great steppes of Mongolia and
Independent Tartary, have ever been the haunts of predatory tribes by
whom the civilisation of Southern Asia has been repeatedly overthrown;
and from the same barbarian hive came the Huns who ravaged the Roman
world in its decline. Europe, on the contrary, nursed its youthful
civilisation among detached communities of its southern peninsulas on
the Mediterranean Sea; and in later ages has repeatedly experienced the
advantages of geographical isolation in the valleys of the Alps, in
Norway and Denmark, in Portugal, the Netherlands, and the British
Islands: where nations protected in their youth from predatory hordes,
and sheltered during critical periods of change, have safely passed
through their earlier stages of progress.

All that we know or can surmise of the nations of North America,
presents a total contrast to this. In so far as the mystery of its
prehistoric Mound-Builders has been solved, we see there a people who
had attained to a grade of civilisation not greatly dissimilar to that
of the village communities of New Mexico and Arizona; and who had
settled down in the Ohio valley, perhaps while feudal Europe was still
only emerging from mediæval rudeness, if not at an earlier date. The
great river-valley was occupied by populous urban centres of an
industrious community. Agriculture, though prosecuted only with the
simplest implements, chiefly of wood and stone, must have been practised
on an extensive scale. The primitive arts of the potter were improved;
the copper abounding in the remote region on the shores of Lake Superior
was prized as a rarity; though metallurgy in its practical applications
had scarcely entered on its first stage. The nation was in its infancy;
but it had passed beyond the rude hunter state, and was entering on a
settled life, with all possibilities of progress in the future, when the
fierce nomads of the north swept down on the populous valley, and left
it a desolate waste. If so, it was but a type of the whole native
history of the continent.

From all that can be gleaned, alike from archæological chroniclings,
Indian tradition, and the actual facts of history in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, the condition of the whole population of the
northern continent has ever been the same. It might not inaptly be
compared to an ever-recurring springtide, followed by frosts that nipped
the young germ, and rendered the promised fruitage abortive. Throughout
the whole period of French and English colonial history, the influence
of one or two savage but warlike tribes is traceable from the St.
Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico; and the rival nations were exposed to
such constant warfare that it is more than doubtful if the natural
increase of population was latterly equal to the waste of war. Almost
the sole memorials of vanished nations are the names of some of their
mountain ranges and rivers. It is surmised, as already noted, that the
Allighewi, or Tallegwi, to whom the name common to the Alleghany
Mountains and river is traced, were the actual Mound-Builders.[61] If
so, the history of their overthrow is not wholly a matter of surmise.
The traditions of the Delawares told that the Alleghans were a powerful
nation reaching to the eastern shores of the Mississippi, where their
palisaded towns occupied all the choicest sites in the Ohio valley; but
the Wyandots, or Iroquois, including perhaps the Eries, who had
established themselves on the headwaters of the chief rivers that rise
immediately to the south of the great lakes, combined with the
Delawares, or Lenape nation, to crush that ancient people; and the
decimated Alleghans were driven down the Mississippi, and dispersed.
Some surviving remnant, such as even a war of extermination spares, may
have been absorbed into the conquering nation, after the fashion
systematically pursued by the Huron-Iroquois in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. Nor is this a mere conjecture. Mr. Horatio Hale,
recognising the evident traces in the Cherokee language of a grammar
mainly Huron-Iroquois, while the vocabulary is largely recruited from
some foreign source, thinks it not improbable that the origin of the
Cherokee nation may have been due to a union of the survivors of the old
Mound-Builder stock with some branch of the conquering race; just as in
1649 a fugitive remnant of the Hurons from the Georgian Bay were adopted
into the Seneca nation;[62] and a few years later such of the captive
Eries as escaped torture and the stake were admitted into affiliation
with their conquerors.[63]

The whole region to the east of the Mississippi, from the fifty-second
to the thirty-sixth degree of north latitude, appears to have been
occupied by the two great Indian stocks, the Algonquin-Lenape and the
Iroquois. But Gallatin, who directed special attention to the
determination of the elements of philological affinity between them,
recognised to the south of their region the existence of at least three
essentially distinct languages of extensive use: the Catawba, the
Cherokee, and that which he assumed to include in a common origin, both
the Muskhogee and the Choctaw.[64] But besides those, six
well-ascertained languages of smaller tribes, including those of the
Uchees and the Natchez, appear to demand separate recognition. Their
region differs essentially from those over which the Algonquin and
Iroquois war-parties ranged at will. It is broken up by broad river
channels, and intersected by impenetrable swamps; and has thus afforded
refuge for the remnants of conquered tribes, and for the preservation of
distinct languages among small bands of refugees. The Timucuas were the
ancient occupants of Florida; but they appear to have been displaced by
the Chatta-Muskogee nations; driven forth, as is surmised, from their
homes in the Ohio valley; and the older race is only known now by the
preservation of its language in works of the Spanish missionaries.[65]

When the Ohio valley was first explored it was uninhabited; and in the
latter part of the seventeenth century the whole region extending from
Lake Erie to the Tennessee river was an unpeopled desert. But the
Cherokees were in the occupation of their territory when first visited
by De Soto in 1540; and they are described by Bertram in 1773, with
their great council-house, capable of accommodating several hundreds,
erected on the summit of one of the large mounds, in their town of Cowe,
on the Tanase river, in Florida. But Bertram adds: “This mound on which
the rotunda stands, is of a much ancienter date than the building, and
perhaps was raised for another purpose. The Cherokees themselves are as
ignorant as we are by what people, or for what purpose, these artificial
hills were raised.”[66] It would, indeed, no more occur to those
wanderers into the deserted regions of the Mound-Builders to inquire
into the origin of their mounds, than into that of the Alleghany
Mountains.

If then it is probable that we thus recover some clue to the identity of
the vanished race of the Ohio valley, the very designation of the river
is a memorial of their supplanters. The Ohio is an Iroquois name given
to the river of the Alleghans by that indomitable race of savage
warriors who effectually counteracted the plans of France, under her
greatest monarchs, for the settlement of the New World. Their historian,
the late Hon. L. H. Morgan, remarks of the Iroquois: “They achieved for
themselves a more remarkable civil organisation, and acquired a higher
degree of influence, than any other race of Indian lineage except those
of Mexico and Peru. In the drama of European colonisation, they stood,
for nearly two centuries, with an unshaken front, against the
devastations of war, the blighting influence of foreign intercourse, and
the still more fatal encroachments of a restless and advancing border
population. Under their federal system, the Iroquois flourished in
independence, and capable of self-protection, long after the New England
and Virginia races had surrendered their jurisdictions, and fallen into
the condition of dependent nations; and they now stand forth upon the
canvas of Indian history, prominent alike for the wisdom of their civil
institutions, their sagacity in the administration of the league, and
their courage in its defence.”[67] But to characterise the elements of
combined action among the Six Nation Indians as wise civil institutions;
or to use such terms as league and federal system in the sense in which
they are employed by the historian of the Iroquois; is to suggest
associations that are illusory. With all the romance attached to the
League of the Hodenosauneega, they were to the last mere savages. When
the treaty which initiated the great league was entered into by its two
oldest members, the Mohawks and the Oneidas, the former claimed the name
of Kanienga, or “People of the Flint.” Whatever may have been the
precise idea they attached to the designation, they were, as they
remained to the last, but in their Stone period. Their arts were of the
rudest character, and their wars had no higher aim than the
gratification of an inextinguishable hatred. All that we know of them
only serves to illustrate a condition of life such as may have sufficed
through countless generations to perpetuate the barbarism which
everywhere reveals itself in the traces of man throughout the northern
continent of America. One nation after another perished by the fury of
this race, powerful only to destroy. The Susquehannocks, whose name
still clings to the beautiful river on the banks of which they once
dwelt, are believed to have been of the same lineage as the Alleghans;
but they incurred the wrath of the Iroquois, and perished. At a later
date the Delawares provoked a like vengeance; and the remnant of that
nation quitted for ever the shores of the river which perpetuates their
name. Such in like manner was the fate of the Shawnees, Nanticokes,
Unamis, Minsi, and Illinois. All alike were vanquished, reduced to the
condition of serfs, or driven out and exterminated.

The tribes that lived to the west of the Mississippi appear to have been
for the most part more strictly nomad. The open character of the
country, with its vast tracts of prairie, and its herds of buffalo and
other game, no doubt helped to encourage a wandering life. The Crees,
the Blackfeet, the Sioux, Cheyennes, Comanches, and Apaches were all of
this class, and with their interminable feuds and perpetual migrations
rendered all settled life impossible. The Mandans, the most civilised
among the tribes of the North-West, abandoned village after village
under the continual attacks of the Sioux, until they disappeared as a
nation; and the little handful of survivors found shelter with another
tribe.

All this was the work of Indians. The Spaniards, indeed, wasted and
destroyed with no less merciless indiscrimination. Not only nations
perished, but a singularly interesting phase of native civilisation was
abruptly arrested in Mexico, Central America, and Peru. The intrusion of
French, Dutch, and English colonists was, no doubt, fatal to the
aborigines whom they supplanted. Nevertheless their record is not one of
indiscriminate massacre. The relations of the French, especially with
the tribes with whom they were brought into immediate contact, were on
the whole kindly and protective. But as we recover the history of the
native tribes whose lands are now occupied by the representatives of
those old colonists, we find the Indians everywhere engaged in the same
exterminating warfare; and whether we look at the earlier maps, or
attempt to reconstruct the traditionary history of older tribes, we
learn only the same tale of aimless strife and extinction. When Cartier
first explored the St. Lawrence in 1535 he found large Indian
settlements at Quebec and on the island of Montreal; but on the return
of the French under Champlain, little more than half a century later,
there were none left to dispute their settlement. At the later date, and
throughout the entire period of French occupation, the country to the
south of the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario was occupied by the Iroquois,
or Six Nation Indians, as they were latterly called. Westward of the
river Ottawa the whole region was deserted until near the shores of the
Georgian Bay; though its early explorers found everywhere the traces of
recent occupation by the Wyandot or other tribes, who had withdrawn to
the shores of Lake Huron to escape the fury of their implacable foes.

At the period when the Hurons were first brought under the notice of the
French Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century they were
established along the Georgian Bay and around Lake Simcoe; and in so far
as the wild virtues of the savage warrior are concerned, they fully
equalled the Iroquois by whom they were at length driven out and nearly
exterminated. When Locke visited Paris in 1679 the narratives of the
Jesuit fathers had rendered familiar the unflinching endurance of this
race under the frightful tortures to which they were subjected by their
Iroquois captors; and which they, in turn, not only inflicted on their
captive foes, but on one after another of the missionaries whose devoted
zeal exposed them to their fury. We now read with interest this
reflection noted in Locke’s Journal, in which he recognises in these
savages the common motives of humanity; the same desire to win credit
and reputation, and to avoid shame and disgrace, which animates all men:
“This makes the Hurons and other people of Canada with such constancy
endure inexpressible torments; this makes merchants in one country and
soldiers in another; this puts men upon school divinity in one country
and physics and mathematics in another; this cuts out the dresses for
the women, and makes the fashions for the men, and makes them endure the
inconveniences of all.” The great English philosopher manifestly
entertained no doubt that the latent elements on which all civilisation
depends were equally shared by Indian and European. But the Hurons
perished—all but a little remnant of Christianised half-breeds now
settled on the St. Charles river below Quebec—in their very hour of
contact with European civilisation.

Father Sagard estimated the Huron tribes at the close of their national
history, when they had been greatly reduced in numbers, as still between
thirty and forty thousand. But besides these there lay between them and
the shores of Lake Erie and the Niagara river the Tiontonones and the
Attiwendaronks, and to the south of the Great Lake the Eries, all of the
same stock, and all sharers in the same fate. Tradition points to the
kindling of the council-fire of peace among the Attiwendaronks before
the organisation of the Iroquois confederacy. Father Joseph de la Roche
d’Allyon, who passed through their country when seeking to discover the
source of the Niagara river, speaks of twenty-eight towns and villages
under the rule of its chief Sachem, and of their extensive cultivation
of maize, beans, and tobacco. They had won, moreover, the strange
character of being lovers of peace, and were styled by the French the
Neuters, from the desire they manifested to maintain a friendly
neutrality alike with the Hurons and the Iroquois. Of the Eries we know
less. In the French maps of the seventeenth century the very existence
of the great lake which perpetuates their name was unknown; but the
French fur-traders were aware of a tribe existing to the west of the
Iroquois, whose country abounded with the lynx or wild cat, the fur of
which was specially prized, and they designated it “La Nation du Chat.”
To their artistic skill are ascribed several remains of aboriginal art,
among which a pictorial inscription on Cunningham’s Island is described
as by far the most elaborate work of its class hitherto found on the
continent.[68] From the partial glimpses thus recovered of both nations
we are tempted to ascribe to them an aptitude for civilisation fully
equal to that of which the boasted federal league of the Iroquois gave
evidence. But they perished by the violence of kindred nations before
either the French or English could establish intercourse with them; and
their fate doubtless reveals to us glimpses of history such as must have
found frequent repetition in older centuries throughout the whole North
American continent.

The legend of the peace-pipe, Longfellow’s poetic version of the Red
Indian Edda, founded on traditions of the Iroquois narrated by an
Onondaga chief, represents Gitche Manito, the Master of Life, descending
on the crag of the red pipestone quarry at the Côteau des Prairies, and
calling all the tribes together:—

    And they stood there on the meadow
    With their weapons and their war gear,
    Wildly glaring at each other.
    In their faces stern defiance,
    In their hearts the feuds of ages,
    The hereditary hatred,
    The ancestral thirst of vengeance.

So far the picture is true to nature; but no dream of a millennial era
for the Red Man, in which all were thenceforth to live together as
brothers, can have fashioned itself in the mind of Indian seer. The
Sioux, the Crees, and the Blackfeet, still continued to nurse the same
feud of ages, and thirsted for each other’s blood, while European
emigrants crowd in to take possession of their vast prairies, destined
to become the granaries of the world. The buffalo, on which they mainly
depended for their food, and their téepees or tents, have vanished from
their prairies, and will ere long be as extinct as the fossil urus or
mastodon. The Red Man of the North-West exhibits no change from his
precursors of the fifteenth century; and for aught that appears in him
of a capacity for self-development, the forests and prairies of the
American continent may have sheltered hunting and warring tribes of
Indians, just as they have sheltered and pastured its wild herds of
buffaloes, for countless centuries since the continent rose from its
ocean bed.

Only by prolonged hereditary feuds, more insatiable, and therefore more
destructive in their results than the ravages of tigers or wolves, is it
possible to account for such an unprogressive condition of humanity as
the archæological disclosures of the northern continent seem to reveal?
Its numerous rivers and lakes, and its boundless forests and prairies,
afforded inexhaustible resources for the hunter, and both soil and
climate have proved admirably adapted for agriculture. Still more, the
great copper region of Lake Superior provided advantages such as have
existed in few other countries of the known world for developing the
first stages of metallurgic art on which civilisation so largely
depends. Whether brought with them from Asia, or discovered for
themselves, the grand secret of the mastery of the ores by fire was
already familiar to Peruvian metallurgists, and not unknown to those of
Mexico. Unalloyed copper, such as that which abounds in the igneous
rocks of the Keweenaw peninsula on Lake Superior, is extremely difficult
to cast; and the addition of a small percentage of tin not only produces
the useful bronze alloy, but renders the copper more readily fusible.
This all-important secret of science the metallurgists of Peru had
discovered for themselves, and turned largely to practical account. The
pictured chronicles of the Mexicans throw an interesting light on the
value they attached to the products of this novel art. It appears from
some of their paintings that the tribute due by certain provinces was
paid in wedges of copper. The forms of these, as well as of chisels and
other tools of bronze, are simple, and indicate no great ingenuity in
adapting the moulded metal to the artificer’s or the combatant’s
requirements. The methods of hafting the axe-blade appear to have been
of nearly the same rude description as are in use by modern savages in
fitting the handle to a hatchet of flint or stone; and the whole
characteristics of their implements suggest the probability that their
metallurgy was a recently acquired art, derived from the civilised races
on whom they had intruded as conquerors.

Such knowledge, partial as it was, must have been derived from the
south. Everywhere to the north of the Mexican Gulf we look in vain for
anything more than the mere hammered native copper, untouched by fire.
Dr. J. W. Foster does indeed quote Mr. Perkins, who himself possesses
sixty copper implements, including knives, spear heads, chisels, and
objects of anomalous form, as having arrived at the conclusion “that, by
reason of certain markings, it was evident that the Mound-Builders
possessed the art of smelting copper,”[69] but the illustrations
produced in proof of it scarcely bear out the opinion. The same idea has
been repeatedly advanced; but the contents of the Mounds amply prove
that if such a knowledge had dawned on their builders it was turned to
no practical account. Mr. Charles Rau, in his _Ancient Aboriginal Trade
in North America_, says: “Although the fire on the hearths or altars now
enclosed by the sacrificial mounds was sometimes sufficiently strong to
melt the deposited copper articles, it does not seem that this
proceeding induced the ancient inhabitants to avail themselves of fire
in working copper; they persisted in the tedious practice of hammering.
Yet one copper axe, evidently cast, and resembling those taken from the
mounds of Ohio, has been ploughed up near Auburn, in Cayuga, in the
State of New York. This specimen, which bears no trace of use, may date
from the earlier times of European colonisation. It certainly would be
wrong to place much stress on such an isolated case.”[70] The well-known
volume of Messrs. Squier and Davis furnishes illustrations of copper and
other metallic relics from the mounds of Ohio.[71] Mr. J. T. Short
engraves a variety of similar relics from Wisconsin, where they appear
to have been found in unusual abundance.[72] In the Annual Report of the
Historical Society of Wisconsin for 1878 the copper implements in their
collection are stated to number one hundred and ninety implements,
classified as spear or dirk heads, knives, chisels, axes, augurs, gads,
and drills, in addition to beads, tubes, and other personal ornaments
made out of thin sheets of hammered copper. Dr. J. W. Foster has
furnished illustrations of the various types from the valuable
collection of Mr. Perkins.[73] Colonel Charles C. Jones engraves a
specimen of the rarely known copper implements of Georgia;[74] and Dr.
Abbott shows the prevailing forms of the same class of relics found
along the whole northern Atlantic seaboard.[75] All tell the same tale
of rudest manipulation by a people ignorant of the working of metals
with the use of fire.

And yet the native copper was ready to hand in a form and in quantity
unknown elsewhere. No such supplies of the pure metal invited the
industry of the first Asiatic or European metallurgists. The
Cassiterides yielded in abundance the ores of copper and tin, but these
had to be smelted and worked with all the accumulated results of
tentative skill before they yielded the copper or more useful bronze. By
whom or where this first knowledge was mastered is unknown: the tendency
is still to look to Asia, perhaps to Phœnicia, or to the still
undetermined cradle of the Aryans, wherever that may prove to have been,
for the birth of this phase of metallurgic art which constituted so
important a stage in early civilisation. Yet if the ancient American
missed it, it was not for want of opportunity. Examples of the
accidental fusion of copper by the sacrificial fires of the
Mound-Builders repeatedly occur in the mounds of the Ohio valley. But no
gifted native alchymist was prompt to read the lesson and turn it to
practical account.

Asia and Europe appear to have passed by a natural transition, step by
step, from their rudest stages of lithic art to polished stone, and then
to implements of metal. Some of the steps were doubtless very slow.
Worsaae believed that the use of bronze prevailed in Denmark “five or
six hundred years before the birth of Christ.”[76] In Egypt it
undoubtedly was known at a greatly earlier date. I still incline to my
early formed opinion, that gold was the first metal worked. Found in
nuggets, it could scarcely fail to attract attention. It was easy to
fashion into shape; and some of the small, highly polished stone hammers
seem fitter for this than any other work.[77] The abundant gold
ornaments of the New World at the time of the discovery of Mexico and
Peru accord with this idea. The like attraction of the bright native
copper, is proved by its employment among the southern Indians for
personal ornaments; and in this way the economic use of the metals may
have been first suggested.

From the working of gold nuggets, or of virgin copper, with the hammer,
to the smelting of the ores, was no trifling step; but that knowledge
once gained, the threshold of civilisation and true progress had been
reached. The history of the grand achievement is embodied in the
earliest myths both of the Old and the New World. Tubal-cain, Dædalus,
Hephæstus, Vulcan, Vœlund, Galant, the Luno or the Celtic Fingal, and
Wayland, the Saxon smith-god, are but legendary variations of the first
worker by whom the gift of metallurgy was communicated to man; and so
too the New World has its Quetzalcoatl, or Vœlund of the Aztecs, the
divine instructor of their ancestors in the use of the metals. But
whatever be the date of this wise instructor, no share of the knowledge
communicated by him to that favoured race appears to have ever
penetrated northward of the Mexican Gulf.

It is vain to urge such dubious evidence as the fancied traces of a
mould-ridge, or the solitary example of a casting of uncertain age, in
proof of a knowledge of the furnace and the crucible among any North
American tribe. Everywhere in Europe the soil yields not only its buried
relics of gold, copper, and bronze, but also stone and bronze moulds in
which implements and personal ornaments were cast. When the ingenious
systematising of Danish archæologists had familiarised the students of
antiquity with the idea of a succession of Stone, Bronze, and Iron
periods in the history of Europe, the question naturally followed,
whether metallurgy did not begin, there, as elsewhere, in the easy
working of virgin copper. Dr. Latham accordingly remarked, in his
_Ethnology of the British Islands_, on the supposition that no unalloyed
copper relics had been found in Britain: “Stone and bone first; then
bronze, or copper and tin combined; but no copper alone. I cannot get
over this hiatus; cannot imagine a metallurgic industry beginning with
the use of alloys.” It was a mistake, however, to assume that no copper
relics had ever been found. At first it had been taken for granted that
all such implements were of the familiar alloy. But so soon as the
importance of the distinction was recognised, examples of pure copper
were forthcoming. So early as 1822, Sir David Brewster described a large
axe of peculiar shape, and formed of copper, which was found in the hard
black till-clay at a depth of twenty feet under Ratho Bog, near
Edinburgh. This is no solitary example. The Scottish Museum of
Antiquities has other implements of pure copper; and Sir William Wilde
states in reference to the collections of the Royal Irish Academy: “upon
careful examination, it has been found that thirty of the rudest, and
apparently the very oldest celts, are of red, almost unalloyed copper”;
as is also the case with some other rudely formed tools in the same
collection.

It was a temporary advantage, doubtless, but a real loss, to the Indian
miners of Lake Superior that they found the native copper there ready to
hand, a pure ductile metal, probably regarded by them as only a variety
of stone which—unlike its rocky matrix,—they could bend, or hammer
into shape, without fracture. Its value as such was widely appreciated.
Copper tools, everywhere retaining the specs, or larger crystals of
silver, characteristic of the Lake Superior veins, tell of the diffusion
of the metal from that single source throughout all the vast regions
watered by the Mississippi and its tributaries, and eastward by lake and
river to the gulf of the St. Lawrence and the mouth of the Hudson.

There was a time when this traffic must have been systematically carried
on; when the ancient miners of Lake Superior worked its rich copper
veins with industrious zeal; and when, probably as part of the same
aggressive energy, the valley of the Ohio was filling with a settled
population; its great earthworks were in process of construction, and a
native race entered on a course that gave promise of social progress.
But, from whatever cause, the work of the old miners was abruptly
terminated;[78] the race of the Mounds vanished from the scenes of their
ingenious toil; and rudest barbarism resumed its sway over the whole
northern continent. The same Aryan race that, before the dawn of
history, before the Sanskrit-speaking people of India, or the Zends of
Persia, entered on their southern homes, spoke in its own cradleland the
mother tongue of Sanskrit, Greek, Celtic, and German, at length broke up
and went forth on its long wanderings. Whatever peoples it found there;
they were replaced by Celts, Romans, Greeks, Slavs, and Teutons, who
broke in upon the barbarism of prehistoric Europe; displaced the older
races, Allophylian, Neolithic, Iberian, Finnic, or by whatever other
name we may find it convenient to designate them; but not without a
considerable intermingling of the old blood with that of the intruders.
The sparsely settled continent gradually filled up. Forests were
cleared, swamps drained, rivers confined by artificial banks and levées
to their channels; and there grew up in their new homes the Celtic,
Classic, Slavic, and Teutonic tongues, with all the varied culture and
civilisation which they represent. Agriculture, the special
characteristic of the whole Aryan race, flourished. They brought with
them the cereals; and, with plenty, the favoured race multiplied, till
at length it has grown straitened within the bounds of the old continent
which it had made its own.

With the close of the fifteenth century one great cycle, that of
Europe’s mediæval era, came to an end; and then we trace the first
beginnings of that fresh scattering of the Aryan clan, and its new
western movement across the Ocean. It seems in a very striking manner
once more to repeat itself under our own eyes, as we look abroad on the
millions crowding from Europe and filling up the western wilderness;
hewing down the forests, cultivating the waste prairies, and everywhere
displacing the rude aborigines: yet here also not without some
interblending of the races; though the two types, Aryan and pre-Aryan,
meet under all the repellent influences of high civilisation and the
lowest barbarism. In the Canadian North-West alone, the young province
of Manitoba began its political existence with a population of between
10,000 and 12,000 half-breeds; in part at least, a hardy race of hunters
and farmers; the representatives of what is as certainly destined to
constitute an element in the new phases which the Aryan race already
begins to assume, under the diverse conditions of a new continent, as
that curious trace of Europe’s pre-Aryan people which attracted the
observant attention of Tacitus among the ancient Britons; and which we
are learning to recognise, with a new significance, as the Melanochroi:
the representatives of the old half-breed of Europe’s prehistoric dawn.

-----

[40] Gladstone, _Juventus Mundi_, pp. 474, 479.

[41] _Indian Migrations_, p. 24.

[42] _Types of Mankind_, p. 351.

[43] _Early Man in Britain_, p. 241.

[44] _Ibid._ p. 244.

[45] _Alaska and its Resources_, p. 237.

[46] _Prehistoric Europe_, p. 550.

[47] _U.S. Geological Survey_, 1872, p. 652. _Report of National
Museum_, 1887, p. 683, Fig. 11535.

[48] _Report of National Museum_, 1887, p. 678.

[49] _Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain_, p. 140.

[50] Vide _Prehistoric Man_, 3d ed. vol. i. p. 180, Fig. 54.

[51] _Report of the Peabody Museum_, vol. ii., p. 38.

[52] _Primitive Industry_, p. 471.

[53] _Ibid._, p. 542.

[54] _Primitive Industry_, p. 547.

[55] _Ibid._, p. 545.

[56] Foster’s _Prehistoric Races_, p. 55.

[57] _The Antiquity and Origin of the Trenton Gravel_, p. 547.

[58] _Primitive Industry_, p. 481.

[59] _Report of Washington National Museum_, 1887-88, pp. 677-702.

[60] _Primitive Industry_, p. 517.

[61] _Indian Migrations as Evidence of Language_ (Horatio Hale), p. 21.

[62] _Indian Migrations_, p. 22.

[63] _Relations des Jésuites_, 1660, p. 7. Quebec ed.

[64] _Archæologia Americana_, vol. ii.

[65] Brinton, _Races and Peoples_, p. 254.

[66] _Bertram’s Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia,
etc._, 1791, p. 367.

[67] _The League of the Iroquois_, p. 2.

[68] Schoolcraft, _History of the Indian Tribes_, vol. ii., p. 78.

[69] _Prehistoric Races of the United States_, p. 259.

[70] _Smithsonian Report_, 1572, p. 353. The important word _not_
supplied here, it is obvious from the context is absent by a mere
typographical error.

[71] _Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley_, vol. i., pp.
196-207.

[72] _The North Americans of Antiquity_, p. 95.

[73] _Prehistoric Races of the United States_, pp. 251-259.

[74] _Antiquities of the Southern Indians_, p. 225.

[75] _Primitive Industry_, pp. 411-422.

[76] _Primæval Antiquities_, p. 135.

[77] _Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_, 1st ed. 1851, p. 214; 2d ed. vol.
i.

[78] _Prehistoric Man_, 3rd ed. vol. i., pp. 203-228.




                                   V
                THE ÆSTHETIC FACULTY IN ABORIGINAL RACES


THE ingenious arts of the palæolithic cave-dwellers of the Vézère
abundantly prove that it needed no wanderers from the cradlelands of Old
World civilisation to that strange Atlantis lying in the engirdling
ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules, to engraft their artistic
capacities on the “Achoriens” by whom it was peopled. The innate faculty
for art has manifested itself in individuals and in nations, among
widely diverse Assyrian, Egyptian, Hellenic, Arabian, and mediæval
races, as in later Frank, Fleming, and Dane, with unaccountable
partiality. For its absence, or very subordinate manifestation, is seen
to be compatible with the highest intellectual triumphs in other
directions. The arts of Britain’s Allophyliæ manifest no instinctive aim
at a reproduction of familiar natural objects, such as is characteristic
of some races at a very primitive stage. Nor was it till a recent
generation that the stock from which Shakespeare and Newton sprung put
forth its first efforts at rivalling the great masters of the
Renaissance, or entering into competition with the skilled painters of
the Low Countries. It is otherwise with the nations of the New World.
The highest stage of civilisation attained there is a very partial one.
But among the various characteristics of the American aborigines which
invite attention, the very wide diffusion of an aptitude for imitative
art is one that merits careful study as typical of American man. It is
not, indeed, to be overlooked that if due allowance be made for the
narrow range in degrees of civilisation among the races of the New
World, the same diversity of racial characteristics is observable there
as elsewhere. The tendency, moreover, of civilisation is to efface, or
greatly to modify, such distinctions. Civilised nations habitually
borrow the arts and imitate the social habits of neighbouring races, or
accept some common standard of intellectual and moral pre-eminence.
Nevertheless, while the capacity for imitative art is neither peculiar
to the New World, nor characteristic of all its diverse nationalities,
it appears to be more generally diffused among the races of America than
elsewhere. It is prevalent among tribes in nearly every condition, from
the rude Indian nomad, or the Eskimo, to the semi-civilised Zuñi, and
the skilled metallurgists and architects of Central America and Peru.

This development of a feeling for art in savage races is at all times
interesting as indicative of intellectual capacity and powers of
observation, even when manifested, as it frequently is, within a very
narrow range. It is by no means a general characteristic either of
savage or civilised man. Yet recent archæological discoveries prove it
to have been one of the earliest forms of intellectual activity among
the cave-dwellers of Europe’s palæolithic dawn. The most civilised
nations have differed widely in the manifestations of this æsthetic
faculty. The city of Dante was the Athens of the Middle Ages in art as
well as letters; while the land which gave birth to Shakespeare can
scarcely be said to have had a native school of painting or sculpture
till late in the eighteenth century. The like differences are observable
among barbarous nations. Races are met with, to whom the drawing of a
familiar object suggests no idea of the original; while others, in
nearly the same stage of savage life, habitually practise the
representation of natural objects in the decorative details of their
implements and articles of dress, and in the carvings which furnish
occupation for many leisure hours.

A special interest attaches to the disclosures of archæology relative to
the prehistoric races of Europe, owing to the evidence thereby furnished
of striking resemblances in their arts and conditions of life to those
of uncultured races of our own day. In many respects it seems as though
the present condition of some existing races of America only repeats
that of Europe’s infancy. But so far as imitative art is concerned, the
analogy fails when the more recent contents of the barrows, cairns, and
grave mounds of prehistoric Europe are brought into comparison with
those of the New World. If, indeed, we leave behind us the age of
cromlechs, kistvaens, cairns, and barrows, and seek to estimate aright
the disclosures of artistic ability pertaining to the far more ancient
men of Europe’s Mammoth and Reindeer periods, it is otherwise. But,
before reviewing the wonderfully definite glimpses thereby furnished of
tribes of rude yet skilful hunters of that post-glacial world, it may be
of some help, in the comparisons which they suggest, to recall
impressions derived from a study of that Stone period in which the
natives of the British Islands appear to have approximated, in many
respects, to the Red Indian nomad of the American forest.

One little-heeded point of evidence of this correspondence, to which I
long since drew attention, is to be found in the traces of artificial
modification of the head-form in ancient British crania; a comparison of
which with skulls recovered from Indian grave mounds helps to throw
light on the habits and social life of the British Islands in
prehistoric times. In illustration of this I may refer to an
exploration, now of old date. In the early summer of 1851, I learned of
the accidental exposure of a stone cist, in trenching a garden at
Juniper Green, a few miles distant from Edinburgh, and immediately
proceeded to the spot. There, under a slightly elevated knoll—the
remains, in all probability, of the ancient barrow,—lay a rude
sarcophagus of unhewn sandstone, within which was a male skeleton, still
in good preservation. The body had been laid on its left side, with the
arms folded over the breast, and the knees drawn up so as to touch the
elbows. A flat water-worn stone formed the pillow, from which the skull
had rolled to the bottom of the cist. Above the right shoulder stood a
gracefully formed clay vase, containing only a little sand and black
dust, the remains, it may be presumed, of food which it originally
contained when deposited there by affectionate hands, in some
long-forgotten century. It was recovered uninjured, and is now
deposited, along with the skull, in the Archæological Museum of
Edinburgh.

The primitive grave, thus discovered within sight of the Scottish
capital, has a curious interest as a link connecting the present with a
remote past. But the special point which throws light on the habits of
the ancient race, is a parieto-occipital flattening, such as is of
common occurrence in skulls recovered from American ossuaries and grave
mounds. This feature is clearly traceable to the use of the cradle-board
in infancy. The mode of nursing the Indian papoose, by bandaging it on a
cradle-board, is specially adapted to the vicissitudes of a nomad forest
life. The infant is carried safely, slung on the mother’s back, leaving
her hands free; and in the pauses of her journey, or when engaged in
field work, it can be laid aside, or suspended from the branch of a
tree, without risk of injury. But one result of this custom is that the
soft bones of the skull are subjected to a continuous pressure in one
direction during the whole term of suckling, which is necessarily
protracted, among a nomad people, much longer than is usual in settled
communities; and to this cause is undoubtedly traceable the occipital
flattening of many skulls recovered from European cists and barrows. Dr.
L. A. Gosse, after discussing in his _Essai sur les déformations
artificielles du Crâne_ certain artificial modifications of the skull,
of common occurrence among the aborigines of the New World, thus
proceeds: “Passant dans l’ancient continent, ne tardons-nous pas à
reconnaître que ce berceau plat et solide y a produit des effets
analogues. Les anciens habitants de la Scandinavie et de la Calédonie
devaient s’en servir, si l’on en juge par la forme de leurs crânes.”[79]

Full-sized representations of the Juniper Green skull, and others of the
same type, are given in _Crania Britannica_.[80] Bateman also, in his
_Ten Years’ Diggings in Celtic and Saxon Gravehills_, concurs with
earlier writers in ascribing to the use of the cradle-board the
flattened occiput observed in skulls recovered from British barrows. The
employment, indeed, of the cradle-board among prehistoric races of
Northern Europe, and their nomad life of which it is so characteristic a
feature, may now be considered as generally recognised. The implements
and pottery recovered from graves of the period show their constructors
to have been, for the most part, devoid of any knowledge of metals; or,
at best, in the mere rudimentary stage of metallurgic arts. But the
Juniper Green cist, that of the large Staffordshire barrow of Wotton
Hill, that of Roundway Hill, North Wilts, another of Green Lowe,
Derbyshire, and others described in the works above referred to, while
all disclosing evidence of correspondence in habits and social condition
between ancient races of the British Isles and the Indians of the New
World, also furnished characteristic examples of their fictile ware; and
here the analogy fails. There are, indeed, abundant specimens of broken
Indian pottery on many of their deserted village sites, which might be
mingled with the fragments of a like kind from early European grave
mounds without attracting special attention. Simple chevron and saltier
or herring-bone patterns, scratched with a pointed bone on the soft
clay, are common to both; and many of the more elaborate linear and bead
patterns of the primitive British potters reappear with slight variation
on the Indian ware. But besides those, few ancient Indian village sites
fail to yield fragments of pottery, including clay tobacco pipes,
ornamented with more or less rude imitations of the human face and of
familiar animals, such as the beaver, the bear, the lynx, and the deer.
Before my first visit to the American continent, while still preoccupied
with the arts of the ancient British savage, and the more graceful
devices of the metallurgists of Europe’s Bronze period, I noted the
prevalence of a conventional ornamentation, consisting mainly of
improvements on what may be called the accidents of manufacture, or
possibly of linear decorations borrowed from patterns of the plaiter or
knitter.[81] No attempt appears to have been made by the old European
decorator at such imitations of familiar natural objects as are now
known to have been practised among the far more ancient cave-dwellers of
Europe, the contemporaries of the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros, and
which are familiar to us in the primitive arts of the New World. Objects
recovered from the mounds of the Ohio and the Mississippi valleys, as
well as the diversified products of the native artificers of Mexico and
Peru, attract special attention by their endless variety of imitative
design; and similar skill and ingenuity are apparent in the pottery, the
plaited manufactures, the stone and bone carvings, and even in many of
the great animal mounds and other earthworks of the North American
continent. An observant recognition of analogies, traceable in the
rhetorical construction of many American Indian holophrasms, appears to
be only another phase of this widely prevalent imitative faculty. At the
same time, whether we study the physical form or the intellectual
characteristics of native American races, it becomes more and more
apparent that the New World has been peopled from different centres, and
still presents essentially distinct types of race. It had its ferocious
Caribs, its Mexicans, with their revolting human sacrifices and other
bloody rites, and its stealthy, treacherous nomads, less courageous but
not less cruel. But it has also gentler races, in whom, as in the
Peruvians, the Zuñis, and others of the Pueblo Indians, the æsthetic
faculty predominates, and overlays with many a graceful concomitant the
utilitarian products of their industrial arts.

Whether barbarous or civilised nations are classified in accordance with
their linguistic affinities, both are found to manifest other
specialties according with the diverse families of speech. The
differences which separate the Aryan from the Semitic races are not more
marked than the intellectual and moral divergencies among barbarous
tribes. But while this is apparent on the American continent, its
diverse races appear to be characterised by a more general aptitude for
artistic imitation than is observable elsewhere, except among the
long-civilised nations of the Old World, whose composite vocabularies
reveal the sources of many borrowed arts. The Peruvian potter sketched
and modelled endless quaint devices in clay; the Zuñian decorated his
gracefully fashioned ware with highly effective parti-coloured designs;
and the old Mound-Builder wrought in intaglio on his domestic and
sepulchral vessels conventional flower patterns; and in his miniature
sculptures reproduced the fauna of an area extending from the Ohio to
the Gulf of Mexico. Native artificers of widely different American races
manifest this imitative faculty. Not only is the Indian pipe sculptor
found copying animate and inanimate objects with an observant eye and a
ready hand, but even the linear patterns on pottery and straw
basket-work are frequently made to assume combinations obviously
suggested by flowers and other familiar objects of nature. The
perception of such analogies, and even the capacity for appreciating the
linear or pictorial representation of objects on a flat surface, varies
greatly in different races. Travellers have repeatedly described the
manifestation by savage races of an utter incapacity to comprehend
pictured representations. Mr. Oldfield, for example, tells how a large
coloured engraving of a native of New Holland was shown to some
Australians. “One declared it to be a ship, another a kangaroo, and so
on, not one of a dozen identifying the portrait as having any connection
with himself.”[82] The artistic faculty is unquestionably hereditary.
There are artistic families and artistic races. But if so, the pictorial
skill of the palæolithic cave-dwellers of Western Europe was not
transmitted to their successors. Guided not only by a comparison of
their tools and weapons with those of the Neolithic period, but also by
cranial and other physical evidence, we are led to assume the absence of
affinity between the men of the Perigord caves and the greatly more
modern races of Europe’s later Stone period; and their lack of the
imitative faculty, so characteristic of the elder race, adds
confirmation to this opinion.

Artistic sympathies, and a capacity for high achievements in painting
and sculpture, are neither the direct results of civilisation, nor in
many cases the product of culture and training. From the days of Giotto,
the shepherd boy, to those of Thorwaldsen, Wilkie, and Turner, art-power
is not only seen to be a direct and exceptional gift of nature, but it
is frequently the product of a singularly partial intellectual
development. Leonardo da Vinci and Michael Angelo are examples of men of
rare and comprehensive genius, who sought in art the form in which to
give expression to their many-sided powers. But, on the other hand,
instances are not rare of artists like Thorwaldsen or Turner, who,
except within the range of their own special art, seemed exceptionally
defective in the exercise of ordinary mental powers. The same is true of
races as of individuals. Some show an aptitude for art wholly wanting in
others, who nevertheless equal or surpass them in more important
qualities. The æsthetic faculty may, indeed, be described as curiously
capricious in its manifestations. The Papuans of New Guinea and of New
Caledonia, a race of Negrillos, in some points presenting analogies to
the Australian, are nevertheless remarkable for a seemingly instinctive
ingenuity and aptitude for art. Mr. Wallace describes them as
contrasting with the Malay race in the habitual decoration of their
canoes, houses, and almost every domestic utensil, with elaborate
carving. The Fijians, who are allied to this Negrillo race, present in
many respects an unfavourable contrast to the true Polynesian. In their
physiognomy and whole physical aspect they are inferior to other island
races of the Pacific; and are further notable for repulsive habits and a
general condition of social and moral degradation. But their ferocity
and the cruel customs in which they so strikingly differ from the Malays
are vices of a vigorous race. They have frequently been observed to
indicate energy capable of being directed to useful ends, as has been
the case with the Maori cannibals of New Zealand, and was seen of old in
the Huns and the Northmen, whose descendants are now among the most
civilised races of the world. It is obvious, at any rate, that the
savage vices of the Fijians are compatible with considerable skill in
such arts as pertain to their primitive condition. Their musical
instruments are superior to those of the Polynesians, and include the
pan-pipe and others unknown in the islands beyond their range. Their
pottery exhibits great variety of form; and some of the vessels combined
in groups present a curious correspondence to familiar examples of
Peruvian art. Their fishing-nets and lines are remarkable for neat and
skilful workmanship, and they carry on agriculture to a considerable
extent. “Indeed,” remarked the ethnologist of the United States
Expedition, in summing up the characteristics of the Fijians, “we soon
began to perceive that the people were in possession of almost every art
known to the Polynesians, and of many others besides. The
highly-finished workmanship was unexpected, everything being executed
until recently, and even now for the most part, without the use of iron.
In the collection of implements and manufactures brought home by the
Expedition, the observer will distinguish in the Fijian division
something like a school of arts for the other Pacific islands.”

All this has to be kept in view, in any attempt to gauge the
intellectual development, or determine the degree of civilisation, of
the palæolithic draughtsmen and carvers of the Garonne. One of the
scenes introduced by M. Figuier, in the fanciful illustrations of his
_L’Homme primitif_, represents a group of artists, such as, except for
their costume, might have been sketched from the students of the École
des Beaux Arts. Their mode of work was probably much more akin to the
intermittent labours of the Indian, whose elaborately sculptured pipe is
laid aside, and resumed again—often after prolonged intervals,—before
it receives the finishing touch. But though the drawings and the
carvings of those primitive artists alike manifest remarkable skill and
observant imitation, the former are the objects of special interest.
Their carvings appear to have been executed, with rare exceptions, for
the decoration of favourite implements and weapons, in accordance with a
practice common to many diverse races and conditions of society. But the
drawings have no such motive. They more nearly correspond to the sketch
or drawing from nature of the modern artist; and furnish evidence of
peculiar attributes, strikingly distinguishing the race of that remote
age from most others that have succeeded them.

Certain it is that, so far as present evidence goes, the greatly
prolonged Neolithic period was characterised by no such artistic feeling
or imitative skill. Specimens of the ingenious handiwork of the
artificers of Europe’s later Stone age abound. We have numerous relics
from the kitchen middens of Denmark, the pile villages of Switzerland,
the crannoges of Scotland and Ireland, as well as the varied contents of
cromlechs, cists, cairns, and barrows, diligently explored throughout
Europe. But no such examples of carvings, or graven representations of
animals or other natural objects, have been found. The “clay in the
hands of the potter” is a familiar symbol of plastic response to the
will of the designer. It is, indeed, easier for the practised modeller
to fashion the clay into any desired form, than to draw it, subject to
rules of perspective, on a flat surface. Linear devices and the
representation of objects in intaglio, or in low relief, are also
accomplished with great facility on the soft clay. Hence the art of
diverse races, periods, and stages of progress, finds its aptest
illustration in fictile ware; and the imitative faculty of widely
different American races may be studied in their pottery. In Mexico,
apparently, we have to look for the northern school of ceramic art.
There, the aggressive races of the North first came in contact with the
civilisation of Central America; and the native aptitude for imitative
representation received a fresh impulse. The Indian modeller learned to
work skilfully in clay; and the variety of design, combined with the
quaint humour of the caricaturist, displayed in many of the Mexican
terra-cottas, serves to indicate this class of work as specially
significant in relation to the present inquiry. The inventive fancy and
skill of the Peruvian potter illustrates in ampler variety the progress
achieved by the races of the southern continent. But this will more
fitly come under review along with other examples of modern native art.
For no analogous traces of contemporary modelling in clay furnish
material for comparison with the art of the Palæolithic era; though the
skill of its bone and ivory carvers was in no degree inferior to that of
the Mexican or Peruvian modeller. But the æsthetic aptitude of that old
race of Europe’s intellectual dawn is in some respects unique. In so far
as their ingenious arts furnish any evidence of true racial
characteristics, the men of the Neolithic era inherited none of their
æsthetic feelings; nor did the imitative faculty manifest itself with
exceptional power until the advent of the Aryan races brought with it
the potentialities of Hellenic inspiration.

The absence of nearly every trace of imitative art in the prehistoric
remains of Britain has already been noted. It made a strong impression
on my mind at an early stage of my archæological researches; for this
characteristic of European art extends over a period of greatly
prolonged duration, marked by the advent and disappearance of races,
dissimilar alike in physical and mental characteristics. We have the
laboriously finished implements of neolithic art, the pottery of at
least two distinct races seemingly prior to the Celts, and then the
graceful artistic productions of the Bronze period, but still only the
rarest traces of any effort at imitation. Long before the imitative arts
of the American continent were known to me otherwise than from
description, I remarked, of the archaic art of the first British
metallurgists: “The ornamentation consists, almost without exception,
only of improvements on the accidents of manufacture. The incised
decorations of the pottery appear, in many cases, to have been produced
simply by passing twisted cords round the soft clay. More complicated
designs, most frequently consisting of chevron, saltire, or herring-bone
patterns, where they are not merely the results of a combination of such
lines, have been suggested, as I conceive, by the few and
half-accidental patterns of the industrious female knitter. In no single
case is any attempt made at the imitation of a leaf or flower, of
animals, or any other simple objects.”[83] At the date of those remarks
the art of Europe’s Palæolithic era was unknown; but with the arts of
other primitive races, and especially those of the American continent,
in view, I then added: “It is curious, indeed, and noteworthy, to find
how entirely every trace of imitative art is absent in British archaic
relics; for it is by no means an invariable characteristic of primitive
arts.” Dr. Hoffman, when commenting on aboriginal American art among the
Indians of California, adds: “I have not met with any attempts at
objective drawings or etchings which may be attributed to the Tshuma
Indians, who were the former occupants of the island;[84] but
ornamentations upon shells and bone beads, soap-stone pipes, shell
pendants, and other ornaments, seem to consist entirely of straight or
zigzag lines, cross-lines, circles,” etc. The earliest examples of
native metallurgy in Britain are to be found in the works of the
primitive goldsmith; but the same conventional ornamentation which
occurs on early pottery, is characteristic of the beautiful personal
ornaments of gold belonging, for the most part, to the first period of
working in metals. It is not till a late stage of the European Bronze
period that imitative art reappears, and zoomorphic decorations become
common.

The discovery in 1868, and subsequent years, of numerous specimens of
the artistic ability of the cave-men of palæolithic Europe, revealed a
singularly interesting phase of primitive history. Remains of the
so-called “Reindeer period” are now familiar to us from many localities;
for the range of this animal in palæolithic times appears to have
extended from the Baltic to the Pyrenees. But a special interest was
conferred on the first disclosures by the locality itself, where the
Vézère, an affluent of the river Dordogne, winds its way through the
cretaceous limestone, in which occur numerous caves and rock-shelters,
rich in remains of primitive art. In this region of South-western
France, where many historical and legendary associations carry the fancy
back to elder centuries, the Dordogne unites with the Garonne at its
estuary below Bordeaux. The upper waters of the Dordogne form the
boundary between Limousin and Auvergne, and the Vézère is one of its
highest tributaries in Limousin. There, nearly in the latitude of
Montreal, but with the genial climate which, throughout the whole
historic period, has characterised Southern France, lie the caves of
Cro-Magnon, La Moustier, Gorge d’Enfer, Laugerie Haute and Basse, and La
Madelaine: the long-sealed art galleries of prehistoric Gaul. The
reindeer and the aurochs haunted its forests; the woolly rhinoceros and
the mammoth still frequented its glades; and the long-extinct fossil
horse was not only an object of the chase, but was possibly already
subdued to the companionship and service of man. Such, at least, is the
idea suggested by a scene graven on the portion of a baton or staff,
found by M. Lartet and Mr. Christy in La Madelaine cave, which
represents a man between two horses’ heads, apparently walking past,
with a staff or spear over his shoulder. Nor were those man’s sole
contemporaries.

The drawings of the ancient cave-men are of varying degrees of merit,
showing the efforts of the unskilled tyro as well as of the practised
artist. Some of the examples found at Laugerie Basse—as, for instance,
the assumed representation of an ibex, with its legs folded as if
sitting,—are the crude efforts of unpractised draughtsmen, and would
compare unfavourably with many examples of graphic art, the work of
modern Eskimo and Indian gravers and draughtsmen. But other
specimens—such as the mammoth from La Madelaine cave, and the Alpine
ibex and reindeers from Laugerie Basse, in Southern France, and, still
more, the remarkably spirited drawing of the reindeer grazing, from the
Kesserloch, near Thayingen, sketched on a piece of reindeer
horn,—evince powers of observation, and a freedom of hand in sketching
from nature, such as would be found exceptional among pupils of our best
training schools of art. On this point my friend, Sir Noel Paton, writes
me: “I entirely concur in your view as to the immense superiority as
works of art of the engravings on horn and ivory found in the
prehistoric caves, over any modern work of the same kind which I have
seen, executed by the Eskimos or other savage, tribes of our own day. As
compared with the latter, the prehistoric productions are like the swift
and direct studies from nature of Landseer, compared with the laboured
scrawlings from memory of a rather dull schoolboy.”

I have elsewhere drawn attention to the fact that some of the drawings
of the Perigord cave-men and their palæolithic contemporaries,
especially, among the latter, the Kesserloch sketch of a reindeer
grazing, are left-hand drawings.[85] So far as this class of evidence is
of value, the examples from the caves in the valley of the Vézère are
exceptionally numerous. There, it may be, a family, or possibly a tribe,
dwelt, among whom left-handedness prevailed to an unusual extent, along
with a degree of skill and dexterity, such as is frequently found to
accompany the instinctive use of the left hand.

In this, as in other respects, the recovery of evidences of a
well-developed æsthetic faculty among the men of Europe’s Mammoth and
Reindeer period, furnishes materials for many suggestive inferences; for
we shall very imperfectly estimate the significance of the primitive
drawings so unexpectedly discovered, if we regard them as no more than
the pastimes of those ancient cave-men, whose artistic ability they so
unmistakably reveal. They are rather to be classed with the
picture-writing of the American aborigines—including its most advanced
Mexican stage abundantly illustrated in Lord Kingsborough’s folios,—as
one of the primitive supplements of language among uncultured races. As
such it is a form of visible speech, and an important step in advance of
the stage of gesture-language. The historical value of the palæolithic
drawings is indisputable. They furnish a record, more trustworthy than
any written chronicle, of the strange conditions of life in a region
familiar to us throughout the whole historic period for its genial
climate and social civilisation. It is in this aspect, as a contemporary
chronicling of current events, that palæolithic art has its chief value.
It furnishes a graphic picturing of the habits of life, and of many of
the attendant circumstances of that remote period, recorded with such
vivid truthfulness, that we realise very definitely the character of its
long-extinct fauna, and, to some considerable extent, the occupations
and modes of life of the cave-men by whom they were hunted, and in
leisure hours were reproduced graven or carved, on bone, horn, or ivory,
or traced in free outline on slabs of schist or other soft stone.

Viewed simply as examples of imitative art among a people still in the
rudest Stone age, the drawings are significant and instructive. They
furnish evidence of observation and artistic capacity, and consequently
of intellectual powers capable of very different results from anything
that could be realised in the absence of all knowledge of metallurgy, or
of anything beyond the crudest appliances for developing mechanical
skill. The conditions of climate probably forbade any attempt at
agriculture. They were hunters, fowlers, fishers, subsisting mainly, if
not wholly, by the chase. They not only successfully pursued the wild
horse, the reindeer, and other swift-footed herbivora, but assailed the
cave-bear, the cave-lion, and other formidable carnivora, as well as the
huge rhinoceros and the mammoth. They also made excursions to the
sea-shore, and no doubt left there shell mounds similar to those which
have been explored with such interesting results on the Danish coast;
and which have their New World equivalents on the seaboards of
Massachusetts, Georgia, and Florida, where at certain seasons the
Indians resorted to feast on the shell-fish. From their drawings and
carvings we not only learn this, but also that they were not unfamiliar
with the whale, the seal, and other marine fauna. The presence of the
whale and seal in the same latitude as the reindeer need not surprise
us. The occupation of Europe by palæolithic man contemporary with the
_Elephas primigenius_ and other extinct mammalia, belongs to an era when
the relative levels of sea and land, and the relations of the Atlantic
coast-line to the ancient continent, differed widely from their present
conditions. If the genial current of the Gulf Stream then reached the
shores of Europe, its influence extended over areas very diverse from
those now affected by it. But the range of the fauna of that Palæolithic
era was a wide one. Tusks of the mammoth and antlers of the reindeer
occur in the Scottish boulder-clay; and the discovery of skeletons of
the whale far inland in the carse of Stirling, accompanied in more than
one case by implements made of perforated stag’s horn, tells of the
presence of the Greenland whale on the ancient Scottish sea coast, while
the stag haunted its forests, and the Allophylian savage paddled his
canoe in estuaries marked for us now by old sea-margins that preceded
the last great rise of the land. Skulls and horns of the elk occur in
the Scottish peat-bogs, seemingly indistinguishable from those of the
_Cervus alces_, or North American moose.[86] As to the reindeer, not
only are its remains found in Scottish mosses and the underlying marl,
but they have been dug up in the ruined brochs, as at Cill-Trolla,
Sutherlandshire, and Keiss in Caithness. The favourite haunts of the
Greenland whale are in seas encumbered with floating ice; and when they
were stranded in the estuary of the Forth by a tide rising on a
shore-line now nearly thirty feet above the tide-mark of the present
day, the highlands of Scotland were capped with perpetual snow, and
great changes of level had still to occur. But neither the whale nor the
Eskimo retreated within the Arctic circle because they could only be at
home among polar ice and snow. Remains of the whale in Scottish kitchen
middens of greatly more modern date show that it must have haunted the
Scottish shores when the temperature of the surrounding ocean differed
little from that of the present day. There is preserved in the Museum of
the Scottish Antiquaries a drinking-cup fashioned from the vertebra of a
whale, which was found in a weem, or subterranean dwelling, on the Isle
of Eday, Orkney, along with implements of stone, horn, bone, bronze, and
iron; and other evidences of the presence of the whale in the Scottish
seas are of frequent occurrence.

As to the ivory of the narwhal and the rostungr, or walrus, it was in
use by Scoto-Scandinavian carvers after the disappearance of the
reindeer from Scotland. A curious large sword, probably of the
fourteenth century, at Hawthornden, near Edinburgh, has the hilt made of
the narwhal’s tusk; and the famous Lewis chessmen, found at Uig in the
Isle of Lewis, as well as examples of chess and tablemen recovered from
time to time in other Scottish localities, are all made of the walrus
ivory, the “huel-bone” of Chaucer. But when the whale haunted the shores
to which the hunters of the Perigord resorted, it is doubtful if Britain
was an island. In that age of the mammoth and the reindeer of the
Pyrenees, when art flourished in the valley of the Vézère, and men,
scarcely less strange than the long-extinct fauna on which they preyed,
sheltered in their rock-dwellings from the ice and snow, the relative
levels of sea and land, and the lines of the Atlantic coast, bore no
relation to their present aspect; for the old region of ice and snow was
what is now familiar to us as the vine-clad sunny land of France. All
this we learn from the archæological remains of those old times, and
especially from the carvings and gravings which, happily for us, were
then executed, whether for pastime or as actual records. Like many of
the native races of the American continent at the present day, the old
cave-dwellers employed their leisure time in carving in bone, horn, or
ivory; and like them too, as we believe, they applied their skill in
graphic art as a means of recording events and communicating facts to
others. The broad palinated antlers of the reindeer, prepared sections
of mammoth ivory, and slabs of schist, all furnished tablets on which
they not only delineated the objects of the chase, but incidents and
observations of daily experience. And if so, we have in such drawings
the germ of ideographic symbolism, and of hieroglyphic writing. By just
such a process of recording facts in a form readily intelligible to
others, the early dwellers in the Nile valley originated the mode of
object-drawing and ideographic chronicling, from which hieroglyphic,
demotic, and ultimately, phonetic writing were evolved.

It is not solely by inference that we are led to surmise that the
ingenious draughtsmen of Southern France had a higher aim than mere
pastime in some, at least, of their graphic devices. The relics
recovered from the ancient caves include what appear to be tallies and
numerical records, unmistakably indicative, not only of a method of
numeration, but of the growth of a system of mnemonic symbolism, and
distinctive graven characters, not greatly inferior to the primitive
alphabets of Celtic or Scandinavian lithology. It is curious, indeed, to
find in use in Europe’s early Post-Glacial period symbols which, but for
their undoubted execution by the ancient cave-men of Aquitania, might be
assigned with every probability to some Druid scribe, familiar with the
ogham characters of the Gauls and British Celts. Among the objects
recovered from the Dordogne caves, including tallies and inscribed
tablets of horn and ivory, with their enumeration in simple units, M.
Broca specially noted a deer’s tyne, marked with a series of notches,
which he assumed to be a hunter’s memoranda of the produce of the chase.
A more complex record, found in the rock-shelter of Gorge d’Enfer, is
inscribed on a plate of ivory. Its groups of horizontal and oblique
lines along the edges, and symmetrical rows of dots on the flat surface,
combine to furnish a record graven in characters as well-defined as many
a runic or ogham inscription. If it be no more than the memoranda of a
successful hunt, with a classification of the different kinds of game
secured for distribution among the members of the tribe, it is not
greatly inferior to the early system of numeration among the Egyptians.
But when such a piece of arithmetic was supplemented by a pictorial
record of the hunt; or by the incident, so acceptable to a bevy of
hunters over their camp-fire, of the fight of the male deer in the
rutting season; or the charge of the enraged elephant with elevated
trunk, trumpeting wrath and defiance: much had been accomplished that
admits of comparison with records of the modern penman.[87]

It is difficult for the men of a lettered age, with all the facilities
of the printing-press in fullest use, to realise the condition of
intellectual activity, or the natural modes of its expression, among an
unlettered people. The transmission of Homeric or Ossianic poems, of a
Niebelungen Lied or an Albanic Duan, from generation to generation, by
the mere aid of memory, is scarcely conceivable to us now. Yet I recall
the account given by Ozahwahguaquzuebe, an Ojibway Indian, who told of
his habitually accumulating his tobacco till he saved enough to bribe an
aged chief of the tribe to repeat to him, again and again, in all its
marvellous details, the legend of Nanaboozo and the post-diluvial
creation, in order that he might be able, in his turn, to recount it in
full, as it had come down from elder generations of his people.

There are some results of the introduction of the printing-press still
very partially appreciated. Its direct influence on social and
intellectual progress receives ample recognition; but not so all
indirect influences traceable to its operations. In elder centuries,
before Gutenberg and Faust superseded the labours of the scribe, not a
few ballad-epics and lyrics were consigned to the wandering minstrels,
to whose tenacious memories we are so largely indebted. But there were
other avenues in those old centuries for fancy and passion, not greatly
dissimilar to those by which the observation and descriptive powers of
the post-glacial Troglodytes found vent. It is vain for a Pugin or a
Ruskin to bewail the mechanical character of modern art. It was easier
for the mediæval satirist to find free scope for his humour in a
sculptured corbel, or on a boss of the beautiful groined ceiling, or to
carve his grosser caricature within easy access under the _miserere_ in
the choir, than to spend long hours at his lectern in the scriptorium,
committing his fancies with laborious pains to less accessible
parchments. And so, both satires and sermons were then graven in stone,
which now find utterance in ways more suited to the age in which we
live:—

    For nature brings not back the Mastodon,
    Nor we those times.

Taste and fancy have now a thousand avenues at their command for the
humour and satire which mingled, in quaint incongruity with the devout
aspirations inwrought into mediæval architecture. With the revival of
learning, and the introduction of the printing-press, came the
Renaissance. Europe renounced mediæval art as “Gothic.” Classic, or what
passed for classic art, ruled for the next three centuries. Architecture
became more and more mechanical; while æsthetic taste sought elsewhere,
and more especially in the novel arena of the printing-press, for
avenues where it could sport in unrestrained freedom.

The ingenious skill of the palæolithic artists and tool-makers, who
wrought in their rock-shelters and limestone caves, in that remote era
when the climate along the northern slope of the Pyrenees resembled that
of Labrador at the present day, has naturally awakened a lively
interest. The rigour of the climate during a greatly prolonged winter
prevented their obtaining stone or flint for purposes of manufacture.
They wrought, accordingly, in bone, in mammoth ivory, and in the horn of
the reindeer, fashioning from such materials their lances, fish-spears,
knives, daggers, and bodkins; turning to account the deer’s tynes for
tallies; and carving out of the larger bones what are assumed to have
been maces or official batons, elaborately ornamented with symbolic
devices designed for other purposes than mere decoration.

The Eskimo are recognised as presenting the nearest type to the cave-men
of Europe’s Post-Glacial era. It is even possible that, like the natives
of Labrador, the latter may have occupied winter snow-huts, and only
resorted to their cave-shelters during the brief heat of a semi-arctic
summer. This, however, is rendered doubtful by the occurrence of
reindeer horns and bones of young fawns, along with others of such
varying age as to indicate the presence of the hunter during nearly
every season of the year. Among a people so situated the industrial arts
are called into constant requisition, alike for clothing and tools; and
the experience of the hunter directs him to the products of the chase
for the easiest supply of both. The pointed horn of the deer furnished
the ready-made dagger, lance head, and harpoon; the incisor tooth of the
larger rodents supplied a more delicately edged chisel than primitive
art could devise; and the very process of fracturing the bones of the
larger mammalia, in order to obtain the prized marrow, produced the
splinters and pointed fragments which an easy manipulation converted
into daggers, bodkins, and needles. The ivory of walrus, narwhal, or
elephant is readily wrought into many desirable forms, and is less
liable to fracture than flint or stone; and all those materials are
abundant in the most rigorous winters, when the latter are sealed up
under the frozen soil. Implements of horn or bone may therefore be
assumed to have preceded all but the rudest flint celts and
hammer-stones or unwrought missiles; and although, owing to the nearly
indestructible nature of their material, it is from the latter that our
ideas of primeval tool-making are chiefly derived, enough has been
recovered from contemporary cave deposits to confirm the analogy of
their arts to those of the hyperborean workmen of the North American
continent.

The necessity which, to a large extent, determined the material of the
ancient workers in bone and ivory, was favourable to the development of
the imitative faculty. The ingenious ivory and bone carvings of the
Tawatins and other tribes of British Columbia, of the Thlinkets of
Alaska, and the Eskimo, equally suffice, with the examples of European
palæolithic art, to show how favourable such material was to the
development of artistic feeling, which must have lain dormant had the
artificers been limited to flint and stone. The same influence may be
seen in operation in many stages of art: as in massive but bald Gothic
structures, such as St. Machar’s Cathedral on the Dee, where the
builders were limited to granite, while contemporary architecture in
localities where good sandstone or limestone abounds is rich in
elaborate details; and, where the soft and easily wrought Caen stone is
available, runs to excess in the florid exuberance of its carvings.

The ingenious artist of the Palæolithic era not only ornamented the
hafts of his tools and weapons with representations of familiar objects
of the chase, but is also accredited with carving, on his mace or baton,
symbolic emblems expressing the rank and official duties of the owner.
The analogous practice of the Haidahs of the Queen Charlotte Islands at
the present day shows that there is nothing inconsistent with primitive
thought in the symbolic, significance assigned to some of the carved
batons; and, if so, we have there examples of imitative art employed in
a way which involved the germ of ideographic graving or picture-writing.
The mere fact of pictorial imitation implies the interpretation of its
representations. Eskimo implements are to be seen in various
collections, as at Copenhagen and Stockholm, in the British Museum, in
those of San Francisco and the Smithsonian Institution at Washington,
ornamented with representations of adventures incident to their habits
of life. An Arctic collection, presented by Captain Beechy to the
Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, furnishes interesting illustrations of the
skill of the Eskimo draughtsman. The carvings and linear drawings
represent, for the most part, incidents in the life of the polar hunter;
and this is so effectively done that, as Captain Beechy says: “By
comparing one with another, a little history was obtained which gave us
a better insight into their habits than could be elicited from any signs
or intimations.”[88] Mr. W. H. Dall figures in his _Alaska and its
Resources_, analogous examples of Innuit or Western Eskimo art; and in
an interesting communication by Dr J. W. Hoffman to the Anthropological
Society of Washington, on Eskimo pictographs as compared with those of
other American aborigines, he figures and interprets similar
examples.[89] One of these, copied from an ivory bow used in making
fire, which he examined in the Museum of the Alaska Commercial Company
of San Francisco, depicts three incidents in the Innuit hunter’s
experience. In one, the hunter supplicates the _Shaman_, or native
medicine-man, for success in the chase; another group represents the
results of the chase; while the third records the incidents of an
unsuccessful appeal to another shaman. Another graving from the same
locality embodies the incidents of success and failure in a prolonged
hunting expedition. In their interpretation, Dr. Hoffman was assisted by
a Kadiack half-breed who happened to visit San Francisco at the time. A
design of the same class copied from a piece of walrus ivory, carved by
a Kiatégamut Indian of Southern Alaska, records a successful feat of the
shaman in curing two patients. He is represented in the act of
exorcising the demons, who are seen just cast out from the men restored
to health by his agency. From the interpretations thus given, it may be
inferred that such drawings as those described by Captain Beechy
represent in nearly every case actual incidents. The hunter celebrates
his return from a successful chase, his experience in the attempt to
propitiate the supernatural powers on his behalf, or any other notable
event, by recording the impressive incidents on the handle of his
hunting knife or his ivory bow, or even in some cases on a tablet of
walrus ivory; just as the enthusiastic sportsman will at times enter in
his journal the special occurrences of the fox-hunt, or the more
adventurous feats of deer-stalking, or commission an artist to
perpetuate them on canvas. Incidents of exceptional skill or daring are
no doubt recalled, and listened to with eager interest by the home
circle in the Arctic snow-hut; and are confirmed in their most thrilling
details by appeals to such graven records.

The more durable material employed alike by the ancient cave-dwellers of
Europe and by the modern Innuit and Eskimo, has secured their
preservation in a form best calculated to command attention. But similar
graphic representations of incidents and ideas are common to various
tribes of North American Indians. Throughout the wide region of the old
Algonkin tribes rock-carvings, such as that of the famous Dighton Bock,
abound. The same are no less frequent in the South-West from New Mexico
to California; while similar pictographs are executed by the Ojibways in
less durable fashion on their grave-posts, or even on strips of
birch-bark. In like fashion, the Crees and Blackfeet of the Canadian
North-West adorn their buffalo-skin tents with incidents of war and the
chase, and blazon on their buffalo robes their personal feats of daring,
and the discomfiture of their foes. In this way, the aboriginal
draughtsman is seen in his pictorial devices to aim at the like result
with that achieved by the old minstrel chronicler or the courtly herald.

Of the ornamented handles of implements recovered from the abodes of the
ancient cave-dwellers of Europe, the most notable examples are far in
advance of any Eskimo carvings. One of those, from the cave at Laugerie
Basse, has been repeatedly engraved. It is fashioned from a piece of
reindeer’s horn. The carver has so modified his design, and availed
himself of the natural contour of his material, as to adapt it admirably
to its purpose as the handle of a poignard. It was apparently intended
to include both handle and blade; but probably broke in the process of
manufacture, and was flung aside unfinished. The design is a spirited
adaptation to the special requirements. The horns are thrown back on the
neck, the fore legs doubled up, and the hind legs stretched out, as if
in the act of leaping. Another finely finished example of a
dagger-handle, from Montastrue, Peccadeau de l’Isle, figured by
Professor de Quatrefages in his _Hommes fossiles_, also represents the
deer with its horns thrown back; but from its fractured condition the
position of the limbs can only be surmised to have corresponded to the
example from Laugerie Basse. With those may be classed such carvings as
the pike, so characteristically represented on a tooth of the cave-bear,
recovered from a refuse heap in the cave of Durntly in the Western
Pyrenees, and other similar sports of primitive artistic skill.

Such carvings had no other aim, we may presume, than the decoration of a
favourite weapon, or the beguiling of a leisure hour. But they show the
fruits of skill, and the observation of a practised eye, by the
ingenious workmen whose drawings and etchings merit our careful study.
Considerable taste and still more ingenuity are exhibited by many of the
American aborigines, in their decorative carvings, and the ornamentation
both of their weapons and dress. The characteristics of Eskimo art have
been noted. The Thlinkets of Alaska, lying on their western border,
manifest a like skill, making ladles and spoons from the horns of the
deer, the mountain sheep, and goat, and carving them with elaborate
ingenuity. They also work in walrus ivory, fashioning their bodkins,
combs, and personal ornaments with varied ornamentation; decorate their
knife-handles of bone, their paddles, and other implements; and carve
grotesque masks, with much inventive ingenuity in the variety of the
design, though scarcely in a style of high art. But it is interesting to
note the different phases of this imitative faculty. Some tribes, such
as the Algonkins, confine their art mainly to literal reproductions of
natural objects; while others, such as the Chimpseyans or Babeens, the
Tawatins, and the Clalam Indians of Vancouver Island, have developed a
conventional style of art, often exhibiting much ingenious fancy in its
grotesque ornamentation. This is specially apparent in the claystone
pipes of the Chimpseyans, in carving which they rival the ingenious
Haidahs of the Queen Charlotte Islands in exuberance of detail. But
while the art has become conventional, where it is not displaced by
imitations of the novel objects brought under their notice in their
intercourse with Europeans its combinations are in most cases referable
to native myths.

In many of the elaborately carved Chimpseyan pipes, their special
purpose seems to be lost sight of in the whimsical profusion of
ornament, embracing every native or foreign object that has chanced to
attract the notice of the sculptor. Nevertheless, it may help us to do
justice to the true aim of the Indian artist, if we call to remembrance
how much of Christian symbolism was embodied in many a mediæval
sculpturing of what, to the unsympathetic observer, seem now only
conventional vines and lilies, or a mere fanciful grouping of dragons
and snakes, with apples, figs, grapes, and thorns. This has to be kept
in view while noting in the pipe sculptures human figures in strangest
varieties of posture, intertwined with zoomorphic devices, in which the
bear and the frog have a prominent place; and, as will be seen, a mythic
significance. It is no less suggestive to note, alike in the Chimpseyan
and in the Tawatin and Haidah carvings, curious analogies to the
sculptures of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America. This resemblance has
been noticed, independently, by many observers.

Marchand, a French navigator who visited the Queen Charlotte Islands in
1791, after having recently seen the Mexican sculpture and paintings,
formed the opinion that the Haidah works of art could be distinctly
traced to Aztec origin.[90] He remarks of their paintings and carvings:
“The taste for ornament prevails in all the works of their hands; their
canoes, their chests, and different little articles of furniture in use
among them, are covered with figures which might be taken for a species
of hieroglyphics; fishes and other animals, heads of men, and various
whimsical designs, are mingled and confounded in order to compose a
subject. It undoubtedly will not be expected that these figures should
be perfectly regular and the proportions in them exactly observed, for
here every man is a painter and sculptor; yet they are not deficient in
a sort of elegance and perfection.”

The imitative faculty thus manifested so generally among a people still
in the condition of savage life, shows itself no less strikingly in the
modern claystone carvings of objects of foreign introduction. The
collection formed by the United States Exploring Expedition, and largely
augmented since, includes numerous carvings in which representations of
log and frame houses, forts, boats, horses, and fire-arms, are
introduced; and where cords, pulleys, anchors, and other details copied
from the shipping which frequent the coasts, furnish evidence of a
practised eye, and considerable powers of imitation. To the unfamiliar
observer, the result presents, in many cases, a very arbitrary and even
incongruous jumble of miscellaneous details. But, most probably, the
native designer had, in every case, a special meaning, and even some
specific incident in view.

The interest awakened by such manifestations of observant accuracy and
artistic skill among savage tribes is not diminished by the fact that in
nearly all other respects they are devoid of culture. Notwithstanding
the absence in most of them of the very rudiments of civilisation,
experience proves that among the tribes to the west of the Rocky
Mountains distinguished by artistic capacity, there is an aptitude for
industrious and settled habits, the want of which is so noticeable in
the nomad tribes of the prairies. Their linear patterns are often
singularly graceful; and they employ colour lavishly, and with some
degree of taste, in decorating their masks, boats, and dwellings. This
is specially noticeable among the Haidahs, in the different dialects of
whose language we find not only names for nearly all the primary
colours, but also the word _kigunijago_, “a picture.” The symbolical and
mythological significance of many of their carvings is indisputable;
while the affinities, traceable at times to the ornamentation most
characteristic of the architectural remains in the principal seats of
native American civilisation in Central America, confer on them a
peculiar interest and value.

The curiously conventional style of ornamentation of the Haidahs of
Queen Charlotte Islands is lavishly expended on their idols, or
manitous, carved in black argillaceous stone, and on their
council-houses and lodges. In front of each Haidah dwelling stands an
ornamented column, formed of the trunk of a tree, large enough, in many
cases, to admit of the doorway being cut through it. These columns, or
“totem-poles” as they have been called, are, in some cases, sixty or
seventy feet high, elaborately carved with the symbols or totems of
their owners. The height of the pole indicates the rank of the inmate,
and any attempt at undue assumption in this respect is jealously
resented by rival chiefs. The symbols of their four clans—the eagle,
beaver, dog-fish, and black duck,—are represented in conventional style
on the carved house-pole, along with their individual or family totems.
In some cases boxes are attached to the poles containing the remains of
their dead. Dr. Hoffman, whose previous studies in native symbolism and
ideography specially prepared him for the intelligent observation of
such monuments, has furnished an interpretation of their most familiar
devices. “When the posts are the property of some individual, the
personal totemic sign is carved at the top. Other animate and grotesque
figures follow in rapid succession, down to the base, so that unless one
is familiar with the mythology and folk-lore of the tribe, the subject
would be utterly unintelligible. A drawing was made of one post with
only seven pronounced carvings, but which related to three distinct
myths. The bear, in the act of devouring a hunter, or tearing out his
heart, is met with on many of the posts, and appears to form an
interesting theme for the native artists. The story connected with this
is as follows:—Toivats, an Indian, had occasion to visit the lodge of
the King of the Bears, but found him out. The latter’s wife, however,
was at home, and Toivats made love to her. Upon the return of the Bear,
everything seemed to be in confusion. He charged his wife with
infidelity, which she denied. The Bear pretended to be satisfied, but
his suspicions caused him to watch his wife very closely, and he soon
found that her visits away from the lodge for wood and water occurred
each day at precisely the same hour. Then the Bear tied a magic thread
to her dress, and when his wife again left the lodge, he followed the
magic thread, and soon came upon his wife, finding her in the arms of
Toivats. The Bear was so enraged at this that he tore out the heart of
the destroyer of his happiness.”[91] Dr. Hoffman found this myth, with
the corresponding carvings in walrus ivory, among the Thlinkit Indians,
who, as he conceives, obtained both the story and the design for their
ivory carvings from the Haidahs. This appears to receive confirmation
from the peculiar style of art common to both.

But the decorations of the Haidah lodge-poles admit at times of a much
more homely interpretation. Mr. James G. Swan, the author of an article
on “The Haidah Indians,” in Vol. XXI. of the _Smithsonian Contributions
to Knowledge_, in a communication to the _West Shore_, an Oregon
journal, thus describes an Indian lodge and house-pole which attracted
his notice, owing to its carved figures, in round hat and other European
costume, surmounting the two corner-posts of the lodge. He accordingly
made a careful drawing of the whole, which, as he says, “is interesting
as illustrative of the grim humour of an Indian in trying to be avenged
for what he considered an act of injustice a number of years ago. Bear
Skin, a somewhat noted Haidah chief, belonging to Skidegate village,
Queen Charlotte Islands, was in Victoria, when for some offence he was
fined and imprisoned by Judge Pemberton, the police magistrate. Bear
Skin felt very much insulted; and in order to get even with the
magistrate he carved the two figures, which are said to be good
likenesses of the Judge, who in this dual capacity mounts guard at each
corner of the front of the chiefs residence. The gigantic face on the
front of the house, and the two bears on the two mortuary columns, seem
to be grinning with fiendish delight, while the raven on top of one of
the columns has cocked his eye so as to have a fair look at the effigies
beneath him. Bear Skin is dead, but the images still remain. It has been
suggested that they be removed to Victoria, and be placed over the
entrance to the police barracks, to keep watch and ward like Gog and
Magog at the gates of old London city.” But, on the other hand, a
symbolical meaning appears to be most frequently embodied in the Haidah
devices; of which Mr. Swan reproduces various illustrations, accompanied
with native interpretations of them. One drawing, for example,
represents a grouping of conventional patterns such as are common on the
Haidah blankets of goats’ hair, and in which the untutored student can
discern little more than confused scroll-work, with here and there an
enormous eye, rows of teeth, and a symmetrical repetition of the design
on either side of the central device. Yet, according to Kitelswa, the
native Haidah interpreter, “it represents cirrus clouds, or, as sailors
term them, ‘mares’ tails and ‘mackerel sky,’ the sure precursors of a
change of weather. The centre figure is T’kul, the wind spirit. On the
right and left are his feet, which are indicated by long streaming
clouds; above are his wings, and on each side are the different winds,
each designated by an eye, and represented by the patches of cirrus
clouds. When T’kul determines which wind is to blow, he gives the word
and the other winds retire. The change in the weather is usually
followed by rain, which is indicated by the tears which stream from the
eyes of T’kul.” The difficulty with which the inexperienced observer has
to contend, in any attempt to interpret such native conventional art,
finds apt illustration in Mr. Swan’s account of an elaborately
sculptured lodge-pole of which he made a drawing at Kioosta village, on
Graham Island, one of the Queen Charlotte group. When describing it in
minute detail, he says: “I could make out all the figures but the
butterfly, which I thought at first was an elephant with its trunk
coiled up; but on inquiry of old Edinso, the chief who was conveying me
in his canoe from Massett to Skidegate, he told me it was a butterfly,
and pointed out one which had just lit near by on a flower.” The same
characteristics have already been referred to in describing the
claystone carvings of the Chimpseyans. They also mark the Haidah
sculptures executed in the soft argillaceous slate which abounds in
their vicinity. But the Haidahs work with no less ability in other
materials; and were familiar of old with the native copper, which is
brought from some still unascertained locality, it is believed, in
Alaska. The collections of the Geological Survey at Ottawa include some
of their beautifully wrought copper daggers and a massive and finely
finished copper neck-collar. They have now learned to work with equal
skill in iron. Their bracelets, rings, and ear ornaments of gold and
silver; their copper shields and richly carved emblematic weapons, bows
and arrows, iron daggers and war knives; as well as their wooden and
horn dishes, spoons, masks, and toys, are eagerly sought after. The
carvings on them, when properly explained, are of great interest; for
every device has a meaning, and each illustrates a story or a legend,
readily understood by the Indian, but by no means willingly interpreted
to strangers.

A knowledge of the myths of the Haidahs and other coast tribes is
indispensable to any interpretation of their carvings; and to those,
accordingly, Dr. Hoffman has directed his attention. “A very common
object,” as he says, “found carved upon various household vessels,
handles of wooden spoons, etc., is the head of a human being in the act
of eating a toad; or, as it frequently occurs, the toad placed a short
distance below the mouth. This refers to the evil spirit, supposed to
live in the wooded country, who has great power of committing evil by
means of poison, supposed to be extracted from the toad”; but, as Dr.
Hoffman adds, it is a difficult matter to get an Indian to acknowledge
the common belief in the mythic being, even when aware that the inquirer
is in possession of the main facts.

The interpretations thus furnished by a careful study of the carvings of
the Haidahs and other artistic native tribes of British Columbia, and
the evidence of a specific meaning and application discoverable in their
most conventional designs, have a significant hearing on the study of
analogous productions of the cave-men of Europe’s palæolithic dawn. The
manifestations of an active imitative faculty and some degree of
artistic skill, among different rude native tribes of this continent,
present some striking parallels to the æsthetic aptitudes of the
primeval draughtsmen and carvers of Europe. There are, moreover,
undoubted resemblances in style and mode of representation of the
objects, as depicted on some of the ancient and the modern bone and
ivory carvings and drawings of the two continents; but the latter
exhibit no evidence of progress. The Innuit and Eskimo designs do,
indeed, more nearly approximate to those of the primitive draughtsmen
than other aboriginal efforts; but their inferiority in all respects is
equally striking and indisputable.

The evidence of artistic ability in the native races both of Central and
Southern America is abundant; nor is the northern continent lacking in
its specially artistic race. But the achievements of the ancient Mayas,
Peruvians, or Mound-Builders, are of very recent date, compared with the
palæolithic, or even the neolithic productions of Europe. It need not,
therefore, excite our wonder to find American antiquaries welcoming a
disclosure, only too strikingly analogous to the famous mammoth drawing
of the La Madeleine cave. There recently issued from the American press
a tastefully printed volume, in which its author, Mr. H. C. Mercer,
gives an account of the discovery, near Doylestown, Pennsylvania, of a
“gorget stone” of soft shale, on which is graven what the author
describes as “unquestionably a picture of a combat between savages and
the hairy mammoth. The monster, angry, and with erect tail, approaches
the forest, in which through the pine-trunks are seen the wigwams of an
Indian village.” The sun, moon, and the forked lightning overhead,
complete a design which could scarcely deserve serious notice, so
palpable is the evidence of the fabrication, were it not for the
unmistakable sincerity with which the author sets forth the narration,
and assures us that after the most careful inquiry “nothing has occurred
to shake his faith in the unimpeachable evidence of an honest
discovery.”[92] The figure of the mammoth has a suspiciously near
resemblance, in all but one respect, to the La Madeleine graving on
mammoth ivory. It charges its assailants with lowered trunk and erect
tail; but instead of presenting, as in the ancient cave-dweller’s
drawing, evidence of aptitude in the free use of the pencil or graving
tool, the scratchings on the Lenape Stone are crude and inartistic, even
if tried by the rudest standard of Indian art. It may, perhaps, be worth
noting that—if the design has not been purposely reversed in order to
evade comparison with the genuine European example,—it is a left-handed
drawing. The forgery of palæolithic implements has become a systematic
branch of manufacture in Europe; and the “Grave Creek Stone,” the “Ohio
Holy Stone,” and other similar productions of perverted American
ingenuity are familiar to us. It need not, therefore, excite any special
wonder to find a like activity in the production of fictitious examples
of pictorial art.

But North America has its own ancient artistic race, which, though
claiming no such antiquity as that of Aquitaine, is, in the primary
sense of the term, essentially prehistoric. Among the æsthetic
productions of older races of the continent, the carvings and sculptures
of the ancient Mound-Builders of Ohio not only admit of comparison with
those of Europe’s primitive workers in bone and ivory, but even, in one
respect, surpass them. For it is curious to observe that the palæolithic
artists, whose carvings and drawings manifest such a capacity for
appreciating the grace of animal form, and for reproducing with such
truthfulness objects and scenes familiar to them in the chase, seem to
have invariably failed, or at least shown a surprising lack of skill, in
their attempts to delineate the human face and figure. Professor de
Quatrefages notes of one such carving: “M. Massénat has brought from
Laugerie Basse a fragment of reindeer’s horn, on which is graven a male
aurochs fleeing before a man armed with a lance or javelin. The animal
is magnificent; the man, on the contrary, is detestable, devoid alike of
proportion and true portraiture.”[93] Some beautiful Mexican terra-cotta
human masks have been preserved; and, amid the endless varieties of
quaint and whimsical device in Peruvian pottery, singularly graceful
portrait-vases occur. But, as a rule, even among the civilised Mexicans,
imitations of the human face and figure seldom passed beyond the
grotesque; and although the sculptors of Central America and Yucatan
manifested an artistic power which accords with the civilisation of a
lettered people, yet, in the majority of their statues and reliefs, the
human form and features are subordinated to the symbolism of their
mythology, or to mere decorative requirements. In the carvings of the
old Mound-Builders, as in those of the vastly more ancient artists of
palæolithic Europe, we have to deal with miniature works of art; but
both include productions meriting the designation. The variety and
expressiveness of many of the mound sculptures, their careful execution,
and the evidence of imitative skill which they furnish, all combine to
render them objects of interest. But foremost in every trait of value
are the human heads. In view of the accuracy of many of the miniature
sculptures of animals, it has been reasonably assumed that they
perpetuate no less trustworthy representations of the workmen by whom
they were carved. Equally well-executed examples of contemporary
portraiture, recovered from palæolithic caves of Europe, would be prized
above all other relics of its Mammoth or Reindeer period. Nevertheless,
striking as is the character of the art of the Aligéwi, it differs only
in degree of merit from that of many modern Indian races; and in some of
the Algonkin stone-pipes the human figure is carved with
well-proportioned symmetry. In such carvings, moreover, even when
expended on the decoration of the pipe,—which was employed among so
many native tribes in their most important ceremonial and religious
observances,—there is rarely anything to suggest a higher aim of the
artist than mere decoration. The same may be assumed of the ancient
carvers, in such work as they expended on the hafts of the daggers found
at Montastrue or Laugerie Basse. But when a carefully executed linear
drawing occurs on a rough slab of schist, with its fractured edges left
untrimmed, as is the case in examples from the caves of Les Eysies and
Massat, the artist manifestly had some other purpose in view; and this I
conceive to have been the earliest stage of ideography or
picture-writing. He was communicating facts in detail by means of his
pencil which his best attempts at verbal description would have failed
to convey.

Language is even now a very inadequate means of communicating to others
specific ideas of form; and some of the most fluent lecturers in those
departments of science, such as geology, biology, and anthropology, in
which there is a frequent demand for the appreciation of details in form
and structure, habitually resort to the chalk and blackboard. Students
of my own earlier days will recall, as among their most pleasant
memories, the facile pencil with which the gifted naturalist, Edward
Forbes, seemed equally eloquent with hand and tongue; and no one who
enjoyed the lucid demonstrations of Agassiz in the same fields of
scientific research can think of him otherwise than with chalk in hand.
To the uncultured, yet strangely gifted Troglodyte of the primeval dawn,
language was still more inadequate for his requirements; and hence, as I
imagine, the facile pencil was in frequent requisition for purposes of
demonstration, with ever-growing skill to the practised hand. Professor
de Quatrefages, who has enjoyed unusually favourable opportunities for
the study of those productions, thus directs attention to their artistic
merits: “The art of the draughtsman, or rather of the engraver, almost
constantly applied to the representation of animals, was first tried on
bone or horn. They have attempted it on stone. The burin must have been
almost always a mere pointed flint. With this instrument, imperfect
though it was, the Troglodytes of the Reindeer age succeeded by degrees
in producing results altogether remarkable. The first lines are simple
and more or less vague. At a later stage they become more defined, and
acquire a singular firmness and precision; the principal lines become
deeper; details, such as the fur and mane, are indicated by lighter
lines, and even the shading is expressed by delicate hatching. But what
is nearly always apparent is a sense of truthful realisation, and the
exact copying of characteristics which enable us often to recognise not
only the order, but the precise species, which the artist wished to
represent. The bear, engraved on a piece of schist which was found by M.
Garrigou in the lower cave at Massat, with the characteristic projecting
forehead, can be no other than the cave-bear, the bones of which were
recovered by that observer in the same place. When we compare the
drawings and anatomical details of the Siberian mammoth with the
engraving on ivory discovered by M. Lartet at La Madeleine, it is
impossible to avoid recognising the _Elephas primigenius_ which existed
throughout the Glacial period, and which has been recovered entire in
the frozen soil of Northern Asia. Oxen, wild goats, the stag, the
antelope, the otter, the beaver, the horse, the aurochs, whales, certain
species of fish, etc., have been found recognisable with the like
certainty. The reindeer especially is frequently represented with
remarkable skill. This may be seen by the engraving found near
Thayingen, in Switzerland.”[94]

M. de Quatrefages is disposed to estimate the artistic merit of the
carvings in ivory as even greater than that of the drawings or etchings.
But specific form and contour are more easily realisable than their
indication on a plane surface. To do full justice to the wonderful skill
of the Troglodyte draughtsman, we must compare the most highly-finished
paintings on Egyptian temples and tombs with the works of their
sculptors; or even the perfect realisations of the Greek sculptors’
chisel, with drawings on the most beautiful Hellenic vases. The mastery
of perspective, as shown in some of the works of those palæolithic
artists is remarkable when compared, for example, with the Assyrian
bas-reliefs; not to speak of the infantile efforts of the Chinese on
their otherwise justly prized ceramic ware.

The potter’s art is at all times an interesting study to the
archæologist. We owe to Etruscan and Hellenic fictile ware our sole
knowledge of painting, contemporary with the most gifted masters of the
sculptor’s art. But it is in the form, rather than the decoration, that
the chief excellency of the art of the potter consists. It is one of the
plastic arts. The clay in the hands of the skilled modeller is even more
facile than the pencil of the draughtsman; and the distinction between
the purely decorative sports of an exuberant fancy, and the purposed
symbolism of the carver or painter, is nowhere more strikingly manifest
than in the modellings of the ingenious worker in clay. But fictile art
belongs, for the most part, to periods greatly more recent than that of
the ancient Stone age. Not that the work of the primitive potter
involved such laboriously accumulated skill as lay beyond reach of the
palæolithic carver and draughtsman; for clay cylinders from the banks of
the Euphrates, and the terra-cottas from the Nile valley, carry us back
to times that long antedate definite history. But alike among the
ancient cave-dwellers of Aquitaine, and the modern Eskimo, the
prevailing conditions of an Arctic or semi-Arctic climate rendered clay,
fuel, and other needful appliances so rarely available, that among the
latter, their pots and lamps are fashioned for the most part of the
_Lapis ollaris_, or potstone. But traces of the pottery of many periods
and races abound, and furnish interesting materials for comparison. The
aptitude of the potter’s clay for a display of skill, alike in modelling
and in tracing on the surface imitative designs and ornamental patterns,
renders the fictile ware of widely different eras a ready test of
æsthetic feeling, as well as a trustworthy guide to the age and race of
its artificers. To the ancient cave-men, to whose skill such carvings as
the reindeer from Laugerie Basse, or Montastrue, are due, modelling in
clay would have been as easy and natural as to the modern sculptor; and
pottery, if well-burnt, when not exposed to violence, is little less
durable than flint or stone. The rarity, or total absence, of pottery
among the contents of the palæolithic caves accords with other
indications of a rigorous climate. A piece of plain earthenware was,
indeed, recovered from the Belgian cave of Trou de Frontal; and Sir W.
Dawson, in his _Fossil Men_, calls attention to the discovery, recorded
by Fournal and Christie, of fragments of pottery in the mud and breccia
of caverns in the south of France, along with bones of man and animals,
including those of the hyæna and rhinoceros. Those, however, whatever be
their true epoch, are mere potsherds, valuable in so far as they
indicate the practice of the potter’s art at such a time, but furnishing
no illustration of skill in modelling.

The pottery found in graves of the Neolithic period is mostly so
imperfectly burned, that, however abundant it may have been, it could
scarcely leave a trace in the breccia, or river gravel, from which the
larger number of relics of palæolithic man have been recovered. But the
pottery and terra-cottas which abound on the sites of Indian villages in
North America everywhere exhibit traces of imitative art, in the efforts
at modelling the human form, and the more or less successful
reproduction of familiar natural objects. Squier remarks in his
“Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York,” that “upon the site of
every Indian town, as also within all of the ancient enclosures,
fragments of pottery occur in great abundance. It is rare, however, that
any entire vessels are recovered. . . . In general there was no attempt
at ornament; but sometimes the exteriors of the pots and vases were
elaborately, if not tastefully, ornamented with dots and lines, which
seem to have been formed in a very rude manner with a pointed stick or
sharpened bone. Bones which appear to have been adapted for the purpose
are often found.”[95] Ornamentation of a more artistic kind appears to
have been most frequently reserved by the native workers in clay for
their pipes, to which at times a sacred character was attached, and on
which accordingly they lavished their highest skill as modellers and
carvers. Some of the smaller articles of burnt clay, however, which
Squier denominates terra-cottas, were probably fragments of domestic
pottery similar to those hereafter described among the relics of the
ancient Indian town of Hochelaga. One example of an ingeniously modelled
pipe, found within an enclosure in Jefferson County, New York, is
specially selected as a good illustration of Indian art. It is of fine
red clay, smoothly moulded, with two serpents coiling round the bowl.
“Bushels of fragments of pipes,” he adds, “have been found within the
same enclosure.” A carved stone pipe, from a grave in Cayuga County, is
described as fashioned in the form of a bird with eyes made of silver
inserted in the head, and Mr. Squier notes of another specimen: “The
most beautiful terra-cotta which I found in the State, and which in
point of accuracy and delicacy of finish is unsurpassed by any similar
article which I have seen of aboriginal origin, is the head of a fox.
The engraving fails to convey the spirit of the original, which is
composed of fine clay slightly burned. It seems to have been once
attached to a body, or perhaps to a vessel of some kind. It closely
resembles some of the terra-cottas from the mounds of the west and
south-west. It was found upon the site of an ancient enclosure in
Jefferson County, in the town of Ellisburg.” Again, in describing some
similar relics from the site of an old Seneca village in Munroe County,
he adds: “The spot is remarkable for the number and variety of its
ancient relics. Vast quantities of these have been removed from time to
time. Some of the miniature representations of animals found here are
remarkable for their accuracy.”[96]

The descriptions thus furnished of the traces of aboriginal art in the
State of New York closely correspond to the remains recovered on the
sites of ancient Indian villages in Canada. A finely modelled clay-pipe,
with a serpent twined round it, and holding a human head in its jaws,
now in my possession, was dug up, along with numerous other clay-pipes,
bone pins, and other relics, in Norfolk County, on the north shore of
Lake Erie. I also possess casts of some ingeniously modelled clay-pipes
found a few years since in an ossuary at Lake Medad, near Watertown,
about ten miles west from Hamilton, Ontario. This no doubt marks the
site of an ancient town of the Attiwendaronks, or Neuter Nation, who
were finally conquered and driven out by the Iroquois in 1635, when the
little remnant that survived was adopted into the Seneca nation. Mr. B.
E. Charlton, who explored the Lake Medad ossuaries, after describing the
human remains, along with large tropical shells, shell-beads and other
relics, adds: “With these were found antique pipes of stone and clay,
many of them bearing extraordinary devices, figures of animals, and of
human heads wearing the conical cap noticed on similar relics in Mexico
and Peru.”[97] Similar discoveries rewarded the researches of Dr. Taché
in the Huron ossuaries on the Georgian Bay, examples of which are now in
the museum of Laval University.

On the site of the famous Indian town of Hochelaga, the precursor of the
city of Montreal, detached fragments, in well-burnt clay, including
modellings of the human head and neck, had been repeatedly found, before
the recovery of larger portions of the Hochelaga pottery showed that
projections modelled in this form within the mouths of their earthern
pots or kettles were designed to admit of their suspension over the
fire. Any projection within the mouth of the pot would have answered the
purpose of protecting the cord or withe from the risk of burning; so
that the moulding of it into the human form furnishes an illustration of
the play of the imitative faculty under circumstances little calculated
to call it forth.

The decoration of domestic pottery by the American Indian workers in
clay is greatly developed among the more southern tribes. The
ornamentation of a few prominent points, moulded more or less rudely
into human or animal heads, gives place with them to the modelling of
the vessel itself into animal forms, or to its decoration, chiefly with
human or animal figures. Among the examples of native art in the
National Museum at Washington are two large vases, remarkable for their
elaborate workmanship, which were brought from Mexico, by General Alfred
Gibbs. They are figured, along with other specimens of Mexican pottery
and terra-cottas, in Mr. Charles Rau’s account of the Archæological
Collection of the United States National Museum. They are there spoken
of as “two large vases of exquisite workmanship,” and one of them is not
only described as an admirable specimen of Mexican pottery, but it is
added: “As far as the general outline is concerned, it might readily be
taken for a vessel of Etruscan or Greek origin. The peculiar
ornamentation, however, stamps it at once as a Mexican product of
art:”[98] and, it may be added, in doing so, places it in very marked
contrast to any example of Etruscan or Greek workmanship. Its modelling,
both in general form and in all its curious zoomorphic details, is
essentially barbarous, yet manifesting ingenious skill in the
workmanship, and exuberant fancy in design. The influence of Mexican art
extended northward; and its characteristics may be traced in much of the
native pottery of the Southern States. But throughout Mexico, Central
America, and the Isthmus, the modeller in clay appears to have revelled
in feats of skill. Clay masks and caricatures, and heads of men and
animals, in endless variety of dress and fashioning, abound. Utility is
in many cases rendered altogether subsidiary to the sports of fancy.
Musical instruments are made in the form of animals; and vases and
earthenware vessels of every kind are modelled in imitation of
vegetables, fruit, and shells, or decorated with familiar natural
objects. This is still more apparent in Peruvian pottery, where an
unrestrained exuberance of fancy sports with the pliant clay. Animal and
vegetable forms are combined. Men and women are represented in their
daily avocations, as porters, water-carriers, etc. Portrait-vases
represent the human head, characterised at times by grace and beauty;
but more frequently grotesquely caricatured. The human head surmounts
the lithe body of the monkey, sporting in ape-like antics; melons and
gourds have animal heads for spouts; while the duck, parrot, toucan,
pelican, turkey, crane, land-turtle, lynx, otter, deer, llama, cayman,
shark, toad, etc., are ingeniously reproduced, singly or in groups, as
models for bottles, jars, or pitchers. The double or triple goblets, and
two-necked bottles or jugs, acquire a fresh interest from resemblances
traceable between some of them and others belonging to distant
localities and remote ages. The Fijians, on the extreme western verge of
the Polynesian archipelago, have already been referred to for their
skill in the finished workmanship of their implements, and of their
pottery, some of which suggest curious analogies to Peruvian types. But
it is more interesting to note the apparent reproduction of Egyptian,
Etruscan, and other antique forms in Peruvian fictile ware; and to
recognise on the latter the Vitruvian scroll, the Grecian fret and other
ancient classic and Assyrian patterns—not as evidence of common origin,
but as originating independently from the ornamentation naturally
produced in the work of the straw-plaiter and weaver. Still more curious
are their analogies to ancient Asiatic art, as disclosed in a comparison
with many of the objects recovered by Dr. Schliemann on Homeric sites.
Among the relics which rewarded his exploration of the site of the
classic Ilios, are examples of double-necked jugs, terra-cotta groups of
goblets united as single vessels, along with others terminating with
mouthpieces in the forms of human or animal heads; or modelled with such
quaint ingenuity to represent the hippopotamus, horse, pig, hedgehog,
mole, and other animals, that, were it not for the strange fauna
selected for imitation, they would seem little out of place in any
collection of Peruvian pottery.

The same exuberant sportiveness of the imitative faculty, so
characteristic of the races of the New World, reappears in productions
of the native metallurgists of Mexico and Central America. Casting,
engraving, chasing, and carving in metal, were all practised by the
Mexicans with a lavish expenditure of misspent labour. Ingenious toys,
birds and beasts with moveable wings and limbs, fish with alternate
scales of gold and silver, and personal ornaments in many fanciful
forms, were wrought by the Mexican goldsmiths with such skill that the
Spaniards acknowledged the superiority of the native workmanship over
any product of European art. The ancient graves of the Isthmus of Panama
have yielded immense numbers of gold relics of the same class, though
inferior to the finest examples described above. They include beasts,
birds, and fishes, frogs and other natural objects, wrought in gold with
much skill and ingenuity. The frog is made with sockets for the eyes, an
oval slit in front, and within each a detached ball of gold, executed
apparently in a single casting. Balls of clay are also frequently found
enclosed in detached chambers in the pottery of the Isthmus. Human
figures wrought in gold, and monstrous or grotesque hybrids, with the
head of the cayman, eagle, vulture, and other animals, attached to the
human form, are also of frequent occurrence; though in this class of
works the modelling of the human form is generally inferior to that of
other animate designs. All of those curious relics are found in graves,
which, judging from the condition of the human remains, are of great
antiquity; if, indeed, they do not point to the central cradle and
common source of Aztec and Peruvian art.

It is thus apparent that the imitative faculty, which manifests itself
in very different degrees among diverse races, was widely diffused
throughout the native tribes of the American continent. But, while a
certain aptitude for art is seen to be prevalent among some of the
rudest tribes, there were, no doubt, among all of them exceptional
examples of artistic ability. There were the Jossakeeds and the Wabenos,
skilled in picturing on bark and deer-skin; and the official annalists
or “Wampum-keepers,” who perpetuated the national traditions. Among the
arrow-makers were some famed for their dexterity in fashioning the
hornstone or jasper into arrow heads; and, while the art of the potter
proved no less easy to female hands than that of the baker, there were,
doubtless, among them some few rarely-gifted modellers, whose skill in
fashioning clay into favourite forms of imitative art won them a name
among the ceramic artists of their tribe. Pabahmesad, the old Chippewa,
of the Great Manitoulin Island, in Lake Huron, famed for his skill in
pipe carving, has been referred to in illustrating the trade and
manufacture of the Stone age.

The little remnant of the once-powerful Huron race now settled on the
river St. Charles, near Quebec, expend their ingenious art on the
manufacture of bark canoes, snow-shoes, la-crosse clubs, basket-work,
and moccasins. In this they show much skill and dexterity; but among
their most adroit workers in recent years was Zacharee Thelariolin, who
claimed to be the last full-blood Indian belonging to the band. He
manifested considerable ability as an artist, had an apt faculty for
sketching from nature, and painted successfully in oil. A portrait of
himself, in full Indian costume, now in the possession of Mr. Clint of
Quebec, is a relic of much interest as the work of an untaught native
Indian, in whom the hereditary imitative faculty thus manifested itself
under circumstances little calculated to favour its development. He was
sixty-six years of age when he executed this portrait. Had it been his
fortune to attract the attention of some appreciative patron in early
years he might have made a name for himself and his people.

Another curious and exceptional example of native artistic ability may
be noted here. The studio of Edmonia Lewis, the sculptor, has long been
known to tourists visiting Rome. Her history is a curious one. Her
father was a Negro, and her mother a Chippewa Indian. She was born at
Greenbush, on the Hudson river, and reared among the Indians till the
age of fourteen, both of her parents having died in her childhood. Her
Indian name was _Suhkuhegarequa_, or Wildfire; but she changed it to
that by which she is now known on being admitted to the Moravian school
at Oberlin, Ohio. After three years schooling she went to Boston, where,
it is said, the sight of the fine statue of Franklin awoke in her the
ambition to be a sculptor. She sought out William Lloyd Garrison, and in
simple directness told him she wanted to do something like the statue of
the printer-statesman. The great abolitionist befriended her. She
received needful training in a local studio, started an _atelier_ of her
own, and when I saw her in Boston, in 1864, she was modelling a
life-size statue emblematic of the emancipation of the race to which
she, in part, belonged. Africa was impersonated, raising herself from a
prostrate attitude, and, with her hand shading her eyes, was looking at
the dawn. Soon after the sculptor went to Rome, and she has there
executed works of considerable merit. Her most successful productions
may be assumed to reflect the artistic aptitudes of her mother’s race.
Her two best works in marble are “Hiawatha’s Wooing” and “Hiawatha’s
Wedding.” A Boston critic, in reviewing her works, says: “She has always
had remarkable power of manipulation, beginning with beads and wampum,
and rising to clay. She has fine artistic feeling and talent, a sort of
instinct for form and beauty demanding outward expression.”

The wide diffusion of this imitative faculty and feeling for form was no
doubt stimulated by its employment for representative and symbolic
purposes. The relation of imitative drawing to written language is
equally manifest in the graven records of the Nile valley and the
analogous inscriptions of Yucatan or Peru. Quipus, wampum, and all other
mnemonic systems, dependent on the transmission of images and ideas from
one generation to another, literally, by word of mouth, have within
themselves no such germ of higher development as the picture-writing or
sculpturing of the early Egyptians, from which all the alphabets of
Europe have been evolved. The phonetic signs, inherited by us directly
from the Romans, seem so simple, and yet are of such priceless value in
their application, that it seems natural to think of the letters of
Cadmus as a gift not less wonderful than speech; since, by their
instrumentality, the wise of all ages speak to us still. Plutarch tells,
in his _De Iside et Osiride_, that when Thoth, the god of letters, first
appeared on the earth, the inhabitants of Egypt had no language, but
only uttered the cries of animals. They had, at least, no language with
which to speak to other generations; nor any common speech to supersede
the confusion of tongues which characterised their great river valley,
bordering on Asia, and forming the highway from Ethiopia to the
Mediterranean Sea. The light thrown for us on the climate, the fauna,
the people, and the whole social life of Europe’s Palæolithic era, by a
few graphic delineations of its primitive artists, suffices to show how
the northern Thoth may have manifested his advent among them.

The condition of the Indian tribes in the North-West, in British
Columbia, and in the territories of the United States, abundantly
illustrates the effect of a multiplicity of languages among nomad
savages. The Blackfeet are in reality a political and not an ethnical
confederation, with at least three distinct languages, and numerous
dialects spoken among their dispersed tribes. The same condition is
found among the Kiawakaskaia Indians, beyond the Rocky Mountains. In the
confluence of the nomad hunters to common centres of trade, speech
accordingly fails them for all purposes of intercommunication; and
travellers and fur-traders have long been familiar with the growth of a
common language at more than one of the chief meeting-places of diverse
tribes and races on the Pacific coast. The Clatsop, in so far as it is
native, is a dialect of the Cowlitz language; but, as now in use, it is
one of the jargons or “trade languages” of the Pacific. But Fort
Vancouver, long one of the largest trading-posts of the Hudson Bay
Company, has been the special Babel where, out of the strangest
confusion of tongues, a new language has been evolved.

The organisation of part of the territory west of the Rocky Mountains
into the province of British Columbia is rapidly modifying the character
of its native population. But in recent years there were frequently to
be found at Fort Vancouver upwards of two hundred _voyageurs_ with their
Indian wives and families, in addition to the factors and clerks.
Thither also resorted for trading purposes, Chinook, Nootka, Nisqually,
Walla-walla, Klikatat, Kalapurgas, Klackamuss, Cowlitz, and other
Indians. A discordant Babel of languages accordingly prevailed; and
hence the growth of a _patois_ by which all could hold intercourse
together. The principal native tribe of the locality is the Chinook, a
branch of the Flathead Indians on the Columbia river. They speak a
language rivalling that of the Hottentots in its seemingly inarticulate
character. Some of its sounds, according to Dr. Charles Pickering, could
scarcely be represented by any combination of known letters; and Paul
Kane, who travelled as an artist among them, described it to me as
consisting of harsh spluttering sounds proceeding from the throat,
apparently unguided either by the tongue or lips. This language
accordingly repelled every attempt at its mastery by others. The Cree is
the native language most familiar to the traders, many of their wives
being Cree women. Both French and English are spoken among themselves;
while, in addition to the tribes already named, natives of the Sandwich
Islands, Chinese, and other foreigners, add to the strange character and
speech of this miscellaneous community. Out of all those elements the
“Chinook jargon” or trade-language of the locality has fashioned itself.

Vocabularies of the Oregon or Chinook jargon have been repeatedly
published since 1838, when the Rev. Samuel Parker made the first attempt
to reduce it to writing. But it is necessarily in an unstable condition,
with local variations and a changing vocabulary. The latest _Dictionary
of the Chinook Jargon, or Trade Language of Oregon_, is that of Mr.
George Gibbs, published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1863, and
includes nearly five hundred words. When studied in all its bearings, it
is a singularly interesting example of the effort at the development of
a means of intercommunication among such a strange gathering of
heterogeneous races. In an analysis of the various sources of its
vocabulary, Mr. Gibbs assigns about two-fifths of the words to the
Chinook and Clatsop languages. But in this he includes one of the most
characteristic elements of the jargon. The representatives of so many
widely dissimilar peoples, in their efforts at mutual communication,
naturally resorted to diverse forms of imitation; foremost among which
was onomatopœia. There are such mimetic words as _he-he_, “laughter”;
_hoh-hoh_, “to cough”; _tish-tish_, “to drive”; _lip-lip_, “to boil”;
_poh_, “to blow out”; _tik-tik_, “a watch”; _tin-lin_ or _ting-ling_, “a
bell”; _tum-tum_, “the heart,” from its pulsation; and hence a number of
modifications in which the heart is used as equivalent to mind or will,
etc. Again, varying intonations are resorted to in order to express
different shades of meaning, as _sey-yaw_, “far off,” in which the first
syllable is lengthened out according to the idea of greater or less
distance indicated. Many of their words, as in all interjectional
utterances, depend for their specific meaning on the intonations of the
speaker. Such utterances play so small a part in our own speech, that we
are apt to overlook the force of the interrogative, affirmative, and
negative tones, and even the change of meaning that is often produced by
the transfer of emphasis from one to another word.[99] But with such an
imperfect means of intercommunication as the trade jargon, there is a
constant motive not only to help out the meaning by expressive
intonation, but also by signs or gesture-language. “A horse” for
example, is _kuatan_; but “riding” or “on horseback” is expressed by
accompanying the word with the gesture of two fingers placed astride
over the other hand. _Tenas_ is “little” or “a child,”—in the latter
case, accompanied by the gesture suggestive of its size,—or it may mean
“an infant,” by the first syllable being prolonged to indicate that it
is very small. In addition to all this, words are borrowed from all
sources; and the miscellaneous vocabulary is completed from English,
French, Cree, Ojibway, Nootka, Chihalis, Nisqually, Kalapuy, and other
tongues.

The late Paul Kane is my authority for some of the details of intonation
and gesture-language. He brought back with him a valuable collection of
studies of the different races in British North America; and, by means
of the jargon, he learned in a short time to converse without difficulty
with the chiefs of most of the tribes around Fort Vancouver. But as an
artist he was in constant use of his pencil; and, as he told me, he
frequently appealed to it, sketching himself, or at times putting his
pencil and note-book into their hands, with considerable success in thus
supplementing less definite signs. The gesture-language furnishes
Cheyenne, Dakota, Apache, and other signs for “paint, colour, draw,” and
“write”; the act of writing or drawing being expressed by holding up the
palm of one hand and moving the forefinger of the other over it, as if
drawing. The jargon has also its word _pent_, “paint,” transformed to a
verb by prefixing the word _mamook_, “to do, to make”; and its _tzum_,
“painting,” or “mixed colours”; _mamooktzum_, “to paint.” In the
gesture-language of the Dakotas and Apaches the equivalent sign is
primarily indicative of daubing the face with colour; but the tribes of
the Pacific coast paint their masks, boats, and houses in diverse
coloured devices, with some degree of taste. There is, therefore, reason
to look for terms expressive of the art in any language in use among
them; though the habitual employment of signs may in some cases check
the evolution of phonetic equivalents. But among many tribes
gesture-language has been systematised into universally recognised
pictographs, and so developed into a native system of hieroglyphics.

Among the Algonkin, Lenape, Iroquois, and other northern tribes, and in
the region comprising New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and other
south-western territory, rock-carvings and pictographs abound. Wherever
large surfaces of rock, or slabs of stone, offer a favourable
opportunity for such records, they are found, at times executed with
great elaboration of detail. But less durable records are in use,
dependent on the materials most available to the scribe. The Algonkins
and Iroquois ordinarily resort to birch-bark; the Crees, Blackfeet, and
other prairie Indians, substitute the dressed skins of the buffalo;
while, as already noted, the tribes on the Pacific coast, as well as the
Innuit and Eskimo, employ deerhorn and ivory. In the South-West, in the
Sierra Nevada and Southern California, the sculptured pictograph, after
being incised on the surface of a rock, or the wall of a cave, is
frequently finished by colouring in much the same way as was the custom
with the ancient Egyptian chroniclers.

Among a series of reports to the Topographical Bureau, issued from the
War Department at Washington, in 1850, is the journal of a military
reconnaissance from Santa Fé, New Mexico, to the Navajo Country, by
Lieutenant James K. Simpson of the Corps of Topographical Engineers. His
narrative is accompanied with a map and illustrations of a remarkable
series of inscriptions, engraved on the smooth surface of a rock called
the Moro. They are of two classes, the native pictographs, and also
numerous Spanish inscriptions and devices; one of which records the
hasty visit of an old Spanish explorer to the Moro Rock in 1606. The
route of Lieutenant Simpson lay up the valley of the Rio de Zuñi, where
he met an old trader among the Navajos, who was waiting to offer his
services as guide to a rock, upon the face of which were, according to
his repeated assertions, “half an acre of inscriptions.” After
travelling about eight miles, through a country diversified by cliffs of
basalt and red and white sandstone, in every variety of bold and
fantastic form, they came in sight of a quadrangular mass of white
sandstone rock, from 200 feet to 250 feet in height. This was the Moro,
or Inscription Rock, on ascending a low mound at the base of which, the
journalist states, “sure enough here were inscriptions, and some of them
very beautiful; and although, with those we afterwards examined on the
south face of the rock, there could not be said to be half an acre of
them, yet the hyperbole was not near so extravagant as I was prepared to
find it.” The inscriptions, some in Spanish, and others in, Latin,
apparently include examples nearly coeval with the conquest of this
region, by Juan de Onate, in 1595; and from their historical interest
they naturally received greater attention from the Topographical Corps
than the Indian hieroglyphics. But the same locality was visited at a
later date by surveyors appointed to ascertain the most practicable
route for a railroad to the Pacific coast; and in a Report of
explorations and surveys, published by the Senate of the United States
in 1856, Lieutenant Whipple furnishes an interesting series of Indian
hieroglyphics or pictographs seen on his route. “The first of the Indian
hieroglyphics,” he remarks, “were at Rocky Dell Creek, between the edge
of the Llano Estacado and the Canadian. The stream flows through a
gorge, upon one side of which a shelving sandstone rock forms a sort of
cave. The roof is covered with paintings, some evidently ancient; and
beneath are innumerable carvings of footprints, animals, and symmetrical
lines.”[100] Examples of these are given; but of one series, the
sketches of which had been lost, Lieutenant Whipple remarks: “This
series, more than the others, seems to represent a chain of historical
events, being embraced by serpentine lines. First is a rude sketch,
resembling a ship with sails; then comes a horse with gay trappings, a
man with a long speaking-trumpet being mounted upon him, while a little
bare-legged Indian stands in wonder behind. Below this group are several
singular-looking figures: men with the horns of an ox, with arms, hands,
and fingers extended as if in astonishment, and with clawed feet.
Following the curved line we come to the circle, enclosing a Spanish
caballero, who extends his hands in amity to the naked Indian standing
without. Next appears a group with an officer, and a priest bearing the
emblem of Christianity.” The Pueblo Indians, who still worship the sun,
recognised in those picturings records of the thoughts and deeds of
their ancestors. They pointed to representations of Montezuma, whom they
still expect to return, and who is regarded as a divine power; and
recognised in the horned men a representation of the buffalo-dance, from
time immemorial a national festival, at which they crowned themselves
with horns and corn-shucks. The drawing is in all probability an
historical record executed at a date not long subsequent to the first
intrusion of the Spaniards.

Lieutenant Whipple next describes the carvings found at El Moro
inscription rock where, he says, “Spanish adventurers and explorers,
from as early a period as the first settlement of Plymouth, have been in
the habit of recording their expeditions to and from Zuñi.” He refers
for those to Captain Simpson’s report upon the Navajo expedition; but
specimens of the Indian drawings are given, which, he says, “are
evidently more ancient than the oldest of the Spanish
inscriptions.”[101] The latter are, for the most part, regular literal
records in the Spanish or Latin language, with names, and, in a few
instances, the date of their engraving. But the European epigraphists
appear at times to have borrowed the ideographic art of their Indian
guides, from the way several of their inscriptions are accompanied with
pictorial devices, or rebuses, somewhat after the native fashion of
writing. One, for example, which reads _Pito Vaca ye Jarde_, has also
the symbol of the _Vaca_, or “cow.” Another group, consisting of certain
initials interwoven into a monogram, accompanied by an open hand with a
double thumb, all enclosed in cartouche-fashion, is supposed by the
transcriber to be, even more than the previous bit of pictorial
symbolism, a pictured pun. “The characters,” he remarks, “in the double
rectangle seem to be literally a sign-_manual_, and may possibly be
symbolical of Francisco Manuel, though the double thumb would seem to
indicate something more.” The Provincial Secretary, Donaciano Vigil,
after noting for Lieutenant Simpson some data relative to the Spanish
inscriptions, adds: “The other signs or characters are traditional
remembrances, by means of which the Indians transmit historical accounts
of all their remarkable successes. To discover (or interpret) these sets
by themselves, is very difficult. Some of the Indians make trifling
indications, which divulge, with a great deal of reserve, something of
the history, to persons in whom they have entire confidence.”

On the summit of the cliff the ruins of a pueblo of bold native masonry
formed a rectangle of 206 feet by 307 feet, around which lay an immense
accumulation of broken pottery of novel and curious patterns. At Los
Ojos Calientes, Lieutenant Simpson visited the _estuffas_, buildings one
story high, called the churches of Montezuma. “On the walls were
representations of plants, birds, and animals; the turkey, the deer, the
wolf, the fox, and the dog, being plainly depicted; none of them,
however, approaching to exactness except the deer, the outline of which
showed certainly a good eye for proportion.” These are the work of the
Jemez Indians, who worshipped the sun, moon, and fire; representations
of which in circular form, and with zigzag barbed lines for lightning,
also occur on the walls.[102] Lieutenant Simpson remarks that he asked a
Jemez Indian “Whether they still worshipped the Sun, as God, with
contrition of heart.” His reply was: “Why not? He governs the World!”

Dr. Hoffman figures and interprets a curious rock-painting, copied by
him from a granite boulder at Tulare river, California. It covers an
area of about twelve feet by eight; and the largest figure is about six
feet in length, and appears to be the work of an advanced party of
native explorers, intended for the guidance of those who followed on
their trail.[103] Dr. Hoffman also furnishes some interesting
illustrations of the reproduction of gesture-language in native
pictographs preserved in the Museum of San Francisco. Certain symbols
are in very general use. But the description of an Innuit drawing on a
slat of wood, as interpreted by a native, partly in his own dialect, but
largely supplemented by gestures, will best illustrate this development
of a system of picture-writing among a savage people. A human figure
directs his right hand to his own side, while, with his left, he points
away from him. This is the _Ego_, the personal pronoun _I_. Again, a
simple tracing of the like figure, successively with a boat-paddle over
his head; his right hand to the side of his head; one finger elevated;
his hand stretched out in the direction indicated, with his harpoon, or
his bow and arrow, expresses his various actions. A spot enclosed in a
circle, and again a blank circle, mark the islands—inhabited or
uninhabited,—to which he is bound. A canoe, with two persons in it,
defines the number going and the mode of transport; a phoca, or other
animal, indicates the prey; and the record closes with an outline of the
house, or tent, towards which the canoe is directed. The whole is
equivalent to a written memorandum left behind, to inform the members of
his family that he has gone in his boat to a particular island, where he
will pass the night,—the right hand to the side of the head being a
symbol of sleep. From thence he will proceed to another island, where he
purposes to catch a seal or sea-lion, and then he will return home. It
is in no degree surprising to find that nearly the same symbols are in
use by widely different tribes; for, alike in their pictographs and
gestures, they naturally aim at the most familiar and literal
representations. The Eskimo and Alaskans represent death, in their
drawings and bone carvings, by the symbol of a headless body, in nearly
the same way as the Iroquois, the Algonkins, and the Blackfeet. To this
is added the spear, the bow and arrow, or the gun, to indicate the mode
of death by violence. The ordinary symbol of sepulchral memorial is the
reversing of the totem and other objects pictured on the grave-post. A
succession of lines in rows or columns is the simplest mode of primitive
numeration, perpetuated among the Egyptians even so late as the
Ptolemaic dynasty. It appears to have been in use among the cave-men of
the Vézère in palæolithic times, and is common to all such records. But
in the Eskimo and Indian pictographs the elevated hand, with one or more
fingers extended, serves for numeration; and where the extended fingers
and thumbs of both hands are represented on an exaggerated scale, it
signifies _multitude_. The native gestures, drawings, and spoken
languages, have indeed to be studied together to understand fully the
processes resorted to for the expression and interchange of ideas.

To the philologist, the efforts at supplying equivalent terms for
objects and ideas common to the many diverse races furnish a study full
of interest. A Chinook or Clatsop word modified to _saghalie_,
signifying “above,” or “high,” is compounded with the Nootka _tyee_, as
the name of the High Chief, or God. _Elip_, a Chihalis word, signifies
“first,” or “before”; _tilikum_, Chinook, is “people, a tribe,” or
“band”; but the two words conjoined, _elip-tilikum_, lit. “the first
people,” is employed in reference to a race of beings who preceded the
Indians as inhabitants of the world, just as we speak of the
Antediluvians. _Ipsoot_ is the Chinook word for “to hide,” _ipsoot
wau-wau_ is “to hide one’s speech,” _i.e._ “to whisper.” Or, again,
_opitsah_ is a modification of the Chinook for “a knife”;
_opitsah-yakka-sikha_, literally, “the knife’s friend,” is “a fork.” The
same word is also applied to a sweetheart. Such economic use of words is
indeed by no means rare. But this branch of the subject lies apart from
the aim of the present paper. It may be noted, however, in passing, that
many of the jargon words, according to Mr. Gibbs, “have been adopted
into ordinary conversation in Oregon, and threaten to become permanently
incorporated as a local addition to the English.” Mr. Horatio Hale, long
ago, stated as a result of his own observations, at an earlier date:
“There are Canadians and half-breeds married to Chinook women, who can
only converse with their wives in this speech; and it is the fact,
strange as it may seem, that many young children are growing up to whom
this factitious language is really the mother-tongue, and who speak it
with more readiness and perfection than any other.”[104] As to grammar,
the jargon has no more than the inevitable rudiments involved in the
necessity for expressing in some way ideas relating to time and number;
and in these directions there is frequent resort to signs. But this,
which accords with the first stage of picture-writing, is true of the
speech of many Indian tribes. Their gesture-language is being reduced to
the equivalent of a vocabulary, and is much more copious than that of
the Oregon jargon. In 1880 the United States Bureau of Ethnology issued
“A Collection of the gesture-signs and signals of the North American
Indians”; and although this was only designed as a preliminary step
towards the complete elucidation of the subject, it suffices to show how
important a part signs and gestures play in the dialogue of many rude
tribes. The Arapahoes, for example, according to Burton, “possess a very
scanty vocabulary, and can hardly converse with one another in the dark.
To make a stranger understand them they must always repair to the
camp-fire for pow-wow.”[105] We are not without some due appreciation,
even now, of the eloquence of action, as well as of speech, in the
effective orator; and Charles Lamb, in one of the _Essays of Elia_,
aptly reminds us how much even ordinary dialogue owes to expression for
its full effect. Candle-light, “our peculiar and household planet,” is
the theme of the quaint humorist. “Wanting it,” he says, “what savage
unsocial nights must our ancestors have spent, wintering in caves and
unillumined fastnesses! . . . What repartees could have passed, when you
must have felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbour’s cheek to be
sure that he understood it?” And so the grave humorist goes on to
picture the privations of a supper party in “those unlanterned nights.”

But the Indian, in many cases, resorts to the pencil, or its equivalent,
for the elucidation of subjects in which language fails him. He will
take a burnt stick and draw a map indicating the route that has to be
taken, the portages on a river, or the trail through the forest, after
he has failed by signs and gestures to convey his meaning; and he can
interpret with ease the drawings of Indians of other tribes. When
camping out on the Nepigon River in 1866, with Indian guides from the
Saskatchewan, who were strangers to the locality, they interpreted the
drawings or carvings on a soft metamorphic rock overlaid by the syenite
of that district; and were able thereby to tell us who had preceded
them, and to determine the route we should take. Lieutenant Whipple in
the narration of his route near the thirty-fifth parallel, remarks:
“Near the Llano Extacado were seen Pueblo Indians from San Domingo.
After an introductory smoke they became quite communicative, furnishing
curious information as to their traditions and peculiar faith. When
questioned regarding the numbers and positions of the Pueblos in New
Mexico, they rudely traced upon the ground a sketch from which a map of
the country is reproduced in the Government Reports.”[106] The Rev. Dr.
O’Meara, for many years a missionary among the Ojibway Indians of Lake
Superior, thus writes to me: “The Indians were always pictorial, even in
common conversation, _i.e._ they liked to explain what they meant by
making figures; and always, if you asked one of them for information as
to the route to any place, he would make a rough map of it, either on
the sand or on a piece of birch-bark.” This fully accords with my own
experience. I have repeatedly seen Indian guides take a piece of
birch-bark and indicate on it some idea otherwise inexpressible from our
ignorance of any common language. Their map-making must be familiar to
all who have travelled much with Indian guides. They delineate with much
accuracy the leading geographical features of any familiar locality. I
have in my note-books sketches made by Indians, when I have placed the
pencil in their hand, and indicated by signs some information I desired
to obtain, about game, fishing, or other matters familiar to them; or
about their own tribal relationships, which they generally express in
totemic fashion by their symbolic bear, deer, beaver, eagle, turtle, or
other animal. Such signs of the clan, tribe, or nation are familiar to
every Indian, as well as the ideographs of his own and others’ names;
and when represented on the roll of birch-bark, painted on the chiefs
buffalo robe, or inverted on his grave-post, they can be interpreted
with the same facility with which an heraldic student discerns the
family history on the painted hatchment or the sculptured shields of
some noble mausoleum.

By an alphabet, strictly so called, we understand a series of symbols
which have become the conventional equivalents to the eye of the sounds
which combine to form the speech of a people. But _alpha_, _beta_, etc.,
were undoubtedly, in their first stage, pictures, and not arbitrary
signs; though they passed undesignedly into the demotic characters of
the Egyptian current hand, and were then transformed, from ideographic
and syllabic characters, into the true phonetics out of which have come
the later alphabets of the civilised world. Egypt is justly credited
with the origination of a system of writing which lies at the foundation
of all our inherited knowledge, and which, as Bacon says, “makes ages so
distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations and inventions, the
one of the other.” Yet the germ of all this lay in the graphic records
of the palæolithic cave-men; and the very same process of evolution from
pure pictorial representation to picture-writing or ideography, and so
to arbitrary hieroglyphic signs, or word-writing, is seen in the graven
records of Copan or Palenque, and on the ancient monuments of the Nile.

It is replete with interest thus to turn aside from the Old World, with
all its wealth of intellectual progress associated with the letters of
Cadmus, and find that in the western hemisphere the human mind has
followed the very same path in its struggle towards the light.
Longfellow, in his “Song of Hiawatha,” has interwoven Algonkin and
Iroquois legends into a national epic, in which the elements of Indian
progress are all traced to this mythic benefactor, subsequently
identified by Mr. Horatio Hale, in his _Book of Iroquois Rites_, with a
wise Onondaga chief of the fifteenth century. But, tracing in legendary
fashion the early steps of Indian progress, the poet represents the
mythic reformer mourning how all things perish and pass into oblivion.
Even the great achievements and the traditions of their people fade away
from the memory of the old men. And so he inaugurates the method of
recording events, which in reality we recognise as the natural product
of the human mind in the exercise of that imitative faculty which the
discoveries of comparatively recent years have revealed to us as in full
activity among the men of Europe’s remote Post-Glacial era. With his
paints of diverse colours he depicts on the smooth birch-bark simple
figures and symbols, such as are to be seen graven on hundreds of rocks
throughout the North American continent, and are in constant use by the
Indian in chronicling his own deeds on his buffalo robe, or recording
those of the deceased chief on his grave-post. The result is a simple
process of picture-writing, readily translatable, with nearly equal
facility, into the language of every tribe. Deeds of daring against
Indians or white men are set forth by the native chronicler, and the
rivals are clearly indicated by means of their characteristic costume
and weapons. Headless figures are the symbols of the dead; scalps
represent his own special victims; and in like manner incidents of the
chase, or feats against the buffalo or grizzly bear, are recorded in
graphic picturings, which are as intelligible as any monumental
inscription of ancient or modern times. The description in Longfellow’s
Indian epic of the celestial and terrestrial symbols, in actual use as
Algonkin and other aboriginal hieroglyphics, would answer, with slight
modification, for those still to be seen on the walls of Egyptian
temples and catacombs:—

    For the earth he drew a straight line,
    For the sky a bow above it;
    White the span between for day-time,
    Filled with little stars for night-time;
    On the left a point for sunrise,
    On the right a point for sunset,
    On the top a point for noontide;
    And for rain and cloudy weather
    Waving lines descending from it.

The picture-writing of the Aztecs, though greatly improved in execution,
and simplified by abbreviations, was the same in principle as that of
the rude northern tribes. The recognised signs of the months and days of
their calendar are not greatly in advance of Indian symbolism; while
some of their pictorial records are as definite pieces of literal
representation as the battle of the reindeer from the Dordogne cave, or
the peaceful grazing scene recovered from a Swiss grotto near Thayingen.
One example of such a pictorial chronicling of an important event has
been repeatedly described, and aptly illustrates its practical
application. When Cortez held his first interview with the emissaries of
Montezuma, one of the attendants of Teuhtlile, the chief Aztec noble,
was observed sketching the novel visitors, their peculiar costumes and
arms, their horses and ships; and by such means a report of all that
pertained to the strange invaders of his dominion was transmitted to the
Aztec sovereign. The skill with which every object was delineated
excited the admiration of the Spaniards. But however superior this may
have been as a piece of art, it was manifestly no advance on the
principle of Indian picture-writing; nor can we be in much doubt as to
its style of execution, since Lord Kingsborough’s elaborate work
furnishes many facsimiles of nearly contemporary Mexican drawings. In
the majority of these, the totemic symbols, and the representations of
individuals by means of their animal or other cognomens, are abundantly
apparent. The specific aim of the artist has to be kept in view. The
figures are for the most part grotesque, from the necessity of giving
predominance to the special feature in which the symbol is embodied. To
the generation for which such were produced, the connection between the
sign, and the person or thing signified, would be manifest; and as a
mnemonic aid, supplemented by verbal descriptions of the trained
official registrars, the record would be ample. But a brief interval
suffices to render such abbreviated symbols obscure, if not wholly
unintelligible; and within less than a century after the Conquest, De
Alva could not find more than two surviving Mexicans, both very aged,
who were able to interpret the native pictorial records. Nevertheless a
system of picture-writing, originating among the rude forest tribes with
the simple employment of the imitative faculty in the representation of
familiar objects, with their associated ideas, had advanced on this
continent to the very same stage from which, in ancient Egypt, the next
step was taken, resulting in the evolution of a phonetic alphabet, and
so of all that is implied in letters in the largest sense.

To this grand aim of ideography, or an equivalent of written speech,
may, as it appears to me, be traced the earliest efforts at drawing and
painting, reaching back to that strange dawn of intellectual vigour
revealed to us in the graphic art of the men of Europe’s Palæolithic
age. The same effort at written speech underlies all the manifestations
of the artistic faculty, common alike to the semi-civilised and to the
barbarous native races of this continent; and in the terms by which they
express the graphic art in their various dialects, the common
significance of drawing and writing is generally apparent. But the
æsthetic faculty was thus stimulated into activity with results which
tended to develop art in all its forms of carving, modelling, sculpture,
and painting. An appreciation of colour, not merely for personal
adornment, but in its artistic application—alike as a decorative art,
and as the means whereby natural objects can be presented with vivid
truthfulness to the eye,—is widely diffused; though the mastery of form
by the modeller or sculptor long precedes that of chiaroscuro, or aerial
perspective. Aboriginal painting is crude, consisting mainly of colour
without tone or shading, even where the drawing is correct. But paints
and dyes, both of mineral and vegetable origin, are largely in use by
many Indian tribes. The Eskimo execute tasteful patterns on their skin
robes in diverse colours; and the northern tribes both to the east and
west of the Rocky Mountains dye porcupine quills and grasses, and with
them work ornamental patterns on their dresses and in basket-work. The
pottery of the Pueblo Indians is elaborately decorated in colours; and
in various other ways—as in the colouring of their masks, and the
painting of their boats and houses, by the Indians of Oregon and British
Columbia,—the native taste for colour is manifested. Mr. Hugh Martin,
in a communication of an early date to the American Philosophical
Society, gives an account of the principal dyes employed by the North
American Indians.[107] The Shawnees obtained a vegetable red, which they
called _hau-ta-the-caugh_, from the root of a marsh plant, and largely
used it in dyeing wool, porcupine quills, and the white hair of deers’
tails. From another root, the _Radix_ _flava_, a bright yellow was
obtained, by mixing which with the red an orange tint is made. But they
also extracted a rich orange colour from the Poccon root. A fine
vegetable blue is also easily procured, and this was transformed to
green by means of a yellow liquor of the smooth hickory bark. Black,
which is much in demand, was obtained both from the sumack and from the
bark of the white walnut. All the colours thus far named are vegetable
dyes, but mineral colours are in general use for painting, and
especially for personal decoration, which is no doubt the primary idea
associated in the Indian mind with the verb “to paint.” The Lenapes, Dr.
Brinton remarks, “obtained red, white, and blue clays, which were in
such extensive demand that the vicinity of those streams in Newcastle
County, Delaware, which are now called White Clay Creek and Red Clay
Creek, are widely known to the natives as _Walamink_, ‘the place of
paint.’”[108] The Shawnees applied the name _Alamonee-sepee_, “Paint
Creek,” to the stream which falls into the Scioto close to Chilicothe.
The word _walamen_, signifying “to paint,” is the Shawnee _alamon_, and
the Abnaki _wramann_, the _r_ being substituted for the _l_. Roger
Williams, describing the New England Indians, speaks of “_wunnam_, their
red painting, which they most delight in,—both the bark of the pine, as
also a red earth.” The word is derived from Narr. _wunne_, Del. _wulit_,
Chip. _gwanatseh_: “beautiful, handsome, good, pretty,” etc. “The Indian
who had bedaubed his skin with red ochreous clay, was esteemed in full
dress, and delightful to look upon. Hence the term _wulit_, ‘fine,
pretty,’ came to be applied to the paint itself.”[109]

A review of the terms of art in the diverse aboriginal vocabularies
would furnish an interesting supplement to the general question of the
manifestation of an artistic faculty, and the evidences of appreciation
of art among savage races. I note a few illustrations, which the
languages of some Northern Indian tribes supply, of the ideas associated
in the native mind with terms of art. The Algonkin languages generally
have no distinctive words clearly discriminating between painting,
drawing, and writing in the sense of ideography; though the inevitable
tendency to invent or appropriate words, as equivalents expressive of
any novel object or idea, is in operation in those as in other
languages. The Ojibways have no generic term for painting the body or
face, but express it by some word connected with the specific colour in
use. For example, the painting the face black, as is done to a youth on
attaining puberty, is _muhkuhdaekawin_. This consists of _muh-kuh-da_,
meaning “black,” _eka_, the form which gives it the verbal significance,
“he makes himself black,” with the termination _win_, constituting the
whole a noun. So _misquah_, “red,” is the root of _misquah-ne-ga-zoo_,
“he is painted red”; _misquah-ne-gah-da_, “it is painted red.”
_Oozahwah_, “yellow,” gives _oo-zah-we-ne-gah-zoo_, “he is painted
yellow”; with the corresponding terminal change for the neuter. But the
word _oozahnamahne_, from _oonah_, “the cheek,” is also used for
painting the face either red or yellow. _Quahnaiy_, or _gwanai_, the
word for “beautiful,” is applied to moral as well as physical beauty,
_e.g._ _gwanaienene_ would be used of a fair, honourable dealing man, as
well as of one who was handsome or good-looking. But such rhetorical
tropes are common to many languages.

I was indebted to the late Silas T. Rand, for upwards of thirty years a
missionary among the Micmac Indians of Nova Scotia, for the following
illustrative details: “The Micmac is rich in words relating to art, the
making and ornamenting of garments, moccasins, snow-shoes, etc., of
weapons and implements for domestic use, making pottery and modelling in
clay. For building and managing a canoe there are at least seventy-six
words. They have words for carving on stone, and also on wood, for
marking dressed skins with flower patterns, for carving flowers in
stone, for scraping them on birch-bark dishes, for drawing a likeness,
making models and patterns, and for working after them. When I was
engaged in translating Exodus, and largely dependent on my Indian
teacher for the words to express all the parts of the Tabernacle, its
coverings and furniture, mortices, tenons, hooks, fillets, loops, bars,
pins, sockets, etc., I fully expected to be baffled. What was my
surprise to find that there were words in the language by which to
express all I needed. Boards, bars, bolts, pillars, poles, rings,
everything was made, put together, and my ‘pundit’ an excellent
mechanic, when he returned next day to go on with our work, assured me
that he had been dreaming about that ‘wigwam’ we had been erecting the
previous day, and he was sure he could make such a one. He had the
pattern in his head as clearly as Moses had it, after he had seen it up
the mountain.” In the Micmac, _aweekum_ is “a drawing,” lit. “I write
it,” “I draw it”; _essum_, “I colour it”; _elapskudaaga_, “I am
carving,” or “cutting stone”; _elapskudaam_, “I am carving it in stone”;
_apsk_, which here denotes “stone,” is only used in composition;
_coondow_ is the word for “stone”; _eloksowa_, “I am carving in wood”;
_noojeweekuga_, “a painter,” “drawer,” “writer,” lit. “a maker of
marks”; _aweegasik_, “a picture,” lit. “it is marked down,” etc.

The Algonkin root _walam_, “red,” is the term employed in the _Walum
Olum_, or “Red Score of the Lenape,” which was brought under the notice
of the New York Historical Society, in 1848, by Mr. E. G. Squier, as
_The Bark Record of the Lenni-Lenape_. His narrative has been more than
once reprinted; but the carefully edited version of this curious Indian
ideograph given by Dr. Brinton, in his _Lenape and their Legends_, will
supersede earlier and less accurate versions. The full translation with
which the pictographic record of the _Walum Olum_ is accompanied,
abundantly suffices to prove that it may be most correctly described as
a series of mnemonic signs employed for the purpose of keeping in memory
a national chant, of a class very familiar to the students of primitive
history. The ballad-epics of the ancient Germans, and the still earlier
lays of ancient Rome, the Abanic Duan, and others of the genealogical
and historical poems of the Celtic nations, were all of this class; and
analogous traditionary chants have been perpetuated among the Maoris of
New Zealand. The system of pictography corresponds to that in use among
the Ojibways and other Algonkin tribes, including the totems, or
sign-names; but it falls far short of true picture-writing. Section IV.
records the conquest by the Lenape tribe, of the northern country, which
they call “The Snake Land.” Bald Eagle, Beautiful Head, White Owl,
Keeping Guard, Snow Bird, and a succession of other chiefs are named,
all of whom are more or less graphically indicated by their totems; but
a paraphrastic interpretation accompanies them setting forth ideas that
have no pictorial representation. Then comes a horizontal line with ten
oblique lines rising from it, and three cross-lines below, with the
interpretation: “After the Seizer there were ten chiefs and there was
much warfare south and north.” Next follows another succession of
chiefs, each symbolised with some associated idea. Thus a group of six
small circles, arranged upright in two columns, is surmounted by a
larger circle, with three oblique lines rising from the top. This is
paraphrased: “After him, Corn-Breaker was chief, who brought about the
planting of corn.” It is not difficult to imagine in the drawing the
conventional representation of an ear of corn; but the major idea can be
no more than one suggested to the memory by association. In some
instances the picture-writing is more manifest. A horizontal line
surmounted by two _téepees_, or buffalo-skin tents, is “the buffalo
land.” In one group, a semicircle with radiating lines, placed on a
straight line, is translated: “Let us go together to the east, to the
sunrise.” In another case, nearly the same symbol—assumed, no doubt, to
represent the sun setting in the ocean,—is rendered, “at the great
sea.” It is, indeed, a system of picture-writing; but instead of being
abbreviated into word-symbols, it is reduced to mere catch-words or
mnemonic signs. Their value would be unquestionable as an aid to memory
in the perpetuation of a mythic or historical poem; but, if the
tradition were lost, they embody no sufficient record from which to
recover it.

Neither the Iroquois nor the Algonkin nation can be pointed to as
specially gifted with imitative powers, or in other ways furnishing
evidence of any highly developed artistic faculty. They cannot compare
in this respect with the Zuñi, or others of the Pueblo Indians, among
whom the arts of long-settled, agricultural communities have been
developed for purposes of ornament as well as utility; nor is their
inferiority less questionable when we compare them with some of the
barbarous tribes of the north-west coast, and the neighbouring islands.
Their languages confirm this; for while, as Mr. Cushing has shown, the
Zuñi language possesses many words relating to art-processes, the
Iroquois and Algonkin dialects supply such terms, for the most part, in
descriptive holophrasms, and not in primitive roots. Nevertheless, alike
in their pottery and carvings, and in their picture-writing, they show a
degree of artistic capacity of which few traces are found in Europe’s
Neolithic age.

In the Ojibway, _oozhebegawin_ is used indiscriminately for “writing,
drawing, painting,” _wazhebeegad_, for “a man who writes, draws.” In
combination with _muh-ze-ne_, “figure, form,” such words are in use as
_muhzenebeégawin_, “a painting, drawing”; _muhzenebeégawenene_ (M.),
_muhzenebeégawequa_ (F.), “a painter, an artist”; _muhzenebeégun_, “a
picture.” “To carve,” or “engrave on a rock,” is _muhzeneko_;
_muhzenekojegun_, “a sculptor’s chisel”; _muhzenekoda_, “it is carved,”
etc. Again with _wahbegun_, “clay,” such holophrasms are obtained as
_wahbegunoonahgunekawenene_, “a man who makes earthen vessels, a
potter,” _wahbeguhega_, “a worker in clay,” lit. “I work with
clay.”[110]

In previous remarks on the main subject of this paper, the development
of the artistic faculty has been noted as, in many cases, an exceptional
manifestation of intellectual activity, alike in ancient and modern
barbarous races. The striking contrast between the richly fluent forms
of the language, and the infantile condition of this people in relation
to so much else, including metallurgy, and the application of the arts
generally to the practical requirements of life, furnishes a no less
interesting illustration of intellectual development fostered by special
influences in another direction. The habitual practice of oratory made
the Iroquois acute reasoners; and their language abounds in abstract
terms to a degree altogether surprising in an uncivilised race. The
purposes of the rhetorician also encouraged the tropical use of literal
terms. It is not, therefore, difficult to understand how the primary
sense of the verb “to track” or “trace out” should ultimately yield the
meaning of “drawing” or “sketching,” and so finally of “painting.” On
the other hand, it abundantly coincides with the instinctive use of the
imitative faculty as a means of conveying definite ideas to others, that
in the Iroquois, as in other languages, the same terms are used to
express the idea of making a mark, drawing, or writing. The primitive
hieroglyphics, from whence our phonetic alphabets have come, were first
literal drawings, and then their abbreviations employed to express
associated ideas. An ideographic purpose appears to underlie the
earliest efforts of imitative art.

-----

[79] _Essai sur les déformations artificielles du Crâne_, p. 74.

[80] _Crania Britannica_, vi. Pl. 15; xiv. Pl. 12; xxxii. Pl. 42.

[81] Vide _Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_, 2d ed. i. 495.

[82] _Trans. Ethnol. Soc._, N.S. iii. 227.

[83] _Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_, i. 495.

[84] _I.e._ the Island of Santa Barbara. See “Remarks on Aboriginal
Art,” in _Proc. Davenport Acad. Nat. Science_, iv. 121.

[85] “The Right Hand:” _Left-handedness_, pp. 35, 37.

[86] _Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot._, ix. 297, 301.

[87] Vide _Prehistoric Man_, 3rd ed. ii. 54.

[88] _Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific_, i. 241.

[89] _Trans. Anthropol. Soc. Washington_, ii. 140.

[90] _Marchand’s Voyages_, ii. 282.

[91] _Remarks on Aboriginal Art in California and Queen Charlotte
Islands_, p. 118.

[92] _The Lenape Stone: or the Indian and the Mammoth_, by H. C. Mercer.
New York, 1885, pp. 5, 17.

[93] _Hommes fossiles et Hommes sauvages_, p. 49.

[94] _Hommes fossiles_, etc., p. 46.

[95] _Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge_, ii. 75.

[96] “Aboriginal Monuments,” etc., p. 76.

[97] _Proceedings of Hamilton Association_, i. 54.

[98] _Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge_, xxii. 82.

[99] The Rev. Mark Pattison, according to one biographer, Mr. Althaus,
had cultivated a habit of reticence, till it became one of his most
marked characteristics. His usual response to any remark was “Ah”; but
his biographer adds: “It was interesting to observe of what a variety of
shades of meaning that characteristic ejaculation ‘Ah’ was capable. Many
times it was his sole answer. Mostly it signified that something had
aroused his interest; sometimes it conveyed approval, sometimes
surprise, sometimes doubt; sometimes it was said in a way that indicated
he did not wish to express himself on the point in question.”

[100] _Reports of Explorations and Surveys for Route for a Railroad to
Pacific Ocean_, 1885. Part iii. p. 39.

[101] _Reports of Explorations and Surveys for Route for a Railroad to
Pacific Ocean_, 1885. Part iii. p. 39.

[102] _Reports of Secretary of War, U.S._, 1850, p. 67.

[103] _Transactions of Anthropol. Soc., Washington_, ii. 130.

[104] _United States Exploring Expedition_, vii. 644.

[105] _Burton’s City of the Saints_, p. 157.

[106] _Explorations and Surveys, Washington_, 1856, iii. 10, 36.

[107] _Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc._ iii. 222.

[108] _The Lenape and their Legends_, p. 53.

[109] _Ibid._, pp. 60, 104.

[110] See pp. 300, 301 for examples in Iroquois.




                                   VI
                   THE HURON-IROQUOIS: A TYPICAL RACE


IT has already been noted in treating of pre-Aryan American men that
throughout the northern continent, from the Arctic circle to the Mexican
Gulf, no trace has been recovered of the previous existence of anything
that properly admits of the term “native civilisation.” The rude arts of
Europe’s Stone age belong to a period lying far behind its remotest
traditions; unless we appeal to the mythic allusions of Hesiod, or to
such poetic imaginings as the _Prometheus_ of Æschylus. But all
available evidence serves to show that the condition of the native
tribes throughout the northern continent has never advanced beyond the
stage which finds its aptest illustration in the arts of their Stone
period, including the rudimentary efforts at turning to account their
ample resources of native copper without the use of fire.

But this uniformity in the condition of the aborigines, and the
consequent resemblance in their arts, habits, and mode of life, has been
the fruitful source of misleading assumptions. Everywhere the European
explorer met only rude hunting and warring tribes, exhibiting such
slight variations in all that first attracts the eye of the most
observant traveller, that an exaggerated idea of their ethnical
uniformity was the natural result. In the systematisings of the
ethnologist, the American type was classed apart as at once uniform and
distinctive; and, strange as it may now seem, this idea found nowhere
such ready favour as among those who had the fullest access to the
evidence by which its truth could be tested. It was the most
comprehensive induction of the author of _Crania Americana_, as the
fruit of his conscientious researches in American craniology. The
authors of _Indigenous Races of the Earth_ and _Types of Mankind_, no
less unhesitatingly affirmed that “identical characters pervade all the
American races, ancient and modern, over the whole continent.”[111] In
this they were sustained by the high authority of Agassiz, who, after
discussing in his _Provinces of the Animal World, and their relation to
Types of Man_, the fauna peculiar to the American continent, and
pointing out the much greater uniformity of its natural productions,
when its twin continents are compared with those of the eastern
hemisphere, thus summed up the result of his investigations: “With these
facts before us, we may expect that there should be no great diversity
among the tribes of man inhabiting this continent; and indeed the most
extensive investigation of their peculiarities has led Dr. Morton to
consider them as constituting but a single race, from the confines of
the Esquimaux down to the southernmost extremity of the continent. But,
at the same time, it should be remembered that, in accordance with the
zoological character of the whole realm, this race is divided into an
infinite number of small tribes, presenting more or less difference one
from another.” It was natural and reasonable that the men of the
sixteenth century should believe in Calibans, or Ewaipanoma, “the
Anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders.”
America was to them, in the most literal sense, another world; and it
was easier for them to think of it as peopled with such monstrosities
than with human beings like ourselves. But it is curious to note in this
nineteenth century the lingering traces of the old sentiment; and to see
men of science still finding it difficult to emancipate themselves from
the idea that this continent is so essentially another world, that it is
inconceivable to them that the races by which it is peopled should bear
any affinity to themselves or to others of the Old World. American
ethnologists long clung to the idea of an essentially distinct
indigenous race; and Dr. Nott, Dr. Meigs, and other investigators
welcomed every confirmation of the view of Dr. Morton as to the
occupation of the whole American continent by one peculiar type from
which alone the Eskimo were to be excepted, as an immigrant element,
possibly—according to the ingenious speculations of one distinguished
student of science,—of remotest European antiquity. Professor Huxley in
an address to the Ethnological Society in 1869, suggests hypothetically,
that the old Mexican and South American races represent the true
American stock; and that the Red Indians of North America may be the
product of an intermixture of the indigenous native race with the
Eskimo. It is noticeable, at any rate, that nearly all writers, however
widely differing on other points, follow Humboldt in classing the Eskimo
apart as a distinct type. He remarks in his preface to his _American
Researches_, that, “except those which border the polar circle, the
nations of America form a single race characterised by the formation of
the skull, the colour of the skin, the extreme thinness of the beard,
and the straight glossy hair.” Some of the characteristics thus noted
are undoubtedly widely prevalent; but the head-form, or “formation of
the skull,” is the most important; and a careful comparison of the
skulls of different tribes has long since modified the opinion,
expressed by the great traveller and reasserted by distinguished
American ethnologists.

In reality, were the typical feature most insisted on as universal as it
was assumed to be, it would furnish the strongest argument for
classifying the predominant Asiatic and American types as one. All the
points appealed to suggest affinity to the Asiatic Mongol. But so far
from the Eskimo standing apart as a markedly exceptional type, if due
allowance be made for the prolonged influence of an Arctic climate, the
Huron-Iroquois approximate to them in some very notable ethnical
features. The dolichocephalic head-form, especially, is common to them,
and to the Algonkin and other Northern Indians. Of those Dr. Latham
remarks: “The Iroquois and Algonkins exhibit in the most typical form
the characteristics of the North American Indians as exhibited in the
earliest descriptions, and are the two families upon which the current
notions respecting the physiognomy, habits, and moral and intellectual
powers of the so-called Red Race are chiefly founded.” Of the former,
Mr. Parkman, who has studied their later history with the minutest care,
says: “In this remarkable family of tribes occur the fullest
developments of Indian character, and the most conspicuous examples of
Indian intelligence. If the higher traits popularly ascribed to the race
are not to be found here, they are to be found nowhere.”[112] To this
typical American race, accordingly, and to some of its peculiarly
distinctive usages, special attention is here directed.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The Iroquois were an important branch of the great stock which included
also the Hurons, or Wyandots, the native historical race of Canada. But
divided as the two were throughout the whole period of French Canadian
history by the bitterest antagonism, it is convenient to speak of them
under the term of Huron-Iroquois. In reviewing the history of this
indigenous stock, with the suggestions prompted by their peculiar
characteristics, it is desirable not only to note the physical geography
of the country which they occupied, as a region of forest and lakes,
but, still more, to keep in view this fact as a predominant
characteristic of the continent, and as one important factor in the
evolution of whatever may seem to be peculiar in the forest tribes of
North America.

The effects resulting from the physical features of a country on the
development and intermingling of its races can nowhere be wisely
overlooked. Even within the limits of the British Islands the influences
of mountain and lowlands: of the fertile stretches of Kent and the
valley of the Thames, the fens of Lincolnshire, the moorlands of
Northumbria, and the Welsh and Scottish Highlands, have largely
contributed to the perpetuation, if not in some degree to the
development, of ethnical distinctions and the diversities in language.

In this respect Britain is an epitome of Europe, with its great mountain
ranges and detached peninsulas, by means of which races have been
isolated within well-defined areas, and their languages and other
distinctive peculiarities preserved. Russia alone, of all European
countries, presents analogies to Northern Asia as a region favourable to
nomadic life; and in so far as its history differs from that of the
continent at large, it accords with such physical conditions. Throughout
the whole historic period, as doubtless in prehistoric times, the great
chain of mountains reaching from the western spur of the Pyrenees to the
Balkans has influenced European progress; while the chief navigable
river, the Danube, traversing the continent through one uniform
temperate zone, has tended still further to the perpetuation of certain
distinctive ethnical characteristics in Central Europe. In all its most
important geographical features, the northern continent of America
presents a striking contrast to this. An isosceles triangle with its
base within the Arctic circle, it tapers to a narrow isthmus towards the
equator. Its great mountain chain runs from north to south, and in near
proximity to the Pacific coast; and its chief navigable river, rising
within the Canadian Dominion, and receiving as its tributaries rivers
draining vast regions on either hand, traverses twenty degrees of
latitude before it reaches the Gulf of Mexico. A lower range of
highlands towards the Atlantic seaboard forms the eastern boundary of
the great interior plain. But the Alleghanies or Appalachian system of
mountains, though they may be said to extend from the St. Lawrence to
the Mexican Gulf, rise only at a few points, as in the White Mountains
of New Hampshire, to any great elevation. They form rather a long
plateau, intersected by wide valleys, diversifying the landscape,
without constituting strongly defined barriers or lines of demarcation.
As a whole, the continent of North America, eastward from the Rocky
Mountains, may be described as a level area, so slightly modified by any
elevated regions throughout its whole extent, from the Arctic circle to
the Gulf of Mexico, as to present no other impediment except its forests
to the wanderings of nomadic tribes. It is interlaced with rivers, and
diversified everywhere with lakes, alike available for navigation and
for fishing; and, until the intrusion of European immigrants, its
forests and prairies abounded with game far in excess of the wants of
its population. Everything thus tended to perpetuate the condition of
nomadic hunter tribes. This stage of native American history inevitably
drew to a close under the influence of European institutions and
civilisation; but it is interesting to note, that the same absence of
any well-defined geographical limitations of area, which tended to
perpetuate the nomadic habits of the savage, has aided in consolidating
the great confederacy of the United States, and maintaining an ethnical
and political conformity throughout the northern continent in striking
contrast to the diversities in race and political institutions in
Europe.

History and native traditions alike confirm the idea that the valley of
the St. Lawrence was the habitat of the Huron-Iroquois stock as far back
as evidence can be appealed to. The Huron traditions tell of a time when
the Province of Quebec was the home of the race eastward to the sea;
while those of three at least of the members of the Iroquois confederacy
in legendary fashion claimed their birth from the soil south of the
great river. When the French explorers, under the leadership of Jacques
Cartier, first entered the St. Lawrence, in 1535, they found at
Stadaconé and Hochelaga—the old native sites now occupied by the cities
of Quebec and Montreal,—a population apparently of the Huron-Iroquois
stock; and, in so far as reliance may be placed on their traditions,
Canada was then populous throughout the whole valley of the St. Lawrence
with industrious native tribes, the representatives of a race that had
occupied the same region for unnumbered centuries. “Some fanciful tales
of a supernatural origin from the heart of a mountain; of a migration to
the eastern seaboard; and of a subsequent return to the country of the
lakes and rivers, where they finally settled, comprise,” says
Brownell,[113] “most that is noticeable in the native traditions of the
Six Nations prior to the grand confederation.” But the value of such
traditionary transmission of national history among unlettered tribes
has received repeated confirmation; and incidents in the history of
their famous league, perpetuated with circumstantial minuteness in the
traditions of the Iroquois, are assignable apparently to the fifteenth
century. The older event of the overthrow of the Alligéwi, in the Ohio
valley, of which independent traditional records have been handed down
by the Lenni-Lenape, or Delawares, and by the Iroquois, is now believed
to be correctly assignable to a date nearly contemporaneous with the
assumption of the authority of Bretwalda of the Heptarchy by Egbert of
Wessex,—that memorable step in the fusion of “nations” not greatly more
important than those of the Iroquois league, until their divisions in
speech and polity were effaced in the unity of the English people. As to
“the fanciful tale of a supernatural origin from the heart of a
mountain,” it is simply a literal rendering of the old Greek metaphor of
the autochthones, or children of the soil, symbolised by the Athenians
wearing the grasshopper in their hair; and is by no means peculiar to
the Iroquois. Mr. Horatio Hale derived from Manderong, an old Wyandot
chief, the story, as narrated to him by the Hurons of Lorette. They took
him, he said, to a mountain, and showed him the opening in its side from
whence the progenitors of the people emerged, when they “first came out
of the ground.”[114] The late Huron chief, Tahourenché, or
François-Xavier Picard, communicated to me the same legendary tradition
of the indigenous origin of his people; telling me, though with a smile,
that they came out of the side of a mountain between Quebec and the
great sea. He connected this with other incidents, all pointing to a
traditional belief that the northern shores of the lower St. Lawrence
were the original home of the race; and he spoke of certain ancient
events in the history of his people as having occurred when they lived
beside the big sea. The earliest authentic reference to this tradition
occurs in the _Relations_ for 1636, where Brebeuf, after a brief
allusion to certain of their magical songs and dances, says: “The origin
of all such mysteries is assigned by them to a being of superhuman
stature, who was wounded in the forehead by one of their nation, at the
time when they lived near the sea.” The references to a migration from
the seaboard obviously point to one of those incidents in the life of
the nation which marked for them an epoch like the Hegira of the Arabs.
When Champlain followed Cartier nearly seventy years later he found only
a few Algonkins in their birch-bark wigwams, where the palisaded towns
of the Huron-Iroquois had stood. But no Algonkin legend claims this as
their early home. The invariable tradition of the Ojibways points to the
Lake Superior region and the country stretching towards Hudson Bay as
the ancestral home of the Algonkin tribes.

Such information as can thus be gleaned from a variety of independent
sources, as from the somewhat confused yet trustworthy narrative of
David Cusick, the Tuscarora historian, and from Peter Dooyentate, the
Wyandot historian, all leads to the same conclusion. From remote and
altogether pre-Columbian centuries, the Hurons and other allied
tribes—the occupants in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of
various detached portions of the country north of the St. Lawrence and
eastward of the Georgian Bay,—appear to have been in possession of the
whole region to which their oldest traditions pointed as the cradle of
the race; while nations of the Algonkin stock lay beyond them to the
north-west. The great river and the lakes from whence it flows into the
lower valley formed a well-defined southern boundary for affiliated
tribes; but the first Dutch and English explorers of the Hudson, and of
the tract of country which now constitutes the western part of the State
of New York, found the river-valleys and lake shores in occupation of
the Iroquois confederacy, then consisting of Mohawks, Oneidas,
Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas. These constituted the five nations of
the famous Iroquois league. But the Hurons of Canada, with whom they
were latterly at deadly feud, appear to have been the oldest
representatives of the common race, and were still in occupation of
their ancestral home when Cartier first explored the St. Lawrence. The
same race had spread far to the south; and its representatives, in
detached groups, long continued to perpetuate its influence. These
included the Conestogas or Andastes, the Andastogues, the Carantouans,
the Cherohakahs or Nottoways, the Tuscaroras, and others, under various
names. It is not always easy to recognise the same tribe under its
widely dissimilar designations. The Susquehannocks of the English and
the Minquas of the Dutch, appear to be the Andastes under other
designations, and Champlain’s Carantouans may have been the Eries. Under
those and other names the Huron-Iroquois stock extended to the country
of the Tuscaroras in North Carolina. Still farther south Gallatin
surmised, from linguistic evidence, a connection between the Cherokees
and the Iroquois.[115] This fact Mr. Hale has placed beyond doubt; and
having detected in the language of the former a grammatical structure
mainly Huron-Iroquois, while the vocabulary is to a great extent
foreign, he is inclined to think that we thus recover traces of a
people, far south in Alabama and Georgia, the descendants of refugees of
the conquered Alligéwi, adopted into one of the nations of their
Iroquois conquerors.[116]

From one after another of the outlying southern offshoots of the common
stock, additions were made from time to time, to restore the numbers of
the decimated Iroquois. Westward of the confederacy was the country of
the Eries, an offshoot of the Seneca nation, occupying the southern
shore of the great lake which perpetuates their name. Immediately to the
north of the Eries, within the Canadian frontier, the Attiwendaronks, or
Neuters, occupied the peninsula of Niagara, while the Tiontates or
Petuns, and other tribes of the same stock, were settled in the fertile
region between Lakes Erie and Huron. In 1714, the Tuscaroras, when
driven by the English out of North Carolina, were welcomed by their
Iroquois kinsmen, and received into the league which thenceforth bore
the name of the Six Nations. Towards the middle of the same century the
waste of war made them ready to welcome any additions to their numbers;
and the Tuteloes and Nanticokes, both apparently Algonkin, furnished
fresh accessions to the diminished numbers of the confederacy, but
without taking their place as distinct nations.

But of all the nations of the stock thus widely spread westward and
southward, the Hurons are the native historical race of Canada,
intimately identified with incidents of its early settlement and of
friendly intercourse with _La Nouvelle France_. Their language is now
recognised as the oldest form of the common speech of the
Huron-Iroquois, and it is not creditable to Canadian philologists that
its grammar still remains unrepresented in any accurate printed form.
The Literary and Historical Society of Quebec did, indeed, publish in
its _Transactions_, in 1831, the translation of a Latin MS., compiled
with much industry by a missionary who had laboured among the Hurons of
Lorette, and whose anonymous work was found amongst the papers of the
mission. But it is the production of one ignorant of the science of
language, and gives no adequate idea either of the grammatical structure
or of the variety and richness of the Huron tongue.

The languages or dialects spoken by many native Indian tribes have
undoubtedly perished with the races to which they pertained; but the
numerous Huron-Iroquois dialects still existing, not only in written
form, but as living tongues, afford valuable materials for ethnical
study. The history of other Indian tribes abundantly accounts for the
multiplication of a minute diversity of languages so specially
characteristic of the American continent, with the endless subdivisions
of its indigenous population into petty tribes, kept apart by
internecine feuds. The number of native American languages is estimated
by Vater, in his _Linguarum Totius Orbis Index_, at about five hundred.
But the question forthwith arises: What shall be regarded as
constituting a language? For, in the wanderings of little bands of
Indian nomads, and the adoption of refugees from disbanded tribes,
dialects multiply indefinitely. Nearly six hundred of such are
catalogued by Mr. Bancroft, in his _Native Races of the Pacific States_,
as spoken between Alaska and the Isthmus of Panama.

Until recently the tendency has been to assume an underlying unity of
speech for the whole American languages, based on the polysynthetic or
holophrastic characteristic ascribed to the whole; just as by an
exaggerated estimate of the prevalence of a predominant head-form, one
physical type was long assumed to characterise the American race from
Hudson Bay to Tierra del Fuego. Perhaps, so far as language is
concerned, the present tendency is towards the opposite extreme. Major
Powell, the chief of the Ethnographical Bureau at Washington, recognises
eighty groups of languages in North America, between which no affinity
is thus far apparent. Fifty-five of those he believes to be
satisfactorily determined as distinct stocks. On the other hand,
Professor Whitney, after noticing the complexity of the inquiry when
directed to the native American languages, thus proceeds: “Yet it is the
confident opinion of linguistic scholars that a fundamental unity lies
at the base of all these infinitely varying forms of speech; that they
may be, and probably are, all descended from a single parent
language.”[117]

Here then is a field for much useful research, with the promise of
valuable results. The subject is rendered more important owing to the
fact that, of nearly all the nations of the North American continent,
their languages are the only surviving memorials of the race. Already,
under the efficient supervision of the Ethnographic Bureau of the United
States, systematic contributions are being secured for this important
branch of knowledge, so far as their own geographical area is concerned.
A no less important area is embraced in the Dominion of Canada, and the
attention of the Government is now directed to the necessity for timely
action in this matter. In the North-West, and in British Columbia,
languages are disappearing and races becoming extinct. Mr. Hale has
contributed to the American Philosophical Society’s _Transactions_ a
valuable monogram on the Tutelo tribe and language, derived mainly from
Nikonha, the last full-blood Tutelo, who survived till upwards of a
hundred years of age. He was married to a Cayuga woman, and lived among
her people on their Grand river reserve. “My only knowledge of the
Tuteloes,” says Mr. Hale, “had been derived from the few notices
comprised in Gallatin’s _Synopsis of the Indian Tribes_, where they are
classed with the nations of the Huron-Iroquois stock. At the same time
the distinguished author, with the scientific caution which marked all
his writings, is careful to mention that no vocabulary of the language
was known. That which was now obtained showed, beyond question, that the
language was totally distinct from the Huron-Iroquois tongues, and that
it was closely allied to the language of the Dakota family.”[118] But
for the timely exertion of a philological student, this interesting link
in the history of the Huron-Iroquois relations with affiliated tribes
would have been lost beyond recall.

The history of the Huron-Iroquois race, and especially of the Six Nation
Indians, since the settlement of the main body for the past century on
their reserves on the Grand river, in the Province of Ontario, curiously
illustrates the pertinacity with which they have cherished the dialectic
varieties of a common tongue. But while the essential differences of
language everywhere constitute one of the most obvious distinctions of
race, it is interesting to note the recognition by the Indians of
affinities of dialects, and even remote kinship based on such evidence;
as in the readmission of the Tuscaroras to the Iroquois family of
nations. According to Brebeuf, the kinship of the Attiwendaronks of the
Niagara peninsula was recognised by the Hurons in that designation which
classed them as a “people of a language a little different.”[119] Peter
Jones Kahkewaquonaby, a civilised Ojibway, adopted into the Mohawk
nation, in speaking of the traditions of the Indians as to their own
origin, says: “All the information I have been able to gain in relation
to the question amounts to the following. Many, many winters ago the
Great Spirit, Keche-Manedoo, created the Indians. Every nation speaking
a different language is a second creation, but all were made by the same
Supreme Being.”[120]

Among the races of the northern continent, none east of the Rocky
Mountains more fitly represent their special characteristics than the
great Huron-Iroquois family. Their language is remarkable for its
compass and elaborate grammatical structure; and the numerous dialects
of the common mother tongue furnish evidence of migration and conquest
over a wide region eastward of the Mississippi. To such philological
evidence many inquirers are now turning for a clue to the origin of the
races of the New World, and for the recovery of proofs of their affinity
to one or other of the Old World stocks. Professor Whitney, after
dwelling on the “exaggeratedly agglutinative type” of the ancient
Iberian language, and its isolation among the essentially dissimilar
languages of Aryan Europe, thus proceeds: “The Basque forms a suitable
stepping-stone from which to enter the peculiar linguistic domain of the
New World, since there is no other dialect of the Old World which so
much resembles in structure the American languages”[121]; not indeed, as
he adds, that they are all of accordant form; for he pronounces the
grouping of them in a single great family as “a classification of
ignorance.” The possibilities of ancient communication between the
opposite shores of the Atlantic, and the migration of colonists of the
New World from the Mediterranean Sea, have already been discussed in
dealing with the legend of the Lost Atlantis. Great indeed as is the
interval of time therein implied, it would not suffice to erase all
traces of affinity of languages. But it would be vain to hope for any
historical guidance recoverable from the oldest of Iroquois legends. If,
moreover, Iberian, Hittite, Egyptian, Phœnician, or other of the world’s
gray fathers, transplanted to America the germs of its long indigenous
stock, we look in vain for any traces of their Old World civilisation
north of the Mexican Gulf. Nor is it by any means an established truth
that the arts of Central America or Peru are of any very great
antiquity. Their metallurgy was at a crude, yet suggestive, stage at
which it was not likely to be long arrested. The same may be said of
their hieroglyphic records; though they certainly present some highly
significant analogies to the Chinese phase of word-writing, calculated,
along with other aspects of resemblance to that stage of partial, yet
long-enduring, civilisation of which China is the Asiatic exemplar, to
modify our estimate of the possible duration of Central and Southern
American civilisation. Nevertheless the assumption of an antiquity in
any degree approximating to that of Egypt seems wholly irreconcilable
with the evidence. Their architecture was barbaric, though imposing from
the scale on which their great temples and palaces were built. In
Central America especially, the aggregation of numerous ill-lighted
little chambers, like honey-comb cells excavated out of the huge pile,
is strongly suggestive of affinity to the Casas Grandes, and the Pueblos
of the Zuñi; and this is confirmed by the correspondence traceable
between many of their architectural details and the ornamentation of the
Pueblo pottery.

The astronomy and the calendars, both of Mexico and Peru, with their
detailed methods of recording their divisions of time, are all
suggestive of an immature phase of civilisation in the very stage of its
emergence from barbarism, modified, in some cases, by the recent
acquisition of certain arts. As to the peculiar phase of Mexican art,
and whatever other evidence of progress Mexico supplies, they appear to
me no more than natural products of the first successful intrusion of
the barbarians of the northern continent on the seats of tropical
civilisation. Certain it seems, at least, that if an earlier
civilisation had ever existed in the north, or if the representatives of
any Old World type were present there in numbers for any length of time,
some traces of their lost arts must long since have come to light.

But the conservative power of language is indisputable; and if the
kinship now claimed for the polysynthetic languages of both hemispheres
be correct, we are on the threshold of significant disclosures. The
Huron-Iroquois tongue, in its numerous ramifications, as well as some of
the native languages that have outlived the last of the races to which
they belonged, may preserve traces of affinities as yet unrecognised.
But in no respect are the Huron-Iroquois more correctly adducible as a
typical race of American aborigines than in the absence of all evidence
of their ever having acquired any of the arts upon which civilisation
depends. We look in vain in their vocabularies for terms of science, or
for names adapted to the arts and manufactures on which social progress
depends. But they had developed a gift of oratory, for which their
language amply sufficed, and from which we may infer the presence in
this race of savages of latent powers, capable of wondrous development.
“Their languages show, in their elaborate mechanism, as well as in their
fulness of expression and grasp of thought, the evidence of the mental
capacity of those who speak them. Scholars who admire the inflections of
the Greek and Sanscrit verb, with their expressive force and clearness,
will not be less impressed with the ingenious structure of the verb in
Iroquois. It comprises nine tenses, three moods, the active and passive
voices, and at least, twenty of those forms which in the Semitic
grammars are styled conjugations. The very names of these forms will
suffice to give evidence of the care and minuteness with which the
framers of this remarkable language have endeavoured to express every
shade of meaning. We have the diminutive and augmentative forms, the
cis-locative and trans-locative, the duplicative, reiterative, motional,
causative, progressive, attributive, frequentative, and many
others.”[122] To speak, indeed, of the Iroquois as, in a consciously
active sense, the framers of all this would be misleading. But it
unquestionably grew up in the deliberations around the council fire,
where the conflicting aims of confederate tribes were swayed by the
eloquence of some commanding orator, until the fiercest warrior of this
forest race learned to value more the successful wielding of the tongue
in the _Kanonsionni_, or figurative Long House of the League, even than
the wielding of the tomahawk in the field. At the organisation of the
confederacy, the Canyengas or Mohawks were figuratively said to have
“built a house,” _rodinonsonnih_, or rather to have “built the long
house” in which the council fire of the Five Nations was kindled. Of
this the Senecas, lying on the extreme west, were styled the
“door-keepers,” and the Onondagas, whose territory was central, were the
custodians. The whole usage is rhetorical and figurative. Under such
influences the language of the Huron-Iroquois was framed, and it grew
rich in emotional and persuasive forms. It only needed the evolution of
a true alphabet out of the pictorial symbolism on their painted robes,
or the grave-posts of their chiefs, to inaugurate a literature which
should embody the orations of the Iroquois Demosthenes, and the songs of
a native Homer, for whom a vehicle of thought was already prepared, rich
and flexible as poet could desire.

So far as the physical traits of the American aborigines furnish any
evidence of ethnical affinity they unquestionably suggest some common
line of descent with the Asiatic Mongol; and this is consistent with the
agglutinate characteristics common to a large class of languages of both
continents. But, on the other hand, the characteristic head-form of the
Huron-Iroquois, as well as that of Algonkin and other northern tribes,
deviates alike from the brachycephalic type of the southern Indians and
from that of the Asiatic Mongols. Humboldt, who enjoyed rare
opportunities for studying the ethnical characteristics of both
continents, but to whom, nevertheless, the northern races, with their
dolichocephalic type of head were unknown, dwells, in his _American
Researches_, on the striking resemblance which the American race bear to
the Asiatic Mongols. Latham classes both under the common head of
Mongolidæ; and Dr. Charles Pickering, of the American Exploring
Expedition, arrived at the same conclusion as the result of his own
independent study of the races of both continents. Nevertheless, however
great may be the resemblance in many points between the true Red Indian
and the Asiatic Mongol, it falls short of even an approximate physical
identity. The Mongolian of Asia is not indeed to be spoken of as one
unvarying type any more than the American. But the extent to which the
Mongolian head-form and peculiar physiognomy characterise one widely
diffused section of the population of the eastern continent, gives it
special prominence among the great ethnical divisions of the human race.
Morton assigns 1421 as the cranial capacity of eighteen Mongol, and only
1234 as that of 164 American skulls other than Peruvian or Mexican. Dr.
Paul Topinard, in discussing the American type, adds: “If we are to rely
on the method of cubic measurement followed by Morton, the American
skull is one of the least capacious of the whole human race.”[123] But
Dr. Morton’s results are in some respects misleading. The mean capacity
yielded by the measurements of 214 American skulls in the Peabody Museum
of Archæology, including a considerable number of females, is 1331; and
with a carefully selected series, excluding exceptionally large and
small crania, the results would be higher. Twenty-six male California
skulls, for example, yield a mean capacity of 1470. The Huron-Iroquois
crania would rank among such exceptional examples.[124] The forehead is,
indeed, low and receding, but the general cerebral capacity is good; and
Dr. Morton specially notes its approximation to the European mean.[125]

But the assumption of uniformity in the ethnical characteristics of the
various races of North and South America is untenable. All probabilities
rather favour the idea of different ethnical centres, a diversity of
origin, and considerable admixture of races. All evidence, moreover,
whether physical or philological, whatever else it may prove, leaves no
room for doubt as to a greatly prolonged period of isolation of the
native races of the New World. Whether they came from the Mediterranean,
in that old mythic dawn the memory of which survived in the legend of a
submerged Atlantis; or the history of their primeval migration still
lingers among fading traces of philological affinity with the Basques;
or if, with the still more remote glimpses which affinite Arctic
ethnology has been assumed to supply, we seek to follow the palæolithic
race of Central Europe’s Reindeer period in the long pilgrimage to
Behring Straits, and so to the later home of the American Mongol; this,
at least, becomes more and more obvious, that they brought with them no
arts derived from the ancient civilisations of Egypt or of Asia. So far,
at least, as the northern continent is concerned, no evidence tends to
suggest that the aborigines greatly differed at any earlier period from
the condition in which they were found by Cartier when he first entered
the St. Lawrence. They were absolutely ignorant of metallurgy; and
notwithstanding the abundance of pure native copper accessible to them,
they cannot be said even to have attained to that rudimentary stage of
metallurgic art which for Europe is spoken of as its “Copper Age.”
Copper was to them no more than a malleable stone, which they fashioned
into axes and knives with their stone hammers. Their pottery was of the
most primitive crudeness, hand-fashioned by their women without the aid
of the potter’s wheel. The grass or straw-plaiting of their basket-work
might seem to embody the hint of the weaver’s loom; but the products of
the chase furnished them with skins of the bear and deer, sufficient for
all purposes of clothing. They had advanced in no degree beyond the
condition of the neolithic savage of Europe’s Stone age when, at the
close of the fifteenth century, they were abruptly brought into contact
with its cultured arts. The gifted historian, Mr. Francis Parkman, who
has thrown so fascinating an interest over the story of their share in
the long-protracted struggle of the French and English colonists of
North America, says of them: “Among all the barbarous nations of the
continent the Iroquois stand paramount. Elements which among other
tribes were crude, confused, and embryotic, were among them systematised
and concreted into an established polity. The Iroquois was the Indian of
Indians. A thorough savage, yet a finished and developed savage. He is
perhaps an example of the highest elevation which man can reach without
emerging from his primitive condition of the hunter.” Yet with this high
estimate of the race as pre-eminent among Red Indian nations, he adds:
“That the Iroquois, left under their institutions to work out their
destiny undisturbed, would ever have developed a civilisation of their
own, I do not believe.”[126] They had not, in truth, taken the first
step in such a direction; and, were it not for the evidence which
language supplies, it would be conceivable that they, and the whole
barbarian nations of which they are a type, were Mongol intruders of a
later date than the Northmen of the tenth century; who, it seems far
from improbable, encountered only the Eskimo of the Labrador coast, or
their more southern congeners, then extending to the south of the St.
Lawrence. The prevalence of a brachycephalic type of head among southern
Indian tribes, while dolichocephalic characteristics are common to the
Eskimo and to the Huron-Iroquois and other northern nations, lends
countenance to the idea of an intermixture of Red Indian and Eskimo
blood. The head-forms, however, though both long, differ in other
respects; and a divergence is apparent on comparing the bones of the
face, with a corresponding difference in their physiognomy.

Dr. Latham recognised the Iroquois as one of the most typical families
of the North American race, and Mr. Parkman styles them “the Indian of
the Indians.” The whole Huron-Iroquois history illustrates their
patient, politic diplomacy, their devotion to hunting and to war. But
their policy gave no comprehensive aim to wars which reduced their
numbers, and threatened their very existence as a race. Throughout the
entire period of any direct knowledge of them by Europeans, there is
constant evidence of feuds between members of the common stock, due in
part, indeed, to their becoming involved in the rivalries of French and
English colonists, but also traceable to hereditary animosities
perpetuated through many generations. The strongly marked diversities in
the dialects of the Six Nations is itself an evidence of their long
separation, prior to their confederation, in the earlier half of the
fifteenth century. By far the most trustworthy narrative of this famous
league is embodied by Mr. Horatio Hale in _The Iroquois Book of Rites_,
a contribution to aboriginal American literature of singular interest
and value. Among the members of this confederacy the Tuscaroras occupy a
peculiar position. They were reunited to the common stock so recently as
1714, but their traditions accord with those of the whole Huron-Iroquois
family in pointing to the Lower St. Lawrence as their original home; and
the diversity of the Tuscarora dialect from those of the older nations
of the league furnishes a valuable gauge of the significance of such
differences as evidence of the length of period during which the various
members of the common stock had been separated. On the other hand, the
manner in which, in the absence of any hereditary feud, the Iroquois
respected the bonds of consanguinity, and welcomed the fugitive
immigrants from North Carolina, throws an interesting light on the
history of the race, and the large extent of country occupied by it in
the time of its greatest prosperity.

The earliest home of the whole Huron-Iroquois stock was within the area
of Quebec and Eastern Ontario, and they have thus a claim on the
interest of Canadians as their precursors in the occupation of the soil;
while, in so far as its actual occupancy by the representatives of the
common stock is concerned, the Hurons were welcomed to a friendly, if
fatal, alliance with the early French colonists; and the Iroquois of the
Six Nations have enjoyed a home, under the protection of England, on the
western Canadian reserves set apart for their use upwards of a century
ago.

There is one notable inconsistency in the traditions of the
Huron-Iroquois which is significant. The fathers of the common stock
dwelt, according to their most cherished memories, in their northern
home on the St. Lawrence, and beside the great sea. It ranked also among
the ancient traditions of the “Wampum-keepers,” or official annalists,
that there came a time when, from whatever cause, the
Caniengas—Ka-nyen-ke-ha-ka, or Flint people, _i.e._ the Mohawks,—the
“eldest brother” of the family, led the way from the northern shore of
the St. Lawrence to their later home in what is now the State of New
York. But the prehistoric character of this later tradition is shown by
the fact that the Oneidas, Onondagas, and Senecas, all claimed for
themselves the character of autochthones in their later home. The
precise spot where, according to the cherished legend of the Oneidas,
they literally sprang from the soil, is still marked by “the Oneida
Stone,” a large boulder of flesh-coloured syenite, from which the latter
called themselves Oniota-aug, “the people begot from the stone.” It
occupies a commanding site overlooking a fine expanse of country
stretching to the Oneida Lake. But, according to Mr. Hale, the name of
the Oneida nation, in the council of the league, was _Nihatirontakowa_,
usually rendered the “great-tree people,” or literally “those of the
great log.” This designation is connected, most probably as an
afterthought, with a legendary meeting of their people with
Hiawatha.[127] The beautiful legend of this benefactor of his people has
been embalmed in the Indian epic of Longfellow, and dealt with as a
chapter of genuine history in Mr. Horatio Hale’s _Iroquois Book of
Rites_. At a period when the tribes were being wasted by constant wars
within and without, a wise and beneficent chief arose among the
Onondagas. His name is rendered: “he who seeks the wampum belt.” He had
long viewed with grief the dissensions and misery of his people, and
conceived the idea of a federal union which should ensure peace. The
system which he devised was to be not a loose and transitory league,
such as the Indian tribes were familiar with; but a permanent
organisation, foreshadowing as it were the federal union of the
Anglo-American Colonies. “While each nation was to retain its own
council and its management of local affairs, the general control was to
be lodged in a federal senate, composed of representatives elected by
each nation, holding office during good behaviour, and acknowledged as
ruling chiefs throughout the confederacy. Still further, and more
remarkably, the confederation was not to be a limited one. It was to be
infinitely expansive. The avowed design of its proposer was to abolish
war altogether. He wished the federation to extend until all the tribes
of men should be included in it. Such,” says Mr. Hale, “is the positive
testimony of the Iroquois themselves, and their statement is supported
by historical evidence.”[128] The league survived far on into the
eighteenth century; but the dream of universal peace among the nations
of the New World, if it ever found any realisation, had vanished in the
reawakening of the demon of strife.

In all the accounts of the Iroquois their league is noted as
distinguishing them from the Algonkins and other ruder tribes of North
America. The story of this league has been reproduced by successive
historians, not without rhetorical exaggerations borrowed from the
institutions of civilised nations, both of ancient and modern times. The
late Hon. L. H. Morgan says of this tribal union: “Under their federal
system the Iroquois flourished in independence, and capable of
self-protection, long after the New England and Virginia races had
surrendered their jurisdictions, and fallen into the condition of
dependent nations; and they now stand forth upon the canvas of Indian
history, prominent alike for the wisdom of their civil institutions,
their sagacity in the administration of the league, and their courage in
its defence. When their power and sovereignty finally passed away, it
was through the events of peaceful intercourse, gradually progressing to
this result.”[129] Schoolcraft in like manner refers to “their
advancement in the economy of living, in arms, in diplomacy, and in
civil polity,” as evidence of a remote date for their confederacy.[130]
But while thus contrasting the “power and sovereignty” of the Iroquois
with the “dependent nations” to the south, Schoolcraft leaves it
manifest that, whatever may have been the extent of the ancient
confederacy, in the seventeenth century their whole numbers fell short
of 12,000; and in 1677 their warriors or fighting men were carefully
estimated at 2150. The diversity of dialects of the different members of
the league is a source of curious interest to the philologist; but the
fact that, among a people numerically so small, local dialects were thus
perpetuated, is a proof of the very partial influence of the league as a
bond of union. It serves to illustrate the general defect of native
American polity. “Nothing,” says Max Müller, “surprised the Jesuit
missionaries so much as the immense number of languages spoken by the
natives of America. But this, far from being a proof of a high state of
civilisation, rather showed that the various races of America had never
submitted for any length of time to a powerful political
concentration.[131] The Iroquois were undoubtedly pre-eminent in the
highest virtues of the savage; and could they have been isolated in the
critical transitional stage, like the ancient Egyptians in their Nile
valley, the Greeks in their Hellenic peninsula, or the Anglo-Saxons in
their insular stronghold—

    . . . . set in the silver sea
    Which serves it in the office of a wall
    Or as a moat defensive—

until they learned to unite with their courage and persistency in war
some of the elements of progress in civilisation ascribed to them, they
might have proved the regenerators of the continent, and reserved it for
permanent occupation by races of native origin. “Wherever they went,”
says Schoolcraft, “they carried proofs of their energy, courage, and
enterprise. At one period we hear the sound of their war-cry along the
Straits of the St. Mary’s, and at the foot of Lake Superior; at another,
under the walls of Quebec, where they finally defeated the Hurons under
the eyes of the French.”[132] And after glancing at the long history of
their triumphs, he adds: “Nations trembled when they heard the name of
the Konoshioni.”

In older centuries, while the Huron-Iroquois still constituted one
united people in their ancestral home to the north of the St. Lawrence,
they must have been liable to contact with the Eskimo, both on the north
and the east; and greatly as the two races differ, the dolichocephalic
type of head common to both is not only suggestive of possible
intermixture, but also of encroachments on the Eskimo in early centuries
by this aggressive race. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as
probably at a much earlier date, when the Iroquois had parted from the
Hurons, they became unquestionably _the_ aggressive race of the northern
continent; and were an object of dread to widely severed nations. Their
earliest foes were probably the Algonkins, whose original home appears
to have been between Lake Superior and Hudson Bay. Nevertheless, there
was a time, according to the traditions of both, apparently in some old
pre-Columbian century, when Iroquois and Algonkins combined their forces
against the long-extinct stock whose name survives in that of the
Alleghany Mountains and river. But if so, their numbers must have then
vastly exceeded that of their whole combined nations at any period
subsequent to their first intercourse with Europeans. For if the growing
opinion is correct that the Alligéwi were the so-called “Mound-Builders”
of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys, they must have been a numerous
people, occupying a territory of great extent, and carrying on
agriculture on a large scale. So far as metallurgy—that crucial test of
civilisation,—is concerned, they had not advanced beyond the stage of
Iroquois progress. Their pottery and ingenious carvings in stone have
already been noted, along with their singular geometrical earthworks
which still puzzle the American archæologist, from the evidence they
show of skill in a people still practically in their Stone period. The
only conceivable solution of the mystery, as already suggested, seems to
me the assumption of some “Druidic” or Brahminical caste, distinct from
the native Alligéwi stock, who ruled in those great northern
river-valleys, as in Peru; and, like the mythic Quetzalcoatl of the
Aztecs, taught them agriculture, and directed the construction of the
marvellous works to which they owe their later distinctive name. But for
some unknown reason they provoked the united fury of Iroquois and
Algonkins; and after long-protracted strife were driven out, if not
wholly exterminated. A curious phase of incipient native civilisation
thus perished; and, notwithstanding all the romance attached to the
league of the Iroquois, it is impossible to credit them at any stage of
their own history with the achievement of such a progress in agriculture
or primitive arts as we must ascribe to this ancient people of the Ohio
valley. To the triumph of the Iroquois in this long-protracted warfare
may have been due the haughty spirit which thenceforth demanded a
recognition of their supremacy from all surrounding nations. Their
partial historians ascribe to them a spirit of magnanimity in the use of
their power, and a mediatorial interposition among the weaker nations
that acknowledged their supremacy. They appear, indeed, to have again
entered into alliance with an Algonkin nation. Their annalists have
transmitted the memory of a treaty effected with the Ojibways, when the
latter dwelt on the shores of Lake Superior; and the meeting-place of
the two powerful races was at the great fishing-ground of the Sault Ste.
Marie rapids, within reach of the copper-bearing rocks of the Keweenaw
peninsula. The league then established is believed to have been
faithfully maintained on both sides for upwards of two hundred years.
But if so, it had been displaced by bitter feud in the interval between
the visits of Cartier and Champlain to the St. Lawrence.

The historical significance given to the legend of Hiawatha by the
coherent narrative so ingeniously deduced by Mr. Horatio Hales from _The
Iroquois Book of Rites_, points to a long-past era of beneficent rule
and social progress among the Huron-Iroquois. But the era is
pre-Columbian, if not mythic. The pipe of peace had been long
extinguished, and the buried tomahawk recovered, when the early French
explorers were brought into contact with the Iroquois and Hurons. The
history of their deeds, as recorded by the Jesuit Fathers from personal
observation, is replete with the relentless ferocity of the savage. War
was their pastime; and they were ever ready to welcome the call to arms.
La Salle came in contact with them on the discovery of the Illinois; and
Captain John Smith, the founder of Virginia, encountered their canoes on
the Chesapeake Bay bearing a band of Iroquois warriors to the
territories of the Powhattan confederacy. They were then, as ever, the
same fierce marauders, intolerant of equality with any neighbouring
tribe. The Susquehannocks experienced at their hands the same fate as
the Alligéwi. The Lenapes, Shawnees, Nanticokes, Unamis, Delawares,
Munsees, and Manhattans, were successively reduced to the condition of
dependent tribes. Even the Canarse Indians of Long Island were not safe
from their vengeance; and their power seems to have been dreaded
throughout the whole region from the Atlantic to the Mississippi.

It thus appears probable that in remote centuries, before the discovery
of America by European voyagers, the region extending westward from the
Labrador coast to Lake Ontario, if not, indeed, to Lake Huron, had been
in occupation by those who claimed to be autochthones, and who were
known and feared far beyond their own frontiers. But though thus
maintaining a haughty predominancy; so far as their arts afford any
evidence, they were in their infancy. The country occupied by them,
except in so far as it was overgrown with the forest, was well adapted
for agriculture; and the Iroquois and Hurons alike compared favourably
with the Algonkins in their agricultural industry. A confirmatory
evidence of exceptional superiority among this remarkable race is that
their women were held in unwonted respect. They had their own
representatives in the council of the tribe; and exercised considerable
influence in the choice of a chief. But on them devolved all domestic
labour, including the cultivation of their fields. This work was
entirely carried on by the women, while the share of the men in the
joint provision of food was the product of the chase. The beautiful
region was still so largely under forest that it must have afforded
abundant resources for the hunter; but it furnished no facilities for
the inauguration of a copper or bronze age, such as the shores of Lake
Superior in vain offered to its Algonkin nomads. Of metallic ores they
had no knowledge; and while they doubtless prized the copper brought
occasionally from Lake Superior, copper implements are rare in the
region which they occupied. Their old alliance with the Algonkins of the
great copper region had long come to an end; and when brought under the
notice of the French and English colonists, the Algonkins had joined
with the Hurons as the implacable foes of the Iroquois confederacy.

In the ancient warfare in which Algonkins and Huron-Iroquois are found
united against the nation of the great river valleys, we see evidences
of a conflict between widely distinct stocks of northern and southern
origin. It is an antagonism between well-defined dolichocephalic and
brachycephalic races. In the dolichocephalic Iroquois or Huron, we have
the highest type of the forest savage; maintaining as his own the
territory of his fathers, and building palisaded towns for the secure
shelter of his people. The brachycephalic Mound-Builder, on the other
hand, may still survive in one or other of the members of the
semi-civilised village communities of New Mexico or Arizona. But if the
interpretation of native traditions have any value, they carry us back
to pre-Columbian centuries, and tell of long-protracted strife, until
what may at first have been no more than the aggressions of wild
northern races, tempted by the resources of an industrious agricultural
community, became a war of extermination. The elaborately constructed
forts of the Mound-Builders, no less abundant throughout the Ohio valley
than their curious geometrical earthworks, prove the dangers to which
they were exposed, no less than the skill and determination with which
the aggressors were withstood, it may be through successive generations,
before their final overthrow.

The palisaded Indian town of Hochelaga, one of the chief urban centres
of the Huron-Iroquois tribes in the older home of the race, and a sample
of the later Huron defences on the Georgian Bay, stood, in the sixteenth
century, at the foot of Mount Royal, whence the city of Montreal takes
its name; and some of the typical skulls of its old occupants, as well
as flint implements and pottery from its site, are now preserved in the
Museum of M’Gill University. The latter relics reveal no more than had
long been familiar in the remains which abound within the area of the
Iroquois confederacy, and elsewhere throughout the eastern states of
North America. Their earthenware vessels were decorated with
herring-bone and other incised patterns; and their tobacco pipes and the
handles of their clay bowls were, at times, rudely modelled into human
and animal forms. Their implements of flint and stone were equally rude.
They had inherited little more than the most infantile savage arts; and
when those were at length superseded, in some degree, by implements and
weapons of European manufacture, they prized the more effective weapons,
but manifested no desire for mastering the arts to which they were due.
To all appearance, through unnumbered centuries, the tide of human life
has ebbed and flowed in the valley of the St. Lawrence as
unprogressively as on the great steppes of Asia. Such footprints as the
wanderers have left on the sands of time tell only of the unchanging
recurrence of generations of men as years and centuries came and passed
away. Illustrations of native art are now very familiar to us. The
ancient flint pits have been explored; and the flint cores and
rough-hewn nodules recovered. The implements of war and the chase were
the work of the Indian brave. His spears and arrow heads, his knives,
chisels, celts, and hammers, in flint and stone, abound. Fish-hooks,
lances or spears, awls, bodkins, and other implements of bone and deer’s
horn, are little less common. The highest efforts of artistic skill were
expended on the carving of his stone pipe, and fashioning the pipe-stem.
The pottery, the work of female hands, is usually in the simplest stage
of coarse, handmade, fictile ware. The patterns, incised on the soft
clay, are the conventional reproductions of the grass or straw-plaiting;
or, at times, the actual impressions of the cordage or wicker-work by
which the larger clay vessels were held in shape, to be dried in the sun
before they were imperfectly burned in the primitive kiln. But the
potter also indulged her fancy at times in modelling artistic devices of
men and animals, as the handles of the smaller ware, or the forms in
which the clay tobacco pipe was wrought. Nevertheless the northern
continent lingered to the last in its primitive stage of neolithic art;
and its most northern were its rudest tribes, until we pass within the
Arctic circle and come in contact with the ingenious handiwork of the
Eskimo. Southward beyond the great lakes, and especially within the area
of the Mound-Builders, a manifest improvement is noticeable. Alike in
their stone carvings and their modelling in clay, the more artistic
design and better finish of industrious settled communities are
apparent. Still further to the south, the diversified ingenuity of
fancy, especially in the pottery, is suggestive of an influence derived
from Mexican and Peruvian art. The carved work of some western tribes
was also of a higher character. But taking such work at its best, it
cannot compare in skill or practical utility with the industrial arts of
Europe’s Neolithic age. This region has now been visited and explored by
Europeans for four centuries, during a large portion of which time they
have been permanent settlers. Its soil has been turned up over areas of
such wide extent that the results may be accepted, with little
hesitation, as illustrations of the arts and social life subsequent to
the occupation of the continent by its aboriginal races. But we look in
vain for evidence of an extinct native civilisation. However far back
the presence of man in the New World may be traced, throughout the
northern continent, at least, he seems never to have attained to any
higher stage than what is indicated by such evidences of settled
occupation as were shown in the palisaded Indian town of Hochelaga; or
at most, in the ancient settlements of the Ohio valley. Everywhere the
agriculturist only disturbs the graves of the savage hunter. The
earthworks of the Mound-Builders, and still more their configuration,
are indeed suggestive of a people in a condition analogous to that of
the ancient populace of Egypt or Assyria, toiling under the direction of
an overruling caste, and working out intellectual conceptions of which
they themselves were incapable. Yet, even in their case, this inference
finds no confirmation from the contents of their mounds or earthworks.
They disclose only implements of bone, flint, and stone, with some rare
examples of equally rude copper tools, hammered into shape without the
use of fire. Working in the metals appears to have been confined to the
southern continent; or, at least, never to have found its way northward
of the Mexican plateau. Nothing but the ingeniously sculptured tobacco
pipe, or the better-fashioned pottery, gives the slightest hint of
progress beyond the first infantile stage of the tool-maker.

Whatever may have been the source of special skill among the old
agricultural occupants of the Ohio valley, their Iroquois supplanters
borrowed from them no artistic aptitude. No remains of its primitive
occupants give the slightest hint that the aborigines of Canada, or of
the country immediately to the south of the St. Lawrence, derived any
knowledge from the old race so curiously skilled in the construction of
geometrical earthworks. Any native burial mounds or embankments are on a
small scale, betraying no more than the simplest operations of a people
whose tools were flint hoes, and horn or wooden picks and shovels.
Wherever evidence is found of true working in metals, as distinct from
the cold-hammered native copper, as in the iron tomahawk, the copper
kettles, and silver crosses, recovered from time to time from Indian
graves, their European origin is indisputable. Small silver buckles, or
brooches, of native workmanship are indeed common in their graves; for a
metallic currency was so unintelligible to them that this was the use to
which they most frequently turned French or English silver coinage.

But notwithstanding the general correspondence in arts, habits, and
conditions of life, among the forest and prairie tribes of North
America, their distinctive classification into various dolichocephalic
and brachycephalic types points to diversity of origin and a mingling of
several races. So far as the native races of Canada are considered, it
has been shown that they belong to the dolichocephalic type. The
Alligéwi, or Mound-Builders, on the contrary, appear to have been a
strongly marked brachycephalic race; and the bitter antagonism between
the two, which ended in the utter ruin of the latter, may have been
originally due to race distinctions such as have frequently been the
source of implacable strife.

The short globular head-form, which, in the famous Scioto-mound skull,
is shown in a strongly marked typical example with the longitudinal and
parietal diameters nearly equal, appears to have been common among the
southern tribes, such as the Osages, Ottoes, Missouries, Shawnees,
Cherokees, Seminoles, Uchees, Savannahs, Catawbas, Yamasees, Creeks, and
many others. This seems to point to such a convergence, of two distinct
ethnical lines of migration from opposite centres, as is borne out by
much other evidence. In noting this aspect of the question anew, the
further significant fact may also be once more repeated, that the Eskimo
cranium, along with certain specialties of its own, is pre-eminently
distinctive as the northern type.

Among what may be accepted as typical Canadian skulls, those recovered
from the old site of Hochelaga, and from the Huron ossuaries around Lake
Simcoe, have a special value. They represent the native race which,
under various names, extended from the Lower St. Lawrence westward to
Lake St. Clair. The people encountered by Cartier and the first French
explorers of 1535, and those whom Champlain found settled around the
Georgian Bay sixty-eight years later, appear to have been of the same
stock. Such primitive local names, as Stadaconé and Hochelaga, are not
Algonkin, but Huron-Iroquois. Native traditions, as well as the
allusions of the earliest French writers, confirm this idea of the
occupation by a Huron-Iroquois or Wyandot population of the “region
north-eastward from the mouth of the St. Lawrence, at or somewhere along
the Gulf coast, before they ever met with the French, or any European
adventurers,” as reaffirmed in the narrative of their own native
historian, Peter Dooyentate.[133] But whatever confirmation may be found
for this native tradition, it is certain that the European adventurers
bore no part in their expulsion from their ancient home. The aborigines,
whom Jacques Cartier found a prosperous people, safe in the shelter of
their palisaded towns, had all vanished before the return of the French
under Champlain; and they were found by him in new settlements, which
they had formed far to the westward on Lake Simcoe and the Georgian Bay.

Questions of considerable interest are involved in the consideration of
this migration of the Hurons; and the circumstances under which they
deserted their earlier home. They were visited by Champlain in 1615, and
subsequently by the missionary Fathers, who, in 1639, found them
occupying thirty-two palisaded villages, fortified in the same fashion
as those described by the first French explorers at Stadaconé and
Hochelaga. Their numbers are variously estimated. Brebeuf reckoned them
at 30,000; and described them as living together in towns sometimes of
fifty, sixty, or a hundred dwellings,—that is, of three or four hundred
householders,—and diligently cultivating their fields, from which they
derived food for the whole year. Whatever higher qualities distinguished
the Iroquois from Algonkin or other native races, were fully shared in
by the Hurons; and they are even spoken of with a natural partiality by
their French allies, like Sagard, as a patrician order of savages, in
comparison with those of the Five Nations. When first visited by French
explorers, after their protracted journey through the desolate forests
between the Ottawa and Lake Huron, their palisaded towns and cultivated
fields must have seemed like an oasis in the desert. “To the eye of
Champlain,” says Mr. Parkman, “accustomed to the desolation he had left
behind, it seemed a land of beauty and abundance. There was a broad
opening in the forest, fields of maize with pumpkins ripening in the
sun, patches of sun-flowers, from the seeds of which the Indians made
hair-oil, and in the midst the Huron town of Otouacha. In all essential
points it resembled that which Cartier, eighty years before, had seen at
Montreal; the same triple palisade of crossed and intersecting trunks,
and the same long lodges of bark, each containing many households. Here,
within an area of sixty or seventy miles, was the seat of one of the
most remarkable savage communities of the continent.”[134] The Hurons,
thus settled in their latter home, consisted of several “nations,”
including their kinsmen to the south, as far as Lake Erie and the
Niagara river. They had their own tribal divisions, still perpetuated
among their descendants. The Rev. Prosper Vincent Sa∫∫atannen, a native
Huron, and the first of his race admitted to the priesthood, informs me
that the Hurons of Lorette still perpetuate their ancient classification
into four _grandes compagnies_, each of which has its five tribal
divisions or clans, by which of old all intermarriage was regulated. The
members of the same clan regarded themselves as brothers and sisters,
and so were precluded from marriage with one another. The small number
of the whole band at La Jeune Lorette renders the literal enforcement of
this rule impossible; but the children are still regarded as belonging
to the mother’s clan. The five clans into which each of the four
companies is divided are:—1. The Deer, _Oskanonton_; 2. The Bear,
_Anniolen_; 3. The Wolf, _Annenarisk∫∫a_; 4. The Tortoise, _Andia∫∫ik_;
5. The Beaver, _Tsotai_. There were two, if not more dialects spoken by
the old Hurons, or Wyandots; and that of Hochelaga probably varied from
any form of the language now surviving. This has to be kept in view in
estimating the value of the lists of words furnished by Jacques Cartier
of “le langage des pays et Royaulmes de Hochelaga et Canada, aultrement
appellée par nous la nouvelle France.”

Of the condition of the region to the west of the Ottawa prior to the
seventeenth century nothing is known from direct observation. Before
Champlain had an opportunity of visiting it, the whole region westward
to Lake Huron had been depopulated and reduced to a desert. The fact
that the few natives found by Champlain occupying the once populous
region of the Hochelaga Indians were Algonkins, has been the chief
ground for the assumption that the expulsion of that old Wyandot stock
was due to their hostility. But such an idea is irreconcilable with the
fact that the latter, instead of retreating southward to their
Huron-Iroquois kinsmen, took refuge among Algonkin tribes. According to
the narrative of their own Wyandot historian, Peter Dooyentate,
gathered, as he tells us, from traditions that lived in the memory of a
few among the older members of his tribe, the island of Montreal was
occupied in the sixteenth century by Wyandots or Hurons, and Senecas,
sojourning peaceably in separate villages. The tradition is vague which
traces the cause of their hostility to the wrath of a Seneca maiden, who
had been wronged by the object of her affections, and gave her hand to a
young Wyandot warrior on the condition of his slaying the Seneca chief,
to whose influence she ascribed the desertion of her former lover.
Whatever probability may attach to this romance of the Indian lovers,
the tradition that the Hurons were driven from their ancient homes on
the St. Lawrence by their Seneca kinsmen is consistent with ascertained
facts, as well as with the later history of the Senecas, who are found
playing the same part to the Eries under a somewhat similar incentive to
revenge, and appear to have taken the lead in the destruction of the
Attiwendaronks. The native tradition is of value in so far as it shows
that the fatal enmity of the Iroquois to the Hurons was not originally
due to the alliance of the latter with the French; but Senecas and
Hurons had alike disappeared before Champlain visited the scene of
Cartier’s earlier exploration. The Attiwendaronks, who dwelt to the
south of the later home of the Hurons, on the shores of Lakes Ontario
and Erie, may have formed another of the nations of the Wyandot stock
expelled from the valley of the St. Lawrence. Situated as they were in
their later home, midway between the Hurons and Iroquois, they strove in
vain to maintain a friendly neutrality. Charlevoix assigns the year 1635
as the date of their destruction by the latter. Certain it is that
between that date and the middle of the century their towns were utterly
destroyed; and such of the survivors as lingered in the vicinity were
incorporated into the nation of the Senecas, who lay nearest to them.

The Eries were another Huron-Iroquois nation who appear to have
persistently held aloof from the league. They were seemingly a fiercer
and more warlike people than the Attiwendaronks; they fought with
poisoned arrows, and were esteemed or dreaded as warriors. Their numbers
must have been considerable, since they were an object of apprehension
to the nations of the league whose western frontiers marched with their
own. They are affirmed by the native historian, Cusick, to have sprung
from the Senecas; but, if so, their separation was probably of remote
date, as they were both numerous and powerful. The country which they
occupied was noted among the French _coureurs des bois_ for its lynx
furs; and they gave accordingly to its people the name of “La Nation du
Chat.” Their ancient home is still indicated in the name of the great
lake beside which they dwelt. But, for some unknown reason, they refused
all alliance with the Senecas and the league of their Iroquois kin, and
perished by their violence within seven years after the Huron country
was laid waste. “To the Eries, and to the Neuter nation,” or
Attiwendaronks, says Schoolcraft, “according to tradition, the Iroquois
offered the alternative of admission into the league or extermination;
and the strangeness of this proposition will disappear, when it is
remembered that an Indian nation regards itself as at war with all
others not in actual alliance.”[135] Peace, he adds, was the ultimate
aim of the founders of the Iroquois oligarchy; and, for lovers of peace
on such terms of supremacy, the _casus belli_ would not be more
difficult to find than it has proved to be among the most Christian of
kings. In the case of the Eries, as of the elder Wyandots of Hochelaga,
the final rupture is ascribed to a woman’s implacable wrath.

Father Le Moyne, while on a mission to the Onondagas in 1654, learned
that the Iroquois confederacy were excited to fury against the Eries. A
captive Onondaga chief is said to have been burnt at the stake after he
had been offered, according to Indian custom, to one of the Erie women,
to take the place of her brother who had been murdered while on a visit
to the Senecas. It is a characteristic illustration of how the feuds of
ages were perpetuated. The traditions of the Iroquois preserved little
more than the fact that the Eries had perished by their fury. But a
story told to Mr. Parkman by a Cayuga Indian, only too aptly illustrates
the hideous ferocity of their assailants. It represented that the night
after the great battle in which the Eries suffered their final defeat,
the forest was lighted up with more than a thousand fires, at each of
which an Erie was being tortured at the stake.[136] The number is
probably exaggerated. But it is only thus, as it were in the lurid glare
of its torturing fires, that we catch a glimpse of this old nation as it
vanished from the scene. Of the survivors, the greater number were
adopted, according to Indian fashion, into the Seneca nation.

Some of the earthworks met with to the south of Lake Erie show proofs of
greater constructive labour than anything found in Canada. Still more
interesting are the primitive hieroglyphics of an inscription on
Cunningham’s Island, ascribed to the Eries, and which Schoolcraft
describes as by far the most elaborate work of its class hitherto found
on the continent.[137] But the rock inscription, though highly
interesting as an example of native symbolism and pictographic writing,
throws no light on the history of its carvers; and of their language no
memorial is recoverable, for they had ceased to exist before the great
lake which perpetuates their name was known to the French.

More accurate information has been preserved in reference to the Hurons,
among whom the Jesuit Fathers laboured with self-denying zeal, from time
to time reporting the results in their _Relations_ to the Provincial of
the Order at Paris. One of the most characteristic religious ceremonies
of the Hurons was the great “Feast of the Dead,” celebrated apparently
at intervals of twelve years, when the remains of their dead were
gathered from scaffolded biers, or remote graves, and deposited amid
general mourning in the great cemetery of the tribe. Valuable robes and
furs, pottery, copper kettles and others of their choicest possessions,
including the pyrulæ, or large tropical shells brought from the Gulf of
Mexico, with wampum, prized implements, and personal ornaments, were all
thrown into the great trench, which was then solemnly covered over. By
the exploration of those Huron ossuaries, the sites of the palisaded
villages of the Hurons of the seventeenth century have been identified
in recent years; and there are now preserved in the Laval University at
Quebec upwards of eighty skulls recovered from cemeteries at St. Ignace,
St. Joachin, Ste. Marie, St. Michael, and other villages, the scenes of
self-denying labour, and in some cases of the cruel torturings, of the
French missionaries by whom they were thus designated. Other examples of
skulls from the same ossuaries, I may add, are now in the Museums of the
University of Toronto, the London Anthropological Society, and the
Jardin des Plantes at Paris. The skulls recovered from those ossuaries
have a special value from the fact that the last survivors were driven
out of the country by their Iroquois foes in 1649; and hence the crania
recovered from them may be relied upon as fairly illustrating the
physical characteristics of the race before they had been affected by
intercourse with Europeans. The Huron skull is of a well-defined
dolichocephalic type, with, in many cases, an unusual prominence of the
occipital region; the parietal bones meet more or less at an angle at
the sagittal suture; the forehead is flat and receding; the superciliary
ridges in the male skulls are strongly developed; the malar bones are
broad and flat, and the profile is orthognathic. Careful measurements of
thirty-nine male skulls yield a mean longitudinal diameter of 7.39 to a
parietal diameter of 5.50; and of eighteen female skulls, a longitudinal
diameter of 7.07 to a parietal diameter of 5.22.[138]

Who were the people found by Cartier in 1535, seemingly long-settled and
prosperous, occupying the fortified towns of Stadaconé and Hochelaga,
and lower points on the St. Lawrence? The question is not without a
special interest to Canadians. According to the native Wyandot
historian, they were Wyandots or Hurons, and Senecas. That they were
Huron-Iroquois, at any rate, and not Algonkins, is readily determined.
We owe to Cartier two brief vocabularies of their language, which,
though obscured probably in their original transcription, and corrupted
by false transliterations in their transference to the press, leave no
doubt that the people spoke a Huron-Iroquois dialect. To which of the
divisions it belonged is not so obvious. The languages, in the various
dialects, differ only slightly in most of the words which Cartier gives.
Sometimes they agree with Huron, and sometimes with Iroquois
equivalents. The name of Hochelaga, “at the beaver-dam,” is Huron, and
the agreement as a whole preponderates in favour of a Huron rather than
an Iroquois dialect. But there was probably less difference between the
two then, than at the more recent dates of their comparison. In dealing
with this important branch of philological evidence, I have been
indebted to the kindness of my friend, Mr. Horatio Hale, for a
comparative analysis of the vocabulary supplied by Cartier, embodying
the results of long and careful study. He has familiarised himself with
the Huron language by personal intercourse with members of a little band
of civilised Wyandots, settled on their reserve at Anderdon, in Western
Ontario. The language thus preserved by them, after long separation from
other members of the widely scattered race, probably presents the
nearest approximation to the original forms of the native tongue, as
spoken on the Island of Montreal and the lower St. Lawrence. In
comparing them allowance has to be made for varieties of dialect among
the old occupants of the lower valley of the St. Lawrence, and also for
the changes wrought on the Huron language in the lapse of three and a
half centuries, not simply by time, but also as the result of
intercourse and intermixture with other peoples. The habit of recruiting
their numbers by the adoption of prisoners and broken tribes could not
fail to exercise some influence on the common tongue. The _k_ or hard
_g_ of Cartier is, in the Wyandot, frequently softened to a _y_; and on
the other hand, the _n_ is strengthened by a _d_ sound, as in Cartier’s
pregnant term _Canada_, the old Hochelaga word for a town, which has
become in the Wyandot _Yandata_; and so in other instances.

The revolution which, at the critical period of the advent of the Trench
in the valley of the St. Lawrence, in the interval of sixty-eight years
between the visits of Cartier and Champlain, displaced the fortified and
populous Indian capital of Hochelaga and left the surrounding regions a
desolate wilderness, is a mysterious event. Had Champlain been curious
to learn the facts of an occurrence then so recent there could have been
little difficulty in recovering the history of the exodus of the
Hochelagans. But it had no interest for the French adventurers of that
day. The well-fortified Wyandot towns had given place to a few ephemeral
birch-bark wigwams belonging to another race; and the readiest solution
of the mystery has been to ascribe the expulsion of the Wyandots, or
Hurons, from their ancient home in Eastern Canada, to the Algonkins.
This, as already shown, is irreconcilable with the fact that Champlain
found them in friendly alliance with the latter against their common
foe, the Iroquois. If, however, the Wyandot tradition of the expulsion
of the Hurons from the island of Montreal by the Senecas be accepted, it
is in no degree inconsistent with the circumstances subsequently
reported by Champlain; but rather serves to account for some of them, if
it is assumed that the Senecas were, in their turn, driven out by the
Algonkins, and then finally withdrew beyond the St. Lawrence.

But there is another kind of evidence bearing on the question of the
affinities of the people first met with by Cartier in 1535, which also
has its value here. The descriptions of the palisaded towns of the
Hurons on the Georgian Bay very accurately reproduce that which Cartier
gives of Hochelaga. Ephemeral as such fortifications necessarily were,
the construction of a rampart formed of a triple row of trunks of trees,
surmounted with galleries, from whence to hurl stones and other missiles
on their assailants, was a formidable undertaking for builders provided
with no better tools than stone hatchets, and with no other means of
transport than their united labour supplied. But the design had the
advantage of furnishing a self-supporting wall, and so of saving the
greater labour of digging a trench, with such inadequate tools, in soil
penetrated everywhere with the roots of forest trees. It was the
Huron-Iroquois system of military engineering, in which they contrasted
favourably with the Algonkins, among whom the absence of such evidence
of settled habits as those secure defences supplied, was characteristic
of these ruder nomads. But such urban fortifications no less strikingly
contrast with the elaborate and enduring military earthworks to the
south of the great lakes. The pottery and implements found on the site
of Hochelaga are of the same character as many examples recovered from
the Huron ossuaries. On the other hand the peculiar rites, of which
those ossuaries are the enduring memorials, appear to have distinguished
the western Hurons from the older settlers on the St. Lawrence. The
great Feast of the Dead, with its recurrent solemnities, when after the
lapse of years the remains of their dead were exhumed, or removed from
their scaffold biers, was the most characteristic religious ceremonial
of the Hurons; and was practised with still more revolting rites by the
kindred Attiwendaronks. Festering dead bodies were kept in their
dwellings, preparatory to scraping the flesh from their bones; and the
decaying remains of recently buried corpses were exhumed for reinterment
in the great trench, which was prepared with enormous labour, and
furnished with the most lavish expenditure of prized furs, wampum, and
other possessions.

In all ages and states of society unavailing sorrow has tempted the
survivors to extravagant excesses in the effort to do honour to the
loved dead; and sumptuary laws have been repeatedly enacted to restrain
such demonstrations within reasonable bounds. _The Book of Rites_
suffices to suggest that the ancient funeral rites of the Iroquois were
of the same revolting and wasteful character, until their mythic
reformer, Hiawatha, superseded them with a simpler symbolical funeral
service. “I have spoken of the solemn event which has befallen you,” are
the introductory words to the thirteenth paragraph of “The Condoling
Council,” and it thus proceeds: “Every day you are losing your great
men. They are being borne into the earth; also the warriors, and also
your women, and also your grandchildren; so that in the midst of blood
you are sitting.” It is therefore enacted, in the twenty-seventh
paragraph, evidently in lieu of older practices: “This shall be done. We
will suspend a pouch upon a pole, and will place in it some mourning
wampum, some short strings, to be taken to the place where the loss was
suffered. The bearer will enter, and will stand by the hearth, and will
speak a few words to comfort those who will be mourning; and then they
will be comforted, and will conform to the great law.”

A string of black wampum sent round the settlement is still, among the
Indians of the Six Nations, the notice of the death of a chief, as a
belt of black wampum was a declaration of war. It seems not improbable
that the people of Stadaconé and Hochelaga had submitted to the wise
social and religious reforms by which the ancient rites of their dead
were superseded by the symbolism of the mourning wampum, and hence the
absence of ossuaries throughout the island of Montreal and the whole
region to the east. But when the fugitive Wyandots fled into the
wilderness, and reared new homes around Lake Simcoe and in the western
peninsula, they may have revived traditional usages of their fathers,
and resumed rites which had been reluctantly abandoned. Among the
civilised Indians of the Six Nations some memorials of their ancestral
rites of the dead still survive. A visitor to the reserve at the time of
the death of a late highly esteemed chief told me that on the event
being known it was immediately responded to by all within hearing by the
prolonged utterance, in a mournful tone, of the cry _Kwé_, and this,
passing from station to station, spread the news of their loss
throughout the reserve. Nearly the same sound, uttered in a quicker
note, _Quaig!_ is the salutation among the Hurons of Lorette.

The later history of the Hurons and Iroquois is not without its special
interest. One little band, the Hurons of Lorette, the representatives of
the refugees from the massacre of 1648, has lingered till our own day in
too close proximity to the French _habitants_ of Quebec to preserve in
purity the blood of the old race. But great as are the alterations which
time and intermixture with the white race have effected, they still
retain many intellectual as well as physical traits of their original
stock after an interval of two hundred and thirty-six years, during
which intimate intercourse, and latterly frequent intermarriage with
those of European blood, have wrought inevitable change on the
race.[139] Other more vigorous representatives of the old Huron stock
occupy a small reservation in the Township of Anderdon, in Western
Ontario, from whom the vocabulary was derived which furnished a test of
the language of the Hochelagans in the sixteenth century. But the Hurons
of Lorette have also preserved their native tongue; and an ample
vocabulary[140] of the older form of their language survives. A third
modification of the ancient tongue no doubt exists; for the larger
remnant of the survivors of the Hurons, after repeated wanderings, is
now settled, far from the native home of the race, on reserves conceded
to them by the American Government in Kansas.

The Hurons have thus, for the most part, disappeared from Canada; but it
is not without interest to note that the revolution which, upwards of a
century ago, severed the connection of the old colonies to the south of
the St. Lawrence with the region to the north, restored to Canada its
ancient Iroquois. This race of savage warriors acquired the mastery of a
region equal in extent to Central Europe; and by a system of warfare,
not, after all, more inherently barbarous or recklessly bloody than that
of Europe’s Grand Monarch, reconstructed the social and political map of
the continent east of the Mississippi. Their influence acquired a novel
importance when, in the seemingly insignificant rivalries of French and
English fur-traders, they practically determined the balance of power
between the two foremost nations of Europe on this continent. Their
indomitable pertinacity proved more than a match alike for European
diplomacy and military skill; and, as they maintained an uncompromising
hostility to the French at a time when the rival colonists were nearly
equally balanced, the failure of the magnificent schemes of Louis XIV.
and his successors to establish in North America such a supremacy as
Charles V. and Philip II. had held in Mexico and Peru, is largely
traceable to them. It is natural that the Anglo-American student of
history should estimate highly the polity of savage warriors who thus
foiled the schemes of one of the most powerful monarchies of Europe for
the mastery of this continent. The late Hon. L. H. Morgan thus writes of
them: “They achieved for themselves a more remarkable civil
organisation, and acquired a higher degree of influence, than any other
race of Indian lineage except those of Mexico and Peru. In the drama of
European colonisation they stood, for nearly two centuries, with an
unshaken front against the devastations of war, the blighting influence
of foreign intercourse, and the still more fatal encroachments of a
restless and advancing border population. Under their federal system the
Iroquois flourished in independence, and capable of self-protection,
long after the New England and Virginia races had surrendered their
jurisdictions, and fallen into the condition of dependent nations; and
they now stand forth upon the canvas of Indian history, prominent alike
for the wisdom of their civil institutions, their sagacity in the
administration of the league, and their courage in its defence.”[141]
But in this their historian applies to the Iroquois a European standard,
similar to that by which Prescott unconsciously magnified Mexican
barbarism into a rivalry with the contemporary civilisation of Spain.
The romance attached to the Hodenosauneega, or Kononsionni, the famous
league of the Long House or United Households, more truly derives its
chief interest and value from the fact that its originators remained to
the last savages. It is, at any rate, important to keep this fact in
view, and to interpret the significance of the league in that light.
When the treaty which initiated it was entered into by the Caniengas and
the Oneidas, they were both in that primitive stage of unsophisticated
barbarism to which the term “Stone Period” has been applied. In the
absence of all knowledge of metallurgy, their implements and weapons
were alike simple and rude. Agriculture, under such conditions, must
have been equally primitive; and as for their wars, when they were not
defensive, they appear to have had no higher aim than revenge. Gallatin,
no unappreciative witness, says of them: “The history of the Five
Nations is calculated to give a favourable opinion of the intelligence
of the Red Man. But they may be ranked among the worst of conquerors.
They conquered only in order to destroy, and, it would seem, solely for
the purpose of gratifying their thirst for blood. Towards the south and
the west they made a perfect desert of the whole country within 500
miles of their seats. A much greater number of those Indians, who since
the commencement of the seventeenth century have perished by the sword
in Canada and the United States, have been destroyed by that single
nation than in all their wars with the Europeans.”[142]

To characterise the combination effected among such tribes as one
presenting elements of wise civil institutions; or indeed to introduce
such terms as league and federal system, in the sense in which they have
been repeatedly employed, as though they referred to a confederation
akin to those of the ancient Achæans or Ætolians, is to suggest
associations altogether misleading. Though an interesting phase of
American savage life, to which its long duration gives a marked
significance, the Iroquois league was by no means unique; though it was
the oldest, and may have been the model on which others were framed. The
Creek confederacy embraced numerous tribes between the Mobile, Alabama,
and Savannah rivers, and the Gulf of Mexico. At the head of it were the
Muskhogees, a numerous and powerful, but wholly savage race of hunters.
Like the Oneidas, Onandagas, and the still older Wyandots, they and the
Choctaws claimed to be autochthones. The Muskhogees appealed to a
tradition of their ancestors that they issued from a cave near the
Alabama river; while the Choctaws pointed to the frontier region between
them and the Chickasaws, where, as they affirmed, they suddenly emerged
from a hole in the earth, a numerous and mighty people. The system of
government amongst the members of this southern confederacy seems to
have borne considerable resemblance to that of the Iroquois; if it was
not borrowed from it. Every village was the centre of an independent
tribe or nation, with its own chief; and the restraints imposed on the
individual members, except when co-operating in some special enterprise
or religious ceremonial, appear to have been slight.

Mr. Hale has shown that the language of the Cherokees has a grammar
mainly Huron-Iroquois, and a vocabulary largely recruited from some
foreign source. From this he infers that one portion of the conquered
Alligéwi, while the conflict still lasted, may have cast in their lot
with the conquering race, just as the Tlascalans did with the Spaniards
in their war against the Aztecs, and hence the origin of the great
Cherokee nation. The fugitive Alligéwi, he surmises, may have fled down
the Mississippi till they reached the country of the Choctaws,
themselves a mound-building people; and to the alliance of the two he
would thus trace the difference in the language of the latter from that
of their eastern kindred, the Creeks or Muskhogees.[143] On the
assumption of such a combination of ethnical elements, the origin of the
Creek confederacy is easily accounted for. It is to this same element of
language that we have to revert for guidance in the interpretation of
the history of this remarkable race. It would be an evasion of the most
essential evidence on which any reliable conclusions must be based, if
the fact were overlooked that the Iroquois never emerged beyond the
primitive stage of the Stone period. Nevertheless in one element of
intellectual development their progress had been great. Each nation of
the Iroquois league had its chief, to whom pertained the right of
kindling the symbolic council-fire, and of taking the lead in all public
assemblies. When the representative chiefs of the nations gathered in
the Long House around the common council-fire of the league, it was no
less necessary that they should be able and persuasive speakers than
brave warriors. Rhetoric was cultivated in the council-house of the
Iroquois no less earnestly than in the Athenian ekklesia or the Roman
forum. Acute reasoning and persuasive eloquence demanded all the
discriminating refinements of grammar, and the choice of terms which an
ample vocabulary supplies. The holophrastic element has been noted as a
peculiar characteristic of American languages. The word-sentences thus
constructed not only admitted of, but encouraged, an elaborate nicety of
discrimination; while the marked tendency of the process, so far as the
language itself is concerned, was to absorb all other parts in the verb.
Time, place, manner, aim, purpose, degree, and all the other
modifications of language are combined polysynthetically with the root.
Nouns are to a large extent verbal forms; and not only nouns and
adjectives, but adverbs and prepositions, are regularly conjugated.
Elaborated polysyllables, flexibly modified by systematic internal
changes, give expression, in one compounded word-sentence, to every
varying phase of intricate reasoning or emotion; and the complex
structure shows the growth of a language in habitual use for higher
purposes than the mere daily wants of life. The vocabulary in use in
some rural districts in England has been found to include less than
three hundred words; and in provincial dialects, thus restricted, the
refinements of grammatical expression disappear. Among such rustic
communities speech plays a very subordinate part in the business of
life. But upon the deliberations of the Indian council-house depended
the whole action of the confederacy. Hence, while in all else the
Iroquois remained an untutored savage, his language is a marvellously
systematised and beautiful structure, well adapted to the requirements
of intricate reasoning and persuasive subtlety.

Professor Whitney says, in reference to American languages generally,
what may more especially be applied to the Huron-Iroquois: “There are
infinite possibilities of expressiveness in such a structure; and it
would only need that some native American Greek race should arise, to
fill it full of thought and fancy, and put it to the uses of a noble
literature, and it would be rightly admired as rich and flexible,
perhaps beyond anything else that the world knew.”[144] Yet, on the
other hand, the Iroquois dispense with the whole labials, never
articulate with their lips, and throw entirely aside from their
alphabetical series of phonetics six of those most constantly in use by
us.

In this direction, then, lies an ethnological problem which cannot fail
to awaken ever-increasing interest. To the native languages of the New
World we must look for a true key to the solution of some of the most
curious and difficult questions involved in the peopling of the
continent. “There lies before us,” says Professor Whitney, “a vast and
complicated problem in the American races; and it is their language that
must do by far the greatest part of the work in solving it.”

Of the languages of the Huron-Iroquois, the Huron appears to be the
oldest, if not the parent stock. When this aggressive race had spread,
as conquerors, far to the south of the St. Lawrence, the mother nation
appears to have held on to the cradleland of the race, where its
representatives were found still in possession when the first European
explorers entered the St. Lawrence. Colonists, of French or English
origin, have been in more or less intimate intercourse with them ever
since, yet the materials for any satisfactory study of the Huron
language, or of a comparison between it and the various Iroquois
dialects, are still scanty and very inadequate. The languages of the
Five Nations that originally constituted the members of the Iroquois
league, are, in the strictest sense of the term, dialects. In their
council-house on the Grand river, the chiefs of the Mohawks, Oneidas,
Onandagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, speak each in their own language and
need no interpreter. Nevertheless, the differences are considerable; and
a Seneca would scarcely find the language of a Mohawk intelligible to
him in ordinary conversation. But the separation of the Tuscaroras from
the Iroquois on the Mohawk river had been of long duration, and their
language differs much more widely from the others.

The Mohawk language was adopted at an early date for communicating with
the Indians of the Six Nations. The New England Company, established in
1649, under favour of the Lord Protector, Cromwell, “for the propagation
of the Gospel in New England,” was revived on the restoration of Charles
II. under a royal charter; and with the eminent philosopher, Robert
Boyle, as its first governor, vigorous steps were taken for the
religious instruction of the Indians. The correspondence of Eliot, “the
Apostle of the Indians,” with the first governor of the Company, is
marked by their anxiety for the completion of the Massachusetts Bible,
which, along with other books, he had translated for the benefit of the
Indians of New England. The silver Communion Service, still preserved at
the reserve on the Grand river, presented to the ancestors of the Mohawk
nation by Queen Anne, is an interesting memorial of the early efforts
for their Christianisation. It bears the inscription: “A. R., 1711.
=The Gift of Her Majesty, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain,
France, and Ireland, and of her Plantations in North America, Queen: to
her Indian Chappel of the Mohawks.=” The date has a special
interest in evidence of the transforming influences already at work; for
it was not till three years later that the Tuscaroras were received into
the confederation, and the Iroquois became known by their later
appellation as the Six Nation Indians. In accordance with the efforts
indicated by the royal gift, repeated steps were taken for translating
the Scriptures and the Prayer-Book into their language. In a letter of
the Rev. Dr. Stuart, missionary to the Six Nations, dated 1771, he
describes his introduction to Captain Brant at the Mohawk village of
Canajoharie, and the aid received from him in revising the Indian
Prayer-Book, and in translating the Gospel of St. Mark and the Acts of
the Apostles into the Mohawk language. The breaking out of the
revolutionary war arrested the printing of these translations. The
manuscripts were brought to Canada in 1781, and placed in the hands of
Colonel Clause, the Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs. This
gentleman subsequently carried them to England, where they were at
length printed. A more recent edition of the Mohawk Prayer-Book,
prepared under the direction of the Rev. Abraham Nelles, a missionary of
the New England Company, with the aid of a native catechist, issued from
the Canadian press in 1842. The Indian text is accompanied with its
English equivalent on the opposite page, and this _Kaghyadouhsera ne
Yoedereanayeadagwha_, or Book of Common Prayer, is still in use in the
religious services of the Six Nation Indians at their settlement on the
Grand river.

Some characteristics of the language, such as the absence of labials,
constitute not only a distinctive difference from the old Huron speech,
but afford proof of the latter being the older form. “It is a fact,”
says Professor Max Müller, in referring to his intercourse with an
intelligent native Mohawk, then a student at Oxford, “that the Mohawks
never, either as infants or as grown-up people, articulate with their
lips. They have no _p_, _b_, _m_, _f_, _v_, _w_—no labials of any
kind.”[145] The statement, so far as the Mohawk infants are concerned,
is open to further inquiry; but Dr. Oronhyatekha, the Mohawk referred
to, who pursued his studies for a time in the University of Toronto, and
to whom I have been largely indebted in this and other researches in
Indian philology, not only rejects the six letters already named, but
also _c_, _g_, _l_, _z_. The alphabet is thus reduced to seventeen
letters. Professor Max Müller notes in passing, that the name “Mohawk”
would seem to prove the use of the labial. But it is of foreign origin,
though possibly derived from their own term: _oegwehokough_, “people.”
The name employed by themselves is “Canienga.” The practice of speaking
without ever closing the lips is an acquired habit of later origin than
the forms of the parent tongue. A comparison of any of the Iroquois
dialects with the Huron as still spoken by the Wyandots of Ontario,
shows the _m_ in use by the latter in what is no doubt a surviving
example of the oldest form of the Huron-Iroquois language. This Huron
_m_ frequently becomes _w_ in the Iroquois dialects, _e.g._
_skatamendjaweh_, “one hundred,” becomes in Mohawk _unskadewennyaweh_;
_rume_, “man,” Mohawk, _ronkwe_, etc. These and other examples of this
interchangeable characteristic of Indian phonology, and the process of
substitution in the absence of labials, are illustrated in the table of
Huron-Iroquois numerals on the following page. The habit of invariably
speaking with the lips open is the source of very curious modifications
in the Iroquois vocabularies when compared with that of the Wyandots.
The _m_ gives place to _w_, _nw_, _nh_, or _nhu_; also to _ku_ and
_nkw_, and so frequently changes the whole character of the word by the
modifications it gives rise to.

A comparison of the numerals of cognate languages and dialects is always
instructive; and with the growing disposition of American philologists
to turn to the Basques, as the only prehistoric race of Europe that has
perpetuated the language of an Allophylian stock with possible analogies
to the native languages of America, their numerals may be placed
alongside of those of the Huron-Iroquois. The permanency of the names
for numerals, and their freedom from displacement by synonyms,

                     COMPARATIVE TABLE OF NUMERALS.

────┬──────────┬──────────────────┬─────────────────────┬─────────────────
    │          │                  │                     │
    │HOCHELAGA.│      HURON.      │                     │
    │(Cartier.)│    (Lorette.)    │      WYANDOT.       │     MOHAWK.
    │          │                  │                     │
────┼──────────┼──────────────────┼─────────────────────┼─────────────────
    │          │                  │                     │
   1│segada}   │                  │                     │
    │secata}   │skāt              │scat                 │unska
   2│tigneny}  │                  │                     │
    │tignem }  │tendi             │tendee               │dekenih
   3│asche     │chin              │shaight              │ahsunh
   4│honnacon  │ndak              │andaght              │kayerih
   5│ouiscon   │wisch             │weeish               │wisk
   6│indahir   │wahia             │waushau              │yayak
   7│ayaga     │tsotaré           │sootaie              │jadah
   8│adigue    │ateré             │autarai              │sadekonh
   9│madellon  │entson            │aintru               │tyodonh
  10│assem     │asen              │aughsagh             │oyerih
  11│   ...    │asenskatiskaré    │assan escate escarhet│unskayawenreh
  12│   ...    │asentenditiskaré  │asanteni escarhet    │dekenihyawenreh
  13│   ...    │āsenachinskaré    │     ...             │ahsunhyawenreh
  14│   ...    │asendakskaré      │     ...             │kayerihyawenreh
  15│   ...    │asenwischskaré    │     ...             │wiskyawenreh
  16│   ...    │asenwahiaskaré    │     ...             │yayakyawenreh
  17│   ...    │asentsotaréskaré  │     ...             │jadahyawenreh
  18│   ...    │asenateréskaré    │     ...             │sadekonhyawenreh
  19│   ...    │asenentsonskaré   │     ...             │tyodonhyawenreh
  20│   ...    │tendi eouasen     │tendeitawaughsa      │dewasunh
  30│   ...    │achink iouasen    │     ...             │ahsunhniwasunh
 100│   ...    │enniot iouasen    │scutemaingarwe       │unskadewennyaweh
1000│   ...    │asenate ouendiaré │assen attenoignauoy  │oyerih-
    │          │                  │                     │  nadewennyaweh
    │          │                  │                     │
────┴──────────┴──────────────────┴─────────────────────┴─────────────────

are seen in the universality of one series of names throughout the whole
ancient and modern Aryan languages of Asia and Europe. But the Basque
numerals bear little or no resemblance to either, unless such can be
traced in the _bi_, “two,” and the _sei_, “six,” as in the _assem_,
“ten” (_decem_), of the old Hochelaga, the _ahsen_ of the later
Wyandots. The _ehun_ of the Basque has also its remote, and probably
accidental resemblance; but the _milla_, “one thousand,” is certainly
borrowed, and serves to show that the higher numerals, with the evidence
they afford of advancing civilisation, were the result of intrusive
Aryan influences in the natives of the Iberian peninsula. With the
growing tendency to turn to the prehistoric Iberians of Europe for one
possible key to the origin of the races and languages of America, it is
well to keep this test in view for comparison with the widely varying
native numerals. But the correspondence is slight, even with probable
Turanian congeners. One Biscayan form of “three,” _hirun_, is not unlike
the Magyar _harom_; while the _eyg_, “one,” of the latter, seems to find
its counterpart in the inseparable particle that transforms the Basque
radical _ham_, “ten,” into the _hamaika_, “eleven.” But such fragmentary
traces are in striking contrast to the radical agreement of Sanskrit,
Zend, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Slavonic, and Teutonic numerals. Mr. Hale
has drawn my attention to the curious manner in which the names of the
first five Hochelaga numerals in Cartier’s list are contracted and
strengthened in the modern Wyandot; and some of the modifications in the
Iroquois dialects are no less interesting. _Secata_, the Hochelaga
“one,” survives in the Onondaga _skadah_, while it becomes _skat_ in the
modern Huron, the Cayuga, and the Seneca. But in the compounded form of
the Wyandot “one hundred,” _skatamendjawe_, as in the Onondaga
_skadahdewennyachweh_, the terminal _a_ reappears. _Tigneny_, the old
form of “two,” is abridged and strengthened to _tendi_; _asche_, “three”
(originally, in all probability, _aschen_, or, as still in use by the
Hurons of Lorette, _achin_), survives as _ahsunh_ or _ahsenh_ in nearly
all the Iroquois dialects, including the Tuscarora. In the Nottoway it
is still discernible in the modified _arsa_. The exceptions are the
Seneca, where it becomes _sen_, while one Wyandot form is _shenk_; which
reappears in the Seneca compounded form of “thirty,” _shenkwashen_.
_Honnacon_, “four,” loses both its initial and terminal syllables, and
becomes _dak_ in the Wyandot, and _keih_ or _kei_, an abbreviation of
the Mohawk _kayerih_, in the Cayuga and the Seneca dialects. The ancient
form of “five,” _ouiscon_, has partially survived in the Huron _ouisch_.
It becomes _wisk_, _whisk_, _wish_, or (in the Seneca) _wis_, in all the
Iroquois dialects,—the Wyandot and Cayuga once more agreeing in form.
The _ayaga_, “seven,” of the old Hochelaga, nearly resembles the _jadah_
of several of the Iroquois dialects, as in the Cayuga _jadak_, in the
Tuscarora _janah_, and in the Nottoway _oyag_; whereas in the Wyandot it
is _tsotaré_. The _adigue_, “eight,” in its oldest form is _sadekonh_ in
the Mohawk, and _dekrunh_ in the Cayuga; with the substitution of the
_l_ for _r_ it becomes _deklonh_ in the Oneida; and after changing to
_tekion_ in the Seneca, and _nagronh_ in the Tuscarora, it reappears in
the Nottoway as _dekra_. The ancient _madellon_, “nine,” curiously
survives in abridged form, with the substitute for the labial, in the
Oneida _wadlonh_ and the Onondaga _wadonh_, while one Wyandot form is
_entron_, and that of the Hurons of Lorette _entson_. In the Hochelaga
_assem_, “ten,” we have the old form which is perpetuated in the Wyandot
_ahsen_, the Onondaga and Cayuga _wasenh_, the Tuscarora _wasunh_, and
the Nottoway _washa_; while the Mohawk and the Oneida have the diverse
_oyerih_, or _oyelih_, with the characteristic change of _r_ into _l_.
The form of the Mohawk for “one thousand,” _oyerihnadewunnyaweh_, is an
interesting illustration of the progressive development of numbers. _Na_
is probably a contraction of _nikonh_, “of them,” or “of it,”—the whole
reading “of them ten hundred.”

In comparing the languages of the different members of the Iroquois
confederacy with the Wyandot or Huron, some of the facts already noted
in the history of the former have to be kept in view. Two and a half
centuries have transpired since the three western nations of the
confederacy, the Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas received great
additions to their numbers by the successive adoption of Attiwendaronk,
Huron, and Erie captives, while the Caniengas, or Mohawks, and the
Oneidas remained unaffected by such intrusions. There is direct evidence
that the Onondaga language has undergone great change; as a Jesuit
dictionary of the seventeenth century exists which shows a much nearer
resemblance between the Mohawk and Onondaga languages at that date than
now appears. Allowance must be made for similar changes affecting the
Hurons in their enforced migration from the St. Lawrence to their later
homes. Here, as in so many other instances, it becomes interesting to
note how the language of a people reflects its history.

In tracing out slighter and more remote resemblances, such as may be
discerned on a close scrutiny, where the variation between the Hochelaga
and the modern Wyandot numerals is widest, the different sources of
change have to be kept in view. In all such comparisons, moreover,
allowance must be made for the phonetic reproduction of unfamiliar words
learned solely by ear, as well as for the peculiar representation of the
nasal sounds in their reduction to writing by a French or English
transcriber.

The tradition, mentioned by Dooyentate, of Senecas and Wyandots living
in friendly contiguity on the Island of Montreal in the sixteenth
century, naturally suggests the probability that their dialects did not
greatly differ. Certain noticeable resemblances between the Seneca and
the Wyandot numerals have been noted above, but it is only their modern
forms that are thus open to comparison; and in the process of phonetic
decay the Seneca has suffered the greatest change. But after making
every allowance for modifications wrought by time, by adoption of
strangers into the tribe, and other internal sources of change, as well
as for the imperfection of Cartier’s renderings of the Hochelaga tongue,
and for subsequent errors of transcribers and printers, there still
remains satisfactory evidence of relationship between nearly half of
Cartier’s vocabulary and the corresponding words of the Wyandot tongue.
A comparison has been made between the Hochelaga numerals and those of
the Wyandots of Anderdon. In the comparative table of numerals given on
page 292, I have placed alongside of the old Hochelaga series derived
from Cartier’s lists those now in use among the Hurons of Lorette, as
supplied to me by M. Paul Picard, the son of the late Huron chief. In
the third column another version of the Wyandot numerals is given, from
Gallatin’s comparative vocabulary. It is derived from different sources,
including the United States War Department; and therefore, no doubt,
illustrates the changes which the language has undergone among the
Wyandots on their remote Texas reserve. Gallatin also gives another
version of Huron numerals derived from Sagard. It will be seen that M.
Picard used the _t_ as in Cartier’s lists, and in that of the southern
Wyandots, where the _d_ is employed in others, except in the Nottoway
numerals, where the use of both is, no doubt, due to the English
transcriber. In comparing the different lists, this variation in
orthography and also the interchangeable _k_ and _g_ have to be kept in
view. Thus the Cayuga has _dekrunh_, in the Oneida _dekelonh_, where the
Tuscarora has _nagronh_. But the Huron _tendi_, in use now both at
Lorette and Anderdon, shows the result of long intercourse with
Europeans begetting an appreciation of their discrimination between the
hard and soft consonants. Had the whole series been derived from one
source, such orthographic variations would have disappeared. The lists
have been furnished to me by the Rev. J. G. Vincent and M. Picard,
educated Hurons; L. A. Dorion, an educated Iroquois; Dr. Oronhyatekha,
an educated Mohawk; Mr. Horatio Hale; and also from Gallatin’s valuable
comparative tables of Indian vocabularies in the _Archæologia
Americana_. In the _Synopsis of the Indian Tribes_, to which these
vocabularies form an appendix, Gallatin classed both the Tuteloes and
the Nottoways, along with the Tuscaroras, as southern Iroquois tribes.
But recent researches of Mr. Hale have established the true place of the
Tuteloes to be with the Dakotan, and not the Huron-Iroquois family. It
is otherwise with the Cherohakahs, or Nottoways, whose home was in
south-eastern Virginia, where their memory is perpetuated in the name of
the river on which they dwelt. At the close of the seventeenth century
they still numbered 130 warriors, or about 700 in all; but twenty years
later, of the whole tribe only twenty souls survived. At that date two
vocabularies of the language were obtained, which furnish satisfactory
evidence of the correctness of their classification among southern
Iroquois tribes. Their numerals, as shown in the tables, approximate, as
might be anticipated, to those of the Tuscaroras, at least in the
majority of the primary numbers; whereas those of the Tuteloes are
totally dissimilar. As to the Basque numerals introduced alongside of
them in the comparative tables, they only suffice to show that the
pre-Aryan language still spoken, in varying dialects, on both slopes of
the Pyrenees, differed equally widely from the Aryan languages of
Europe, and from the Iroquois or any other known American language,
except in so far as the latter are agglutinative in structure. Van Eys,
in his _Basque Grammar_, draws attention to the words _buluzkorri_, and
_larrugori_, “naked”; the first of which literally signifies “red hair,”
and the second “red skin.” They are interesting illustrations of the way
in which important historical facts lie embedded in ancient languages.
But the colour of the hair forbids the inference that the ruddy Basques
of primitive centuries were akin to the “Redskins” of the New World.

The phonology of the Iroquois languages is notable in other respects
besides those already referred to. According to M. Cuoq, an able
philologist, who has laboured for many years as a missionary among the
Iroquois of the Province of Quebec, the sounds are so simple that he
considers an alphabet of twelve letters sufficient for their indication:
_a_, _e_, _f_, _h_, _i_, _k_, _n_, _o_, _r_, _s_, _t_, _w_. The
transliterations noticeable in the various Iroquois dialects, follow a
well-known phonetic law. Thus the _l_ and _r_ are interchangeable, as
_ronkwe_, “man,” in the Mohawk, becomes in the Oneida _lonhwe_; _raxha_,
“boy,” becomes _laxha_; _rakeniha_, “my father,” becomes _lakenih_, etc.
The same is seen throughout the compound numerals from “eleven” onward.
The Cayuga and Tuscarora most nearly approach to the Mohawk in this use
of the _r_. A characteristic change of a different kind is seen in the
grammatical value of the initial _r_ in the Mohawk in relation to
gender. For example, _onkwe_ is applied to mankind, as distinguished
from _karyoh_, “the brute.” It becomes _ronkwe_, “man,” _yonkwe_
“woman.” So also _raxah_, “boy,” changes to _kaxha_, “girl”;
_rihyeinah_, “my son,” to _kheyenah_, “my daughter,” etc. The change of
gender is further illustrated in such examples as _raohih_, his apple;
_raoyen_, his arrow; _ahkohih_, her apple; _ahkoyen_, her arrow;
_raonahih_ (masc.), _aonahih_ (fem.), their apples; _raodiyenkwireh_
(masc.), _aodiyenkwireh_ (fem.), their arrows, etc. But this arrangement
of the formative element as a prefix is characteristic of American
languages, though not peculiar to them. Thus _Seshatsteaghseragwekough_,
Almighty God (literally, “Thou who hast all power, or strength”),
becomes, in the third person, _Rashatsteaghseragwekough_.

The vowel sounds are very limited. No distinction is apparent in any
Huron-Iroquois language between the _o_ and the _u_. In writing it the
_e_ and _u_ sounds are also often interchangeable. Where, for example,
_e_ is used in one set of the Tuscarora numerals supplied to me, another
substitutes _u_ for it wherever it is followed by an _n_; e.g. _enjih_,
_unjih_; _ahsenh_, _ahsunh_; _endah_, _undah_, etc. So also the word for
“man” is written for me in one case _onkwe_, and in another _unkweh_. It
requires an acute and practised ear to discriminate the niceties of
Indian pronunciation, and a no less practised tongue to satisfy the
critical native ear. Dr. Oronhyatekha, when pressed to define the value
of the _t_ sound in his own name, replied “It is not quite _t_ nor _d_.”
The name is compounded of _oronya_, “blue,” the word used in the
Prayer-Book for “heaven,” and _yodakha_, “burning.” In very similar
terms, Asikinack, an educated Odahwah Indian, when asked by me whether
we should say Ottawa, or Odawa—the Utawa of Morris’s “Canadian Boat
Song,”—replied that the sound lay between the two,—a nicety
discernible only by Indian ears.

The euphonic changes which mark the systematic transitions in the Mohawk
language, though by no means peculiar to it, cannot fail to awaken an
interest in the thoughtful student, who reflects on the social condition
of the people among whom this elaborated vehicle of thought was the
constraining power by means of which their chiefs and elders swayed the
nations of the Iroquois confederacy with an eloquence more powerful and
persuasive than that of many civilised nations. They have been
illustrated in the verb; but the same systematic application of euphonic
change through all the transitions of their vocabulary is seen in the
elaborate word-sentences, so characteristic of the extreme length to
which the incorporating mode of structure of the Turanian family of
languages is carried in many of those spoken by the American nations.
The habitual concentration of complex ideas in a single word has long
been recognised, not only as giving a peculiar character to many of the
Indian languages, but as one source of their adaptability to the aims of
native oratory. From the Massachusetts Bible of Eliot, Professor Whitney
quotes a word of eleven syllables; and Gallatin produces from the
Cherokee another of seventeen syllables. This frequently embodies a
descriptive holophrasm, and so aids the native rendering of novel
objects and ideas into a language, the vocabulary of which is
necessarily devoid of the requisite terms. But in such cases the
agglutinative process is obvious, and the elements of the compounded
word must be present to the mind of speaker and hearer. The English word
“almighty” is itself an example of the process. It becomes in the Mohawk
Prayer-Book _seshatsteaghseragwekonh_, from _seshatsteh_, “you are
strong,” and _ahkwekonh_, “all,” or “the whole.” When the missionaries
first undertook to render into the Mohawk language the Gospels and
Service-Books for Christian worship, it may be doubted if many of their
converts had ever seen a sheep. But they had to reproduce in Mohawk this
general confession: “We have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost
sheep.” They did it accordingly in this fashion:
_Teyagwaderyeadawearyesneoni yoegwathaharagwaghtha tsisahate tsiniyouht
yodiyadaghtoeouh teyodinakaroetoeha_, which may be literally rendered:
“We make a mistake, and get off the track where your road is, the same
as strayed animals with small horns.” The extreme literalness of the
rendering may probably strike the mind of the English reader in a way
that would not occur to the Indian, familiar with such descriptive
holophrasms. But it illustrates a difficulty with which Eliot was very
familiar when engaged on his Massachusetts Indian Bible. In translating,
for example, the song of Deborah and Barak, where the mother of Sisera
“cried through the lattice,” the good missionary looked in vain in the
Indian wigwam for anything that corresponded to the term. At length he
called an Indian and described to him a lattice as wicker-work, and
obtained in response a rendering of the text which literally meant: “The
mother of Sisera looked through an eel-pot.” It was the only kind of
wicker-work of which the Indian had any knowledge.

Evidences of an exceptional development of the æsthetic faculty among
the nations of the New World have already been noted; but the Iroquois
cannot be included among those specially noticeable for their imitative
powers, or in other ways furnishing evidence of any highly developed
artistic faculty. They cannot compare in this respect with the Zuñi or
others of the Pueblo Indians, among whom the arts of long-settled
agricultural communities have been developed for purposes of ornament as
well as utility; nor is their inferiority less questionable when we
compare them with some of the tribes of the north-west coast and the
neighbouring islands. Their languages confirm this; for while, as Mr.
Cushing has shown, the Zuñi language possesses many words relating to
art-processes, the Iroquois and Algonkin dialects supply such terms for
the most part only in descriptive holophrasms, and not in primitive
roots.

In Iroquois, the word _kar_ or _kare_ signifies “to paint” or “draw.”
The initial _k_ in Iroquois words is usually not radical, and so rarely
enters into composite terms. The root of _kar_, is _ar_ or _are_, which
added to _kaiata_, or _oiata_, “living thing, person, body,” makes
_kaiatare_, “image” or “likeness,” _i.e._ “pictured body,” or as a verb
“to paint” or “depict anything.” To this is added the verbal suffix _ta_
or _tha_, which occasionally becomes _stha_, and has different meanings,
causative and instrumental. The Mohawk supplies such words and terms of
art as _ahyeyatonh_, “to grave”; _rahyatonhs_, “an engraver”;
_ahyekonteke_, “to paint”; _rakonteks_, “a painter”; _s’hakoyatarha_,
“an artist”; _rahkaratahkwas_, “a carver”; _rateanakerahtha_, “a
modeller,” or “one who models figures in clay.” In the Iroquois version
of the Gospel of St. John, chap. viii. verse 6 reads thus: _Nok tanon ne
Iesos wathastsake ehtake nok rasnonsake_ (more correctly, _rasnonkenh_)
_warate wahiaton onwentsiake_, lit. “But instead Jesus bent low and with
hand used, wrote,” or “engraved, on the earth.” The version of the
second commandment in the Mohawk Prayer-Book affords another
illustration, in the holophrasm _asadatyaghdoenihseroenyea_. It is
compounded of _ahsonniyon_, “make”; _ahsadadonnyen_, “to make for
yourself”; _kayadonnihsera_, “an image” or “doll.” _Toghsa
asadatyaghdoenihseroenyea, shekonh othenouh taoesakyatayerea nene enekea
karouhyakouh, neteas eghtake oughweatsyakonh_, etc., lit. “Do not make
an image or idol for yourself, even anything like above in the sky, nor
below in the earth,” etc.

The word _kaiata_, or _oiata_, as already noted, signifies “a living
thing, person,” or “body”; _kakonsa_ or _okonsa_, is the “face” or
“visage”; and from those come many derivatives. Bruyas gives _gaiata_,
“a living thing”; _gaiatare_ (or _kaiatare_) “image,” and as a verb, “to
paint.” There is also _gaiatonni_, “a doll” or “puppet,” _i.e._ “a made
person,” from _oiata_ and _konnis_, “to make.” From the same root we may
probably derive _kiaton_, “to write,” as in the Iroquois Gospels,
_wahaiaton_, “wrote”; _kahiaton_, “it is written,” etc. The original
meaning was, no doubt, picture-writing, _i.e._ making images of things.
In the old Onondaga dictionary of the Jesuit Fathers is the word
_kiatonnion_, “I keep writing.” The same authority also gives
_guianatonh_ (_kianatonh_), “I paint,” apparently from another root,
_oiana_ (_kaiana_) “track, walk, gait,” etc., which has many
derivatives. The remarkable compass and minute nicety of expression
which the Iroquois grammar had acquired in the various languages of the
Six Nations, approximates to the wonderful expansion effected on the
crude Anglo-Saxon verb by the evolution of the auxiliaries out of vague
active verbs. This has been effected through the habitual resort to
oratory as a source of combined action in the councils of the tribes,
which constituted one of the most remarkable characteristics of this
representative Indian stock. In this respect the expressive flexibility
and rhetorical aptitude of the Iroquois languages stand out in striking
contrast to the limited compass of grammatical discrimination in those
of Europe’s Scandinavian and Teutonic races by whom the Roman empire was
overthrown. They had indeed their “tun-moot,” the council meeting of the
village community for justice and government; but the deliberations on
the moot-hill, though they embodied the germ of all later parliaments,
gave birth to no such development of language. It is when entering on
the history of the grand constitutional struggle for a free parliament
that Carlyle, in quaint irony, exclaims, or assigns to his apocryphal
Dryasdust the exclamation: “I have known nations altogether destitute of
printers’ types and learned appliances, with nothing better than old
songs, monumental stone heaps and quipo-thrums to keep record by, who
had truer memory of their memorable things. . . . The English, one can
discern withal, have been perhaps as brave a people as their neighbours;
perhaps, for valour of action and true hard labour in this earth, since
brave peoples were first made in it, there has been none braver any
where or any when:—but also, it must be owned, in stupidity of speech
they have no fellow!”[146] It suited the purpose of the satirist to
ignore for the moment that Shakespeare came of that same speechless
race. But in its earlier stage when any comparison with Indian nations
is permissible the irony is not extravagant.

But apart from the great compass of the Iroquois verb as illustrative of
grammatical development in the languages of unlettered nations, another
characteristic feature is the distinction between masculine and feminine
forms both in speaking of and to a man or woman. In the study of the
minute niceties of the Iroquois verb I have been largely indebted to Dr.
Oronhyatekha, and to the Rev. Isaac Bearfoot, both educated Mohawks.
When tracing out the comprehensive power of the Mohawk verb, I had in
view at the same time the recovery of evidences that the language might
supply of an inherent recognition of the artistic faculty. This is much
more strongly manifested in other American races in all stages of
progress, from the ingenious Haidahs and Tawatins of British Columbia,
and the Pueblo Indians of Arizona, to the semi-civilised nations of
Mexico and the lettered races of Central and Southern America.
Nevertheless the Iroquois recorded in primitive picture-writing the
deeds of their departed braves, and have left records in the same crude
hieroglyphics, such as the graven rock on Cunningham Island, Lake Erie.
Their pipes were carved, and their pottery modelled into representations
of familiar objects indicative of a habitual, though simple practice of
imitative art that could not fail to beget some counterpart in their
languages. Hence the choice of the verb _kyadarahste_, “to draw.”
_Kayadareh_, or _kyadareh_, signifies “a body or form _in_,” _e.g._ “in
a frame” or “group”; _kyadarastonh_, on the other hand, implies “a body”
or “form transferred _on_ to something,” _e.g._ a board or canvas. The
latter is therefore the more expressive and correct term to use for
drawing or painting, while it illustrates the process of augmenting the
vocabulary to meet the requirements of novel acquisitions in art. But
its chief value consists in its affording illustration not only of the
inherent capacity of the language to express with minute nicety of
detail the manifestations of an æsthetic faculty, as yet very partially
developed, but of the compass of its grammar to indicate every
distinctive variation of form expressive of time, place, action, object,
or subject. The latest results of philological research in this
direction are set forth in the _Lexique_ and the _Études philologique_
of Abbé Cuoq, and in an admirable _résumé_ in Mr. Horatio Hale’s
introduction to _The Iroquois Book of Rites_.[147] The systematic
processes by which the moods and tenses are indicated, either by changes
of termination or prefixed particles, or by both conjoined, are
carefully indicated by Mr. Hale; but he adds: “A complete grammar of
this speech, as full and minute as the best Sanscrit or Greek grammars,
would probably equal, and perhaps surpass those grammars in extent. The
unconscious forces of memory and of discrimination required to maintain
this complicated intellectual machine, and to preserve it constantly
exact, and in good working order, must be prodigious.” This tendency to
elaborate niceties of discrimination is in striking contrast to that of
the modern cultivated languages of Europe; and it is not without reason
that it is spoken of as a “complicated intellectual machine.” The
contrast, for example, between the Mohawk or other Iroquois verb, in all
its complex variations, and the extreme simplicity of the Anglo-Saxon
verb, with only its Indefinite and Perfect Tenses,—the former
predicated either of the present, or of a future time, and the latter of
any past time,—can scarcely fail to impress the thoughtful student who
keeps in view the relative civilisation of the Iroquois, and of the
English people at the period when Anglo-Saxon in its purely inflectional
stage was still the national language. The English verb has since then
acquired wonderful power and compass by means of the auxiliary verbs;
but its whole tendency is at variance with the elaborations in number
and gender of the Iroquois verb. These are only partially illustrated in
the above example, and might easily have been carried further. For
example, the rendering of the Active, Indicative, Past Progressive, with
Feminine Object is really a verb in the passive voice. To realise the
full inflectional niceties of such minute grammatical distinctions, the
two genders should be given; and also a mixed gender, _i.e._ the two
genders together, as the artists may consist of both sexes. This is
indicated in the two forms of the Future Indefinite, by
_eas’hakodiyadarahste_, “they (mas.) shall draw her,”
_eayaktodiyadarahste_, “they (fem.) shall draw her.” But a study of the
paradigm of the Mohawk verb will be found to illustrate in a variety of
interesting aspects the process of unpremeditated grammatical evolution
among an unlettered people, with whom the influence of oratory in the
councils of the tribe was one of their most powerful resources as a
preliminary to war.

The grand movement of the barbarian races of Northern Europe in the
fifth and following centuries is spoken of as the wandering of the
nations. The natural barriers of the continent seemed for a time to have
given way, and the unknown tribes from beyond the Baltic and from the
shores of the North Sea poured into the valley of the Danube, and swept
beyond the Alps and the Pyrenees to the furthest shores of the
Mediterranean Sea. The physical geography of the New World presents
fewer barriers to be surmounted. But if the student of North American
ethnology spread before him a map of the continent, and trace out the
wanderings of the Huron-Iroquois, he must revert in fancy to that remote
era when confederated Iroquois and Algonkins swept in triumphant fury
through the wasted valley of the Ohio, and repeated there what Goth and
Hun did for Europe, in Rome’s decline and fall. The long-settled and
semi-civilised Mound-Builders fled before the furious onset, leaving the
great river-valley a desolate waste. The barrier of an old-settled and
well-organised community, which, probably for centuries, had kept
America’s northern barbarians in check, was removed, and the fierce
Huron-Iroquois ranged at will over the eastern regions of the continent,
far southward of the North Carolina river-valleys, where the Nottoways
and Tuscaroras found a new home. As to the Nottoways, they appear to
have passed out of all remembrance as an Iroquois tribe; yet it is
suggestive of a long-forgotten chapter of Indian history, that the name
is still in use among the northern Algonkins as the designation of the
whole Iroquois stock. The Nottawa saga is doubtless a memorial of their
presence on the Georgian Bay, and the Notaway (_Náhdahwe_) river which
falls into Hudson Bay at James Bay, is so named in memory of
Huron-Iroquois wanderers into that Algonkin region.

Some portion of the ancient Huron stock tarried on the banks of the St.
Lawrence, in what is known to us now as the traditional cradleland of
those Canadian aborigines. Others found their way down the Hudson, or
selected new homes for themselves on the rivers and lakes that lay to
the west, till they reached the shores of Lake Erie; and all that is now
the populous region of Western New York was in occupation of the
Iroquois race. Feuds broke out between them and the parent stock in the
valley of the St. Lawrence. They meted out to those of their own race
the same vengeance as to strangers; and the survivors, abandoning their
homes, fled westward in search of settlements beyond their reach. The
Georgian Bay lay remote from the territory of the Iroquois, but the
nations of the Wyandot stock spread beyond it, until the Niagara
peninsula and the fertile regions between Lake Huron and Lake Erie were
occupied by them, and the Niagara river alone kept apart what were now
hostile tribes. But wherever the test of linguistic evidence can be
obtained their affinities are placed beyond dispute. On the other hand,
the multiplication of dialects is no less apparent, and in many ways
helps to throw light on the history of the race.

The old Huron mother tongue still partially preserves the labials which
have disappeared from all the Iroquois languages. The Mohawk approaches
nearest to this, and appears to be the main stem from whence other
languages of the Six Nations have branched off. But the diversities in
speech of the various members of the confederacy leave no room to doubt
the prolonged isolation of the several tribes, or “nations,” before they
were induced to recognise the claims of consanguinity, and to band
together for their common interest. Some of the noteworthy diversities
of tongue may be pointed out, such as the _r_ sound which predominates
in the Mohawk, while the _l_ takes its place in the Oneida. In the
Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, they are no longer heard. The last of
these reduces the primary forms to the narrowest range; but beyond, to
the westward, the old Eries dwelt, speaking, it may be presumed, a
modified Seneca dialect, but of which unfortunately no record survives.
As to the Tuscaroras and the Nottoways, if we knew nothing of their
history, their languages would suffice to tell that they had been
longest and most widely separated from the parent stock.

It is not without interest to note in conclusion that the main body of
the representatives of the nations of the ancient Iroquois league sprung
from the Huron-Iroquois stock of Eastern Canada,—after sojourning for
centuries beyond the St. Lawrence, until the traditions of the home of
the race had faded out of memory, or given place to mythic legends of
autochthon origin,—has returned to Canadian soil. At Caughnawaga, St.
Regis, Oka, and on the river St. Charles, in the Province of Quebec; at
Anderdon, the Bay of Quinté, and above all, on the Grand river, in
Ontario; the Huron-Iroquois are now settled to the number of upwards of
8000, without reckoning other tribes. If, indeed, the surviving
representatives of the aborigines in the old provinces of the Canadian
Dominion are taken as a whole, they number upwards of 34,000, apart from
the many thousands in Manitoba, British Columbia, and the North-west
Territories. But the nomad Indians must be classed wholly apart from the
settlers on the Grand river reserves. The latter are a highly
intelligent, civilised people, more and more adapting themselves to the
habits of the strangers who have supplanted them; and they are destined
as certainly to merge into the predominant race, as the waters of their
ancient lakes mingle and are lost in the ocean. Yet the process is no
longer one of extinction but of absorption; and will assuredly leave
traces of the American autochthones, similar to those which still in
Europe perpetuate some ethnical memorial of Allophylian races.

-----

[111] _Types of Mankind_, p. 291.

[112] _The Jesuits in North America_, p. 43.

[113] _The Indian Races of North and South America_, p. 286.

[114] _Magazine of American History_, vol. x. p. 479.

[115] _Archæologia Americana_, vol. ii. p. 173.

[116] _Indian Migrations_, p. 17.

[117] _Whitney’s Study of Language_, p. 348.

[118] _The Tutelo Tribe and Language_, p. 9.

[119] _Relation_, 1641, p. 72.

[120] _Peter Jones and the Ojibway Indians_, p. 31.

[121] _The Life and Growth of Languages_, p. 259.

[122] Hale’s _Indian Migrations as evidenced by Language_, p. 3.

[123] _Anthropology_, by Dr. Paul Topinard: Eng. Trans., p. 480.

[124] “The Huron Race and Head-form:” N. S. _Canadian Journal_, vol.
xiii. p. 113.

[125] _Crania Americana_, p. 195.

[126] _The Jesuits in North America_, p. 47.

[127] _The Iroquois Book of Rites_, p. 78.

[128] _Ibid._, pp. 21, 22.

[129] _League of the Iroquois_, p. 4.

[130] _Notes on the Iroquois_, p. 51.

[131] _Lectures on the Science of Language_, 5th ed. p. 58.

[132] _Notes on the Iroquois_, p. 52.

[133] _Origin and Traditional History of the Wyandotts_, p. 4.

[134] _Pioneers of France in the New World_, p. 367.

[135] _League of the Iroquois_, p. 76.

[136] _The Jesuits in North America_, p. 441 note.

[137] _History of the Indian Tribes_, vol. ii. p. 78.

[138] “Huron Race and Head-form,” _Canadian Journal_, N. S., vol. xiii.
p. 113.

[139] “Some American Illustrations of the Evolution of new Varieties of
Man,” _Journal of Anthropology_, May 1879.

[140] The Huron vocabulary prepared by the Jesuit Father, Chaumonot, is,
as I have recently learned, still in existence, and will, I hope, be
speedily published under trustworthy editorial supervision.

[141] _The League of the Iroquois_, p. 2.

[142] _Archæologia Americana_, vol. ii. p. 79.

[143] _Indian Migrations_, p. 22.

[144] _Life and Growth of Language_, p. 261.

[145] _Lectures on the Science of Language_, 2nd series, p. 162.

[146] Cromwell’s _Letters and Speeches_, Introduction.

[147] See p. 110.




                                  VII
                         HYBRIDITY AND HEREDITY


FOUR centuries have now completed their course since the discovery of
America revealed to Europe an indigenous people, distinct in many
respects from all the races of the Old World. There, as in the older
historic areas, man is indeed seen in various stages: from the rudest
condition of savage life, without any knowledge of metallurgy, and
subsisting solely by the chase, to the comparatively civilised nations
of Mexico, Central America, and Peru, familiar with some of the most
important arts, skilled in agriculture, and with a system of writing
embodying the essential germs of intellectual progress.

The western hemisphere, which was the arena of such ethnical
development, had lain, for unnumbered centuries, apart from Asia and
Europe; and so its various nationalities and races were left to work out
their own destinies, and to develop in their own way whatever inherent
capacities for progress pertained to them. But this done, it was
abruptly brought into intimate relations with Europe by the maritime
discoveries which marked the closing years of the fifteenth century.

From that date a constant transfer of races from the Old to the New
World has been taking place, alike by voluntary and enforced migration;
with results involving a series of undesigned yet exhaustive
ethnological experiments carried out on the grandest scale. There alike
has been tested to what extent the European and the African are affected
by migration to new regions, and by admixture with diverse races. There
can now be witnessed the results of a transference, for upwards of three
centuries, of indigenous populations of the Old World to a continent
where they have been subjected to many novel geographical, climatic, and
social influences. There, too, has taken place, on a scale without any
parallel elsewhere, an intimate and prolonged intermixture of some of
the most highly cultured races of Europe with purely savage tribes,
under circumstances which have tended to place them, for the time being,
on an equality as hunters, trappers, or explorers of their vast forest
and prairie wilds.

The whole question of heredity, its phenomena and results, is now in
process of review under the novel phases that affect anthropology; and
in this view the illustrations which the New World supplies in reference
to hybridity and absorption have a distinctive value. The anthropologist
recognises various elements marking diversity of race in stature,
colour, proportion of limbs, conformation of skull, colour and other
characteristics of eye and hair. He also notes no less distinctively the
diverse intellectual and moral aptitudes. Noticeable as are the
diversities of national type in Europe, the range of variation is
trifling when compared with the conditions under which the White, Red,
and Black races have met and intermingled in the West Indies and in
North and South America. The cultured and civilised races of Europe have
there united their blood with the African negro and the native Indian
savage; and both admixtures have been carried out on so great a scale as
to furnish indisputable data for determining the question how far the
half-breed is a mean between the two parents; or if there is any
inevitable preponderance of one of them, with a tendency to revert to
one or the other type. The intermarriage of fair and dark races of the
Old World has gone on throughout the whole historic period, with
apparently resultant intermediate types. The Iberians and “black Celts”
of Western Europe, and the dark brunettes of the Mediterranean shores,
stand out in marked contrast to the blondes of the Baltic shores.
Whatever may be said of other diversities of race, Professor Huxley is
led to the opinion that the Melanochroi, or dark whites, are not a
distinct group, but the metis resultant from just such a mixture of his
“Australioids” and his “Xanthocroi,” as has been going on for centuries
on the American continent between the blondes of Europe and the native
olive-skinned American, and between both of them and the dark African
race.

Yet, on the other hand, many anthropologists insist on the survival of
distinct types, even among approximate races, as shown in the remarkable
persistency of the Jewish type, notwithstanding the modifications that
have resulted from intermarriage with fair and dark races of many lands.
Dr. F. von Luschan, in describing the Tachtadschy,[148] calls attention
to the fact that the Greeks of Lycia represent a mixture of two distinct
types. From this he draws the following inference: “At first glance it
appears remarkable and hardly probable that two disparate types should
remain distinct, although intermarriage has continued without
interruption through thousands of years. But we must acknowledge that it
would be just as remarkable if continued intercrossing should result in
the production of a middle type (_Mischform_). It is true that at the
present time the greater number of anthropologists appear to be of the
opinion that middle forms originate wherever two distinct types live in
close contact for a long time. If this is true at all, it is true only
in a very limited sense, and still needs to be proven. _A priori_, we
rather ought to expect that one or the other of these types would soon
succumb in the struggle for existence. It would become extinct, and give
way to the other type; or both types might continue to co-exist,
although intercrossing might go on for centuries. They would undergo no
other changes than those which each singly, uninfluenced by the other,
would have undergone by the agency of physical causes.”

The evidence we possess of the physical characteristics of the
succession of races in Europe from palæolithic times is already
considerable; and in reference to neolithic and later periods is ample.
Within the recent historic period of the decline and fall of Rome, and
the influx of Northern and Asiatic barbarians, the evidence of admixture
of race is abundant; and the physical, intellectual, and moral changes
resulting therefrom have stamped their ineffaceable impress on history.
But the conditions under which the meeting of the Aryans with
Allophylians, Neolithians, or other prehistoric races took place in
older centuries, can only be surmised; and the many analogies resulting
from the intrusion of the European races on the aborigines of the
western hemisphere are calculated to render useful aid in determining
some definite results.

History has familiarised us with the idea of sovereign and subject
races. The monuments of Egypt perpetuate the fact from its remote dawn,
Punic, Roman, Gothic, Frank, Saracenic, and Scandinavian races, have in
turn subdued others, and made them subservient to their will. Evidence
of a different kind, but little less definite, points to the intrusion
into Europe in prehistoric times of races superior alike in physical
type, and in the arts upon which progress depends, to the Autochthones,
or primitive occupants of the soil. Further indications have been
assumed to point to the contemporaneous presence, in primeval Britain,
as elsewhere, of races of diverse type, and apparently in the relation
of lord and serf: a natural if not indeed inevitable consequence of the
intrusion of a superior race of conquerors.

But in the New World the inaptitude of the native race for useful
serfdom largely contributed to the introduction there of other and very
diverse races from Africa and Asia; so that now within a well-defined
North American area, indigenous populations of the three continents of
the Old World are displacing its native races. Still more, all three
meet there under circumstances which inevitably lead to their
intermixture with one another, and with the native races.

Various terms, such as Iberian, Silurian, Canstadt, Cimbric, Finnish,
and Turanian, have been applied to primitive types as expressive of the
hypothesis of their origin. But on turning to the American continent we
see vast regions occupied exclusively until a comparatively recent
period by tribes of savage hunters, upon whom some of the most civilised
races of Europe have intruded, with results in many respects so
strikingly accordant with the supposed evolution of the Melanochroi of
the Old World, that we seem to look upon a series of ethnological
experiments prolonged through centuries, with synthetic results to a
large extent confirmatory of previous inductions.

The intermingling of very diverse races at present taking place on the
American continent includes some of widely diverse types. There is seen
the Portuguese in Brazil; the Spaniard in Peru, Mexico, Central America,
and in Cuba; the African in the West Indies and the Southern States; the
Chinese on the Pacific; the Frenchman on the St. Lawrence; the German,
the Italian, the Norwegian, the Icelander, the Celt, and the
Anglo-Saxon: all subjected to novel influences, necessarily testing the
results of a change of climate, of diet, and of social habits, on the
ethnical character of each. There too, alike in the Red and the Black
races, we can study the results of hybridity carried out on a scale
adequate to determine many important points calculated to throw light on
the origin and perpetuation of diverse races of mankind.

The growth of a race of hybrid African blood has been one of the results
of the substitution at an early date of imported negro slaves to supply
the place of the rapidly disappearing Indians who perished under the
exactions of their taskmasters. According to careful data set forth in
the United States census for 1850, the whole number of native Africans
imported cannot have exceeded 400,000. At present the coloured
race—hybrids chiefly—of African blood numbers nearly 7,000,000. In
1715 there were 58,000 negroes in British America; in 1775, when the
revolution broke out, there were 501,102. After the epoch of
independence the increase became more rapid. In 1790 the numbers were
757,208; in 1800, 893,041; in 1810, 1,191,364. At the date of
emancipation in 1865 there were, in round numbers, in slavery,
4,000,000; and at the census in 1880 the negro population in the United
States had risen to 6,580,793;[149] and in the returns thus far
published relative to the later census of 1890, in the Southern States
alone they are reported to number 6,996,116; so that with the added
numbers of the Northern States and Canada they can fall little short of
8,000,000. Of this numerous intrusive race, the larger number are
hybrids; and, as was inevitable, they include some small proportion of
mixed negro and Indian blood.[150] But it is the Metis, or White and Red
half-breed, that constitutes the subject of special interest here.

Various causes have tended to beget more friendly relations between the
older colonists of New France, and at a later date between those of
British America and the native Indian race, than have existed either in
Spanish America or the United States.

The great North-West, with its warlike Chippeways, Crees, Sioux, and
Blackfeet; and beyond the Rocky Mountains its Tinné, Babeens, Clalams,
Newatees, Chinooks, Cowlitz, and numerous other native tribes; had till
recently been under the control of the all-powerful fur-trading company
of Hudson Bay. The interests of the fur-traders stimulated them to fair
and honourable dealing with the native tribes; and while they had no
motive to encourage the Indians to abandon their nomadic life for the
civilised habits of a settled people, or even to interpose in the wars
which varied the monotony of the Indians’ wild hunter-life, they had so
thoroughly won the confidence of the natives, that tribes at open enmity
with each other were ready to repose equal confidence in the Hudson Bay
factors.

The late Paul Kane, author of _Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians
of North America_, informed me that when travelling beyond the Rocky
Mountains he found no difficulty in transmitting his correspondence
home, even when among the rudest Flathead savages. His packet, entrusted
to one of the tribe, was accompanied with a small gift of tobacco, and
the request to have it forwarded to Fort Garry, or other Hudson Bay
fort. The messenger—Cowlitz, Chinook, Nasquallie, or other
Indian,—carried it to the frontier of his own hunting-grounds, and then
sold it for so much tobacco to some Indian of another tribe; by him it
was passed on, by like process of barter, till it crossed the Rocky
Mountains into the territory of the Blackfeet, the Crees, and so onward
to its destination, in full confidence that the officers of the Hudson
Bay Fort would sustain the credit of the White Medicine-man (for so the
painter was regarded), and redeem the packet at its full value in
tobacco or other equivalent.

The personal interests of the little bands of European fur-traders thus
settled in the heart of a wilderness, and surrounded by savage hunters,
no less strongly prompted them to exclude the maddening fire-water from
the vast regions under their control. Guns and ammunition, kettles,
axes, knives, beads, and other trinkets, with the no less prized
tobacco, were abundantly provided for barter. Even nails and the iron
hoops of their barrels were traded with the Indians, and displaced the
primitive tomahawk and arrow head of flint or stone. Thus, curiously,
the Stone period of a people still in the most primitive stage of
barbarism has been superseded by the use of metals obtained solely by
barter, and without any advance either in the knowledge of metallurgy,
or in the mastery of the arts which lie at the foundation of all
civilisation. Long before the advent of Europeans, the Chippeways along
the shores of Lake Superior had been familiar with the native copper
which abounds there in the condition of pure metal. But they knew it
only as a kind of malleable stone; nor have they even now learned the
application of fire in their simple metallurgic processes. The root of
their names for iron and copper is the same abstract term, _wahbik_,
used only in compound words, and apparently in the sense of rock or
stone. _Pewahbik_ is iron; _ozahwahbik_, copper, literally the yellow
stone. It formed no part of the Hudson Bay traders’ aim to advance him
beyond the stage of a savage hunter. It was incompatible with the
interests of the fur-trader to teach him any higher use of the rich
prairie land than that of a wilderness inhabited by fur-bearing animals,
or a grazing ground for the herds of buffalo which furnished their
annual supply of pemmican; or to familiarise him with more of the
borrowed arts of civilisation than helped to facilitate the accumulation
of peltries in the factory stores. Hence the intrusive Europeans and the
native tribes met on common ground, engaged in the same pursuits, all
tending to foster the habits of hunter-life; and so presenting a close
analogy to the condition of Europe when, in its Neolithic age, its rude
hunter tribes were invaded by the Aryans. Thus engaged to a large extent
in the same pursuits, the Whites and Indians of the Canadian North-West
have dwelt together for successive generations on terms of comparative
equality, and with results of curious interest, hereafter referred to,
in relation to the intermingling of the races.

In the long-settled provinces of Canada it has been otherwise. There the
aborigines had to be gathered together on suitable reserves, and induced
to accommodate themselves in some degree to the habits of an industrious
agricultural population; or to be driven out, to wander off into the
great hunting-grounds of the uncleared West. The exterminating native
wars, which preceded the settlement of Upper Canada, greatly facilitated
this; and the tribes with which the English colonists of Ontario have
had to deal have been for the most part immigrants, not greatly less
recent than themselves. As to the Six Nation Indians settled on the
Grand River and at the Bay of Quinté (the most numerous and the farthest
advanced in civilisation of all the Indians in the British provinces),
they are a body of loyalist refugees who followed the fortunes of their
English allies on the declaration of independence by the revolted
Colonies; and there is now in use, at the little Indian Church at
Tuscarora, the silver Communion Plate presented to their ancestors while
still in the valley of the Mohawk, in the State of New York, the gift of
Her Majesty Queen Anne, “to her Indian Chappel of the Mohawks.”[151]

But the civilisation which has thus resulted from prolonged and intimate
relations with the Whites, has been accompanied by an inevitable
admixture of blood, of which the results are abundantly manifest in the
physical characteristics of the Indian settlers, both on the Grand river
and at the Bay of Quinté. The system of adopting members of other
tribes, including even those of their vanquished foes, to recruit their
own numbers, was practised by many of the North American tribes, and was
familiar to the Iroquois, or Indians of the Five Nations, as they were
styled before the admission of the Tuscaroras to their confederacy. In
1649, for example, the survivors of two of the Huron towns which they
had ravaged, besought the favour of the victors, and were adopted into
the Seneca nation. Nor did extreme differences of race interfere with
affiliation, as in the case of children kidnapped from the White
colonists in their vicinity. One interesting example of the latter
suffices to illustrate the extent to which such a process tended to
affect the ethnical purity of the race.

In the year 1779, while the Mohawks still dwelt in their native valley
in the State of New York, Ste-nah, a white girl, then about twelve years
of age, was captured in one of their marauding expeditions, and adopted
into the tribe. In 1868, while still living, she was described to me by
an educated Mohawk India, as a full-blood _Sko-ha-ra_, or Dutchwoman.
She grew up among her captors, accompanied the tribe on their removal
from the Mohawk valley to the shores of the Bay of Quinté, and married
one of the Mohawk braves. She had reached mature years, and was the
mother of Indian children, when an aged stranger visited the reserve in
search of his long-lost daughter. He had heard of a captive white woman
who survived among the emigrant Mohawks there, and was able, by certain
marks, and the scar of a wound received in childhood, to identify his
long-lost daughter. But the discovery came too late. As my Mohawk
informant told me, she had got an Indian heart. She had, indeed, lost
her native tongue; had acquired the habits and sympathies of her adopted
people; and coldly repelled the advances of her aged father, who in vain
recalled his long-lost daughter Christina in the Mohawk white-blood,
_Ste-nah_. If the date of her capture and her estimated age can be
relied on, she must have been in her hundred and fifth year at the time
of her death, in December 1871. I have received through one of her
grandsons—himself a Mohawk chief,—a genealogical table of her
descendants, from which it appears that there are at the present time
fifty-seven of them living and twenty-three dead. It is thus apparent,
that by the adoption of a single White captive into the tribe, there
are, in the fourth generation, fifty-seven survivors out of eighty
members of the tribe, all of them of hybrid character.

The influence of a single case of admixture of White blood, thus
followed out to its results in the fourth generation, suffices to show
how largely those tribes must be affected who dwell for any length of
time in close vicinity to White settlers, and in intimate friendly
relations with them. The earlier French and English colonists, like the
Hudson Bay traders of later times, were mostly young adventurers,
without wives, and readily entering into alliance with the native women.
The children of such unions were admitted to a perfect equality with the
Whites, when trained up in their settlements; and in the older period of
French and English rivalry the Indians were dealt with on very different
terms from those with which they are now regarded, though even yet some
memory of older relations survives.

During the wars between the French and English colonists to the north
and south of the St. Lawrence, in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, the alliance of neighbouring Indian tribes was courted; and
the traditions of the fidelity of the Hurons to the French, and the
loyalty of the Iroquois to the English, are cherished as incentives to
the fulfilment of obligations entered into on behalf of the little
remnant of the Huron nation remaining on the river St. Charles, below
Quebec; and to a liberal and generous policy towards the Six Nation
Indians settled on the Grand river and elsewhere in Western Canada.

But also in the primitive simplicity of border life, the half-civilised
Indian and the rude settler meet on common ground; and in some cases the
friendly relations established between them have survived the more
settled condition of agricultural progress in the clearings. In this
respect the older colonists of Quebec fraternised far more readily with
the native population than has been the case with English settlers. The
relations in which the early French colonists stood to the Indians of
Lower Canada bore more resemblance to those of the fur-traders of the
North-West in later times, and were of a kindlier nature than those of
the intrusive European emigrants of the present century. Prior to the
accession of Louis XIV. to the throne, the French possessions in the New
World had been regarded as little more than a hunting-ground to be
turned to the same account as the Hudson Bay Company’s territory; and
the peopling of Canada had given little promise of permanent
colonisation. Priests and nuns alone varied the usual class of trading
adventurers who resort to a young colony. But soon after the King
reached his majority, a systematic shipment of emigrants to Canada was
organised under the direction of Colbert; sundry companies of soldiers
were disbanded in the colony; and then, at last, the necessity of
finding wives for the settlers was recognised. Thereupon a system of
female emigration, with bounties on marriage, was established. Colbert,
writing to the Canadian Intendant, tells him that the prosperity of the
people, and all that is most dear to them as colonists, depend upon
their securing the marriage of youths not later than their eighteenth or
nineteenth year to girls at fourteen or fifteen; and the next step was
to impose a fine on the father of a family who neglected to marry his
children when they reached the respective ages of twenty and sixteen.

Up to this period the native women had chiefly supplied wives for the
colonists; nor was this element now ignored or slighted. In the _Mémoire
sur l’Etat Présent du Canada_, 1667, it is stated: “At this time it was
believed that the Indians, mingled with the French, might become a
valuable part of the population. The reproductive qualities of Indian
women therefore became an object of attention to Talon, the Royal
Intendant; and he reports that they impair their fertility by nursing
their children longer than is needful; but, he adds, ‘this obstacle to
the speedy building up of the colony can be overcome by regulations of
police.’” Thus it is apparent that the strongest encouragement was given
to such alliances.

The religious element, moreover, among a purely Roman Catholic
population, helped to foster a sense of equality in the case of the
Christianised Indian; while the gentler and less progressive habits of
the French habitants have tended to prevent direct collision with the
Indians settled in their midst. Hence in the province of Quebec,
half-breeds, and men and women of partial Indian blood, are frequently
to be met with in all ranks of life; and slighter traces, discernible in
the hair, the eye, the cheek-bone, and peculiar mouth, as well as
certain traits of Indian character, suggest to the close observer remote
indications of the same admixture of blood.

But while favouring influences in national character, political
institutions, and religion, all united to encourage a more friendly
intercourse between the native and European population of Lower Canada,
the circumstances attendant on the settlement of new clearings have
everywhere led in some degree to similar results; and experience
abundantly proves the impossibility of preserving distinct two races
living in close proximity to each other.

Throughout the old provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, and the Maritime
Provinces, where the aborigines are mostly congregated on reserves,
under the charge of Government officers of the Indian Department, they
appear, with few exceptions, to have passed the critical stage of
transition from a nomadic state to that of assimilation to the habits of
settled industry of the Whites.

The native tribes of the old provinces of the Dominion, though bearing a
variety of names, may all be classed under the two essentially distinct
groups of Algonkins and Iroquois. Under the former head properly rank
the Micmacs, and other tribes of Prince Edward’s Island, Nova Scotia,
and New Brunswick; and the Chippeways, including Ottawas, Mississagas,
Pottawattomies, etc., of Ontario. Under the other head have to be placed
not only the Six Nations—Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas,
and Tuscaroras,—but also the Wyandots, or Hurons, both of Upper and
Lower Canada; though among the one were found the faithful allies of the
English, while the other adhered persistently to the French; and to the
deadly enmity between them was due the expulsion of the Hurons from
their ancient territory on the Georgian Bay, and the extermination of
all but an insignificant remnant, including the refugees on the St.
Charles river, below Quebec.

The Canadian census of 1871 includes the aborigines in the enumeration
of the population of the Dominion, and states the grand total of the
Indians of the Provinces of Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New
Brunswick, at 23,035.

That the Indian population, gathered on their own reserved lands under
the care of Government superintendents, is not diminishing in numbers,
appears to be universally admitted. But as, at the same time, the pure
race is being largely replaced by younger generations of mixed blood,
the results cannot be looked upon as encouraging the hope of
perpetuating the native Indian race under such exceptional conditions;
nor can it be overlooked that the increase is partly begot by the
addition of a foreign element. At best the results point rather to such
a process of absorption as appears to be the inevitable result wherever
a race, alike inferior in numbers and in progressive energy, escapes
extirpation at the hands of the intruders.

In the boyhood of the older generation of Toronto, hundreds of Indians,
including those of the old Mississaga tribe, were to be seen about the
streets. Now, at rare intervals, two or three squaws, in round hats,
blue blankets, and Indian leggings, attract attention less by their
features than their dress; for in complexion they are nearly as white as
those of pure European descent. The same is the case on all the oldest
Indian reserves. The Hurons of Lorette, whose forefathers were brought
to Lower Canada after the massacre of their nation by the Iroquois in
1649, are reported to have considerably increased in numbers in the
interval between 1844 and the last census. But while the Commissioners
refer to them as a band of Indians “the most advanced in civilisation in
the whole of Canada,” they add that “they have, by the intermixture of
White blood, so far lost the original purity of race as scarcely to be
considered as Indians.” In their case this admixture with the European
race has been protracted through a period of upwards of two centuries,
till they have lost their Indian language, and substituted for it a
French patois. Were it not for their hereditary right to a share in
certain Indian funds, which furnishes an inducement to perpetuate their
descent from the Huron nation, they would long since have merged in the
common stock. Yet the results would not thereby have been eradicated,
but only lost sight of. Their baptismal registers and genealogical
traditions supply the record of a practical, though undesigned,
experiment as to the influence of hybridity on the perpetuation of the
race, and show the mixed descendants of Huron and French blood still,
after a lapse of upwards of two centuries, betraying no traces of a
tendency towards infertility or extinction.

In the Maritime Provinces the Micmacs are the representatives of the
aboriginal owners of the soil. Small encampments of them may be
encountered in summer on the Lower St. Lawrence, busily engaged in the
manufacture of staves, barrel-hoops, axe-handles, and baskets of various
kinds, which they dispose of, with much shrewdness, to the traders of
Quebec, and the smaller towns on the Gulf. So far as I have seen, the
pure-blood Micmac has more of the dark-red, in contrast to the prevalent
olive hue, than other Indians. But the Micmacs of Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick reveal the same evidence of inevitable amalgamation with the
predominant race as elsewhere. The Rev. S. T. Rand—a devoted missionary
labouring among the Indians of Nova Scotia,—on being asked to obtain a
photograph of a pure-blood representative of the tribe, had some
difficulty in finding a single example, and stated that not one is to be
found among the younger generation.

In the old provinces the Indians are in the minority; but the same
process is apparent where little bands of pioneers leave the settled
provinces and states to begin new clearings, or to engage in the
adventurous life of hunters and trappers in the far West. The hunter
finds a bride among the native women; and when at length the wild tribe
recedes before the growing clearing and the diminished supplies of game,
it not only leaves behind a half-breed population as the nucleus of the
civilised community, but it also carries away with it a like element,
increasingly affecting the ethnical character of the whole tribe.

The same circumstances have continued, in every frontier settlement, to
involve the inevitable production of a race of half-breeds. Even the
cruellest exterminations of hostile tribes have rarely been carried out
so effectually as to preclude this. In New England, for example, after
the desolating war of 1637, which resulted in the extinction of the
Pequot tribe, Winthrop thus summarily records the policy of the victors:
“We sent the male children to Bermuda by Mr. William Pierce, and the
women and maid children are disposed about in the towns.” Such a female
population could not grow up in a young colony, with the wonted
preponderance of males, and leave no traces in subsequent generations.

Seeing, then, that the meeting of two types of humanity so essentially
distinct as the European and the native Indian of America, has, for
upwards of three centuries, led to the production of a hybrid race, it
becomes an interesting question, what has been the ultimate result? Has
the mixed breed proved infertile, and so disappeared; has it perpetuated
a new and permanent type of intermediate characteristics; or has it been
absorbed into the predominant European race without leaving traces of
this foreign element? These questions are not without their significance
even in reference to the policy in dealing with the Indian settlements
in old centres of population; for the traces of this intermingling of
the races of the Old and New World are neither limited to frontier
settlements nor to Indian reserves.

Among Canadians of mixed blood there are men at the Bar and in the
Legislature, in the Church, in the medical profession, holding rank in
the army, in aldermanic and other civic offices, and engaged in active
trade and commerce. A curious case was recently brought before the law
courts in Ontario. A son of the chief of the Wyandot Indians settled in
Western Canada, left the reserves of his tribe, engaged in business, and
acquired a large amount of real estate and personal property. He won for
himself, moreover, such general respect that he was elected Reeve of
Anderdon by a considerable majority over a White candidate. Thereupon
his rival applied to have him unseated, on the plea that a person of
Indian blood was not a citizen in the eye of the law. Fortunately the
judge took a common-sense view of the case, and decided that as he held
a sufficient property-qualification within the county, the election was
valid.

That an Indian ceases to be such in the eye of the law, and in all
practical relations to society, when he becomes an educated industrious
member of the general community, and competes not only for its
privileges but for its highest honours, is inevitable. But it is not
with the Indian as with the Negro mixed race. The privileges and the
disabilities of the Indian ward may both be cast off; but a certain
degree of romance attaches to Indian blood, when accompanied with the
culture and civilisation of the European. The descendants of Brant and
other distinguished native chiefs are still proud to claim their
lineage, where the physical traces of such an ancestry would escape the
eye of a common observer. Traces of Indian descent may be recognised
among ladies of attractive refinement and intelligence, and with certain
mental as well as physical traits which add to the charm of their
society. Similar indications of the blood of the aborigines are familiar
to Canadians in the gay assemblies of a Governor-General’s receptions,
in the halls of Legislature, in the diocesan synods and other
ecclesiastical assemblies, and amongst the undergraduates of Canadian
universities.

But the condition of men and women of mixed blood, admitted to all the
privileges of citizenship, and mingling in perfect equality with all
other members of the community, is in striking contrast to that of the
occupants of the Indian reserves, where they are settled, for the most
part in isolated bands, in the midst of a progressive White population.
Such a condition is manifestly an unfavourable one, and one, moreover,
which cannot be regarded as other than transitional. They are
confessedly dealt with as wards, in a state of pupilage.

A growing sense of the necessity for some modification of this system
has been felt for a considerable time; and in 1867 “An Act to encourage
the gradual Civilisation of the Indian Tribes,” received the royal
assent. This Act avowedly aims at the “gradual removal of all legal
distinctions between them and Her Majesty’s other Canadian subjects; and
to facilitate the acquisition of property, and of the rights
accompanying it, by such individual members of the said tribes as shall
be found to desire such encouragement, and to have deserved it.”

That the ultimate result of this will involve the disappearance of the
Indian as a distinct race is inevitable. He will be absorbed into the
dominant race; not to be displaced or driven out of the community; but
to be perpetuated, as the precursors of the blonde Aryans of Europe
still survive in the “dark Whites” that now, in undisputed equality,
enjoy all the rights of citizenship of a common race. They will indeed
constitute but a small remnant of the nations of Euramerican blood. That
whole tribes and peoples of the American aborigines have been
exterminated in the process of colonisation of the New World is no more
to be questioned, than that a similar result followed from the Roman
conquest and colonisation of Britain. Nevertheless, long and careful
study of the subject has satisfied me that a larger amount of absorption
of the Indian into the Anglo-American race has occurred than is
generally recognised.

Fully to appreciate this, it is necessary to retrace the course of
events by which America has been transferred to the descendants of
European colonists. At every fresh stage of colonisation, or of
pioneering into the wild West, the work has necessarily been
accomplished by hardy young adventurers, or the hunters or trappers of
the clearing. It is rare indeed for such to be accompanied by wives or
daughters. Where they find a home they take to themselves wives from
among the native women; and their offspring share in whatever advantages
the father transplants with him to this home in the wilderness. To such
mingling of blood, in its least favourable aspects, the prejudices of
the Indian present little obstacle. Henry, in his narrative of travel
among the Cristineaux on Lake Winipagoos upwards of a century ago, after
describing the dress and allurements of the women, adds: “One of the
chiefs assured me that the children borne by their women to Europeans
were bolder warriors and better hunters than themselves.” This idea
recurs in various forms. The half-breed lumberers and trappers are
valued throughout Canada for their hardihood and patient endurance; the
half-breed hunters and trappers are equally esteemed in the Hudson Bay
territory; and beyond their remotest forts Dr. Kane reported, as his
experience within the Arctic circle, that “the half-breeds of the coast
rival the Esquimaux in their powers of endurance.”

Mr. Charles Horetskey, in his _Canada on the Pacific_, after remarking
on the well-known fact that Japanese junks have been known to drift on
to the Pacific coast of America, and so contribute new elements of
Mongolian character to the native population, thus proceeds to notice
another element of hybridity. “There is,” he says, “another mixture in
the blood on the west coast of Vancouver Island, and a very marked
one—the Spanish, owing to the Spaniards having long had a settlement at
Nootka. Strangely enough, the Spanish cast of countenance does not show
in the women, who have the same flat features as their sisters to the
eastward. Nor is it so noticeable among the young men, many of whom,
however, have beards—a most unusual appendage among American Indians,
and of course traceable to the cause referred to. The features are more
observable among the older men, many of whom, with their long, narrow,
pointed faces and beards, would, if washed, present very fair models for
Don Quixote.” Within the region of Alaska, Russian traders have
contributed another element to the mingling of races; and Mr. Wm. H.
Dall, in his _Alaska and its Resources_, states specifically the number
of the Creoles or half-breeds of that region as 1421. But the present
condition of society there favours their increase. In 1842, they were,
for the first time, qualified to enter the Church as priests; and in
1865, the American Expedition found Ivan Pavloff, the son of a Russian
father and a native woman of Kenai, filling the office of Bidarshik, or
commander of the post at Nulato. He was legally married to a
full-blooded Indian woman, by whom he had a large family.

Another intrusive element, that of the Asiatic Mongol, has awakened
alarm for the possible future of the white race of settlers, both in
America and in Australia. In 1875 the number of Chinese in California
amounted to 130,000; 19,000 arrived in a single year. They speedily made
their way to the New England States, and to Eastern Canada; till it has
been deemed politic to forbid further immigration. It is the intrusion
of a type approximating to the American Mongol, and so has a special
interest in its bearing on the ethnology of the continent; for here we
see the approximate types of Asia and America brought into contact, it
may be as descendants of a common stock, separated through unnumbered
centuries by untraversed oceans.

The Indians of Vancouver Island and British Columbia were estimated in
1860 to number 75,000. The observations of Paul Kane in 1846 showed that
a considerable half-breed population already existed then in the
vicinity of every Hudson Bay fort. But at the later date the reported
richness of the gold-diggings was attracting hundreds of settlers; and
as usual, in such cases, nearly all males. The admixture of blood with
the native population consequent on such a social condition is
inevitable; and though such a population is least likely to leave behind
it any permanent traces among settled civilised colonists, yet the
condition of things which it presents illustrates the social life of
every frontier settlement of the New World. Everywhere the colonisation
of the outlying territory begins with a migration of males, and by and
by the cry comes from Australia, Canada, and elsewhere, for stimulated
female emigration. It is a state of things old as the dispersion of the
human race, and typified in such ancient legends as the Roman Rape of
the Sabines. The abstract of the United States census of 1860 showed
that the old settled states of New England are affected even more than
European countries by this inevitable source of the disparity of the
sexes. In Massachusetts, at that date, the females outnumbered the males
by upwards of 37,000; while in Indiana, on the contrary, they fell short
of the males by 48,000.

In the latter case, on a frontier state, where the services of the
Indian women must necessarily be courted in any attempt at domestic
life, intermixture between the native and intruding races is inevitable,
and the feeling with which it is regarded finds expression constantly
through the genuine New World lyrics of Joaquin Miller, with his “brown
bride won from an Indian town”—

    Where some were blonde and some were brown,
    And all as brave as Sioux.

Thus the same process still repeats itself along the widening frontier
of the far West, which has been in operation on the American continent
from the days of Columbus and Cabot. Hardy bands of pioneer adventurers,
or the solitary hunter and trapper, wander forth to brave the dangers of
the prairie or savage-haunted forest, and to such, an Indian bride
proves the fittest mate. Of the mixed offspring a portion cling to the
fortunes of the mother’s race, and are involved in its fate; but more
adhere to those of the white father, share with him the vicissitudes of
border life, and cast in their lot with the first nucleus of a settled
community. As the border land slowly recedes into the further West, new
settlers crowd into the clearing; the little cluster of primitive
log-huts grows up into the city, perhaps the capital of a state, and
with a new generation the traces of Indian blood are well nigh
forgotten. If any portion of the aboriginal owners of the soil linger in
the neighbourhood, they are no less affected by the predominant
intruding race.

The transfer of the rich prairie lands of the great North-West from the
care of Hudson Bay factors and trappers, the organisation of it into the
Province of Manitoba, and the territories already in preparation for new
provinces, under the government of their own legislatures, has
necessarily brought to an end the condition of things so favourable to
friendly relations between the White and Red races. The region,
moreover, is now traversed by the Canadian Pacific Railway; and the
herds of buffalo, on which the Indian mainly depended for his supplies
of food, fur robes, and teepe skins, have finally disappeared. Railways,
telegraph lines, and other appliances of civilisation are equally
incompatible with the existence of the wild buffalo and the wild Indian.
The former inevitably vanished from the scene. It remains to be seen if
the latter can adapt himself to the novel conditions of such an
environment.

As some preparation for the inevitable revolution, the half-breeds,
already numbering thousands, accustomed to mingle on perfect equality
with the Whites, and trained in some partial degree to agricultural
industry, entered on the possession of farms allotted to them by the
Government. But such a transitional stage, forced into premature
development, could scarcely be expected to pass through all its
revolutionary stages without a conflict, and clashing of interests; and
the efforts of the Dominion Government to deal with this novel condition
of things were only partially successful. But perhaps the most notable
feature in the results has been that the chief difficulty was, not with
the wild tribes transferred from the management of the fur-traders to
the direct jurisdiction of the Government, but with the half-breeds,
claiming civil rights, and jealously resenting encroachments on lands
appropriated for their own settlement.

The reports of the Indian Department supply interesting glimpses of the
process of adjustment with the various tribes of natives reluctantly
yielding to the new condition of things. Returns made to an address of
the House of Commons at Ottawa, dated March 1873, disclose the
jealousies and suspicions of the native tribes, and the anxiety evinced
by the Government officials to remove all just grounds of complaint. Mr.
Beatty, a contractor for certain surveys on the Upper Assiniboine,
reports that the Portage Indians, under their chief, Yellow Quill, had
absolutely forbidden any survey of their lands, and driven him and his
party off the field. The Lieutenant-Governor thereafter held an
interview with Yellow Quill and a party of his braves, and after a long
_pow-wow_ succeeded in pacifying him. Again, a party of about two
thousand Sioux are reported to have left in high dudgeon, with a threat
to return in force next spring; and the Hon. Alexander Morris—now
Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba—writes to the Provincial Secretary at
Ottawa, that “The Red Lake Indians on the American side have been
sending tobacco to the Sioux in our territory, as it is believed, with
the view of common action with regard to the Boundary Survey.” For the
settlement of provinces, and the surveying of the prairie for disposal
to its new occupants, had necessitated the determination of a
well-defined boundary between the Canadian territories and those of the
United States. Only a few years had elapsed since the State of Minnesota
was desolated by a cruel war, carried on by the Sioux at the
instigation, as was then affirmed, of Southern agents, with a view to a
diversion in favour of the South during the great Civil War. A large
number of the Sioux have since crossed the boundary, and settled within
the British lines; and the Hon. Mr. Morris writes from Fort Garry in
December last: “Some of the Sioux assist the white settlers as labourers
in the summer. They have asked for land, and were led to believe that
they would be assigned a reserve, and, if so, they would plant crops,
and could then be removed from the settlement.” But Mr. Morris specially
draws the attention of the provincial authorities to the excited state
apparent among all the Western tribes, and adds: “I believe it to be in
part created by the Boundary Commission. They do not understand it, and
think the two nations are uniting against them.” The difficulties,
however, were overcome; and the reports of the Indian agents contain
some curious illustrations of the difficulties inevitable in the first
attempt at transforming wild Indian tribes into prairie farmers. One of
them thus writes: “The full demands of the Indians cannot be complied
with; but there is, nevertheless, a certain paradox in asking a wild
Indian, who has hitherto gained his livelihood by hunting and trapping,
to settle down on a reservation and cultivate the land, without at the
same time offering him some means of making his living. As they say
themselves: ‘We cannot tear down the trees and build huts with our
teeth, we cannot break the prairie with our hands, nor reap the harvest,
if we had grown it, with our knives.’” But even among the wild tribes of
the prairies a great diversity in habits, and in aptitude for the new
life now forced upon them as their only chance of survival, is apparent.
The Portage Indians clung to their old status as hunters living in their
buffalo-skin lodges on the prairies; the St. Peter Indians form
permanent settlements, not only of birch-bark wigwams, but many of them
have built log-houses for themselves. Even among the tribes already
settling down to steady agricultural labour, such as the Saulteux and
the Swampies of Manitoba, a very great difference both in sentiments and
customs prevail. Thirty-four Indian families from one tribe in Pembina
are reported by the agent as demanding their allocation of farms; the
chiefs and headmen of other tribes are in negotiation for farming
implements, stock, etc., and some of their demands curiously illustrate
the form in which the new life thus opening up to them presents its most
tempting aspects. Hoes, axes, and other indispensable implements have
been readily granted to them. Ploughs, harrows, and oxen are in request,
and have been conceded or promised where the Government agent is
satisfied that they will be turned to good account. But in special
demand is “a bull and cow for each chief, and a boar for each reserve.”
The incipient idea of the stock farm is indeed apparent in the universal
demand of all: “A promise,” says one of the agents, “which the Indians
never omit to mention, that they shall be supplied with a male and
female of each animal used by a farmer.” But the transformation of the
wild hunter into an industrious agriculturist is a difficult process;
and even in the new generation, born under such changed conditions, the
Indian boy shows much greater aptitude for mechanical employments; and
takes more readily to the work of the carpenter than to that of tilling
the soil, which, so long as the Indian was its lord, was practised
exclusively by the women of the tribe.

Could the older condition of interblended prairie life have been
sufficiently long perpetuated, the results would far more fully have
presented results in close analogy to the intermingling of Europe’s
aboriginal and Aryan races in prehistoric times. A settlement begun by
Lord Selkirk in 1811, was formed on the Red River within the area now
embraced in the Province of Manitoba. It consisted of hardy Orkney men
and Sutherlandshire Highlanders; and on the amalgamation of the
North-West and the Hudson Bay Companies, the settlement received
considerable additions to its numbers. When at length the great fur
Companies’ supremacy came to an end, the community numbered upwards of
two thousand whites, chiefly occupied in farming, or in the service of
the Company. At a later date, another settlement was formed on the
Assiniboine river, chiefly by French Canadians. In those, as at the
forts and trading-posts of the Hudson Bay Company, the settlers
consisted chiefly of young men. They had no choice but to wed or cohabit
with the Indian women; and the result has been, not only the growth of a
half-breed population greatly out-numbering the Whites, but the
formation of a tribe of half-breeds, divided into two distinct bands,
according to their Scottish or French paternity, who kept themselves
distinct in manners, habits, and allegiance, alike from the Whites and
the Indians.

This rise of an independent half-breed tribe is one of the most
remarkable results of the great, though undesigned, ethnological
experiment which has been in progress ever since the meeting of the
diverse races of the Old and New World on the continent of America; and
when the peculiar circumstances which favoured this result came to an
end, it became a matter of great interest to note the most striking
phases presented by it, before they are effaced by the influx of
European emigration. I accordingly printed and circulated as widely as
possible a set of queries relative to the Indian and half-breed
population both of Canada and the Hudson Bay territory; and from the
returns made to me by Hudson Bay factors, missionaries, and others, most
of the following results are derived. The number of the settled
population, either half-breed or more or less of Indian blood, in Red
River and the surrounding settlements was about 7200. The intermarriage
there has been chiefly with Indian women of the plain Crees, though
alliances also occur with the Swampies (another branch of the Crees),
and with Sioux, Chippeway, and Blackfeet women. But the most noticeable
differences are traceable to the white paternity. The French half-breeds
have more demonstrativeness and vivacity, but they are reported to take
less readily to the steady drudgery of the farm than those of Scotch
descent. But, at best, the temptations of a border settlement, with its
buffalo hunts and its chief market for peltries, were little calculated
to develop the industrious habits of a settled community; and the
intrusion of farmers from the old provinces, and immigrants from Europe,
ignorant of their habits and wholly indifferent to their interests,
necessarily interfered with the healthful process of transformation into
a settled industrious community of civilised half-breeds.

Some of the results elicited by the inquiries are of value in their
bearing on the question of mixed races, and the apparent tendency to
develop permanent varieties; and all the more so as the data thus
obtained show the condition of the North-West community immediately
prior to the formation of the Province of Manitoba, and the inauguration
of the revolution which inevitably followed in its train. The
half-breeds are a large and robust race, with greater powers of
endurance than the native Indian. Mr. S. J. Dawson, of the Red River
Exploring Expedition, speaks of the French half-breeds as a gigantic
race as compared with the French Canadians of Lower Canada. Professor
Hind refers in equally strong language to their great physical powers
and vigorous muscular developments; and the venerable Archdeacon Hunter,
of Red River, replied in answer to my inquiry: “In what respects do the
half-breed Indians differ from the pure Indians as to habits of life,
courage, strength, increase of numbers, etc.?” “They are superior in
every respect, both mentally and physically.” Much concurrent evidence
points to the fact that the families descended from mixed parentage are
larger than those of the whites; and though the results are in some
degree counteracted by a tendency to consumption, yet it does not amount
to such a source of diminution on the whole as to interfere with their
steady numerical increase. One of the questions circulated by me was in
this form: “State any facts tending to prove or disprove that the
offspring descended from mixed White and Indian blood fails in a few
generations.” To this the Rev. J. Gilmour answered: “I know many large
and healthy families of partial Indian blood, and have formed the
opinion that they are likely to perpetuate a hardy race.” The venerable
Archdeacon Hunter, familiar with the facts by long residence as a
clergyman of the Roman Catholic Church among the mixed population of the
Red River Settlement, answered still more decidedly: “The offspring
descended from mixed White and Indian blood does not fail, but,
generally speaking, by intermarriages it becomes very difficult to
determine whether they are pure Whites or half-breeds.” Living, however,
for many years among a people in whom the Indian traits are more or less
traceable, it is probable that Archdeacon Hunter is less attracted by
the modified, ample black hair, the large full mouth, and the dark,
though gentle and softly expressive eye, which strikes a stranger on
first coming among any frontier population of mixed blood. The
half-breeds also retain much of the reserved and unimpressible manner of
the Indian; though a good deal of intercourse with the native race has
led me to the conclusion that this is more of an acquired habit than a
strictly hereditary trait: a piece of Indian education akin to certain
habits of social life universally inculcated among ourselves. When off
his guard, the wild Indian betrays great inquisitiveness, and when
relaxing over the camp-fire after a laborious day gives free play to
mirth and loquacity.

So far, however, much that has been said applies to the mixed population
of the Red River Settlement, living on a perfect equality with the white
settlers, and constituting an integral part of the colony. They are
neither to be confounded with the remarkable tribe of half-breed
hunters, nor with the Indians of mixed blood already described, on older
Canadian reserves. Remote as this settlement has hitherto been from
ordinary centres of colonisation, and inaccessible except through the
agency of the Hudson Bay Company, every tendency has been to encourage
the introduction of the young adventurer, trapper, or _voyageur_, rather
than the married settler. The habits of life incident to the fur trade
made the distinction less marked between the Indian and the white man;
and thus a people of peculiar type grew up there as intermediate in
habits and mode of life as in blood from those of the old settled
provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. Much property is now possessed by
men of mixed blood. Their young men have in some cases been sent to the
colleges of Canada, and, after creditably distinguishing themselves,
have returned to lend their aid in the progress of the settlement. Thus
a favourable concurrence of circumstances in all respects tended to give
ample opportunity for testing the experiment of intermingling the blood
of Europe and America, and raising up a civilised race peculiar to its
soil. With the rapid influx of emigrants; the settling of the prairie
lands with a population of yeomen farmers; and the rise of villages and
towns along the railways and river highways; the ultimate absorption of
this half-breed population, and its merging into the homogeneous
community that will ultimately be fashioned out of a meeting of very
diverse settlers, is inevitable. Icelanders and Danes, Germans,
Russians, Italians, French, Highland crofters, and Irish Celts, are all
being interfused into the new community of which the half-breed element
will form no unimportant factor.

But a greater interest attaches to that other class of half-breeds
already alluded to, which the new order of things has inevitably tended
to efface, though not necessarily to eradicate, as an element in the
population of the future province. Besides the civilised race of
half-breeds, mingling on a perfect equality with the Whites; brought up
in many cases in full enjoyment of such domestic training as the Hudson
Bay factor and hunter could furnish in the wilderness; there remained
apart from them a half-breed race, the offspring born to native women as
the inevitable results of such a social condition as pertains to the
occupants of the forts and trading-posts of that remote region. These
half-breed buffalo hunters were wholly distinct from the civilised
settlers, and yet more nearly related to them than to the wild Indian
tribes. They belonged to the settlement, possessed land, and cultivated
farms, though their agricultural labours were very much subordinated to
the claims of the chase, and they scarcely aimed at more than supplying
their own wants. The two bands numbered in all between 6000 and 7000.
Each division had its separate tribal organisation and distinct
hunting-grounds, extending beyond the British American frontier. In 1849
the White Horse plain half-breeds on the Strayenne river, Dakota
territory, rendered the following returns to an officer appointed to
take the census: “700 half-breeds, 200 Indians, 603 carts, 600 horses,
200 oxen, 400 dogs, and 1 cat.” This may illustrate the general
character of a people partaking of the nomad habits of the Indian, and
yet possessed of a considerable amount of movable property and real
estate. They are a hardy race, fearless horsemen, and capable of
enduring the greatest privations. They have adopted the Roman Catholic
faith, and specially coveted the presence of a priest with them when on
their hunting expeditions. The mass was celebrated on the open prairie,
and was prized as a guarantee of success in the hunting-field. On such
expeditions, it has to be borne in view, they were not tempted by mere
love of the chase or by the prospect of a supply of game. Winter-hunting
supplies to the trapper the valued peltries of the fur-bearing animals;
but they depended on the summer and autumn buffalo hunts for the supply
of pemmican, which furnished one of the main resources of the whole
Hudson Bay population. The summer hunt kept them abroad on the prairie
from about the 15th of June to the end of August, and smaller bands
resumed the hunt in the autumn. With this as the favourite and
engrossing work of the tribe, it is inevitable that farming could be
carried on only in the most desultory fashion. Nevertheless, the
severity of the winter compelled them to make provision for the numerous
horses and oxen on which the summer hunt depended; and thus habits of
industry and forethought were engendered.

The half-breed hunters regarded the Sioux and Blackfeet as their natural
enemies, and carried on warfare with them much after the fashion of the
Indian tribes that have acquired fire-arms and horses; but they gave
proof of their “Christian” civilisation by taking no scalps. In the
field, whether preparing for hunting or war, the superiority of the
half-breeds was strikingly apparent. They then evinced a discipline,
courage, and self-control, of which the wild Sioux, Crees, or Blackfeet
are wholly incapable; and they accordingly looked with undisguised
contempt on their Indian foes.

Such are some of the most noticeable characteristics of this interesting
race, called into being by the contact of the European with the native
tribes of the forest and prairie. With so many of the elements of
civilisation which it is found so hard to introduce among the most
intelligent native tribes, an aptitude for social organisation, and a
thorough independence of all external superintendence or control, there
seems no reason to doubt that here is an example of an intermediate
race, combining characteristics derived from two extremely diverse types
of man, with all apparent promise of perpetuity and increase, if they
could have been secured in the exclusive occupation of the region in
which they have originated. But the railway has traversed the trail of
the buffalo; and they have been compelled to make their choice between
conformity to the industrial habits of agricultural settlers, or follow
the herds of the buffalo in search of some remote wilderness beyond the
shriek of the locomotive and the hail of the pioneer immigrant.

The inevitable revolution was not permitted to be inaugurated without
very practical protest. The Red River Expedition of Sir Garnet Wolseley
in 1870 was directed to put down a revolt of the half-breeds, under
their leader, Louis Riel, resolute to oppose the intrusion of immigrant
settlers. The struggle was renewed in 1885 under the same leader, but
with the more legitimate grievance of neglected land claims, and the
assertion of their rights to property in the prairie lands and on the
river fronts. They were encountered by a Canadian volunteer force;
Batoche, their little urban stronghold, was captured; and the North-West
rebellion was brought to an end. But it was freely acknowledged that,
poorly armed and ill-provided with the indispensable requisites for
meeting a well-organised force of militia, under an experienced British
soldier, General Middleton, they displayed unflinching courage, and held
out bravely against overwhelming numbers furnished with the deadly
appliances of modern warfare.

It could not be supposed that the invasion of the western hemisphere by
the wanderers from the later homes of the Aryans beyond the Atlantic
could reproduce in all respects the old phenomena that marked the
displacement of Europe’s prehistoric races. But making due allowance for
the changes wrought on the Aryan stock by the civilising influences of
twenty centuries or more; and the consequent disparity between them and
the rude hunter tribes of the American forests and prairies; much
remains to aid us in the interpretation of the past. Ethnological
investigation and induction enable us to realise the condition of Europe
when its thinly-dispersed population consisted of a dark-skinned race,
small in stature, and, as we may conceive, with hair and eyes of
corresponding hue. Sepulchral deposits and the chance disclosures in
their old cave-shelters have made us familiar with their physical form.
Their modern representatives survive on the outskirts of Europe’s
civilised centres. Still more, their ethnical characteristics have been
perpetuated by the very same process as may now be seen in progress in
the frontier states of America and the newest provinces of the Canadian
Dominion. Not only are the modern representatives of Europe’s Allophyliæ
to be found among the Lapps, Finns, and the Iberians of Northern and
Western Europe; but everywhere in the British Isles, and throughout
Western Europe, the Melanochroic elements stand out distinctly from the
predominant Xanthocroic stock, among a people unconscious of any
diversity of race. Here then we see evidences of the intermingling and
the partial absorption of the Australioid savage of prehistoric Europe
by the later Xanthocroi, the product of which survives in the brunette
of Britain, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. In Britain the
contrasting characteristics of the diverse ethnical elements attracted
the attention of Tacitus in the first century of our era. In Spain the
Iberian still preserves the evidence of an individuality apart from the
Indo-European races in the vernacular Euskara, while a large Moorish
element in the southern portion of the peninsula perpetuates the results
of another foreign intrusion and interblending of races within historic
times.

The diversity apparent in some of the results of the meeting of
dissimilar races in the Old World and the New, is due to the
geographical characteristics of the two hemispheres. Alike by sea and
land, Europe could be entered by invading colonists, gradually, and at
many diverse points. Hence, the aggression of the higher races may be
assumed to have begun while the difference between them and the
aborigines of Europe was much less than that which distinguishes the
European from the Bed Indian savage. The conquest would thus be
protracted over a period probably of many generations, and so would
involve no such collisions as inevitably result in the destruction of
savage races when brought into abrupt contact with those far advanced in
civilisation.

But the peculiar relations of the frontier populations of the New World,
and especially of the factors, trappers, and _voyageurs_ of the Hudson
Bay Company, with the native tribes, helped to create a partial equality
between the civilised European and the savage, and so to beget results
akin to those which have left such enduring evidences of the mingling of
diverse races in the population of Europe.

This accordingly suggests a question affecting the whole relations of
British and European colonists generally to the native population of new
lands settled and colonised by them. Not only English, Scotch, and
Irish, but German, Norwegian, Icelandic, French, Polish, Russian, and
Italian emigrants flock in thousands to the New World, merge in the
common stock, and in the third generation learn to speak of themselves
as “Anglo-Saxon!” The investigations of ethnologists have well-nigh put
an end to the supposed purity of an Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Scandinavian
population in all but the assumed purely Celtic areas of the British
Islands; and the latest system of ethnical classification is based on
the recognition of the survival in the mixed population of modern
Britain of a race-element which still perpetuates an enduring influence
derived from aborigines of Europe anterior to the advent of Celt or
Teuton. The power of absorption and assimilation of a predominant race
is great; and ethnological displacement is no more necessarily a process
of extinction now than in primitive times; though intermixture must ever
be most easily effected where the ethnical distinctions are least
strongly marked, and the conditions of civilisation are nearly akin.

The permanent survival of a disparate type in America perpetuating the
evidences of the interblending of the Red and White races may be
doubted. That some ineffaceable results will remain I cannot doubt; but
the enormous disparity in numbers between the millions of European
nationalities, and the little remnant of the native race brought in
contact with them, precludes the possibility of results such as have
perpetuated in the modern races of Europe elements derived from some of
its earliest savage tribes.

It has indeed been such a favourite idea with some physiologists that in
the undoubted developments of something like a distinct Anglo-American
type, there is a certain approximation to the Indian, that Dr.
Carpenter, in his _Essay on the Varieties of Mankind_, lays claim to
originality in the idea “that the conformation of the cranium seems to
have undergone a certain amount of alteration, even in the Anglo-Saxon
race of the United States, which assimilates it in some degree to that
of the aboriginal inhabitants.” This he dwells on in some detail, and
arrives at what he seems to regard as an indisputable conclusion, that
the peculiar American physiognomy to which he adverts presents a
transition, however slight, toward that of the North American Indian.
But the long-cherished opinion, to which Dr. Morton gave currency, of
the existence of one special type of skull-form common to the whole
aborigines of America, has been abandoned by all who have given any
attention to the evidence which Dr. Morton’s own _Crania Americana_
supplies. I doubt if the idea of such an approximation of the
Anglo-American to the Red Indian type would ever have occurred to a
physiologist of Canada or of New England, to whom abundant opportunities
for comparing the Indian and Anglo-American features, and of noting the
actual transitional forms between the two, are accessible. But if such
examples can be clearly recognised, they may be assigned with
probability to a reverting to the type of some Bed ancestress whose
blood is transmitted to a late descendant.

But it is otherwise with the millions of the Coloured race who now
constitute the indigenous population of the Southern States. They are at
home there in a climate to which the White race adapts itself with very
partial success. The offspring of white fathers and of mothers of the
African races, they have multiplied to millions; and now with the
recently acquired rights of citizenship, and with the advantages of
education within their reach, the country is their own. The very social
prejudices against miscegenation protect them from the effacing
influences to which the Indian half-breed is exposed by ever recurrent
intermarriage with the dominant race. As yet, there are discernible the
various degrees of heredity from the Mulatto to the Quinteron. But the
abolishing of slavery has placed the Coloured race on an entirely new
footing; and left as it now is, free to enjoy the healthful social
relations of a civilised community, and protected by the very prejudices
of race and caste from any large intermixture with the White race, it
can scarcely admit of doubt that there will survive on the American
continent a Melanocroi of its own, more distinctly separated from the
White race, not only by heredity, but also by climatic influences, than
the “dark Whites” of Europe are from the blonde types of Hellenic,
Slavic, Teutonic, or Scandinavian stocks.

-----

[148] _Reisen in Lykien_, etc., Vienna, 1889.

[149] Vide _History of the Negro Race in America_. G. W. Williams.

[150] _Science_, Feb. 13, 1891. A. F. Chamberlain.

[151] See p. 290.




                                  VIII
                  RELATIVE RACIAL BRAIN-WEIGHT AND SIZE


CONSISTENTLY with the recognition of the brain as the organ of
intellectual activity, it seems not unnatural to assume for man, as the
rational animal, a very distinctive cerebral development. One of the
most distinguished of living naturalists, Professor Owen, has even made
this organ the basis of a system of classification, by means of which he
separates man into a sub-class, distinct from all other mammalia. But
while a comparison between man and the anthropoid apes, as the animals
most nearly approximating to him in physical structure, lends
confirmation to the idea not only that a well-developed brain is
essential to natural activity, but that there is a close relation
between the development of the brain and the manifestation of
intellectual power; the distinctive features in the human brain, as
compared with those of the anthropomorpha, prove to be greatly less than
had been assumed under imperfect knowledge. The substantial difference
is in volume. “No one, I presume,” says Darwin, “doubts that the large
size of the brain in man, relatively to his body, in comparison to that
of the gorilla or orang, is closely connected with his higher mental
powers”;[152] and it might not unfairly be reasoned from analogy, that
the same test distinguishes the intellectual man from the stolid, and
the civilised man from the savage. A careful study of the subject,
however, shows some remarkable deviations from such a scale of
progression. Attention is indeed directed to greatly more ample proofs
of inequality between the organic source of power and the manifestations
of mental energy; as, for example, in the ant, with its cerebral ganglia
not so large as the quarter of a small pin’s head, displaying instincts
and apparent affections of wonderful intensity and compass. Viewed in
this aspect, “the brain of an ant is one of the most marvellous atoms of
matter in the world, perhaps more marvellous than the brain of man.”
Here, however, we look on elements of contrast rather than analogy; and
seek in vain in this direction for any appreciable test of the soundness
of the popular belief in the size of the brain as a measure of
intellectual power. It is otherwise when we turn to the anthropomorpha.
There, alike in the scientific and in the popular creed, very special
and exceptional affinities to man are admitted; and a careful study of
their anatomical structure tends to increase the recognised points of
analogy.

Mr. Lockhart Clarke, in a contribution to Dr. Maudsley’s work on the
Physiology and Pathology of Mind, gives a minute description of the
concentric layers of nervous substance which combine to form the
convolutions of the human brain; and of the forms and disposition of the
various nerve-cells of which its vesicular structure consists. Comparing
the human brain with those of other animals, he says: “Between the cells
of the convolutions in man and those of the ape tribe I could not
perceive any difference whatever; but they certainly differ in some
respects from those of the larger mammalia: from those, for instance, of
the ox, sheep, or cat.”[153] Apart from the difference in volume (55 to
115 cubic inches), the only distinctive features, according to Professor
Huxley, between the brain of the anthropomorpha and that of man, are
“the filling up of the occipito-temporal fissure; the greater complexity
and less symmetry of the other sulci and gyri; the less excavation of
the orbital face of the frontal lobe; and the larger size of the
cerebral hemispheres, as compared with the cerebellum and the cerebral
nerves.”

The brain of the orang is the one which seems most nearly to approximate
to that of man. In volume it is about 26 or 27 cubic inches; or about
half the minimum size of a normal human brain. The frontal height is
greater than in that of other anthropomorpha; the frontal lobe is in all
respects larger as compared with the occipital lobe; and certain folds
of brain-substance, styled “bridging convulsions,” which in the human
brain are interposed between the parietal and occipital lobes, also
occur, though greatly reduced, in the brain of the orang; while they
appear to be wholly wanting in the chimpanzee, the gibbon, and other
apes which superficially present a greater resemblance to man. Referring
to the convolutions of the central cerebral lobe, Huschke says: “With
their formation in the ape, the brain enters the last stage of
development until it arrives at its perfection in man”; and the higher
class of brains may be arranged between the extremes of poorly and
richly convoluted examples.

But it must not be overlooked that, apart from structural differences,
relative, and not absolute mass and weight of brain has to be
considered, otherwise the elephant and the whale would take the foremost
place. “The brain of the porpoise,” Professor Huxley remarks,[154] “is
quite wonderful for its mass, and for the development of the cerebral
convolutions”; but it is the centre of a nervous system of corresponding
capacity, while as compared with the size of the animal, the brain is
not relatively large. Vogt states the weight of the human body to be to
the brain, on an average, as 36 to 1; whereas in the most intelligent
animals the difference is rarely less than 100 to 1.

Assuming the existence of some uniform relation between the size of the
brain and the development of the intellectual faculties, along with
whatever is recognised as most closely analogous to them in the lower
animals, it might be anticipated that we should find not only a
graduated development of brain in the anthropomorpha as they approximate
in resemblance to man; but, still more, that the progressive stages from
the lowest savage condition to that of the most civilised nations should
be traceable in a comparative size and weight of brain. Dr. Carl Vogt,
after discussing certain minor and doubtful exceptions, thus proceeds:
“We find that there is an almost regular series in the cranial capacity
of such nations and races as, since historic times, have taken no part
in civilisation. Australians, Hottentots, and Polynesians, nations in
the lowest state of barbarism, commence the series; and no one can deny
that the place they occupy in relation to cranial capacity and cerebral
weight corresponds with the degree of their intellectual capacity and
civilisation.”[155] But the position thus confidently assigned to the
Polynesians receives no confirmation from the evidence supplied by the
measurements of Dr. J. B. Davis, in his _Thesaurus Craniorum_; and a
careful study of the subject reveals other remarkable deviations from
such a scale of progression, not only in individuals but in races. To
these exceptional deviations, with their bearing on the comparative
capacity of races, the following remarks are chiefly directed. The
largest and heaviest brains do indeed appear, for the most part, to
pertain to the nations highest in civilisation, and to the most
intelligent of their number. But this cannot be asserted as a uniform
law, either in relation to races or individuals. The more carefully the
requisite evidence is accumulated, the less does it appear that the
volume of brain, or the cubic contents of the skull, supply a uniform
gauge of intellectual capacity. In the researches which have thus far
been instituted into the characteristics of the human brain among the
lowest races, the development is in many respects remarkable; and, as
was to be expected, no organic differences between diverse races of men
have been traced.

Professor C. Luigi Calori has published the results of a careful
examination of the brain of a negro of Guinea. It presented the marked
excess of length over breadth so characteristic of the negro cranium;
but in other respects it corresponded generally to the fully developed
European brain. The distribution of the white and gray substances was
the same; the cerebral convolutions were collected into an equal number
of lobes; and the only special difference was that the convolutions were
a little less frequently folded, and the separating sulci somewhat less
marked than in the average European brain. But even in those respects
the complication was great. The actual weight of the brain, according to
Professor Calori, was 1260 grammes, equivalent to 44.4 cubic inches. The
complexity of convolution, and consequent extension of superficies of
the encephalon, appears to be an essential element in the development of
the brain as the organ of highest mental capacity; and to the cerebrum,
apparently, the true functions of intellectual activity pertain.
Professor Wagner undertook the measurement of the convex surface of the
frontal lobe in a series of brains. The heaviest, as a rule, had also
the greatest development of surface. But the two elements were not in
uniform ratio. Some of the lighter brains presented a much greater
degree of convolution and consequent extent of convex superficies than
others which ranked above them in weight. It is thus apparent that in
estimating the comparative characteristics of brains, various elements
are necessary for an exhaustive comparison. Besides the functional
differences of the cerebrum, cerebellum, and pons varolii, they have
different specific gravities, so that brains of equal weight may differ
widely in quality. Dr. Peacock, taking distilled water as 1000, gives
the values of the subdivisions of the brain thus: cerebrum, 1034;
cerebellum, 1041; pons varolii, 1040. Again, Dr. Sankey states the mean
specific gravity of the gray matter of the brain in either sex as
1034.6, and of the white matter as 1041.2. The variations from these
results, as given by Bastian, Thurnam, and others, are trifling. But it
is significant to note that recent researches show that where greater
specific gravity of brain occurs in the insane, it appears to be limited
to the gray matter.[156] Professor Goodsir maintained that symmetry of
brain has more to do with the higher faculties than bulk of form. It is,
at any rate, apparent that two brains of equal weight may differ widely
in quality.

Nevertheless, the popular estimate embodied in such expressions as “a
good head,” “a long-headed fellow,” and “a poor head,” like many other
popular inductions, has truth for its basis. Up to a certain stage the
growth of the brain determines the capacity of the skull. Then it seems
as though more complex convolutions accompanied the packing of the
elaborated cerebral mass within the fixed limits of its osseous chamber.

A comparison of races, based on minute investigation of an adequate
number of brains of fair typical examples, may be expected to yield
important results; but in the absence of such direct evidence, the chief
data available for this purpose are derived from measurements of the
internal capacity of their skulls. Among English observers who have
devoted themselves to this class of observations, the foremost place is
due to Dr. J. Barnard Davis, who, in 1867, summed up the results of his
extensive researches in a contribution to the Royal Society, entitled
“Contributions towards determining the Weight of the Brain in different
Races of Man.”[157] Inferior as such evidence must necessarily be, if
compared with the examination of the brain itself, nevertheless the
number of skulls of the different races gauged unquestionably furnishes
some highly valuable data for ethnical comparison. The evidence,
moreover, is obtained from a source in some respects less variable than
the encephalon; and will always constitute a corrective element in
estimating results based on direct examinations of the brain. Dr. Davis,
indeed, claims “that the examination of a large series of skulls in
ascertaining their capacities and deducing from those capacities the
average volume of the brain, affords in some respects more available
data for determining this relative volume for any particular race than
the weighing of the brain itself.” The defect is, that its most
important results are necessarily based on the assumption of a uniform
density of brain; whereas some notable ethnical differences, hereafter
referred to, may prove to be due to the fact that certain races derive
their special characteristics from a prevailing diversity in this very
respect.

But the extensive observations of Dr. Davis, as of Dr. Morton, have a
special value from the fact that each furnishes results based on a
uniform system of observation; for the diverse methods and materials
employed by different observers in gauging the human skull have greatly
detracted from their practical value. In a communication by the late
Professor Jeffreys Wyman to the Boston Natural History Society,[158] he
presented the results of a series of measurements of the internal
capacity of the same skull with pease, beans, rice, flax-seed, shot, and
coarse and fine sand. From repeated experiments he arrived at the
conclusion that the apparent capacity varied according to the different
substances used, so that the same skull measured respectively, with
pease 1193 centimetres, with shot 1201.8, with rice 1220.2, and with
fine sand 1313 centimetres. Professor Wyman was led to the conclusion
that, for exactness, small shot, as employed latterly by Dr. Morton, is
preferable to sand, were it not for its weight, which, in the case of
old and fragile skulls, is apt to be destructive to them. With a view to
avoid the latter evil, Dr. J. B. Davis has used fine Calais sand of
1.425 specific gravity. The diversity in apparent volume, consequent on
the employment of different substances in gauging the internal capacity
of the skull, necessarily detracts from the value of comparative results
of Morton, Davis, and others. But the elaborate measurements of their
great collections of human crania furnish reliable series of data, each
uniform in system, and sufficiently minute to satisfy many requirements
of comparative craniometry and approximate cerebral development.

Without assuming an invariable correspondence in cubical capacity and
brain-weight, there is a sufficient approximation in the cubical
capacity of the skull and the average weight of the encephalon to render
the deductions derived from gauging the capacities of skulls of
different races an important addition to this department of comparative
ethnology. For minute cerebral comparisons, however, it is apparent that
much more is required; and the special functions assigned to the various
organs within the cranium have to be kept in view. Of these the medulla
oblongata, in direct contact with the spinal cord, is now recognised as
the centre of the vital actions in breathing and swallowing; and is
believed also to be the direct source of the muscular action employed in
speech. Next to it are the sensory ganglia, arranged in pairs along the
base of the brain. To the cerebellum, which the phrenologist sets apart
as the source of the emotions and passions embraced in his terminology
of amativeness, philoprogenitiveness, etc., physiologists now assign the
function of conveying to the mind the conditions of tension and
relaxation of the muscles, and so controlling their voluntary action.
But above all those is the cerebrum, or brain-proper, consisting of two
large lobes of nervous substance, which in man are so large that, when
viewed vertically, they cover and conceal the cerebellum. To this organ
is specially assigned emotion, volition, and ratiocination. It is the
assumed seat of the mind; and, in a truer sense than the skull—

    The dome of thought, the palace of the soul;

if indeed it be not, to one class of reasoners, the mind itself. Certain
it is that no acute disease can affect it without a corresponding
disorder of the functions of mind; and with this organ much below the
average size, intellectual weakness may always be predicated. But at the
same time, it is significant to note that the human brain, stinted in
its full proportions, and reduced to a seeming equality with the
anthropomorpha, exhibits no corresponding capacities or instincts in
lieu of the higher mental qualities. Microcephaly is the invariable
index, not of mere limited intelligence and mental capacity, but of
actual mental imbecility. If the augmentation of the brain of the
anthropomorpha from 55 to 115 cubic inches be all that is requisite for
the transformation of the irrational ape into the reasoning man, it
would seem to be in no degree illogical to look for the accompaniment of
the inversion of the process by an approximation, in some instances, to
certain capacities and functions of the ape. But there are no
indications of this. In some examples of microcephaly, the so-called
animal propensities do indeed manifest themselves to excess; but there
is no reproduction of the animal nature, instincts, or capacities,
analogous to the scale of cerebral development of the orang or
chimpanzee. A microcephalous idiot, who died at the age of twenty-two,
in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, had a brain weighing only 13.125
oz., or 372 grammes. In describing this case, Professor Owen remarks:
“Here nature may be said to have performed for us the experiment of
arresting the development of the brain almost exactly at the size which
it attains in the chimpanzee, and where the intellectual faculties were
scarcely more developed. Yet no anatomist would hesitate in at once
referring the cranium to the human species.” And so is it with the
encephalon. The brain of the chimpanzee is a healthy, well-developed
organ, adequate to the amplest requirements of the animal; whereas the
microcephalous human brain is inadequate for any efficient, continuous
cerebral activity: not merely limited in its range of powers. Much,
however, may yet be learned from a careful attention to the imperfect
manifestations of activity in certain directions, in cases of
microcephalic idiocy, and noting the predominant tendency in each case,
with a view to subsequent examination of the brain. By this means it may
be found possible to refer certain forms of mental activity to special
variations in the structure of the organ, or to distinct members of the
encephalon.

Dr. Laennec exhibited to the Anthropological Society of Paris a
microcephalous idiot of the male sex, aged fourteen years. “This child
is entirely unconscious of his own actions, and his intellectual
operations are very few in number, and very rudimentary. His language
consists of two syllables, _oui_ and _la_, and he takes an evident
pleasure in pronouncing them. He takes no heed in what direction he
walks. He would step off a precipice, or into a fire.” Attention was
specially directed to the idiot’s hands: “The thumbs are atrophied, and
cannot be opposed to the other fingers. The palms of the hands have the
transverse creases, but not the diagonal—the result of the atrophy of
the thumbs. Hence the hand resembles that of the chimpanzee. The
dentition too is defective. Though fourteen years of age, the child has
only twelve teeth.” Here it is curious to note the analogies in physical
structure to the lower anthropomorpha in other organs besides the brain,
for it only renders more striking the absence of any corresponding
aptitudes.

Dr. J. Barnard Davis, in his interesting monograph on _Synostotic Crania
among Aboriginal Races of Man_, produces some remarkable illustrations
of the effect of premature ossification of the sutures of the skull in
arresting the full development of the brain, and so rendering it unequal
to the due performance of its functions. “I have,” he says, “the cranium
of a convict who was executed on Norfolk Island, which I owe to the
kindness of Admiral H. M. Denham. This man was executed there when that
beautiful isle was appropriated to the reception of the most dangerous
and irreclaimable convicts from the other penal settlements. It is a
microcephalic skull, rather dolichocephalic, of a man apparently about
forty years of age. It exhibits a perfect ossification of the sagittal
and of the greater portion of the lambdoidal sutures. The coronal suture
is partially obliterated at the sides in the temporal regions, and can
only be distinguished by faint traces in all its middle parts. In this
case there has not been any compensatory development of moment in other
directions. The calvarium is not abridged in its length, which is 7.1
inches, equal to 179 millimetres; probably it is a little elongated. It
is, however, very narrow being only 4.8 inches, or 122 mm. at its widest
part, between the temporal bones. So that the result is a very small,
dwarfed, almost cylindrical calvarium. The internal capacity is only 59
ounces of sand,[159] which is equal to 71.4 cubic inches, or 1169 cubic
centimetres.” Here is a skull considerably below the lowest mean of the
crania of any race in Morton’s enlarged tables, or in the more
comprehensive ones furnished in Dr. Davis’s _Thesaurus Craniorum_.
Another skull nearly approximating to it is that of a Cole, one of the
savage tribes of Nagpore, in Central India, who are said to go entirely
naked. It is described in the supplement to the _Thesaurus Craniorum_ as
that of “Chara,” a Cole farmer, aged fifty, and its internal capacity is
stated as 59.5 oz. av., equivalent to 71.7 cubic inches. The Coles
appear to be small of stature. The heights of three of them, whose
skulls are in the same collection, were respectively 5 ft. 5 in., 5 ft.
2 in., and 5 ft., and the average internal capacity of five male skulls
is only 66.6. The small stature in this and others of the native races
of Central India, has to be taken into account in estimating the
relative size of the brain. But, after making all due allowance for
this, the Cole skulls are remarkable for their small size, being smaller
even than the ordinary Hindoos of Bengal. Yet one of them, “Cootlo,”
whose skull is among those included in the above mean, commanded a band
of insurgents in the Porahant rebellion of 1858, and made himself a
terror to the district.

The microcephalism of races, as well as of individuals, of small
stature, must not be confounded with the true microcephaly of a dwarfed
or imperfectly developed brain, which is invariably accompanied with
mental imbecility. The Mincopies of the Andaman Islands are spoken of by
Professor Owen as “perhaps the most primitive, or lowest in the scale of
civilisation, of the human race.”[160] Mr. G. E. Dobson, in describing
his first visit to one of their “homes,” says: “Although none of the
tribe exceeded 64 inches in height, so that on first seeing them we
thought the shed contained none but boys and girls, I was especially
struck by the remarkable contrast between the size of the males and
females.”[161] Dr. J. B. Davis has given, in the supplement to
_Thesaurus Craniorum_, the dimensions of a male Mincopie skeleton in his
collection. The age he assumes to have been about thirty-five. The
internal capacity of the skull is 62 oz. (Calais sand), equivalent to
75.5 cubic inches, and the entire height of the skeleton is 58.7 inches.
It belongs, says Dr. Davis, to a pigmy race, is small in all its
dimensions, and is particularly small in the dimensions of the pelvis.
Of their skulls, moreover, he adds, “it is somewhat difficult to
determine the sex with confidence. They are all small (but this is a
character of the race), they are delicate in development, and they have
that fulness of the occipital region, and smallness of the mastoid
processes, which are marks of femininism.”

Mr. Alfred R. Wallace connects the Mincopies with the Negritos and
Semangs of the Malay peninsula, a dark woolly-haired race, dwarfs in
stature. Dr. Davis says of the six Mincopie skulls in his collection,
four male and two female, as well as of others which he has seen: “They
are all remarkably and strikingly alike, not merely in size but in form
also. They are all small, round, brachycephalic crania of beautiful
form.” Moreover, though classed as “lowest in the scale of
civilisation,” the Mincopies betray no deficiency of intellect. The
admirable photographs which illustrate Mr. Dobson’s narrative show in
the majority of them good frontal development. The brain is not, indeed,
relatively small. Their canoes are made of the trunk of a tree, hollowed
out; and Mr. Dobson remarks: “The construction of their peculiar arrows
and fish-spears with movable heads exhibits much ingenuity, and the use
of no small reasoning power in adapting means to an end.”

We are indeed too apt to apply our own artificial standards as the sole
test of intellectual vigour; whereas it is probable that in the amount
of acquired knowledge and acuteness of reasoning many savage races
surpass the majority of the illiterate peasantry in the most civilised
countries of Europe. Mr. Wallace, in viewing the subject in one special
light, remarks: “The brain of the lowest savages, and, as far as we yet
know, of the prehistoric races, is little inferior in size to that of
the higher types of man, and is immensely superior to that of the higher
animals; while it is universally admitted that quantity of brain is one
of the most important, and probably the most essential of the elements
which determine mental power. Yet the mental requirements of savages,
and the faculties actually exercised by them, are very little above
those of animals. The higher feelings of pure morality and refined
emotion, and the power of abstract reasoning and ideal conception, are
useless to them; are rarely, if ever, manifested; and have no important
relations to their habits, wants, desires, and well-being. They possess
a mental organ beyond their needs.”[162]

Here, however, it may be well to guard against the confusion of two very
distinct elements. The higher feelings of pure morality and refined
emotion are not manifestations of intellectual vigour in the same sense
as is the power of abstract reasoning and ideal conception. It is not
rare to find an English or Scottish peasant with little intellectual
culture or capacity for abstract reasoning, but with an acutely
instinctive moral sense. On the other hand, among the criminal class, it
is by no means rare to find examples of wonderfully vigorous
intellectual power applied to the planning and accomplishing of schemes
which involve as much foresight and skill as many a triumph of
diplomacy; but which at the same time seem to be nearly incompatible
with any moral sense. Moreover, it is needless to say that intellectual
vigour and high moral principle are by no means invariable concomitants
in any class of society; nor can they be traced to a common source. Mr.
Wallace recognises that “a superior intelligence has guided the
development of man in a definite direction, and for a special purpose”;
and such guidance involves much more than the mere evolution of a higher
animal organisation. But, appreciating as he does the difficulties
involved in any acceptance of a theory of evolution which assumes man to
be the mere latest outgrowth of a development from lower forms of animal
life, Mr. Wallace points out that “natural selection could only have
endowed savage man with a brain a little superior to that of an ape,
whereas he actually possesses one very little inferior to that of a
philosopher.”

Yet neither Mr. Wallace, nor Professor Huxley when controverting this
argument, withholds a due recognition of the activity of the intellect
of the savage. No one indeed can have much intercourse with savage races
wholly dependent on their own resources without recognising that, within
a certain range, their faculties are kept in constant activity. The
savage hunter has not merely an intimate familiarity with all the
capabilities and resources of many regions traversed by him in pursuit
of his game; his geographical information includes much useful knowledge
of the topography of ranges of country which he has never visited. I
found, on one occasion, when exploring the Nepigon River, on Lake
Superior, that my Chippeway guides, though fully 500 miles from their
own country, and visiting the region for the first time, were
nevertheless on the lookout for a metamorphic rock underlying the
syenite which abounds there; and they made their way by well-recognised
land-marks to this favourite “pipestone rock.” While moreover the
Indian, like other savages, is devoid of much of what we style “useful
knowledge,” but which would be very useless to him, he is fully informed
on many subjects embraced within the range of the natural sciences; and
has a very practical knowledge of meteorology, zoology, botany, and much
else which constitutes useful knowledge to him. He is familiar with the
habits of animals, and the medicinal virtues of many plants; will find
his way through the forest by noting the special side of the trunks on
which certain lichens grow; and follow the tracks of his game, or
discover the nests of birds, by indications which would escape the most
observant naturalist. The Australian savage, stimulated apparently to an
unwonted ingenuity by the privations of an arid climate, is the inventor
of two wonderfully ingenious implements, the _wommera_ or throwing
stick, and the _bomerang_, which, when employed by the native expert,
accomplish feats entirely beyond any efforts of European skill.
Moreover, as Professor Huxley remarks, he “can make excellent baskets
and nets, and neatly fitted and beautifully balanced spears; he learns
to use these so as to be able to transfix a quartern loaf at sixty
yards; and very often, as in the case of the American Indians, the
language of a savage exhibits complexities which a well-trained European
finds it difficult to master.” Again he goes on to say: “Consider that
every time a savage tracks his game he employs a minuteness of
observation, and an accuracy of inductive and deductive reasoning which,
applied to other matters, would assure some reputation to a man of
science, and I think we need ask no further why he possesses such a fair
supply of brains. In complexity and difficulty, I should say that the
intellectual labour of a good hunter or warrior considerably exceeds
that of an ordinary Englishman.” Hence Professor Huxley is not prepared
to admit that the American or Australian savage possesses in his brain a
mental organ which he fails to turn to full account. But without
entering on the questions of evolution and natural selection in all
their comprehensive bearings, it is still apparent that the brain of the
savage is an instrument of great capacity, employed within narrow
limits.

In estimating the comparative size of the brain, it is seen to be
necessary to discriminate between individuals or races of small stature
and cases of true microcephaly. On the other hand, it is not to be
overlooked that examples of idiocy are not rare where the head is of a
fair average size, and where the mental imbecility is regarded as
congenital. But in this as in other researches of the physiologist, he
is limited in his observations mainly to the chance opportunities which
offer for study; and not unfrequently the prejudices of affection arrest
the hand of the student, and prevent a _post-mortem_ examination in
cases where science has much to hope for from freedom of investigation.
Hence the data thus far accumulated in evidence of the actual structure,
size, and weight, of the human brain fall far short of what is requisite
for a solution of many questions in reference to the relations between
cerebration and mental activity. From time to time men of science have
sought by example, as well as by precept, to lessen such impediments to
scientific research. Dr. Dalton left instructions for a _post-mortem_
examination in order to test the peculiarity of his vision, which he had
assumed to be due to a colouring of the vitreous humour; Jeremy Bentham
bequeathed his body to his friend Dr. Southwood Smith, for the purposes
of anatomical science; and the will of Harriet Martineau contained this
provision: “It is my desire, from an interest in the progress of
scientific investigation, that my skull should be given to Henry George
Atkinson, of Upper Gloucester Place, London, and also my brain, if my
death should take place within such distance of his then present abode
as to enable him to have it for purposes of scientific investigation.”
The will is dated March 10, 1864; but by a codicil, dated October 5,
1871, this direction is revoked, with the explanation which follows in
these words: “I wish to leave it on record that this alteration in my
testamentary directions is not caused by any change of opinion as to the
importance of scientific observation on such subjects, but is made in
consequence merely of a change of circumstances in my individual case.”
The natural repugnance of surviving relatives to any mutilation of the
body must always tend to throw impediments in the way of such
researches; though it may be anticipated that, with the increasing
diffusion of knowledge, such obstacles to its pursuit will be
diminished. Thus far, however, notwithstanding the persevering labours
of Welcker, Bergmann, Parchappe, Broca, Boyd, Skae, Owen, Thurnam, and
other physiologists, their observations have been necessarily limited
almost exclusively to certain exceptional sources of evidence, embracing
to a large extent only the pauper and the insane classes; and in the
case of the latter especially, the functional disorder or chronic
disease of the organ under consideration renders it peculiarly desirable
that such results should be brought, as far as possible, into comparison
with a corresponding number of observations on healthy brains of a class
fairly representing the social and intellectual status of a civilised
community.

The average brain-weight of the human adult, as determined by a numerous
series of observations, ranges for man from 40 oz. to 52½ oz., and for
woman from 35 oz. to 47½ oz. But some indications among ancient crania
tend to suggest a doubt as to whether this difference in cerebral
capacity was a uniformly marked sexual distinction among early races;
due allowance being made for difference in stature. Dr. Thurnam made the
race of the British Long Barrows a special subject of study; and Dr.
Rolleston followed up his researches with valuable results. Amongst
other points, he noted that the males appear to have averaged 5 ft. 6
in., and the females 4 ft. 10 in. in height. But while the difference of
stature between the male and the female exceeds what is observable in
most modern races, the variation in the size and internal capacity of
their skulls appears to be less than among civilised races. The like
characteristics are noticeable in the larger race of Europe’s
Palæolithic era. Nothing is more striking in the discovery of those
ancient remains of European man than the remarkable development of the
skulls and the good brain capacity of the race of the palæotechnic dawn,
where man is proved, by his works of art and all the traces of his
hearth and home, to have been still a rude hunter and cave-dweller. The
Canstadt type of skull is assumed to be that of the earliest European
race of which traces have thus far been discovered; and it is
unquestionably markedly inferior in development to that of the artistic
Troglodytes of the French Reindeer period. Yet remarkable examples of
atavism, as in the skull of St. Mansuy, the missionary bishop of Toul,
in Lorraine, in the fourth century, and in that of Robert the Bruce,
show a reversion to this early type, in accompaniment with exceptional
intellectual capacity. The Neanderthal skull, an extreme example of the
primitive type, is pronounced by Professor Schaaffhausen to be the most
brutal of all human skulls; though this impression is mainly due to the
abnormal development of the superciliary ridges, in which it undoubtedly
approximates to the chimpanzee or the gorilla. But it has an estimated
capacity of 75 cubic inches, and a corresponding cerebral development in
no degree incompatible with the idea that the remains recovered from the
Neanderthal cave may be those of a skilled hunter; and one apt in the
ingenious arts of the primitive tool-maker.

Whatever other changes, therefore, may have affected the brain as the
organ of human thought and reasoning, it does not thus far appear that
the average mass of brain has greatly increased since the advent of
European man. Important exceptions have indeed been noted. Professor
Broca’s observations on the cerebral capacity of the Parisian population
at different periods, based on nearly 400 skulls derived from vaults and
cemeteries of dates from the eleventh or twelfth to the nineteenth
century, appear to him to show a progressive cerebral development in
that centre of European civilisation.[163] But though the assumption is
not inconsistent with other results of civilisation, and is the
necessary corollary of the postulate that intellectual activity tends to
development of brain, the fact that the crania presented a still greater
diversity in type than in size reminds us of the intermixture of races
on the banks of the Seine, and the consequent necessity for much more
extended observations before so important a deduction can be received as
an established truth.

Taking the average brain-weight of the human adult as already stated,
all male brains falling much below 40 oz. or 1130 grammes, and female
brains below 35 oz. or 990 grammes, may be classed as _microcephalous_;
and all above the maxima of the medium male and female brain, viz. 52½
oz. or 1480 grammes, and 47½ oz. or 1345 grammes, may be ranked as
_megalocephalous_, or great brains.

Professor Welcker, who devoted special attention to the whole subject
under review, assumes another and simpler test when he says that skulls
of more than 540 to 550 millimetres, or 21.26 to 21.65 inches in
circumference—the weight of brain belonging to which is 1490 to 1560
grammes (52.5-55 oz. av.)—are to be regarded as exceptionally large.
But while an excess of horizontal circumference may be accepted as
indicating good cerebral capacity, it must not be overlooked that the
adoption of it as the key to any definite or even approximate
brain-weight ignores the important elements of variation involved in the
difference between acrocephalic and platycephalic head-forms. The volume
of brain in Scott, and probably in Shakespeare, appears to have depended
more on its elevation than its horizontal expansion. The same was also
the case with Byron. The intermastoid arch, measured across the vertex
of the skull from the tip of one mastoid process to the other, furnishes
an accurate gauge of this development. Of thirteen selected male English
skulls in Dr. Davis’s collection, the mean of this measurement is 15.1;
and of thirty-nine male and female English skulls, it is only 14.4. Of
the whole number of eighty-one English skulls described in the
_Thesaurus Craniorum_, three exceptionally large ones are: No. 123, that
of an ancient British chief, of fully 6 ft. 2 in. in stature, from the
Grimsthorpe Barrow, Yorkshire; No. 905, a calvarium of great magnitude,
very brachycephalic, and with the elevation across the middle of the
parietals apparently exaggerated by compression in infancy, from Hythe,
Kent; and No. 1029, another male skull, remarkable alike for its size
and weight, and with a peculiarity of conformation ascribed by Dr. Davis
to synostosis of the coronal suture. The intermastoid arch in those
exceptionally large skulls measures respectively 16.0, 16.2, and 16.9,
whereas the same measurement derived from the cast of Scott’s head taken
after death, yields the extraordinary dimensions of 19 inches. This last
measurement is over the hairy scalp. But after making ample allowance
for this, the vertical measurement of the skull and consequently of the
brain is remarkable.

Full value has been assigned at all periods to the well-developed
forehead. It is characteristic of man. The physiognomist and the
phrenologist have each given significance to it in their respective
systems; and it has received no less prominent recognition from the
poets. A fully developed forehead is assumed as distinctive of the male
skull. But Juliet, in _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, when depreciating
her rival, exclaims, “Ay, but her forehead’s low”; and the jealous Queen
of Egypt, in _Antony and Cleopatra_, is told of Octavia that “her
forehead is as low as she would wish it.” “The fair large front” of
Milton’s perfect man is the external index of an ample cerebrum: the
organ to which the seat of consciousness, intelligence, and will is
assigned. It is therefore consistent with this that a low, retreating
forehead is popularly assumed to be the characteristic index of the
savage, and of the unintellectual among civilised races. But the
cerebral characteristics of both ancient and modern civilised races have
still to be studied in detail; and the influence of race and sex on the
form of the head and the mass and weight of the brain, involves some
curious questions in relation to the oldest illustrations of the
physical characteristics of man, and to the effect of civilisation on
the relative development of the sexes.

Early observations led Dr. Pruner-Bey and other ethnologists of France
to recognise in certain ancient Gaulish skulls of a brachycephalic type
the evidences of a primitive race, assumed to represent the inhabitants
of France and of Central Europe during its Reindeer period, and which
appeared to be assigned with reasonable probability to a Mongol origin.
But in the Cro-Magnon cavern, and in other caves more recently explored,
the remains of a race of men have been brought to light markedly
dolichocephalic, and no less striking in cranial capacity. Dr. Broca
speaks of these ancient cave-dwellers of the valley of the Vézère as
characterised by “sure signs of a powerful cerebral organisation. The
skulls are large. Their diameters, their curves, their capacity, attain,
and even surpass, our medium skulls of the present day. The forehead is
wide, by no means receding, but describing a fine curve. The amplitude
of the frontal tuberosities denotes a large development of the anterior
cerebral lobes, which are the seat of the most noble intellectual
faculties.”

This primitive race of hunters, marked by such exceptional
characteristics, belonged to the remote Reindeer period of Western
Europe, and was contemporary with the mammoth, the tichorine rhinoceros,
and the fossil horse, as well as with the cave-lion, the cave-bear, and
other long-extinct carnivora of Europe. The remarkable evidence of their
intellectual capacity has already been reviewed, in considering the
manifestations of the artistic faculty among primitive races. Their
weapons and implements, including carved maces or official batons, as
they are assumed to be, contribute additional evidence of skill and
latent capacity among a primitive race of hunters and cave-dwellers. Dr.
Broca, after a consideration of the merits of their ingenious arts,
says: “They had advanced to the very threshold of civilisation”; and Dr.
Pruner-Bey thus comments on their characteristics: “If we consider that
its three individuals had a cranial capacity much superior to the
average at the present day; that one of them was a female, and that
female crania are generally below the average of _male_ crania in size;
and that nevertheless the cranial capacity of the Cro-Magnon woman
surpasses the average capacity of male skulls of to-day, we are led to
regard the great size of the brain as one of the more remarkable
characters of the Cro-Magnon race. This cerebral volume seems to me even
to exceed that with which at the present day a stature equal to that of
our cave-folks would be associated; whilst the skulls from the Belgium
caves are small, not only absolutely, but even relatively in the rather
small stature of the inhabitants of those caves.”

The Canstadt head is undoubtedly an unintellectual type suggestive of an
inferior, though not necessarily an older savage race; for the evidence
of climate, contemporary fauna, and other indices of the environments of
the Cro-Magnon cave-dwellers, all point to an early Post-Glacial era.
Dr. Isaac Taylor, in his _Origin of the Aryans_, assuming the priority
of the Canstadt man, speaks of him as “this primitive savage, the
earliest inhabitant of Europe.” The forehead in this type is low and
receding, and the cerebral capacity generally correspondingly inferior.
The relative superposition in some discoveries of ancient human remains,
as in the alluvium and gravels of a former bed of the Seine, at
Grenelle, lends confirmation to the idea that in this poorly-developed
cranial type we recover the physical characteristics of the earliest
type of the European savage thus far brought to light. But no disclosure
of regular sepulture, or of implements or carvings assignable to him,
have hitherto furnished the means of determining his condition or mode
of life.

The disclosures of the rock-shelters in the valley of the Vézère are, on
the contrary, replete with interest, from the evidence they furnish of a
race of savage hunters, in whom ingenious skill and great artistic
aptitude gave evidence of latent intellectual capacity of a high order.
The remarkable size of crania accompanying those examples of primitive
art seemingly pertaining to the Troglodytes of the Mammoth and Reindeer
periods of Central Europe, is the more significant from its bearing on
the evidence of progressive cerebral development adduced by Dr. Broca
from skulls recovered from ancient and modern cemeteries of Paris. It
appears, indeed, to conflict with any theory of a progressive
development from the Troglodyte of the Post-Glacial age to the civilised
Frenchman of modern times. Professor Boyd Dawkins has accordingly been
at some pains in his _Cave Hunting_ to show that the conclusions formed
by previous observers as to the epoch of their burial are not supported
by the facts of the case; and he sums up his review of the whole
evidence by expressing a conviction that he “should feel inclined to
assign the interments to the Neolithic age, in which cave-burial was so
common. The facts,” he adds, “do not warrant the human skeletons being
taken as proving the physique of the palæolithic hunters of the
Dordogne, or as a basis for an inquiry into the ethnology of the
palæolithic races. Professor Boyd Dawkins also pronounces the same
doubts in reference to the equally characteristic male skeleton found in
a cave at Mentone, and to others obtained in the Lombrive and other
caves. It is not to be overlooked that the possibility of the intrusion
of human remains into earlier strata constitutes an important element
suggesting caution in reasoning from such evidence. For the remains of
man differ from those of other animals found in such series of deposits
as mark a succession of periods, in so far as they pertain to the only
animal habitually given to the practice of interment. Human skeletons
found under such circumstances may have been artificially intruded long
subsequent to the accumulation of the breccia in which they lay.
Happily, however, any doubts as to the contemporaneity of the human
remains with the other cave relics has been removed by the discovery of
skeletons, similar in type, in other caverns in the same valley—and
especially in that of Laugerie Basse,—in positions which seem to leave
no room for questioning their being of the same age as the works of art
found along with them.

Other examples of the ancient man of Europe show him in like manner
endowed with a cerebral development in advance of the rudest races of
modern times. The skull found by Dr. Schmerling in the Engis cave, near
Liège, along with remains of six or seven human skeletons, was embedded
in the same matrix with bones of the fossil elephant, rhinoceros, hyæna,
and other extinct quadrupeds. It is a fairly proportioned,
well-developed dolichocephalic skull; and, like others of the ancient
human skulls of different types thus far found, has signally
disappointed the expectations of those who count upon invariably finding
a lower type the older the formation in which it occurs. “Assuredly,”
says Professor Huxley, “there is no mark of degradation about any part
of its structure. It is, in fact, a fair average human skull, which
might have belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the
thoughtless brain of a savage.” Even the famous Neanderthal skull, of
uncertain geological antiquity, but pronounced to be “the most brutal of
all human skulls,” acquires its exceptional character, as already noted,
chiefly from the abnormal development of the superciliary region.

                 *        *        *        *        *

It is a universally accepted fact that the size of the male head and the
weight of the brain are greater than those of the female. The average
weight of the male brain is found to exceed that of the female by about
10 per cent; or, as it is stated by Professor Welcker, the brain-weight
of man is to that of woman as 100 to 90. But the difference of stature
between the two sexes has to be taken into account. The average, based
on various series of observations to determine the mean stature for man
and for woman, shows the latter to be about 8 per cent less than the
former; or, as Dr. Thurnam has stated it more precisely:

           RATIO OF STATURE AND BRAIN-WEIGHT IN THE TWO SEXES

                                                 MALE.  FEMALE.
           Stature                                 100     92.0
           Weight of brain                         100     90.3

Here again, however, it becomes important to take into consideration
other elements of difference besides weight; for, as Tennyson insists,
“Woman is not undevelopt man, but diverse.” The results of Wagner’s
observations on the superficial measurements of the convolutions of the
brain point to the conclusion that in the female the lesser brain-weight
may be compensated by a larger superficies. Ranked in the order of their
relative weights in grammes, six average brains of men and women were
found to stand thus:—

          1.  Male                                  (_a_)  1340
          2.  Male                                  (_b_)  1330
          3.  Male                                  (_c_)  1273
          4.  Female                                (_d_)  1254
          5.  Female                                (_e_)  1223
          6.  Female                                (_f_)  1185

But the same brains, when tested by the degrees of convolution of the
frontal lobe, measured in squares of sixteen square millimetres,
irrespective of the question of relative size, ranked as follows,
advancing the female (_d_) from the fourth to the first place, and
reducing the male (_c_) from the third to the sixth place:—

          1.  Female                                (_d_)  2498
          2.  Male                                  (_a_)  2451
          3.  Male                                  (_b_)  2309
          4.  Female                                (_f_)  2300
          5.  Female                                (_e_)  2272
          6.  Male                                  (_c_)  2117

But, as already indicated, some modern disclosures tend to raise the
question whether the difference between the sexes, in so far as relative
volume of brain is concerned, has not been increased as a result of
civilisation. The disparity in size between the Cro-Magnon male and
female skeletons is quite as great as that of modern times, but the
capacity of the female skull is relatively good.

Other observations, such as those of Professor Rolleston “On the People
of the Long Barrow Period,” seem to indicate a nearer approximation in
actual cranial capacity of the two sexes in prehistoric times than among
modern civilised races. On the assumption that intellectual activity
tends to permanent development of brain, it is consistent with the
conditions of savage life that it should bring the mental energies of
both sexes into nearly equal play. They have equally to encounter the
struggle for existence, and have their faculties stimulated in a
corresponding degree. As nations rise above the purely savage condition
of the hunter stage, this relative co-operation of the sexes is
subjected to great variations. The laws of Solon with reference to the
right of sale of a daughter or sister, and the penalties for the
violation of a free woman, show the position of the weaker sex among the
Greeks at that early stage to have been a degrading one. But the change
was great at a later stage; and much of our higher civilisation is
traceable to the early establishment of the European woman’s rights,
which Christianity subsequently tended to enlarge. The position of woman
among the ancient Britons appears to have been one of perfect equality
with man. Among the Arabians and other Mohammedan nations, including the
modern Turks, the opposite is the case; and the whole tendency of the
creed of the Koran, and the social life among Mohammedan nations, must
be towards the intellectual atrophy of woman. Hence it is consistent
with the diverse conditions of life that, in so far as cerebral
development is the result of mental activity, a much closer
approximation is to be looked for in the mass and weight of brain in the
two sexes among savage races, than among nations where woman
systematically occupies a condition of servile degradation, or of
passive inertness.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Some interesting results of the actual brain-weights of Negroes and
other typical representatives of inferior savage races have been
published, including examples of both sexes; and although the
observations are as yet too few for the deduction of any absolute or
very comprehensive conclusions, they furnish a valuable contribution
towards this department of ethnical comparison. In 1865, Dr. Peacock
published the results of observations on the brains of four Negroes and
two Negresses; and to those he subsequently added a seventh
example.[164] Others are included in the following table. But I have
excluded some extremes of variation, such as the two given by Mascagni,
one of which weighed 1458 grammes, or 51.5 oz. av., and the other only
738 grammes, or 26.1 oz. av. In addition to such actual brain-weights,
Morton, Tiedemann, Davis, Wyman, and others, have gauged the skulls of
Negroes, American Indians, Mincopies, Tasmanians, Australians, and other
savage races, as well as those of many civilised and semi-civilised
nations, and thereby contributed valuable data towards determining their
relative cranial capacity. In his _Crania Ægyptiaca_, Dr. Morton, when
discussing the traces of a Negro element in the ancient Egyptian
population, says: “I have in my possession seventy-nine crania of
Negroes born in Africa, for which I am indebted to Drs. Goheen and
M’Dowell, lately attached to the medical department of the colony of
Liberia, in Western Africa; and especially to Don Jose Rodriguez
Cisneros, M.D., of Havana, in the island of Cuba. Of the whole number,
fifty-eight are adult, or sixteen years of age and upwards, and give
eighty-five cubic inches for the average size of the brain. The largest
head measures ninety-nine cubic inches; the smallest but sixty-five. The
latter, which is that of a middle-aged woman, is the smallest adult head
that has hitherto come under my notice.”[165]

                                TABLE I

                           NEGRO BRAIN-WEIGHT

 ─────┬────────────────────────────────────┬────────────────────┬────────
      │                                    │                    │
 Sex. │               Race.                │     Authority.     │Weight.
      │                                    │                    │
 ─────┼────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────┼────────
      │                                    │                    │
  M.  │African,        Mozambique          │Peacock             │ 43.80
  M.  │   „                                │   „                │ 45.80
  M.  │   „            Buenos Ayres        │   „                │ 44.00
  M.  │   „            Congo               │   „                │ 46.25
  M.  │   „                                │   „                │ 42.80
  M.  │   „                                │Sœmmering           │ 45.40
  M.  │   „                                │Tiedemann           │ 35.20
  M.  │   „            Congo               │C. Luigi Calori     │ 44.40
  M.  │   „                                │Barkow              │ 50.80
  M.  │   „                                │   „                │ 45.90
  M.  │   „                                │   „                │ 38.90
  M.  │   „                                │Sir A. Cooper       │ 49.00
  F.  │Hottentot Venus                     │Marshall            │ 31.00
  F.  │Bushwoman                           │   „                │ 30.75
  F.  │   „                                │   „                │ 31.50
  F.  │   „                                │   „                │ 31.00
  F.  │   „                                │Flower and Murie    │ 38.00
  F.  │African                             │Peacock             │ 46.00
  F.  │   „                                │   „                │ 41.00
      │                                    │                    │
 ─────┴────────────────────────────────────┴────────────────────┴────────

The influence of race on the volume, weight, disposition, and relative
proportions of the different subdivisions of the human brain, and so of
brain on the character of races, has thus far been very partially
tested. But the diversities of race head-forms—brachycephalic,
dolichocephalic, platycephalic, acrocephalic, etc.—are now
well-recognised, though their relation to cerebral development still
requires much research for its elucidation. The ancient Roman forehead,
as illustrated by classic busts, and confirmed by genuine Roman skulls,
was low but broad, and the whole head was platycephalic. The Greek had a
high forehead, and the works of the Greek sculptors show that this was
regarded as typical. But contemporary with the classic races were the
Macrocephali of the Euxine and the Caspian Seas, who, like many modern
tribes of the New World, purposely aimed at depressing a naturally
receding forehead, and thereby exaggerated the typical forehead
characteristic of certain ancient barbaric races.

In the case of hybrids the interchange of physical and mental
characteristics of the parents, including modifications of head-form, is
a familiar fact. The English head-form appears to be an insular product
of intermingled Briton, Teuton, and Scandinavian elements, which has no
continental analogue; and its subdivisions, or sub-types, vary with the
ethnical intermixture. The Scottish head appears to exceed the English
in length, while the latter is higher. Where the Celtic element most
predominates, the longer form of head is found; but even in the most
Teutonic districts the difference between the prevailing head-form and
that of the continental German is so marked that the latter finds it
difficult to obtain an English-made hat which will fit his head.[166]
Here the diversities of head-form are accompanied with no less marked
differences of individual and national character.

Professor Welcker determined the average capacity of the German male
skull as 1450 cubic centimetres, equivalent to 88 cubic inches, and
representing an average brain-weight of 49 oz. Dr. Davis, by a similar
process, assigns to the Germans, male and female, the larger mean
brain-weight of 50.28 oz.; but by combining the means of both sexes, as
derived from his own tables and those of Huschke and Wagner, we obtain a
mean weight of German brain of 1314 grms., or 46.37 oz. The results of
an extensive series of observations by Dr. Broca, on the male French
skull, yield a mean capacity of 1502 cubic centimetres, or 91 cubic
inches, representing an average brain-weight of 50.6 oz. Morton, taking
his average from five English skulls, gives the great internal capacity
of 96 cubic inches; while Davis arrives at a capacity of only 90.9 cubic
inches from the examination of thirty-two skulls, male and female; and
for the Scottish and Irish, each of 91.2 cubic inches, from an
examination of thirty-five skulls. But unfortunately the Davis
collection, so rich in other respects, derived its chief English
specimens from a phrenological collection; and, along with a few large
skulls, contains “many small and poor English examples.”[167] The
average weight of the English brain may therefore, as Dr. Davis admits,
be assumed to be higher than the mean determined by him. “Still a
comparison with actually tested weights of brains shows that there
cannot be any material error.” The average brain-weight of twenty-one
Englishmen, as given by him, is 50.28 oz., that of thirteen women is
43.13; and of the combined series, 47.50. The results determined by the
same process in relation to the other nationalities of Europe are
exhibited in detail in Dr. Davis’s tables, printed in the _Philosophical
Transactions_.

Such averages are, at best, only approximations to true results; and
when obtained, as in Morton’s English race, from a very few examples, or
in Davis’s, from exceptional skulls, collected under peculiar
circumstances or for a special purpose, they must be tested by other
observations. According to Dr. Morton, for example, the mean internal
capacity of the English head is 96 cubic inches, while that of the
Anglo-American is only 90 cubic inches. Such a conclusion, if
established as the result of comparison of a sufficiently large number
of well-authenticated skulls, would be of great importance in its
bearing on the influence of change of climate, diet, habits, etc., as
elements affecting varieties of the human race. But determined as it was
in the Morton collection, from five English and seven Anglo-American
specimens, it can be regarded as little more than a mere chance result.
Ranged nearly in the order of mean internal capacity of skull, the
following are the results arrived at, mainly by gauging the skulls in
various collections available for such comparisons of different races of
mankind. In presenting them here, I avail myself of Dr. Thurnam’s
researches, augmenting them with other data subsequently published,
including results deduced from Dr. Davis’s minute reports of his own
extensive collections, and taking Tiedemann’s capacity of 92.3 for the
European skull as 100.

                                TABLE II

         RATIO OF CUBICAL CAPACITY OF SKULLS OF DIFFERENT RACES

           ────────────────────┬────────────────────┬──────────
                               │                    │
                  Race.        │     Authority.     │Capacity.
                               │                    │
           ────────────────────┼────────────────────┼──────────
                               │                    │
           European            │Tiedemann           │  100.0
           Asiatic             │Davis               │   94.3
           African             │   „                │   93.0
           American            │Tiedemann           │   95.0
              „                │Davis               │   94.7
              „                │Morton              │   87.0
           Oceanic             │Davis               │   96.9
           Chinese             │   „                │   99.8
           Mongol              │Morton              │   94.0
              „                │Tiedemann           │   93.0
           Hindoo              │Davis               │   89.4
           Malay               │Tiedemann           │   89.0
           American Indian     │Morton              │   91.0
           Esquimaux           │Davis               │   98.8
           Mexican             │Morton              │   88.5
           Peruvian            │Wyman               │   81.2
              „                │Morton              │   81.2
           Negro               │Tiedemann           │   91.0
              „                │Peacock             │   88.0
           Hottentot           │Morton              │   86.0
           Javan               │Davis               │   94.8
           Tasmanian           │   „                │   88.0
           Australian          │Morton              │   88.0
              „                │Davis               │   87.9
                               │                    │
           ────────────────────┴────────────────────┴──────────

The tables of Dr. Morton and Dr. Davis furnish materials for drawing
comparisons between diverse nations of the great European family; but
though they are of value as contributions to the required means for
ethnical comparison, they fall far short of determining the average
cranial capacity of the different nationalities. Whilst, for example,
the tabular data in the _Thesaurus Craniorum_ show a mean internal
capacity of 94 cubic inches for the combined Teutonic family, the Finns
yield the higher mean capacity of 96.3 cubic inches. Again, Dr. Thurnam
found that the results of the weighing of fifty-nine brains of patients
at the Friends’ Retreat near York, mostly persons of the middle class of
society, yielded weights considerably above those which he subsequently
obtained from testing those of pauper patients in Wilts and Somerset.
But this has to be estimated along with the undoubted ethnical
differences which separate the population of Yorkshire from that of
Somerset and Wiltshire. An interesting paper in the West-Riding Asylum
Reports gives the results of the determination of 716 brain-weights,
rather more than half being males. The average is 48.149 oz. for the
male, and 43.872 for the female brain; whereas the average weights of
267 male brains of a similar class of patients in the Wilts County
Asylum, as given by Dr. Thurnam, is 46.2 oz., and of 213 female brains,
41.0 oz. The results of the observations carried on by Dr. Boyd at St.
Marylebone yield, from 680 male English brains, a mean weight of 47.1
oz., and from 744 female brains a mean weight of 42.3 oz.; whereas Dr.
Peacock determined, from 183 cases in the Edinburgh Infirmary, the
weight of the male Scottish brain to average 49.7, and that of the
female brain to average 44.3 oz. Here the results are determined by so
numerous a series that they might be accepted as altogether reliable,
were it not that in the former case they are based to a large extent on
a purely pauper class; whereas the patients of the Royal Infirmary of
Edinburgh include respectable mechanics and others from many parts of
Scotland, among whom education is common. It is not to be doubted,
indeed, that a considerable difference in the form and size of the head,
and no doubt also in brain-weight, is to be looked for amongst English,
Scotch, Irish, German and French men and women, according to the county
or province of which they are natives, and the class of society to which
they belong.

The comparative ratio of the cubical capacity of the skull, or the
average brain-weight, in so far as either is indicative of ethnical
differences among members of the European family of nations, has thus to
be determined by numerous examples; or dealt with in detail in reference
to the different nationalities. Even in single provinces or counties,
social position, and probably education, must be taken into account; so
that a series of observations on hospital and pauper patients may be
expected to fall below the general average; and fallacious comparisons
between European peoples may be based on data, correct enough _per se_,
but unjust when placed alongside of a different class of results. The
great mass of evidence in reference to brain-weight has thus far been
mainly derived, in the case of the sane, from one rank of life. A
comparison of the results with those derived from the insane of various
classes of society shows less discrepancy than might have been
anticipated. But there are certain cases of hydrocephalous and other
abnormally enlarged brains which have to be rigorously excluded from any
estimate of the size or weight of the brain, either as a race-test or as
an index of comparative mental power.

Were it possible to select from among the great intellects of all ages
an adequate series of representative men, and ascertain their
brain-weights, or even the cubical capacity of their skulls, one
important step would be gained towards the determination of the relation
between size of brain and power of intellect. But we have little other
data than such hints as the busts of Æschylus, Pericles, Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle, and other leaders of thought may supply. Malcolm
Canmore—Malcolm of the great head, as his name implied,—stands forth
with marked individuality from out the shadowy roll of names which
figure in early Scottish history. Charlemagne, we should fancy, merited
a similar designation. But the portraits of his modern imperial
successor, Charles V., show no such loftiness of forehead. Judging from
the portraits and busts of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Cromwell,
Napoleon, and Scott, their brains must have considerably exceeded the
ordinary size. In the report of the _post-mortem_ examination of Scott,
the physicians state that “the brain was not large.” But this, no doubt,
means relatively to the internal capacity of the skull in its then
diseased condition. The intermastoid arch, as already noted, shows a
remarkably exceptional magnitude of 19 inches, whereas the average of
fifty-eight ancient and modern European skulls, as given in the
_Thesaurus Craniorum_, is only 14.60. The portraits of Wordsworth and
Byron show an ample forehead; and the popular recognition of the “fair
large front” of Milton’s typical man as the index of superior intellect
is an induction universally accepted. But, on the other hand, examples
of intellectual greatness undoubtedly occur with the brain little, if at
all, in excess of the average size. On the discovery of Dante’s remains
at Ravenna in 1865, the skull was pronounced to be ample, and exquisite
in form. But its actual cubical capacity and estimated brain-weight fall
considerably below those of the highest ascertained brain-weights of
distinguished men. Again, looking at the casts of the skulls of Robert
the Bruce and the poet Burns, the first impression is the comparatively
small size of head, and the moderate frontal development in each. Robert
Liston, the eminent surgeon, remarked of the former: “The division of
the cranium behind the meatus auditorius is large in proportion to that
situated before it. The skull is also remarkably wide and capacious in
that part, whereas the forehead is rather depressed”;[168] and more
recent observers have not hesitated to recognise in it a reversion to
the Canstadt type of the primitive European savage. Other
characteristics so markedly indicate the elements of physical rather
than intellectual vigour, that Liston expressly pointed out the analogy
to “the heads of carnivorous animals.” The Bruce was indeed
pre-eminently distinguished for courage and deeds of personal prowess;
but it was no less by statesmanlike qualities, calm, resolute
perseverance, and wise prudence, that he achieved the independence of
his country.

George Combe, the phrenologist, to whom the original cast of Burns’s
skull was first submitted, thus states the case in reference to the
frontal development of the poet: “An unskilful observer looking at the
forehead might suppose it to be moderate in size; but when the
dimensions of the anterior lobe, in both length and breadth, are
attended to, the intellectual organs will be recognised to have been
large. The anterior lobe projects so much that it gives an appearance of
narrowness to the forehead which is not real.”[169] The actual
dimensions of the skull are, longitudinal diameter, 8 inches; parietal
diameter, 5.95; and horizontal circumference, 22.25.

In the year 1865 the bones of Italy’s greatest poet, Dante, were
submitted to a minute examination under the direction of commissioners
appointed by the Italian Government to verify the discovery; and careful
measurements were taken of the skull. Dr. H. C. Barlow, describing it
from personal observation, says: “The head was finely formed, and the
cranium showed, by its ample and exquisite form, that it had held the
brain of no ordinary man. It was the most intellectually developed head
that I ever remember to have seen. The occipital region was prominently
marked, but the frontal was also amply and broadly expanded, and the
anterior part of the frontal bone had a vertical direction in relation
to the bones of the face” (_Athenæum_, September 9, 1865). But however
intellectually developed and exquisite in form the poet’s skull may have
appeared, the actual measurements fall short of the amplitude here
assigned to it. The dimensions are as follows: Internal capacity,
determined by filling the calvarium with grains of rice, 3.1321 lbs.
av., or a little over 50 oz.; circumference, 52 cent. 5 mill.;
occipito-frontal diameter, 31 cent. 7 mill.; transverse diameter, taken
between the ears, 31 cent. 8 mill.; height, 14 cent. If the internal
capacity is accepted without any correction, it would yield 57 oz., but
if allowance be made, as in the actual weighing of the brain, for the
abstraction of the dura mater and fluids, of say 8 per cent, this would
reduce it to about 52.5, or nearly the same weight as that of the
mathematician, Gauss. Professor Welcker deducts from 11.6 to 14 per
cent, according to the size of the skull; Dr. J. B. Davis recommends a
uniform deduction of 10 per cent. If we apply the latter rule, it will
reduce the estimated weight of Dante’s brain to 51.3 oz.[170]

Another interesting example of the skull of an Italian poet is that of
Ugo Foscolo, a cast of which was taken on the transfer of his remains to
the Church of Santa Croce at Florence. Though only fifty years old at
the time of his death, the skull was marked by “the entire ossification
of the coronal, sagittal, and lambdoidal sutures, and that atrophy of
the outer table, manifested by a depression on each side in the
posterior half of each parietal, leaving an elevated ridge in the
middle, in the position of the sagittal, which is but rarely observed
except in extremely advanced age.”[171] Sir Henry Holland, who knew the
poet intimately, describes him as resembling in temperament the painter
Fuseli, “passionately eccentric in social life.” Full of genius and
original thought, as the writings of Foscolo show him to have been, he
“was fiery and impulsive, almost to the verge of madness.”[172] He died
in England in obscurity and neglect; but a regenerated Italy recalled
the memory of her lost poet, and transferred his remains to Santa
Croce’s consecrated soil. The estimated size of his brain is given as
1426 cubic cents., equivalent to 87 cubic inches internal capacity,
which corresponds to a weight of brain of 48.44 oz. The longitudinal
diameter is 6.90; the parietal diameter 5.70; the intermastoid arch
15.0; and the horizontal circumference 520 mm., or 20.5 inches. The
brain capacity of the poet was thus little more than the European mean
deduced by Morton from the miscellaneous examples in his collection.

Dr. J. C. Gustav Lucae, in his _Zur Organischen Formenlehre_, furnishes
views and measurements of two other skulls of men of known intellectual
capacity. One of these is Johan Jacob Wilhelm Heinse, the author of
_Ardinghello_, a work of high character in the elements of æsthetic
criticism, though as a romance fit to rank with _Don Juan_ in subjective
significance and morality. He wrote another romance entitled
_Hildegard_; in addition to numerous articles and translations of
Petronius, Tasso, etc., which won for him the high commendation of
Goethe, and the more guarded admiration of Wieland. His skull, as
figured by Dr. Lucae, shows the frontal suture still open at the age of
fifty-three, at which he died. The internal capacity of the skull is
stated as 41.4 oz., equivalent to 1173 grms. In this, as in other
examples hereafter referred to, Dr. Lucae has gauged the capacity of the
skull with peas, and gives the weight in “unzen.” In the results deduced
from them here the _unzen_ are assumed to be Prussian ounces, the lb. of
12 oz. equal to 350.78348 grms. As already noted, the determination of
the internal capacity of the skull by varying tests, such as pease,
rice, and sands of diverse degrees of fineness, leads to uncertain
results. In those here deduced from the data furnished by Dr. Lucae, the
unzen have been tested by a series of experiments made with a view to
correct the error necessarily resulting from the fact that peas do not
entirely fill the cavity. The results show that 82.5 grms. of ordinary
sized peas occupy the space of 100 grms. of water. Deducting 10 per cent
for membranes and fluids, the estimated brain-weight of Heinse is 1379
grms. or 48.7 oz. av. The dimensions of the skull are given thus:—

             ───────────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────
                            │          │          │
                            │ Height.  │ Length.  │ Breadth.
                            │          │          │
             ───────────────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────────
                            │          │          │
             Fore part      │   4.9    │   4.00   │   4.1
             Middle part    │   4.1    │   3.11   │   5.3
             Hind part      │   3.9    │   3.60   │   4.1
                            │          │          │
             ───────────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────

The other example produced by Dr. Lucae is that of Dr. Christian
Heinrich Bünger, Professor of Anatomy in the University of Marburg. In
this skull the frontal suture is still more strongly defined at the age
of sixty than in that of Heinse. The internal capacity of the skull is
stated as 42.8 oz., equivalent to 1213 grms., which, dealt with as above
stated, yields 1410 grms. or 49.8 oz. av. Other dimensions of the skull
are given as follows:—

             ───────────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────
                            │          │          │
                            │ Height.  │ Length.  │ Breadth.
                            │          │          │
             ───────────────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────────
                            │          │          │
             Fore part      │   4.8    │   4.1    │   4.2
             Middle part    │   4.9    │   4.1    │   5.0
             Hind part      │   3.7    │   3.1    │   4.1
                            │          │          │
             ───────────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────

The premature ossification of the sagittal suture, by arresting the
expansion of the brain laterally, is a frequent source of abnormal
elongation of the head. On the other hand the frontal suture, which
ordinarily closes in the man-child before birth, though persistent in
the lower animals, is occasionally found to remain open in man till
maturity, as in the two notable cases here described. Darwin refers to
it as a case of arrested development. “This suture,” he says,
“occasionally persists, more or less distinctly, in man after maturity,
and more frequently in ancient than in recent crania; especially, as
Canestrini has observed, in those exhumed from the Drift, and belonging
to the brachycephalic type. In this and other instances the cause of
ancient races approaching the lower animals in certain characters more
frequently than do the modern races, appears to be that the latter stand
at a somewhat greater distance in the long line of descent from their
early semi-human progenitors.”[173] It may be permissible to express a
doubt as to this relative frequency of the occurrence of the frontal
suture in ancient and modern races, since the great naturalist does not
state it as a result of his own observations. Not only am I led to do so
from repeatedly noting its occurrence in modern crania; but its effect
can in no way favour arrested development. It must rather admit of the
free expansion of the frontal lobes of the brain, the decrease of which
in a progressive ratio is characteristic of the orang, chimpanzee, and
baboon.

On the general question of cranial development as an index of cerebral
capacity, Professor Welcker assigns a standard, which was accepted by
Dr. Thurnam, thus: “Skulls of more than 540 to 550 millimetres in
horizontal circumference (the weight of brain belonging to which is 1490
to 1560 grms., or 52.5-55 oz. av.), are to be regarded as exceptionally
large. The designation of _kephalones_, proposed by Virchow, might
commence from this point. Men with great mental endowments fall, for the
most part, under the definition of kephalony. If we consider the
relations of capacity, 1800 grms. (63.5 oz.) appears to be the greatest
attainable weight of brain within a skull not pathologically enlarged.”
But the brain of Cuvier—the heaviest healthy brain yet
recorded,—exceeded this. Its weight is stated by Wagner as 1861 grms.,
or 65.8 oz.; but this M. Broca corrects to 1829.96 grms. Even thus
reduced it exceeds the limits assigned by Professor Welcker to the
normal healthy brain. But a curious commentary upon this is furnished by
the fact that the modern English skull which Dr. Davis selects as
presenting the most striking analogy to the Neanderthal skull—“the most
ape-like skull which Professor Huxley had ever beheld,”—though marked
not only by the prominence of the superciliary ridges, but by great
depression of the frontal region, appears to have a cubical capacity
equivalent to that of Dr. Abercrombie, whose brain is only surpassed by
that of Cuvier among the ascertained brain-weights of distinguished
men.[174] Its capacity is 94 oz. of sand, or 113 cubic inches,
equivalent—after making the requisite deduction for membranes and
fluids,—to a brain-weight of 63 oz.

I have attempted in the following table to reduce to some common
standard such imperfect glimpses as are recoverable of the cranial
capacity of some distinguished men, of whose actual brain-weights no
record exists:—

                               TABLE III

                 CRANIAL CAPACITY OF DISTINGUISHED MEN

 ────────────────────┬────────┬──────────┬───────────────┬───────────────
                     │        │          │               │
                     │Length. │ Breadth. │Circumference. │   Estimated
                     │        │          │               │ Brain-Weight.
                     │        │          │               │
 ────────────────────┼────────┼──────────┼───────────────┼───────────────
                     │        │          │               │
 Dante               │   —    │    —     │       —       │     51.3
 Robert the Bruce    │  7.70  │   6.25   │     22.25     │       —
 Burns               │  8.00  │   5.95   │     22.25     │       —
 Scott (head)        │  9.00  │   6.40   │     23.10     │       —
 Heinse              │   —    │   5.30   │       —       │     48.0
 Bünger              │   —    │   5.00   │       —       │     49.8
 Ugo Foscolo         │  6.90  │   5.70   │     20.50     │     48.4
                     │        │          │               │
 ────────────────────┴────────┴──────────┴───────────────┴───────────────

Some of the examples adduced in the above table appear to exhibit
instances of mental endowment of high character, without the
corresponding degree of cranial, and consequently cerebral development.
The following table exhibits recorded examples of a series of actual
brain-weights of distinguished men. It seems to lend confirmation to the
idea that great manifestation of mental endowment is correlated, in the
majority of observed cases, to a brain above the normal average in mass
or weight. But even here intellect and brain-weight are not strictly in
uniform ratio. Several of the following brain-weights, including that of
Tiedemann, are furnished by Wagner, in the _Vorstudien des Menschlichen
Gehirns_; but in an elaborate table of brain-weights given in the
_Morphologie und physiologie des Menschlichen gehirns als Seelenorgan_,
the brain of Byron is classed above all except Cuvier; while Vogt gives
the same place, by estimate, to Schiller’s, as next in rank to that of
the great naturalist among highly developed brains. Dr. Thurnam states
his authorities for others, when producing them in his valuable
contribution to the _Journal of Mental Science_ “On the Weight of the
Brain.” For that of Webster he refers to “the unsatisfactory article on
the brain of Daniel Webster, _Edin. Med. Surg. Journ._, vol. lxxix. p.
355.” Dr. J. C. Nott, in his “Comparative Anatomy of Races” (_Types of
Mankind_, p. 453), says: “Dr. Wyman, in his _post-mortem_ examination of
the famed Daniel Webster, found the internal capacity of the cranium to
be 122 cubic inches, and in a private letter to me, he says: ‘The
circumference was measured outside of the integuments before the scalp
was removed, and may, perhaps, as there was much emaciation, be a little
less than in health.’ It was 23¾ inches in circumference; and the Doctor
states that it is well known there are several heads in Boston larger
than Webster’s. I have myself, in the last few weeks, measured half a
dozen heads as large and larger.” The circumference, it will be seen,
exceeds the corresponding measurement of Scott’s head, taken under
similar circumstances. But the statement of 122 cubic inches as the
internal capacity of Webster’s skull seems open to question. If correct,
instead of 53.5 oz. of brain-weight as stated in the following table, it
is the equivalent of a brain-weight of fully 65 oz., or one in excess
even of that, of Cuvier. The brain-weights of Goodsir, Simpson, and
Agassiz, are given in the following table from the reported autopsy in
each case:—

                                TABLE IV

                   BRAIN-WEIGHTS OF DISTINGUISHED MEN

─────┬────────────────────┬─────────────────────────┬──────┬──────┬──────
     │                    │                         │      │      │
     │                    │                         │ Age. │Oz.   │Grms.
     │                    │                         │      │      │
─────┼────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┼──────┼──────┼──────
     │                    │                         │      │      │
    1│Cuvier              │Naturalist               │  63  │64.5  │ 1830
    2│Byron               │Poet                     │  36  │63.5? │ 1799
    3│Abercrombie         │Philosopher, Physician   │  64  │63.   │ 1785
    4│Schiller            │Poet                     │  46  │63.?  │ 1785
    5│Goodsir             │Anatomist                │  53  │57.55 │ 1629
    6│George Brown        │Statesman (Canadian)     │  61  │56.3  │ 1595
    7│Harrison            │Chief Justice            │  45  │56.   │ 1586
    8│Spurzheim           │Phrenologist, Physician  │  56  │55.06 │ 1575
    9│Simpson             │Physician, Archæologist  │  59  │54.   │ 1530
   10│Dirichlet           │Mathematician            │  54  │53.6  │ 1520
   11│De Morny            │Statesman                │  50  │53.6  │ 1520
   12│Napoleon I.         │General, Statesman       │  52  │53.5  │ 1516
   13│Daniel Webster      │Statesman                │  70  │53.5  │ 1516
   14│Campbell            │Lord Chancellor          │  80  │53.5  │ 1516
   15│Agassiz             │Naturalist               │  66  │53.4  │ 1512
   16│Chalmers            │Author, Preacher         │  67  │53.   │ 1502
   17│Fuchs               │Pathologist              │  52  │52.9  │ 1499
   18│De Morgan           │Mathematician            │  73  │52.7  │ 1493
   19│Gauss               │Mathematician            │  78  │52.6  │ 1492
   20│Broca               │Anthropologist           │  —   │52.5  │ 1488
   21│Dupuytren           │Surgeon                  │  58  │50.7  │ 1436
   22│Grote               │Historian                │  76  │49.75 │ 1410
   23│Whewell             │Philosopher              │  71  │49.   │ 1390
   24│Hermann             │Philologist              │  51  │47.9  │ 1358
   25│Tiedemann           │Physiologist             │  80  │44.2  │ 1254
   26│Hausmann            │Mineralogist             │  77  │43.2  │ 1226
     │                    │                         │      │      │
─────┴────────────────────┴─────────────────────────┴──────┴──────┴──────

Dr. Thurnam, in producing fifteen of the above examples, remarks:
“Altogether, they decidedly confirm the generally received view of the
connection between size of brain and mental power and intelligence”; and
he adds his conviction that if the examination of the brain in the upper
ranks of society, and in men whose mental endowments are well known,
were more generally available, further confirmation would be given to
this conclusion. The converse, at least, is certain, that no great
intelligence or unwonted mental power is possible with a brain much
below the average in mass and weight But while the above list exhibits a
series of exceptionally high brain-weights of distinguished men, the
relative weights in some cases—as in Napoleon—are calculated to excite
surprise if viewed as an index of comparative intellectual capacity. On
the other hand, those lowest in the scale, and below the mean weight,
include men of undoubted eminence in letters and science; while the
proofs are no less unquestionable that a large healthy brain is not
invariably the organ of unwonted intelligence or mental activity.

In the _Philosophical Transactions_ of 1861, Dr. Boyd published an
elaborate series of researches illustrative of the weight of various
organs of the human body, including the weights of two thousand brains.
Most of the healthy brains are those of patients in the St. Marylebone
Infirmary, and have already been referred to as necessarily representing
the indigent and uneducated classes of London. Here, therefore, if an
unusually large brain is the index of intellectual power, every
probability was against the occurrence of brains above the average size
or weight. But the results by no means confirm this assumption. Among
the patients in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, in like manner, though
including the better class of artizans and others from country
districts, we might still look for a confirmation of M. Broca’s
assumption, based on extensive observations of French crania, “that,
other things being equal, whether as the result of education, or by
hereditary transmission, the volume of the skull, and consequently of
the brain, is greater in the higher than in the lower classes.” But Dr.
Peacock’s tables include four brain-weights, three of them of a sailor,
a printer, and a tailor, respectively, ranging from 61 to 62.75 oz.; and
so surpassing all but two, or at the most three, of the heaviest
ascertained brain-weights of distinguished men. Tried by the posthumous
test of internal capacity, three skulls of nameless Frenchmen, derived
from the common cemeteries of Paris, in like manner showed brains
equalling in size that of Cuvier. The following are the maximum
brain-weights among the St. Marylebone patients apparently unaffected by
cerebral disease:—

                                TABLE V

                  MAXIMUM BRAIN-WEIGHTS—ST. MARYLEBONE

       ───────────────┰─────────────────────┰─────────────────────
                      ┃                     ┃
            AGE.      ┃        MALE.        ┃       FEMALE.
                      ┃   Oz.       Grms.   ┃   Oz.       Grms.
                      ┃                     ┃
       ───────────────╂─────────────────────╂─────────────────────
                      ┃                     ┃
             7-14     ┃  57.25       1622   ┃  52.00       1473
            14-20     ┃  58.50       1658   ┃  52.00       1473
            20-30     ┃  57.00       1615   ┃  55.25       1565
            30-40     ┃  60.75       1721   ┃  53.00       1502
            40-50     ┃  60.00       1700   ┃  52.50       1488
            50-60     ┃  59.00       1672   ┃  52.50       1488
            60-70     ┃  59.50       1686   ┃  54.00       1530
            70-80     ┃  55.25       1565   ┃  49.50       1403
             80       ┃  53.75       1523   ┃  48.00       1360
          All Ages.   ┃                     ┃
             7-80     ┃  60.75       1721   ┃  55.25       1565
                      ┃                     ┃
       ───────────────┸─────────────────────┸─────────────────────

The stature, or relative size of body, has already been referred to as
an element in testing the comparative male and female weight of brain;
and it is one which ought not to be overlooked in estimating the
comparative size and weight of the brains of distinguished men. From my
own recollections of Dr. Chalmers, who was of moderate stature, his head
appeared proportionally large. The same was noticeable in the cases of
Lord Jeffrey, Lord Macaulay, Sir James Y. Simpson, and very markedly so
in that of De Quincey. The philosopher Kant was also of small stature;
and Dr. Thurnam refers to the observation of Carus that he had a head
not absolutely large, though, in proportion to the small and puny body
of that eminent thinker, it was of remarkable size. Among the
large-brained artizans of the Marylebone Infirmary, on the contrary, the
probabilities are in favour of a majority of them being men of full
muscular development and ample stature. Nevertheless, with every
allowance for this, it still remains probable, if not demonstrable, that
from the same humble and unnoted class, examples of megalocephaly could
be selected little short in cerebral mass, and apparently in
brain-weight, of the group of men whose large brains are recognised as
the concomitants of exceptionally great mental capacity and intellectual
vigour. Unless, therefore, we are contented to accept the poet’s dictum,
“Their lot forbad,”[175] and assume that “chill penury repressed their
noble rage, and froze the genial current of the soul,” it is manifest
that other elements besides those of volume or weight are essential as
cerebral indices of mental power. Dr. Thurnam, after noting examples
that had come under his own notice of brain-weights above the
medium—but which, as those of insane patients, may be assigned to other
causes than healthy cerebral development,—adds: “The heaviest brain
weighed by me (62 oz., or 1760 grms.) was that of an uneducated butcher,
who was just able to read, and who died suddenly of epilepsy, combined
with mania, after about a year’s illness. The head was large, but
well-formed; the brain of normal consistence; the _puncta vasculosa_
numerous.” In cases like this, of weighty brain with no corresponding
manifestation of intellectual power, something else was wanting besides
an ampler sphere. The mere position of a humble artizan or labourer will
not suffice to mar the capacity to “make by force his merit known,”
which pertains to the “divinely gifted man.”

Arkwright, Franklin, Watt, Stephenson, Farraday, Hugh Miller, and others
of the like type of self-made men, are not rare. Among the large-brained
artizans, scarcely one can have had a more limited sphere for the
exercise of mental vigour than the poet Burns, the child of poverty and
toil, who refers to his own early years as passed in “the unceasing moil
of a galley-slave.” In his case the very means essential to a healthy
physical development were stinted at the most critical period of life.
His brother Gilbert says: “We lived sparingly. For several years
butcher’s meat was a stranger to the house; while all exerted themselves
to the utmost of their strength, and rather beyond it, in the labours of
the farm. My brother, at the age of thirteen, assisted in thrashing the
crop of corn, and at fifteen was the principal labourer on the farm.”
Such premature toil and privations left their permanent stamp on his
frame. “Externally, the consequences appeared in a stoop of the
shoulders, which never left him; but internally, in the more serious
form of mental depression, attended by a nervous disorder which affected
the movements of the heart.” He had only exchanged the toil on his
father’s farm for equally unremitting labour on his own, when the finest
of his poems were written; nor would it be inconsistent with all the
facts to assume that the privations of his early life diminished his
capacity for continuous mental activity; as it undoubtedly impaired his
physical constitution. But, while the possession of a brain much above
the average in size might have seemed to account for his triumph over
the depressing influences of his limited sphere, the fact that his brain
appears to have been below the average size, points to some other
requisite than mere cerebral mass as essential to intellectual vigour.

The brain is influenced in all its functions by the character and the
amount of blood circulating through it, and promptly manifests the
effects of any deleterious substance, such as alcohol or opium,
introduced into its tissues. It depends, like other portions of the
nervous system, on an adequate supply of nourishment. In both respects
the brain of the Ayrshire poet was injuriously affected, in so far as we
may infer from all the known circumstances of his life.

The human brain is large in proportion to the body in infancy and youth;
and the opinions of leading anatomists and physiologists early in the
present century favoured the idea that it attained its full size within
a few years after birth. Professor Sœmmering assumed this to take place
so early as the third year. Sir William Hamilton explicitly stated his
conclusion thus: “In man the encephalon reaches its full size about
seven years of age”; and Tiedemann assigns the eighth year as that in
which it attains its greatest development. But the more accurate and
extended observations since carried on rather tend to the conclusion
that the brain not only goes on increasing in size and weight to a much
later period of life; but that it is healthfully stimulated by habitual
activity, and under exceptionally favouring circumstances it may
increase in weight long after the body has attained its maximum.

The largest average brain-weights, as determined by observations on the
brains of upwards of 2000 men and women in different countries of
Europe, have indeed been found in those not above twenty years of age;
and from a nearly equal number of English examples, Dr. Boyd determines
the period of greatest average weight to be the interval between
fourteen and twenty years of age; but this includes cases in which death
has ensued from undue or premature brain development.

Other evidence leaves no room for doubt that cases are not rare of the
growth, or increased density of the brain up to middle age; while the
observations of Professor Welcker indicate this process extended to a
later period of life. The average brain-weights, as given by Boyd,
Peacock, and Broca, from healthy or sane cases, along with those of
Welcker, include the weights of 47 male brains from ten to twenty years
of age, giving an average of 49.6 oz., or 1405 grms.; and of 112 male
brains from twenty to thirty years of age, giving an average of 48.9
oz., or 1384 grms.; and the results of a nearly equal number of female
brains closely approximate. They embrace English, Scotch, German, and
French, men and women. Dr. Welcker’s results indicate the period of
maximum brain-weight to be between 30-40, as shown in the following
table:—

                                TABLE VI

             AVERAGE WEIGHT OF THE BRAIN AT DIFFERENT AGES

       ───────────────┰─────────────────────┰─────────────────────
                      ┃                     ┃
            AGE.      ┃        MALE.        ┃       FEMALE.
                      ┃ Oz. Av.     Grms.   ┃ Oz. Av.     Grms.
                      ┃                     ┃
       ───────────────╂─────────────────────╂─────────────────────
                      ┃                     ┃
          From 10-20  ┃   47.5       1346   ┃   43.1       1221
               20-30  ┃   49.5       1404   ┃   44.1       1251
               30-40  ┃   49.5       1404   ┃   44.8       1272
               40-50  ┃   48.6       1379   ┃   43.5       1234
               50-60  ┃   48.1       1365   ┃   43.5       1234
               60-70  ┃   46.1       1306   ┃   42.8       1213
                      ┃                     ┃
       ───────────────┸─────────────────────┸─────────────────────

In the female examples, amounting to thirty-one between seventy and
eighty years of age, and six between eighty and ninety, the continuous
diminution of brain-weight corresponds with the increasing age; but in
the male examples, sixty-five cases between sixty and seventy years of
age yield an average brain-weight of 46.1 oz., while twenty-seven cases
between seventy and eighty years of age give 47.9 as the average;
falling in the next decade to 43.8.

It may be inferred from the number of cases pointing to an early
attainment of the highest average brain-weight, not that the brain
differs from all other internal organs of the human body in attaining
its maximum before the period of puberty; but that physical as well as
mental vigour are dependent on the maintenance of a nice equilibrium
between the brain and the other organs while in process of development.
The observations of Dr. Boyd, including the results of 2614
_post-mortem_ examinations of sane and insane patients of all ages,
showed that the average weight of the brain of “still-born” children at
the full period was much greater than that of the new-born living child.
It is a legitimate inference, therefore, that death in the former cases
was traceable to an excessive premature development of the brain. Again,
when it is shown from numerous cases that the highest average weights of
brain in both sexes occur not later than twenty years of age, it appears
a more legitimate inference to trace to exceptional cerebral development
towards the period of adolescence, the mortality which rendered
available so many examples of unusually large or heavy brains, than to
assume that the normal healthy brain begins to diminish at that age.

It is a fact familiar to popular observation that a large head in youth
is apt to be unfavourable to life. A tendency to epilepsy appears to be
the frequent concomitant of an unusually large brain; and with the
congestion accompanying its abnormal condition, this may account for the
weights of such diseased brains as have been repeatedly found in excess
of nearly all the recorded examples of megalocephaly in the cases of
distinguished men. But a greater interest attaches to a remarkable
example of healthy megalocephaly recorded in the _British Medical
Journal_ for 1872. The case was that of a boy thirteen years of age, who
died in Middlesex Hospital from injuries caused by a fall from an
omnibus. His brain was found to weigh 58 oz. He had been a particularly
healthy lad, without any evidence of rachitis, and very intelligent.
This is a strikingly exceptional case of a healthy brain, at the age of
thirteen, exceeding in weight all but two of the greatest ascertained
brain-weights of distinguished men.

From the evidence already adduced of relative cubical capacity of the
skulls of different races, it appears, as was to be expected, that there
is a greater prevalence of the amply-developed brain among the higher
and more civilised races. But all averages are apt to be deceptive; and
the progressive scale from the smallest up to the greatest mass of brain
is by no means in the precise ratio of an intellectual scale of
progression. The results of Dr. J. B. Davis’s investigations, based on
the study of a large, and in many cases a seemingly adequate number of
skulls, bring out this remarkable fact, that, so far from the
Polynesians occupying a rank in the lowest scale, as affirmed by
Professor Vogt, the Oceanic races of the Pacific generally rank in
internal capacity of skull, and consequent size of brain, next to the
European.

But it is of more importance for our present inquiry to note that, as
exceptionally large and heavy brains occur among the most civilised
races, in some cases—and in some only—accompanied with corresponding
manifestations of unusual intellectual power; so also it becomes
apparent that skulls much exceeding the average, and some of remarkable
internal capacity, are met with among barbarian races, and even among
some of the lowest savages. Taking the crania in the elaborate series of
tables in Dr. J. B. Davis’s _Thesaurus Craniorum_, with an internal
capacity above 100 cubic inches, they will rank in order as follows:—

           Chinese                                  111.8
           Maduran                                  110.6
           Marquesan                                110.6
           Kanaka                                   108.8
           Javan                                    107.
           Negro                                    105.8
           Australian                               104.5
           Kafir                                    104.5
           Bakele                                   103.3
           Tidorese                                 103.3
           Bhotia                                   102.7
           Bodo                                     100.9
           Hindoo                                   100.9
           Sumatra                                  100.9

Among the European series the largest is an Irish cranium of 121.6 cubic
inches, and next to it comes an Italian, 114.3, and an Englishman,
112.4; an ancient Briton from a Yorkshire Long Barrow, 109.4; an ancient
Roman, 106.4; a Lapp, 105.8; an ancient Gaul, 103.7; a Briton of Roman
times, 103.3; a Merovingian Frank, 101.5; and an Anglo-Saxon, 100.9.
Those and other examples of the like kind are full of interest as
showing the recurrence of megalocephalic variations from the common
cranial and cerebral standard among ancient races; and among rudest
savages as well as among the most cultivated classes of modern civilised
nations. But the order shown in the above instances is derived from
purely exceptional examples, and is no key to the relative capacity of
the races named.

Opportunities for testing the size and weight of the brain among
barbarous races are only rarely accessible to those who are qualified to
avail themselves of them for the purposes of science. Some near
approximation to the relative brain-weight of the English, Scotch,
German, and French, may now be assumed to have been established. Dr.
Thurnam instituted a comparison between those and two of the prehistoric
races of Britain—the Dolichocephali of the Long Barrows, and the
Brachycephali of the Round Barrows of England.[176] The results are
curious, as showing not only a greater capacity in the ancient British
skulls than the average modern German, French, or English head; but an
actual average higher than that of all but five of the most
distinguished men of Europe, whose brain-weights have been recorded. On
comparing the ancient skulls with those of modern Europeans, as
determined by gauging the capacity of both by the same process, the
following are the results presented, according to the authorities
named:—

                               TABLE VII

───────────────────────┬──────────┬──────────┬────────┬──────────┬────────
                       │          │          │        │          │
                       │          │          │        │Capacity. │ Brain-
    SKULLS OF MEN.     │   No.    │  Weight  │ Cubic  │  Centi-  │ weight
                       │          │ of Sand. │  In.   │ metres.  │oz. av.
                       │          │          │        │          │
───────────────────────┼──────────┼──────────┼────────┼──────────┼────────
                       │          │          │        │          │
Anc. British, L.       │    18    │   82     │   99   │   1622   │  54.0
Barrows                │          │          │        │          │
Anc. British, R.       │    18    │   80½    │   98   │   1605   │  53.5
Barrows                │          │          │        │          │
Mod. English, _Morton_ │    28    │   77     │   94   │   1540   │  52.2
Mod. French, _Broca_   │   357    │   74     │   91   │   1502   │  50.6
Mod. German, _Welcker_ │    30    │   72     │   88   │   1450   │  49.0
                       │          │          │        │          │
───────────────────────┴──────────┴──────────┴────────┴──────────┴────────

The highest average of any nationality, as determined by Drs. Reid and
Peacock from the weighing of 157 brains of male patients, chiefly
Scottish Lowlanders, in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, is little more
than 50 oz., or 1417 grammes; whereas the estimated average brain-weight
in the ancient British skulls is 54 oz. for the Dolichocephali of the
Long Barrows, which equals that of Sir James Simpson, and exceeds all
but six of the most distinguished men adduced in Table IV. For the
Brachycephali of the Round Barrows it is 53.5 oz., which is in excess of
the brain-weights of Agassiz, Chalmers, Whewell, and other distinguished
men, and exactly accords with that of Daniel Webster and Lord Chancellor
Campbell. In so far, moreover, as this illustrates the cerebral capacity
of ancient races, it is in each case an average obtained by gauging
eighteen skulls, and not the cranial capacity of one or two
exceptionally large ones. Dr. Thurnam does indeed suggest that the
Barrows may have been the sepulchres of chiefs; nor is this unlikely;
but the superior vigour and mental endowment which this implies fails to
account for a cerebral capacity surpassing all but the most
distinguished men of science and letters in modern Europe referred to in
the above table. Rather may we conclude from this, as from other
evidence, that quality of brain may, within certain limits, be of more
significance than mere quantity; and that brains of the same volume, and
agreeing in weight, may greatly differ in minute structure and in powers
of cerebration.

In the case of the ancient British Barrow-Builders we seem to have large
heads and remarkable development of brain, without any indications of an
equivalent in intellectual power; and although the estimated
brain-weight derived from gauging the capacity of the empty chamber of
the skull proceeds on the assumption of mass and weight agreeing,
sufficient data exist to justify the adoption of this for approximate
results. The average weight of brain of twelve male Negroes of
undetermined tribes, deduced from gauging their skulls, has been
ascertained to amount to 1255 grammes, or 44.3 oz. The actual weight of
brain of the Negro of Guinea, described by Professor Calori, was 1260
grammes; and other examples vary considerably from the average. Mascagni
gives 1458 grammes as the weight of one Negro brain weighed by him;
equivalent to an actual brain-weight of 51.5 oz., which is greater than
that of Dupuytren, Whewell, Hermann, Tiedemann, or Grote. Nevertheless,
although the extremes are great, and are confirmed by a like diversity
in measurements of the horizontal circumference and of internal
capacity, the average result given above appears to be a fair and
reliable one.

Thus far the inquiry into data illustrative of comparative size and
weight of brain has dealt chiefly with the races of the eastern
hemisphere. The compass is great in point of time in so far as it
embraces savage and civilised peoples, including the barbarians of
Europe’s Palæolithic era, along with modern tribes of Asia, Africa, and
Australia, and some of the most notable among the prehistoric races of
the British Isles. The compass is equally great in the range of
intellectual development, when to those are added data illustrative of
the average brain-weight of some of the leading nations of modern
Europe, and a series of examples derived from noted instances of the
highest exceptional types of intellectual power and activity in recent
times. Some general conclusions of a comprehensive kind seem to follow
legitimately from this evidence. Notwithstanding the prominence given to
the assumed evidence of a low type of skull, depressed forehead, and
poor frontal development, in the assumed primitive European Canstadt
race, when we keep in view the enormous interval of time assumed to
separate “those savages who peopled Europe in the Palæolithic age” from
our own era, the amount of difference in size and apparent brain-weight
is not remarkable. Compared with those of contemporary savage races it
suggests no more than the accompanying development of the brain in a
ratio with the intellectual activities of progressive civilisation, and
even then the relative brain-mass of the lowest type is suggestive of
latent powers only needing development. But the old and later races of
the New World stand in a different relation to each other; and the
process thus far employed when applied to determine the comparative
cranial capacities of the native American races, discloses results of a
different character, and widely at variance with those above described
relating to the ancient races of Britain. On the continent of America
the native ethnical scale embraces a comparatively narrow range, and any
intrusive elements are sufficiently recent to be easily eliminated. The
Patagonian and the Fuegian rank alongside of the Bushman, the Andaman
Islander, or the Australian, as among the lowest types of humanity;
while the Aztecs, Mayas, Quichuas, and Aymaras, attained to the highest
scale which has been reached independently by any native American race.
We owe to the zealous and indefatigable labours of Dr. Morton, alike in
the formation of his great collection of human crania, and in the
published results embodied in the _Crania Americana_, a large amount of
knowledge derived from this class of evidence in reference to the races
of the New World. In one respect, at least, those results stand out in
striking contrast to the large-headed barbarian Barrow-Builders of
ancient Britain. Dr. Morton subdivides the American races into the
Toltecan race, embracing the semi-civilised communities of Mexico,
Bogota, and Peru, and the barbarous tribes scattered over the continent
from the Arctic circle to Tierra del Fuego. His latest views are
embodied in a contribution to Schoolcraft’s _History of the Indian
Tribes of the United States_, entitled “The Physical Type of the
American Indians.” In treating of the volume of brain, he draws special
attention to the Peruvian skulls, 201 in number, obtained for him from
the cemeteries of Pisco, Pachacamac, and Arica. “Herera informs us that
Pachacamac was sacred to priests, nobles, and other persons of
distinction; and there is ample evidence that Arica and Pisco, though
free to all classes, were among the most favoured cemeteries of Peru.”
Dr. Morton accordingly adds: “It is of some importance to the present
inquiry, that nearly one-half of this series of Peruvian crania was
obtained at Pachacamac; whence the inference that they belonged to the
most intellectual and cultivated portion of the Peruvian nation; for in
Peru learning of every kind was an exclusive privilege of the ruling
caste.” In reality, however, later additions to our knowledge of the
physical characteristics of the ancient Peruvians tend to confirm the
idea of the existence of two distinct races: a patrician order occupying
a position analogous to the Franks of Gaul or the Normans of England,
though more aptly to be compared to the Brahmins of India; and a more
numerous class, constituting the labouring and industrial orders of the
community, abundantly represented in the Pacific coast tribes of Peru,
the cemeteries of which have furnished the larger number of crania to
European and American collections.

To such a patrician order or caste the intellectual superiority and
privileges of the governing race pertained. But whatever may have been
the exclusive prerogatives of the patrician and sacerdotal orders, there
is no doubt that the Peruvians as a people had carried metallurgy to as
high a development as has been attained by any race ignorant of working
in iron. They had acquired great skill in the arts of the goldsmith, the
engraver, chaser, and modeller. Pottery was fashioned into many artistic
and fanciful forms, showing ingenuity and great versatility of fancy.
They excelled as engineers, architects, sculptors, weavers, and
agriculturists. Their public works display great skill, combined with
comprehensive aims of practical utility; and alone, among all the
nations of the New World, they had domesticated animals, and trained
them as beasts of burden. It is not, therefore, without reason that Dr.
Morton adds: “When we consider the institutions of the old Peruvians,
their comparatively advanced civilisation, their tombs and temples,
mountain roads and monolithic gateways, together with their knowledge of
certain ornamental arts, it is surprising to find that they possessed a
brain no larger than the Hottentot and New Hollander, and far below that
of the barbarous hordes of their own race. For, on measuring 155 crania,
nearly all derived from the sepulchres just mentioned, they give but 75
cubic inches (equivalent, after due deduction for membranes and fluids,
to a brain of 40.1 oz. av. in weight,) for the average bulk of the
brain. Of the whole number, only one attains the capacity of 101 cubic
inches, and the minimum sinks to 58, the smallest in the whole series of
641 measured crania. It is important further to remark that the sexes
are nearly equally represented, namely, eighty men and seventy-five
women.”

Other collections subsequently formed have largely added to our means of
testing the curious question thus raised of the apparent inverse ratio
of volume of brain to intellectual power and progressive civilisation
among the native races of the American continent. In 1866, Mr. E. G.
Squier presented to the Peabody Museum of American Archæology and
Ethnology at Harvard, a collection of seventy-five Peruvian skulls,
obtained by himself from various localities both on the coast and in the
interior. “The skulls from the interior represent the Aymara on Lake
Titicaca, as well as the Quichua, Cuzco, or Inca families; and the
skulls of every coast family from Tumbes to Atacama, or from Ecuador to
Chili.”[177] Subsequently the curator, the late Professor Jeffreys
Wyman, made this collection, along with two others, of skulls from the
mounds of Kentucky and Florida, the subject of careful comparative
measurements. The following are the results: The crania from Florida
were chiefly obtained from a burial place near an ancient Indian shell
mound of gigantic proportions, a few miles distant from Cedar Keys. They
are eighteen in number, and have a mean capacity of 1375.7 cubic
centimetres, or nearly 84 cubic inches. The skulls from the Kentucky
mounds, twenty-four in number, show a mean capacity of 1313 cubic
centimetres, 80.21 cubic inches, with a difference of 125 cubic
centimetres, or 7.61 cubic inches in favour of the males. Yet, small as
the Kentucky skulls are, they exceed the Peruvian ones. Keeping in view
the varied sources of the latter, Professor Wyman remarks: “Although the
crania from the several localities show some differences as regards
capacity, yet in most other respects they are alike.” And the numbers,
when viewed separately, are too few to attach much importance to
variations within so narrow a range. Nevertheless it is noteworthy that
the highest mean is that of the Aymaras of Lake Titicaca; and this
difference is considerably increased by measurements derived from
subsequent additions to the Harvard collection, received since the death
of Professor Wyman from the high valley of Lake Titicaca. In other
respects besides their marked superiority in size, the latter crania
differ from those of the Coast tribes, and confirm the earlier deduction
of an ethnical distinction between the more numerous race so abundantly
represented in the Coast cemeteries, and that which is chiefly
represented by crania brought from the interior. The numbers from the
several localities selected by Professor Wyman as fair average specimens
of the whole stand thus: six from burial towers, or chulpas, near Lake
Titicaca, 1292; five from Cajamaquilla, 1268.75; fourteen from Casma,
1254; four from Truxillo, 1236; four from Pachicamac, 1195; sixteen from
Amacavilca, 1176.2; and seven from Grand Chimu, 1094.28.

In 1872, the collection of Peruvian crania in the Peabody Museum was
augmented by a large addition from 330 skulls obtained by Professor
Agassiz, through the intervention of Mr. T. J. Hutchinson, British
Consul at Callao, in Peru. From those contributed to the Harvard Museum,
Dr. Wyman selected eleven as apparently the only ones unaffected by any
artificial compression or distortion, and therefore valuable as
illustrations of the normal shape of the Peruvian head. They are quite
symmetrical. The occiput, instead of being flattened or vertical, as in
the distorted crania, has the ordinary curves, and in some of them is
prominent. Two of them are marked by a low, retreating forehead; but in
all the others the forehead is moderately developed. As, moreover, the
larger half appear to be the skulls of females, this accounts for the
mean capacity falling below the Peruvian average. But they are all
small. The largest of them is only 1260 cubic centimetres, or less than
74 cubic inches; and the average capacity of ten of them is 1129 cubic
centimetres, or 69 cubic inches.

The collection, as a whole, differs from that of Mr. Squier, in having
been derived from the huacas, or ancient graves of one locality, that of
Ancon, near Callao. Professor Wyman stated as the result of his careful
study of them: “The average capacity obtained from the whole collection,
including those having the distorted as well as the natural shape,
varies but little from that of previous measurements,” including those
of Morton and Meigs, and his own results from the Squier collection.

Another collection of 150 ancient skulls, obtained by Mr. Hutchinson
during his residence in Peru, and presented to the Anthropological
Institute of London, has the additional value, like that of Squier, of
having been carefully selected from different localities, including
Santos, Ica, Ancon, Passamayo, and Cerro del Oro; and the same may be
said of those enumerated in the _Thesaurus Craniorum_ of Dr. Davis. We
have thus unusually ample materials for determining the cranial
characteristics of this remarkable people, and the results in every case
are the same. After a careful examination of the Peruvian skulls, in the
London anthropological collection, Professor Busk states his conclusions
thus: “The mean capacity of the larger skulls, which may be regarded as
males, appears, as far as I have gone, to be about 80 cubic inches,
equivalent to a brain of about 45 ounces, roughly estimated. This
capacity, and the measurements above cited, show that the crania
generally are of small size”; and he adds: “this is in accord with the
statements of all observers.”[178]

Dr. Davis has added to the valuable data included in his _Thesaurus
Craniorum_, a series of measurements of skeletons. Unfortunately that of
a male Quichua, procured by him in the form of a “Peruvian mummy,”
proved to be affected with carious disease about the last dorsal and
upper lumbar vertebræ; and consequently the length of the vertebral
column essential for comparison with the skeletons of other races, is
wanting; but the other measurements indicate in this example a stature
below the average, while the skull exceeds it. The average internal
capacity of eighteen Quichua male skulls, as given by Dr. Davis, is
seventy-three, whereas this is 78.5. That the ancient Peruvian skulls
are, with rare exceptions, of small size, is undoubted; and in view of
this it becomes a matter of some importance to determine whether this
was in any degree due to a correspondingly small stature. Obscure
references are found in the legendary history of Peru to a pigmy race.
Pedro de Cieza de Leon, whose travels have been translated by Mr.
Markham, refers to the first emigration of the Indians of Chincha to
that valley, “where they found many inhabitants, but all of such small
stature, that the tallest was barely two cubits high” (p. 260).
Garcilasso de la Vega repeats another tradition heard by himself in
Peru, of a race of giants who came by sea to the country, and were so
tall that the natives reached no higher than their knees. They lived by
rapine, and wasted the whole country till they were destroyed by fire
from heaven. Traditions of this class may possibly point to the
existence of an aboriginal race of small stature. The aborigines of
Guatemala, Salvador, and Nicaragua, are described as below the middle
size (Bancroft, vol. i. p. 688); and Von Tchudi divides the wild Indians
of Peru into the Iscuchanos, the natives of the highlands, a tall, slim,
vigorous race, with the head proportionally large and the forehead low;
and those of the hot lowlands, a smaller race, lank, but broad
shouldered, with a broad face and small round chin. There appear,
therefore, to be traces of one or more aboriginal races of small
stature. But Dr. Morton says expressly of the Peruvians: “Our knowledge
of their physical appearance is derived solely from their tombs. In
stature they appear not to have been in any respect remarkable, nor to
have differed from the cognate nations except in the conformation of the
head, which is small, greatly elongated, narrow its whole length, with a
very retreating forehead, and possessing more symmetry than is usual in
skulls of the American race.” Some of the characteristics here referred
to are, in part at least, the result of artificial modifications; but
the small head appears to be an indisputable characteristic of the most
numerous ancient people of Peru.

It may not unreasonably excite surprise that Dr. Morton should have
adduced results apparently pointing to the conclusion that civilisation
had progressed among the native races of the American continent in an
inverse ratio to the volume of brain; and yet passed it over with such
slight comment. The only hint at a recognition of the difficulty is
where, as he draws his work to a close, he indicates his observation of
a greater anterior and coronal development in the smaller Peruvian
brain. “It is curious,” he says, “to observe that the barbarous nations
possess a larger brain by 5½ cubic inches than the Toltecans; while, on
the other hand, the Toltecans possess a greater relative capacity of the
anterior chamber of the skull in the proportion of 42.3 to 41.8. Again,
the coronal region, though absolutely greater in the barbarous tribes,
is rather larger in proportion in the demi-civilised tribes.”[179] But
Dr. Morton also noted that the heads of nine Peruvian children in his
possession “appear to be nearly if not quite as large as those of
children of other nations at the same age”;[180] so that he seemed to
recognise something equivalent to an arrested cerebral development
accompanying the intellectual activity of this remarkable people at some
later stage, yet without apparently affecting their mental power. But it
was characteristic of this minute and painstaking observer to accumulate
and set forth his results, unaffected by any apparent difficulties or
inconsistencies which they might seem to involve.

Important advances have been made in craniometry, as in other branches
of anthropology, since Dr. Morton formed the collection which now, with
many later additions, constitutes an important department in the
collections of the Academy of Science of Philadelphia. Zealous and
well-trained labourers are following in his steps; but the value of his
services to science are more fully appreciated with every addition to
the work he inaugurated. Researches have been prosecuted for some years
by a committee of the British Association with a view to securing
reliable data relative to the tribes of the Canadian North-West and
British Columbia. In following out their instructions, Dr. Franz Boas
has prepared valuable tables of measurements, both of living examples of
the Haidah, Tsimshian, Kwakintl, and Nootka tribes, and of crania of
those and other natives of the Pacific coast; but unfortunately he has
omitted the cerebral capacity. But a large collection of crania of
tribes lying to the south of British Columbia, now in the Peabody Museum
of Harvard University, has furnished to Mr. Lucien Carr opportunities
for a series of careful measurements showing some very distinctive
diversities among tribes of the coast and the islands of Southern
California. From those the following table is derived. The capacity is
given in cubic centimetres; and shows not only a marked diversity in
cerebral capacity distinguishing different island tribes, but also notes
the relative difference of the male and female head. Among the Indians
of the Pacific coast are the Haidahs and others noted for exceptional
ingenuity and skill in their carvings, pottery, and other handiwork. But
besides the fair-skinned Haidahs and Tsimshians of the north, there are
essentially diverse tribes of Southern California, noticeable for
swarthy and almost black colour; and not only inferior, but essentially
differing in the style of their arts.

                               TABLE VIII

                     CRANIA OF PACIFIC COAST TRIBES
                  _Santa Catalina Island, California._

───────────────┬──────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────
               │          │               │               │
No. of Crania. │   Sex.   │   Capacity    │   Capacity    │   Capacity
               │          │   Average.    │   Maximum.    │   Minimum.
               │          │               │               │
───────────────┼──────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────
               │          │               │               │
      26       │   Male   │     1470      │     1719      │     1282
      12       │  Female  │     1279      │     1451      │     1098
               │          │               │               │
───────────────┴──────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────

                   _San Clementé Island, California._

───────────────┬──────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────
               │          │               │               │
No. of Crania. │   Sex.   │   Capacity    │   Capacity    │   Capacity
               │          │   Average.    │   Maximum.    │   Minimum.
               │          │               │               │
───────────────┼──────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────
               │          │               │               │
       9       │   Male   │     1452      │     1747      │     1300
       6       │  Female  │     1315      │     1352      │     1268
               │          │               │               │
───────────────┴──────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────

                    _Santa Cruz Island, California._

───────────────┬──────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────
               │          │               │               │
No. of Crania. │   Sex.   │   Capacity    │   Capacity    │   Capacity
               │          │   Average.    │   Maximum.    │   Minimum.
               │          │               │               │
───────────────┼──────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────
               │          │               │               │
      45       │   Male   │     1365      │     1625      │     1144
      35       │  Female  │     1219      │     1528      │     1040
               │          │               │               │
───────────────┴──────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────

                 _Santa Barbara Islands and Mainland._

───────────────┬──────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────
               │          │               │               │
No. of Crania. │   Sex.   │   Capacity    │   Capacity    │   Capacity
               │          │   Average.    │   Maximum.    │   Minimum.
               │          │               │               │
───────────────┼──────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────
               │          │               │               │
       9       │   Male   │     1324      │     1441      │     1167
       5       │  Female  │     1247      │     1316      │     1175
               │          │               │               │
───────────────┴──────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────

Among exceptional features claimed as more or less a racial
characteristic of American crania, the _os Incæ_, or epactal bone in the
occiput, has been noted as present in various stages of manifestation in
3.81 per cent; and among ancient Peruvian crania in 6.08 per cent; while
it does not apparently exceed 2.65 per cent in the Negro; and only
reaches 1.19 per cent in Europeans.[181] In so far as this may be
regarded as a sign of arrested development, it is noteworthy as thus
occurring in excess in the small-headed, yet highly ingenious and
civilised Peruvian race. Dr. Morton noted as a remarkable fact that the
skull of the Peruvian child appeared to equal in size that of other
races; so that in a much ampler sense than in the perpetuation of a
suture of the occiput beyond the stage of fœtal development, the
small-sized skull and brain of the adult Peruvian is abnormal. But he
followed out his observation of the phenomena no farther than to state,
in summing up his investigations “On the internal capacity of the
cranium in the different races of men:”[182] “Respecting the American
race, I have nothing to add, excepting the striking fact that of all the
American nations, the Peruvians had the smallest heads, while those of
the Mexicans were something larger, and those of the barbarous tribes
the largest of all,” namely:—

                        { Peruvians, collectively 75    cubic  inches.
   Toltecan Nations     {
                        { Mexicans,        „      79      „       „
   Barbarous Tribes                               82      „       „

The enlarged tables given in the catalogue of Dr J. Aitken Meigs,
increase this inverse ratio of cerebral capacity, thus:—

    Peruvians                                                    75.3
    Mexicans                                                     81.7
    Barbarous Tribes                                             84.0

“The great American group,” he says, “is, in several respects, well
represented in the collection. It includes 490 crania and 13 casts,
making a total of 503 from nearly 70 different nations and tribes. Of
this large number 256 belong to the Toltecan race (embracing the
semi-civilised communities of Mexico, Bogota, and Peru), and 247 to the
barbarous tribes scattered over the continent. Of 164 measurements of
crania of the barbarous tribes, the largest is 104 cubic inches; the
smallest 69; and the mean of all 84. One hundred and fifty-two Peruvian
skulls give 101 cubic inches for the largest internal capacity, 58 for
the smallest, and 75.3 for the average of all.”[183]

The results which Professor Jeffreys Wyman arrived at from a careful
comparative measurement of the Squier collection, were confirmed by his
subsequent study of that of Professor Agassiz, and may be quoted as
applying to both; for he sums up his later investigations with the
remark: “These results agree with all previous conclusions with regard
to the diminutive size of the ancient Peruvian brain.”[184] Of the
Squier collection he says: “The average capacity of the fifty-six crania
measured agrees very closely with that indicated by Morton and Meigs,
namely, 1230 centimetres, or 75 cubic inches, which is considerably less
than that of the barbarous tribes of America, and almost exactly that of
the Australians and Hottentots as given by Morton and Meigs, and smaller
than that derived from a larger number of measurements by Davis. Thus we
have, in this particular, a race which has established a complex civil
and religious polity, and made great progress in the useful and fine
arts,—as its pottery, textile fabrics, wrought metals, highways and
aqueducts, colossal architectural structures and court of almost
imperial splendour prove,—on the same level, as regards the quantity of
brain, with a race whose social and religious conditions are among the
most degraded exhibited by the human race. All this goes to show, and
cannot be too much insisted upon, that the relative capacity of the
skull is to be considered merely as an anatomical and not as a
physiological characteristic; and unless the quality of the brain can be
represented at the same time as the quantity, brain measurement cannot
be assumed as an indication of the intellectual position of races any
more than of individuals.”[185]

The only definite attempt of Dr. Morton to solve the difficulty thus
presented to us, curiously evades its true point. “Something,” he says,
“may be attributed to a primitive difference of stock; but more,
perhaps, to the contrasted activity of the two races.” Here, however, it
is not a case of intellectual activity accompanied by, and seemingly
begetting an increased volume of brain; but only the assumption of
greater activity in the small-brained race to account for its triumph
over larger-brained barbarous tribes in the attainment of numerous
elements of a native-born civilisation. The question is, how to account
for this intellectual activity, with all its marvellous results,
attained by a race with an average brain of no greater volume than that
of the Bushman, the Australian, or other lowest types of humanity.

The Nilotic Egyptian race, of composite ethnical character, presents
striking elements of comparison, in the ingenious arts and constructive
skill of the ancient dwellers in the Nile valley; but whether we take
the Egyptian of the Catacombs, the Copt, or the Fellah, we seek in vain
for like microcephalous characteristics. Among modern races the Chinese
exhibit many analogies in arts and social life to the ancient Peruvians;
but their cerebral capacity presents no correspondence to that of the
American race. Dr. Morton gives a mean capacity for the Chinese skull of
85, as compared with the Peruvian 75.3, while Dr. Davis derives from
nineteen skulls a mean internal capacity of 76.7 oz. av., or 93 cubic
inches.

But another Asiatic race, that of the Hindoos—also associated with a
remarkable ancient civilisation, and a social and religious organisation
not without suggestive analogies both to ancient Egypt and Peru,—is
noticeable for like microcephalous characteristics. In completing the
anatomical measurements with which Dr. Morton closes his great work, he
places the Ethiopian lowest in the scale of internal capacity of
cranium; but, while including the Hindoo in his Caucasian group, he
adds: “It is proper to mention that but three Hindoos are admitted in
the whole number, because the skulls of these people are probably
smaller than those of any other existing nation. For example, seventeen
Hindoo heads give a mean of but 75 cubic inches.”[186] The Vedahs of
Ceylon, the Mincopies, the Negritos, and the Bushmen, appear to vie with
the Hindoos in smallness of skull; but all of them are races of
diminutive stature. This element, therefore, which has been referred to
as important in individual comparisons, is no less necessary to be borne
in view in determining such comparative results as those which
distinguish the Peruvians from other American races. Certain races are
unquestionably distinguished from others by difference of stature.
Barrow determined the mean height of the Bushman, from measurements of a
whole tribe, to be 4 ft. 3½ in. D’Orbigny, from nearly similar evidence,
states that of the Patagonians to be 5 ft. 8 in. The internal capacity
of the Peruvian skull, as derived from eighteen male and six female
Quichua skulls in Dr. Davis’s collection, is 70, while he states that of
the Patagonian skull as 67 and of the Bushman as 65; but it is manifest
that the latter figures, if taken without reference to relative stature,
furnish a very partial index of the comparative volume of brain.

Professor Goodsir, as already noted, held that symmetry of brain has
more to do with the higher faculties than mere bulk. In the case of the
Peruvians the systematic distortion of the skull precludes the
application of this test. But in the small Hindoo skull the fine
proportions have been repeatedly noted. Dr. Davis, in describing one of
a Hindoo of unmixed blood, born in Sumatra, says: “His pretty,
diminutive skull is singularly contrasted with those of the races by
whom, alive, he was surrounded”;[187] and he adds: “The great agreement
of the elegant skulls of Hindoos in their types and proportions,
although not in dimensions, with those of European races, has afforded
some support to that widespread and learned illusion, ‘the Indo-European
hypothesis.’ The Hindoo skulls are generally beautiful models of form in
miniature.”

Mr. Alfred R. Wallace, in his _Malay Archipelago_, discusses the value
of cranial measurements for ethnological purposes; and, employing those
furnished by Dr. J. B. Davis in his _Thesaurus Craniorum_ as a “means of
determining whether the forms and dimensions of the crania of the
eastern races would in any way support or refute his classification of
them,” he finally selected as the best tests for his purpose—1. The
capacity of the cranium; 2. The proportion of the width to the length
taken as 100; 3. The proportion of the height to the length taken as
100. But here again, unfortunately, the systematic distortion of the
Peruvian skull limits us to the first of those tests. There are, indeed,
the eleven normal Peruvian crania selected as such from the numerous
Ancon skulls brought by Professor Agassiz from Peru. But those are
stated by Professor Wyman to be on an average less by six inches than
the ordinary skull. Some partial results embodied in the following table
admit of comparison with those based on the more ample data of Table X.
Dr. Lucae, in his _Zur Organischen Formenlehre_, gives the cranial
capacity of single skulls of different races, selected as examples of
each. In these, as in others already referred to, the capacity was
determined with peas; and the results—assumed to be given in Prussian
ounces,—are dealt with here, as in the skulls of Heinse and Bünger. The
experiments carried on for the purpose of testing the process fully
confirmed the results stated by Professor Wyman as to the differences in
apparent cubical capacity according to the material employed. Taking a
sound Huron Indian skull, a mean internal capacity of 1490 grms. was
obtained by repeatedly gauging it with peas, and of 1439.5 with rice.
The position of the Negro, heading the list, serves to show the
exceptional nature of the evidence; though this is rather due to the
inferiority of other examples, such as the Chinese and Greenlander, than
to its capacity greatly exceeding the Negro mean. In the first column
the unzen, as Prussian ounces, are rendered in grammes. The second
column gives the nearer approximation to the true specific gravity,
according to the standard referred to, based on a series of experiments
carried out under my direction in the laboratory of the University of
Toronto, and assuming 82.5 grms. of peas to occupy the space of 100
grms. of water. The third and fourth columns represent the estimated
brain-weight, after the requisite deductions, on the basis of s.g. of
brain as 1.0408.

                                TABLE IX

                                 LUCAE

───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬──────────
               │               │               │               │
               │   Internal    │ Internal Cap. │ Brain-Weight. │  Brain-
               │   Capacity.   │  Corrected.   │     Grms.     │ weight.
               │     Grms.     │     Grms.     │               │ Oz. Av.
               │               │               │               │
───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼──────────
               │               │               │               │
Negro          │    1169.28    │    1424.12    │    1281.71    │   45.2
Chinese        │    1081.58    │    1364.48    │    1228.04    │   43.4
Nubian         │    1041.24    │    1313.54    │    1182.19    │   41.7
Floris         │    1033.93    │    1304.38    │    1173.94    │   41.4
Papuan         │    1030.42    │    1299.95    │    1169.96    │   41.3
Greenlander    │    1023.12    │    1290.74    │    1161.67    │   41.0
Javanese       │     995.06    │    1254.54    │    1129.91    │   39.8
               │               │               │               │
───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴──────────

In the following table the examples are derived from Dr. J. B. Davis’s
tables, with the exception of the Peruvians. For these I have availed
myself of Dr. Jeffreys Wyman’s careful observations on the large
collection in the Peabody Museum, the results of which confirm Dr.
Morton’s earlier data. One further fact, however, may be noted as a
result of my own study of Peruvian crania, amply confirmed by the
published observations of others, namely, that while the Peruvian head
unquestionably ranks among those of the microcephalous races, the range
of variation among the Peruvian coast tribes appears to be less than
that even of the Australian. Of this there is good evidence, based on
the comparison of several hundred crania. But exceptional examples of
unusually large skulls may be looked for in all races; and a few of such
abnormal Peruvian or other skulls would modify the mean capacities and
weights in the following table. Nevertheless the average results, as a
whole, are probably a close approximation to the truth:—

                                TABLE X

                 COMPARATIVE CEREBRAL CAPACITY OF RACES

   ────────────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────
                       │               │               │
                       │               │   Capacity.   │ Brain-Weight.
          Race.        │    Number.    │ Cubic Inches. │    Oz. Av.
                       │               │               │
   ────────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────
                       │               │               │
   European            │      299      │     92.3      │     47.12
   English             │       21      │     93.1      │     47.50
   Asiatic             │      124      │     87.1      │     44.44
   Chinese             │       25      │     92.1      │     47.00
   Hindoos             │       35      │     82.5      │     42.11
   Negroes             │       16      │     86.4      │     44.08
   Negro Tribes        │       69      │     85.2      │     43.47
   American Indians    │       52      │     87.5      │     44.64
   Mexicans            │       25      │     81.7      │     41.74
   Peruvians           │       56      │     75.0      │     38.25
   Eskimos             │       13      │     91.2      │     46.56
   Oceanic             │      210      │     89.4      │     45.63
   Javans              │       30      │     87.5      │     44.64
   Australians         │       24      │     81.1      │     41.38
                       │               │               │
   ────────────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────

Looking for some definite results from the various data here produced,
the deductions which they seem to suggest may be thus stated. While
Professor Wyman justly remarks that the relative capacity of the skull,
and consequently of the encephalon, is to be considered as an anatomical
and not as a physiological characteristic, relative largeness of the
brain is nevertheless one of the most distinguishing attributes of man.
Ample cerebral development is the general accompaniment of intellectual
capacity, alike in individuals and races; and microcephaly, when it
passes below well-defined limits, is no longer compatible with rational
intelligence; though it amply suffices for the requirements of the
highest anthropomorpha. Wagner thus definitely refers the special
characteristics which separate man from the irrational creation to one
member of the encephalon: “The relation of the lobes of the cerebrum to
intelligence may, perhaps, be expressed thus: there is a certain
development of the mass of the cerebrum, especially of the convolutions,
requisite in order to such a development of intelligence as divides man
from other animals.”

The important data accumulated by Morton, Meigs, Davis, Tiedemann,
Pruner-Bey, Broca, and others, by the process of gauging the skulls of
different races, proceeds on the assumption of brain of a uniform
density. But it seems by no means improbable that certain marked
distinctions in races may be traceable to the very fact of a prevailing
difference in the specific gravity of the brain, or of certain of its
constituent portions; to the greater or less complexity of its
convolutions; and to the relative characteristics of the two
hemispheres. Moreover, it may be that some of those sources of
difference in races may not lie wholly out of our reach, or even beyond
our control. The diversity of food, for example, of the Peruvians and of
the American Indian hunter tribes was little less than that which
distinguishes the Eskimo from the Hindoo, or the nomad Tartar from the
Chinese. The remarkable cerebral capacity characteristic of the Oceanic
races is the accompaniment of well-defined peculiarities in food,
climate, and other physical conditions; and Australia is even more
distinct in its physical specialties than in its variety of race.

Looking then to the unwonted persistency of the Peruvian cranium within
such narrow limits, so far at least as the physical characteristics of
the predominant population of Peru are illustrated by means of the great
Coast cemeteries; and to the striking discrepancy between the volume of
brain and the intellectual activity of the race; I am led to the
conclusion that, in the remarkable exceptional characteristics thus
established by the study of this class of Peruvian crania, we have as
marked an indication of a distinctive race-character as anything
hitherto noted in anthropology.

-----

[152] _The Descent of Man_, Part I. chap. iv.

[153] _Insanity and its Treatment_, by G. F. Blandford, M.D., p. 10.

[154] _Mr. Darwin’s Critics: Critiques and Addresses._

[155] Vogt, _Lectures on Man_, Lecture III.

[156] _Journal of Mental Science_, vol. xii. p. 23.

[157] _Philosophical Transactions_, vol. clviii. p. 505.

[158] _Proceedings of the Boston Natural History Society_, vol. xl.

[159] The internal capacity of 59 oz. is given here from the _Thesaurus
Craniorum_, p. 40, in correction of that of 50 oz. stated in the memoir
in _Transactions of the Dutch Society of Sciences_, Haarlem, p. 21,
which may be presumed to be a misprint. Dr. Davis adds, in the
_Thesaurus Craniorum_: “An early closure of the sutures has occasioned a
stunted growth of the brain, especially of its convolutions, and thus
prevented the development of those structures and faculties which might
have given a different direction to his lower propensities”; and he
justly adds his conviction that this was a case rather for timely
treatment as a dangerous idiot, than for punishment as a criminal.

[160] _Report of British Association_, 1861.

[161] _Journal Anthrop. Inst._, vol. iv. p. 464.

[162] _Limits of Natural Selection, as applied to Man._

[163] _Bull. de la Soc. d’Anthropologie de Paris_, 1861, ii. p. 501;
1862, iii. p. 192.

[164] _Mem. Anthropol. Soc. London_, vol. i. p. 65.

[165] _Crania Ægyptiaca_, p. 21.

[166] _Vide_ “Physical Characteristics of the Ancient and Modern Celt”:
_Canadian Journal_, vol. vii. p. 369.

[167] _Thesaurus Craniorum_ (Appendix), p. 347.

[168] _Archæologia Scotica_, vol. ii. p. 450.

[169] _Phrenological Development of Robert Burns_, by George Combe, p.
7.

[170] The use of different standards of weights and measures, and of
diverse materials for determining the capacity of the skull in different
countries, greatly complicates the researches of the craniologist. Some
pains have been taken here to bring the various weights and measurements
to a common standard. In attempting to do so in reference to the weight
of brain of Italy’s great poet, the following process was adopted: It
was ascertained by experiment that 912.5 grms. of rice, well shaken
down, occupied the space of 1000 grms. of water. Hence 3.1321 lbs.
rice = 3.4324 water. Multiplying this by 1.04, the s.g. of brain, the
result is the capacity of the skull, viz. 3.5697 lbs., or 57 oz., as
given above. In this and other investigations embodied in the present
paper, I was indebted to the valuable co-operation of my late friend and
colleague, Professor H. H. Croft.

[171] Dr. J. B. Davis, Supp. _Thesaurus Craniorum_, p. 7.

[172] Sir H. Holland’s _Recollections of Past Life_, p. 254.

[173] _The Descent of Man_, vol. i. p. 120. Appleton ed.

[174] _Memoirs of Anthrop. Soc. London_, vol. i. p. 289. _Thesaurus
Craniorum_, p. 49.

[175] Grey’s _Elegy_.

[176] _Mem. Anthropol. Soc. London_, vol. i. p. 465.

[177] _Peabody Museum Annual Report_, 1868, p. 7.

[178] _Journal of Anthropol. Inst._, vol. iii. p. 92.

[179] _Crania Americana_, p. 260.

[180] _Ibid._, p. 132.

[181] _Crania Americana_, p. 261.

[182] Same as Footnote 181.

[183] _Introductory Note, Catalogue_, p. 10.

[184] _Peabody Museum Report_, 1874, p. 10.

[185] _Ibid_. 1871, p. 11.

[186] _Crania Americana_, p. 261.

[187] _Thesaurus Craniorum_, p. 148.




                                 INDEX


Abbeville, bones of extinct mammalia at, 154
Abbot, Dr. Charles C., _Primitive Industry of the Native Races_, quoted,
  89, 98;
  discoveries at Trenton, 100, 158, 160, 162, 163, 164, 165, 167, 180
Abercrombie, Dr., 374, 376
Adam, M. Lucien, papers by, 19
Africa, circumnavigation of, in 611 B.C., 9
African hybrid, the, 311
Agassiz, Professor, 20, 150, 216, 375, 376, 385, 390, 396, 399
Akkad, language of the Sumerian class, 27
Alaska, peopled by Eskimo, 66, 234
Aleutian Island, 66, 117
Algonkins, 18, 66, 106, 173, 206, 207, 216, 229, 234, 237, 241, 243, 244,
  248, 252, 254, 265, 268, 270, 274, 275, 276, 280, 281, 282, 300, 304,
  318
Alleghans, 106, 172, 174, 175
Alligéwi, 103, 172, 215, 251, 253, 267, 269, 273, 287
Alphabet, Indian, 237
Alton, find of flint implements, 97
Andaman Islander, 348, 387
Andastes, 253
Andastogues, 253
Anderdon, Indian reserve, 280, 284, 295, 306
Anne, Queen, gift to the Mohawks, 314
_Antiquitates Americanæ_, 51, 57, 58, 61
Apaches, 175, 229
Arapahoes, 235
Arifrode’s Icelandic Saga, 51
Arnold, Dr., 137
Arrowhead-makers, 224
Artist, the Indian, 193
Ashbrandsson, Biorn, 37
Assiniboins, 120, 121
Athabaska river, 121, 126
Athabascan, language of, 18
Atkinson, Henry George, 353
Atlantis, legend of, 1;
  supposed geographical position, 2
Attiwendaronks, 177, 220, 254, 256, 277, 278, 282, 294
Aughey, Professor, 148
Avalldamon, Skræling chief, 69
Aymaras, 387, 389
Aztecs, 20, 103, 238, 268, 287, 387

Babeens, 90, 121, 207, 312
Bacon, quoted, 34
Bancroft’s _Native Races of the Pacific States_, quoted, 6, 70
Barlow, Dr. H. C., 369
Basket-work, 224
Bastian, 343
Bateman, 83, 188
Batoche, 334
Bauchman’s Beach, arrow-makers of, 128
Bay of Quinté, 314
Bearfoot, Rev. Isaac, 302
Bear Skin, a Haidah chief, and Judge Pemberton, 211
Beatty, Mr., 326
Beechy, Captain, 204
Belgium caves, 357
Bell, Dr. Robert, 101, 120, 125, 126
Bentham, Jeremy, 352
Berkeley landed at Rhode Island in 1728, 79
Bertram, the Cherokees described by, 173
Bible, Indian, translation of, 298, 299
Blackfeet, 120, 175, 178, 206, 226, 229, 234, 312, 329, 333
Blankets, drawings on Haidah, 211
Boas, Dr. Franz, 393
Bone implements, 167
Borlase, 83
Boucher de Perthes, M., 5, 88, 91, 112
Boyd, Dr., 367, 377, 380, 381, 382
Boyle, Robert, 289
Brain, the weight in proportion to the body, 341
Brain, the average weight of, 353, 360
Brant, a native chief, 321
Brasseur de Bourbourg, Abbé, 5
Brazil, discovery of, 13, 38;
  caves, 148, 149
Brewster, Sir David, 182
Brinton, Dr., 14, 20, 28, 241, 243
British Association at Montreal, 61, 69
British Columbia, tribes of, 115, 324
Brown, George, 376
—— J. Allan, 88
Brownell’s _Indian Races_, 251
Broca, Professor, 354, 357, 358, 373, 376, 377, 381, 402
Bronze, sword, leaf-shaped, 85;
  workers in, 95
Bruce, King Robert the, 354, 369, 374
Buckland’s, Dean, _Reliquiæ Diluvianæ_, 145
Buffalo, 178, 325
Buffalo robe, pictured, 35, 89
Bulmer, J. Y., 55
Bünger, Professor, 372, 374
Burns’s head, 369, 374, 379
Busk, Professor, 390
Buslyde, Hierome, 76
Byron, 355, 375, 376

Cabral, Pedro Alvares de, 12, 45
Caliban, references to, 74, 84, 247
Calori, Professor C. L., 342
Campbell, Lord Chancellor, 376, 385
Canarses of Long Island, 269
Caniengas, or Flint People, 264, 285, 294
Cape Breton Island, 53, 54, 69
Cape Cod, 62
Carantouans, 253
Caribbees, shell-workers of the, 94
Caribs, 190
Carpenter, Dr., 336
Carr, Lucien, 393
Cartier, Jacques, 53, 176, 253, 262, 268, 274, 275, 277, 280, 281, 282,
  295
Carved lodge-poles, 210, 212
Cassiterides, 181
Catawbas, 103, 173, 274
Catlin, Mr., artist, 123
Caughnawaga, 306
Cave-men, 152, 153, 165, 195, 196
Cayugas, 253, 278, 289, 294, 297, 305, 318
Centennial Exposition of Philadelphia in 1876, 166
Chalmers, Dr., 376, 378, 385
Champlain, 252, 268, 274, 275, 276, 277, 281
Charlevoix, Père, 117, 277
Charles River, 49
Charlton, B. E., 220
Chattahoochee River, 97
Chatta-Muskogees, 103, 173
Cherohakahs, 253, 296
Cherokees, 103, 172, 173, 174, 253, 274, 287, 298
Chesapeake Bay, 269
Cheyennes, 175, 229
Chickasaws, 103, 286
Chichenitza sculptured tablets, 34
Chimpseyans, 121, 138, 207, 208
China, money of, 22
Chincha, Indians of, 391
Chinooks, 130, 134, 227, 234, 312
Chippeways, 121, 124, 134, 225, 312, 318, 329, 351
Choctaws, 103, 173, 286, 287
Chuakouet, grape vine at, in 1606, 53
Cisneros, Dr., 362
Cissbury, flint pits at, 92
Clalam Indians, 121, 138, 312
Clarke, Hyde, _Examination of the Legend_, quoted, 2;
  _Khita and Khita-Peruvian Epoch_, quoted, 4, 26
Clarke, Lockhart, 340
Clatsops, 130, 226, 234
Claussen, M., 148
Cliff dwellings, 135
Cloyne, Bishop of, 77
Colbert, shipment of emigrants under direction of, 316
Coles, the, 348
Columbus, 1, 7, 11, 13, 37, 40, 72, 73, 74, 77, 131, 325
Columns, ornamental, 209
Comanches, 175
Combe, George, 369
Comparative cerebral capacity of races, 400, 401
Compass, the, of the Norse rovers, 12
Conestogas, 253
Cook, Captain, 14
Copan, statue at, 34, 35
Copenhagen, rune-stones at, 42, 56
Copper of Lake Superior, 35, 115, 170, 179, 262, 313;
  of Mexico, 179, 181
—— implements, 106, 116, 179, 182, 212, 262
—— ornaments, 116, 212
—— smelting, 180
Coral islands of the Pacific, 21
Correa, Pedro, 74
Corvo, coins found at, 9, 36
Cowlitz, 130, 226, 227, 312
Crania of Pacific coast tribes, 394
Creeks, 103, 274
Crees, 175, 178, 206, 227, 229, 312, 329, 333
Cresson, H. T., 99, 100, 162
Cristineaux, 143, 323
Cromagnon cavern, 85, 357, 358, 361
Cross-ness, 61
Cumshewa, 115
Cunningham’s Island, 177, 278
Curtius, Professor, 10
Cushing, Mr., 244, 300
Cusick, David, 252, 277
Cuvier, 373, 374, 375, 376, 377
Cuoq, M., 297
Cuzco, 389

Dakota, 229, 256
Dakotan, language of, 18, 296
Dall, W. H., 117, 152, 205, 323
D’Allyon, Father, 177
Dalton, Dr., 352
Dante, 368, 369, 374
Darwin, 339, 372
Davis, Dr. J. Barnard, 117, 342, 344, 345, 347, 348, 349, 355, 362, 365,
  366, 370, 373, 383, 390, 391, 397, 398, 400, 402
—— Straits, 65
Dawkins, Professor Boyd, 150, 151, 152, 165, 358, 359
Dawson, Dr. G. M., 114, 120, 125
—— S. J., 330
Dawson’s, Sir W., _Fossil Men_, 219
Delaware gravel beds, 98, 158
Delawares, 103, 175, 251, 269
De Leon, Pedro de Cieza, 391
Denham, Admiral H. M., 347
Designs on pottery, Indian, 121, 189, 190, 195, 220;
  by cave-men, 196
De Quatrefages, Professor, 206, 215, 216
De Quincey, 378
_Descriptio insularum aquilonis_, 52
De Soto, 173
Dighton Rock, 46, 47, 54, 61, 79, 206
Dirichlet, the mathematician, 376
Dobson, G. E., 348, 349
Donnelly’s _Atlantis_, 6
Dooyentate, Peter, 252, 274, 276, 295
D’Orbigny, 143, 398
Dordogne cave, 239;
  valley, 64
Dorion, L, A., 296
Dowler, Dr., 149, 150, 154
Drawings of Animals, Indian, 217
Dupuytren, Surgeon, 376, 386
Dyes employed by Indians, 240-243

Ealing, palæolithic workshop at, 88
Earthworks, 105, 117
Edda, Red Indian, 178
Egilsson, Sveinbiorn, 51
Eider ducks, 59
Eliot, Indian Bible of, 298
El Moro rock, 231
Emigrants to New York, 32;
  to Canada, 316
Engis cave, 359
Eric Saga, 165
Eric the Red, 41, 44, 52, 59, 62
Eries, 172, 177, 254, 277, 278, 294
Eriksson, Leif, 44, 49, 51, 53, 58, 59, 62, 71
Eriksson, Thorwald, 49, 54, 66
Erlendsson Hauk, 71
Eskimo: a typical Mongol, 17, 18;
  in Greenland, 43, 64;
  migrations of, 65;
  in Alaska, 66;
  implements of, 84;
  pedigree, 133;
  half-breed in Labrador, 144, 151;
  implements of, 152, 153, 159, 165, 204;
  and cave-men, 203;
  designs by, 213, 234, 240, 247, 248, 267, 272;
  cranium of, 274;
  powers of endurance, 323
Evans, Sir John, 81, 155
Ewaipanoma, 247
Eyrbyggja Saga, 70

Farish, Dr. J. G., 54, 55
Farms, allocation of, 328
Fijians, 192
Figuier, M., 193
Five Nations, the, 260, 275, 286, 289
Flathead Indians, 130, 312
Flint as a fire-producer, 81
Flint Ridge, 101, 102, 111
Flint River, 126
Flint-workers, 92
Flores, island, 74
Flower, Professor, 17, 18
Forbes, Edward, 216
Fort M’Leod, Alberta, 115
Foscolo, Ugo, 370, 374
Foster, Dr. J. W., 149, 179, 180
Fox, Colonel A. Lane, 92
Franklin, 379
Fredericksburg, 118
French half-breeds, 330
Frere John, 87, 88
Freydisa, 62, 68
Fuchs, pathologist, 376
Fuegians of Tierra del Fuego, 84
Furdustrandir, 59, 63

Gallatin, 173, 253, 256, 286, 295, 296, 298
Gama, Vasco da, voyage of, 9, 12
Gamlison Thorhall, 58
Ganton, flint flakes at, 95
Garcilasso de la Vega, 391
Garnett, Rev. Richard, 28
Garonne, valleys of, 150, 151
Garrison, W. Lloyd, 225
Gauss, the mathematician, 370, 376
Geikie, Professor, 154
Gellisson Thorkell, 51
Gesture-language, 229, 233, 235
Gibbs, General Alfred, 221
Gibbs, George, 227
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 50
Giles, Peter, 76
Gilmour, Rev. J., 330
Gold, first metal wrought, 35
Goheen, Dr., 362
Gold ornaments, 181, 212, 223, 388
Gomara, 74
Goodsir, Professor, 343, 375, 398
Gosse, Dr. L. A., 188
Grænlendingathàttr, 62
Grand river reserves, 306, 314, 316
Grapes, wild, of North America, 48, 53, 60, 62
Grave Creek Stone, 214
Grave mounds, 116
Grave-posts, pictured, 35
Graves, flint implements in, 95, 96
Greenland, 41, 43, 53, 60, 63, 65
Greenwell, Rev. Canon, 83, 93, 95, 96
_Grenlands Historiske Mindesmærker_, 40
Grimolfson Bjarne, 58
Grinnel Leads, 97
Grote, 376, 386
Grupson, Erik, 49
Gudleif, a Norse leader, 38
Gudrida, Karlsefne’s wife, 67
Guysborough, 53
Gwyneth, Owen, 38

Haidahs, of Queen Charlotte Islands, 90, 115, 116, 121, 130, 134, 138,
  204, 207, 208, 209, 211, 393
Hake, the Scot, 58, 59, 60, 61
Haki, a Scot, 59, 60
Hakluyt, 50
Hale, Horatio, on currency in China, 22;
  grammar of the Hurons, 103;
  _Indian Migrations_, 140, 172, 235;
  _Iroquois Rites_, 237, 252, 253, 256, 263, 264, 268, 280, 287, 293, 296,
    303
Half-breeds, 143, 144;
  powers of endurance, 323
Halliburton, R. G., 69
Hamilton, Sir. W., 380
Hamlet, quoted, 96
Hanno, voyage of, 9
Harkussen, 58, 60, 61
Harriot, 74
Harrison, Chief Justice, 376
_Hauks Vók_, 71
Hausmann, 376
Hawkins, Sir John, 50
Heinse, J. J. W., 371, 374
Helluland, 45, 52, 59, 62, 70
Henry the Navigator, 11
—— a traveller of last century, 143, 323
Herjulfson, Bjarni, 44, 60, 71
Hermann, 376, 386
Hiawatha, quoted, 265, 268
Hieroglyphics, Indian, 230, 231
Hind, Professor, 330
Hindoos, 397
Hittite capital, Ketesh, 30
Hoare, Sir R. C., 82, 83
Hochelaga, 221, 270, 272, 274, 275, 276, 278, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284,
  293, 295
Hodges, Robert, 84
Hoffman, Dr. J. W., 195, 205, 210, 233
Holland, Sir Henry, 371
Holy Island, 42
Hóp, Mount Hope Bay, 60, 61, 63
Horetskey, Charles, 323
Horn, engraving on, 94, 197
Horsford, Professor E. N., 49
Hoxme, flint implements found at, 89
Huidœrk inscription, 57
Humboldt, 35, 169, 248, 260
Hunter, Archdeacon, 330, 331
Hurons, 65, 101, 176, 177, 224, 280, 318, 319
Huron-Iroquois, language of, 18, 64, 65, 66, 139, 172, 246 _et seq._
Huschke, 341, 364
Hutchinson, T. J., 390
Huxley, Professor, quoted, 248, 308, 340, 351, 352, 359, 374

Iceland, 41, 43, 44
Icelandic Sagas, 51, 70
Idols of the Haidah, 209
Igalikko runic monuments, 36
Ilium, 168
Illinois, 175
Incas, 389
Indians of California, money of, 23
Indian lodge, 211
Innuit designs, 213
Iroquois, 103, 106, 107, 172, 173, 175, 176, 177, 229, 234, 237, 244, 245,
  316, 318
Isle de Bacchus, 53
—— of Orleans, 53
—— Royale, 116
Ivory, 94, 138, 151, 153, 197, 217

Jeffrey, Lord, 378
Jemez Indians, 232
Jones, Colonel C. C., 148, 180
Jossakeeds, 224
Jowett’s, Professor, _Dialogues of Plato_, quoted, 1
Jugs, double-necked, 223
Julian calendar, 34

Kablunet, 65
Kalapurgas, 227
Kane, Paul, 121, 130, 227, 228, 312, 324
—— Dr., 144, 323
Kanienga, 174
Karlsefne, Thorfinn, 41, 49, 58, 62, 63, 66, 67, 68, 71
Karlseven, 54
Keel-ness, 61
Keenan, Mr., 119
Kent’s Hole, 84
Kentucky skulls, 389
Kettle, stone, 84
Kewenaw peninsula, 106, 116
Khita or Hittites, 10
Kialarnes, 68
Kiatégamut Indians, 205
Kiawakaskaia, 226
Kingiktorsoak runic monuments, 36, 57
Kingsborough, Lord, 239
Kioosta village on Graham Island, 212
Kjalarnes, 53
Klaskane Indians, 130
Klikatat, 227
Kona, 65
Konegan, 66
Krossanes, 63

Labrador (Helluland), 62
La-crosse clubs, 224
Laennec, Dr., 347
La Jeune Lorette, 276
Lake-dwellings of Switzerland, 90
Lake Simcoe, 283
La Madeleine cave, 213
Lamb, Charles, quoted, 235
Lane, 74
Languages—Huron-Iroquois, 257, 281;
  Indian, 66, 255;
  Mohawk, 291;
  significance of, 15;
  of uncivilised races, 17
La Salle, 110, 269
Latham, Dr., 182, 248, 260, 263
Laugerie Basse, cave at, 206, 359
League of the Hodenosauneega, 174
Leavenworth, 111
Left-hand drawings, 197
Leidy, Professor Joseph, 89, 156
Le Moyne, Father, 278
Lenape, 172, 214, 229, 241, 269
Lenni-Lenape, 251
Les Eysies, cave of, 216
Lewis, Professor H. C., 99, 163
Lewis, Edmonia, 225
Lindsay, Sir David, 76
Lion from Marash, 30
Lion of Piræus, 30
Liston, Robert, 369
Little Falls, Minnesota, 148
Locke’s _Journal_, 176
Lombrive cave, 359
Longfellow, quoted, 178
Long, Major J. H., 123
Lorette, 275, 283, 295, 319
Los Ojos Calientes, 232
Lucae, Dr. J. C. Gustav, 371, 399
Lukins, Mr., 123
Lund, Dr., 148, 149
Luschan, Dr. F. von, 309
Lyell’s, Sir Charles, _Principles of Geology_, quoted, 6, 145, 154
Lynx or wild cat, 177

Macaulay, Lord, 378
M’Dowell, Dr., 362
MacEnery, J., 147
Mackenzie, Major Colin, 83
Macrocephali, 363
Madoc, a Welsh prince, 38
Maeshowe, Orkney, 30, 42
Magnusen, Finn, 51
Malay race, 192
Malformation, artificial, 24
Mammoth, bones of, 88;
  carvings of, 213, 217
Mandans, 175
Mangue language, 28
Manhattans, 269
Manitoba, 184
Maps, earliest, 53
—— by Rafn, 62
—— of Vinland, 49
Marchand’s voyage, 208
Markham, Mr., 391
Markland, 57, 59, 69
Martin, Hugh, 240
Martineau, Harriet, 352
Mascagni, 362, 385
Massat, cave of, 216
Massénat, M., 215
Mayas, 13, 25, 31, 387
Meigs, Dr. J. Aitken, 247, 395, 396, 402
Melanochroi or dark whites, 308
_Mémoires de la Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord_, 51
Mentone, skeleton found at, 359
Mercer, H. C., 214
Metallurgy, American, 35
Metis, the, 311
Mexican calendar, 33, 169
—— sculptured monuments, 39
—— terra-cotta human masks, 215
Mexicans, 190
Mexico, ruins of, 137
Micmacs, 55, 64, 65, 125, 242, 318, 319
Middleton, General, 334
Miller, Joaquin, 325
Millicet Indians, 55, 65
Milton’s _Paradise Lost_, 50
Minsi, 175
Mississagas, 318
Missouries, 274
Moccasins, 224
Mohawks, 174, 253, 264, 289, 290, 294, 297, 299, 302, 305, 314, 318
Money, Origin of Primitive, 22
Montgomery’s _Greenland_ epic, 46
More, Sir Thomas, 75, 76, 77
Morgan, Hon. L. H., 174, 265, 285
Moro rock, 230
Morris, Hon. Alexander, 326, 327
—— William, quoted, 37, 71
Morton, Dr., 247, 261, 337, 344, 345, 348, 362, 365, 366, 371, 387, 392,
  395, 396, 397, 400, 402
Mound builders, 102, 103, 104, 108, 167, 214, 215, 267, 270, 273
Mount Hope Bay, 46
Müller, Professor Max, 19, 266, 290, 291
Munch, Professor, 51
Musical instruments in the form of animals, 222
Muskogees, 106, 173, 286

Naaman’s Creek, rock shelter, 99
Nanticokes, 254, 269
Nantucket, 45
Napoleon, 376, 377
Narraganset Bible, 28
Nasquallie, 312
Natchez, 103, 106, 173
Naticokes, 175
Navajo Expedition, 230, 231
Neanderthal skull, 354, 359, 373
Neepigon River, 119, 121, 236, 351
Negroes, brain-weights of, 362, 363, 385, 395
Neolithians, 309
Newark earthworks, 102
Newatees, 130, 312
New England, 64
Newfoundland, 53
New Jersey, old implement-maker at, 90, 98
New Orleans, skeleton of, 161
Newport in Narragansett Bay, 79
“Nina,” the, 75
Nipissing, Lake, 125
Nisqually, 227
Nootkas, 134, 227
North Fork, 117
Norumbega, ancient city of, 50
Nott, Dr. J. C., 247, 375
Nottawa saga, 304
Nottoways, 253, 296, 305
Nova Scotia, 45, 47, 53, 54, 59, 61, 64

Oar, with runic inscription, 43
Ohio Holy Stone, 214
Ohio Valley, earthworks of, 38, 101
Ojibways, 206, 242, 243, 245, 252, 257, 268
Oka, 306
Olaf, the Saint, 37
O’Meara, Rev. Dr., 236
Oneidas, 174, 253, 264, 285, 286, 289, 294, 297, 305, 318
Onondagas, chief, 178, 237, 253, 260, 264, 278, 286, 289, 294, 305, 318
Ontonagon, 116
Orang, brain of, 340
Orinoco River, 72
Oronhyatekha, Dr., 296, 298, 302
Osages, 274
Otouacha, 275
Ottawas, 318
Ottoes, 274
Owen, Professor, 339, 346, 348

Pabahmesad, the old Chippewa, 224
Pacasset River, 46, 62
Paisley Block, 101
Palenque, sculptured tablets, 34, 35
Parker, Rev. Samuel, 227
Parkman, Francis, 248, 262, 275, 278
Patagonians of Tierra del Fuego, 84
Paton, Sir Noel, 197
Patterson, George, 126
Pattison, Rev. Mark, _note_ 228
Pavloff, Ivan, 324
Peacock, Dr., 343, 362, 367, 377, 381
Peat mosses of Denmark and Ireland, 90
Pequot, 320
Perkins, Mr., 179, 180
Peruvian, natives, 190;
  pottery, 215;
  skulls, 387, 388;
  crania, 395
Petun Indians, 101
Philadelphia gravel beds, 99
Phillips, H., jun., 57, 59, 60
Phœnician, Cadmus, 35
Picard, Paul, 295, 296
Pickering, Dr. Charles, 24, 227, 260
Pictou harbour, 54
Picture-writing, 33, 40, 233, 238, 239, 244
Pierce, William, 320
“Pinta,” the, 75
Piræus, lion of, 42
Plato’s _Critias_, quoted, 1, 2, 75
Point Oken, 122
Population, and number of villages, 275;
  coloured, 311, 318, 324, 329
Porpoise, brain of, 341
Port Dover, implements at, 101
Potomac, rock at the, 57
Pottawattomies, 318
Pottery, 153, 167, 168, 171, 189, 192, 194, 218, 219, 220, 240, 262, 267,
  271, 273, 282, 388
Powell, York, 62
Powhattan, 269
Pre-Aryan Man, 130 _et seq._
Pre-Columbian America, Copenhagen volume on, 43, 131;
  intercourse between Europe and America, 7
Prescott, 285
Prestwich, Professor, 162
Pritchard, Dr., 16
_Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_, 57
Pruner-Bey, Dr., 356, 402
Pueblo Indians, 190, 231, 236, 240, 244, 299

Quebec and the Huron Indians, 251
Quichuas, 387, 389;
  skulls, 398
Quiriqua sculptured tablets, 34

Race-types, 18
Rae, Dr., 144
Rafn, Professor Christian, 40, 46, 47, 51, 52, 61, 78
Ragnvald, Earl, 42
Rainy River, 126
Raleigh, 74, 77
Rand, Rev. Silas T., 242, 319
Rau, Charles, 118, 119, 180
Red Lake Indians, 327
Red River, 328, 330, 334
Reeve of Anderdon, 321
Reeves’ _The Finding of Wineland the Good_, 49, 51, 52, 71
Reid, Dr., 385
Reindeer’s horn, engraving on, 215
Rhode Island, 52, 54, 60, 61, 62, 78
Riel, Louis, 334
Rink, Dr. Henry, 18, 66, 144
Rites, revolting, 282
Riverview Cemetery, 118
Rocky Dell Creek, 231
Rolleston, Dr., 353, 361
Rosehill, Lord, 82
Royal Society of Canada, 60
Rune-stones, 42
Runic inscriptions, 42, 131
Russians in Alaska, 323

Sa∫∫atannen, Rev. P. W., 275
Sachem, chief, 177
Saco, 53
Saga of Barthar Snæfellsass, 70
Saga of Eric the Red, 71
Saga of Halfdan Eysteinsson, 70
Sagard, 296
St. Brandon, Island of, 37
St. Charles river reserves, 306, 316, 318
St. John, New Brunswick, 53
St. Mansuy, 354
St. Molio’s Cave on the Clyde, 30
St. Olaf, 44
St. Peter Indians, 328
St. Regis, 306
Saline River, 108
Salmon River, 54, 115
San Esteban, convent of, 73
Sankey, Dr., 343
Saulteux, 328
Savannahs, 274
Schaaffhausen, Professor, 354
Schiller, 375, 376
Schliemann, Dr., 136
Schmerling, Dr., 359
Schumacher, Paul, 112
Scioto-mound skull, 273
Scott, Sir Walter, brain of, 355, 368, 374
Sculptured figures, 23;
  monuments of Mexico, Central America, and Peru, 39
Seal hunting, 65
Sea-rovers, literary memorials of, 11
Selkirk, Lord, 328
Sellers, G. E., 106, 107, 109, 122, 123
Seminoles, 274
Senecas, 253, 264, 276, 277, 278, 280, 281, 289, 294, 295, 305, 318
Seven Islands, the, 37
Shakespeare, brain of, 355
Shaler, Professor, 98, 99
Shawnees, 101, 175, 240, 241, 269, 274
Sheep, mountain, 115
Shell, mounds, British and Danish, 90;
  workers of the Caribbees, 94;
  ornaments on, 195
Ships of the Norse rovers, 12
Short, J. T., 180
Shoshones, 89, 97, 156
Sigurd, King of Norway, 42
Simpson, Lieut. James K., 230, 231, 232
Simpson, Sir James Y., 375, 376, 378, 385
Sioux, 120, 175, 178, 312, 325, 326, 327, 329, 333
Six Nation Indians, 143, 174, 176, 254, 256, 263, 264, 283, 289, 290, 301,
  305, 314, 316, 318
Skrælings, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 157, 165
Skulls, Mound-Builders, 105;
  cave-men, 153;
  Red Indian, 161;
  comparison of, 187;
  capacity, 261;
  Canadian, 274;
  Huron, 279;
  table of cubical capacity, 366
Smith, Captain John, 269
Smith, Dr. Southwood, 352
Snorrason, Thorbrand, 68
Snorre, 67
Snovri, 41
Snow Bird, 243
Snow-shoes, 224
Sœmmering, Professor, 380
Solon, 3, 75, 361
Soto, Dr., 103, 104
Southey, quoted, 38
Spenser, Edmund, quoted, 77
Spider Islands in Lake Winnipeg, 101
Spurzheim, Dr., 376
Squier, E. G., 118, 243, 388, 390, 396
Squier and Davis’ _Ancient Monuments_, 117, 180
Stadaconé, 274, 275, 280, 283
Ste-nah, capture of, 315
Stephens’ _Old Northern Runic Monuments_, 42, 56
Stirling, whale at, 199
Stone implements, 82, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 95, 97, 110, 111, 112, 116, 118,
  122, 126, 147, 152, 153, 157, 167, 224, 262, 271;
  manufacture of, 88-92, 122, 124
Stone ornaments, 125, 214
Storm, Professor Gustav, 45, 46, 51, 52, 53
Straumey (Stream Isle), 59
Straumfiordr (Stream Firth), 59, 63, 68
Stuart, Rev. Dr., 290
Sturluson, Snorro, 78
Sun-worshippers, 103
Survey, Government, 326, 327
Susquehannocks, 175, 269
Swampies, 328, 329
Swan, James G., 211, 212
Symbols of the clans, 210

Tadmor, 168
Tahiti, traditions of, 14
Talavera, Prior Fernando de, 73
Talligew, or Tallegewi, 103, 106, 107, 172
Taunton River, 61
Tawatins, 138, 204, 207, 208
Taylor, Dr. Isaac, 30, 358
Tchudi, Von, 391
Thelariolin Zacharee, 224
Temagamic, Lake, 125
Temissaming, Lake, 126
Texas reserve, 296
Thales, a Greek astronomer, 33
The Snake Land, 243
Thlinkets, 204, 207, 210
Thomsen of Copenhagen, 81
Thomson’s, Professor Wyville, _Depths of the Sea_, quoted, 5
Thorbrandson, Snorre, 58
Thorfinn, 58, 61
Thorgilsson’s _Iselandinga Vók_, 71
Thorhall, 59, 60
Thorvald, 58, 61, 62, 63
Thurnam, Dr., 343, 353, 360, 365, 366, 367, 373, 375, 376, 378, 384, 385
Tiedemann, 362, 375, 376, 380, 386, 402
_Timæus_ of Plato, 1, 15, 75
Timucuas, 173
Tin-mines of Spain and Cornwall, 9, 95
Tinné Indians, 18, 115, 312
Tiontates, 254
Tiontonones, 177
T’kul, the wind spirit, 212
Tlascalans, 103
Toad, emblematic of an evil spirit, 213
Tobacco in Queen Charlotte Islands, 115
Tobacco-pipes, 120, 167, 168, 178, 190, 195, 207, 219, 271, 272, 273
Toivats and the “King of the Bears,” 210
Topinard, Dr. Paul, 261
Toscanelli, Paolo, 72
Toys, ingenious, 223
Traffic, ancient routes of, 113
Trenton, gravel beds, 99, 158, 161
Tryggvason, King Olaf, 59
Tshugazzi, 66
Tshimsians, 115
Tshuma Indians, 195
Tubal-cain, art of, 17, 168
Tulare River, rock at, 233
Tuscaroras, 253, 254, 289, 296, 297, 305, 314, 318
Tuteloes, 28, 130, 254, 256, 296
Tylor, Dr. E. B., 61

Uchees, 173, 274
Unamis, 175, 269
Unitah Mountains, 156
Usher, Dr., 161
Uvaege, 69
Uxmal sculptured tablets, 34

Valdidida, 69
Vancouver Island, Indians of, 324
Vases, native art, 221
Vespucci, Amerigo, 13, 74
Vespuce, Amerike, 75
Vethilldi, 69
Vézère, valley of, 357, 358
Vigfusson, Gudbrand, 62
Vincent, Rev. J. G., 296
Vinland, or Vineland, 41;
  origin of name, 46;
  booths in, 49;
  coast of, 54, 57, 60, 69
Virchow, Professor, 373
Virginia, 74
Vogt, Dr. Carl, 341, 375, 383

Wabenos, 224
Wagner, Professor, 343, 364, 373, 375
Wallace, A. R., 192, 349, 350, 351, 398
Walla-walla, 227
War-sling of the Skrælings, 67
Webster, Daniel, 375, 376, 385
Welcker, Professor, 355, 360, 364, 370, 373, 381
Welsh Indians, 38
Weston, T. C., 115
Whale at San Diego, 127
Whewell, 376, 385, 386
Whipple, Lieutenant, 231, 236
White Man’s Land, 38
White Owl, 243
Whitney, Professor, 16, 149, 255, 257, 288, 289, 298
Wilde, Sir William, 183
Wild goat, carvings of, 217
Wilson, Thomas, 156, 165
Wilts County Asylum, 367
Winslow, Dr. C. F., 149
Winthrop, Mr., 320
Wolseley, Sir Garnet, 334
Wright, Professor G. F., 99
Wyandots, 103, 172, 176, 249, 276, 277, 278, 280, 283, 286, 293, 295, 305,
  318, 321
Wyman, Professor Jeffreys, 149, 344, 362, 375, 389, 390, 396, 399, 400,
  401

Yamasees, 274
Yarmouth, inscribed rock at, 54, 59, 60
Yellowstone Park, 115

Zuñi Indians, 190, 244, 299, 300

                                THE END
                _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_




                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES

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[The end of _The Lost Atlantis and Other Ethnographic Studies_, by
Daniel Wilson.]