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diff --git a/51881-0.txt b/51881-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4436834 --- /dev/null +++ b/51881-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,16108 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lost Atlantis and Other Ethnographic
+Studies, by Daniel Wilson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: The Lost Atlantis and Other Ethnographic Studies
+
+Author: Daniel Wilson
+
+Release Date: April 28, 2016 [EBook #51881]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOST ATLANTIS, OTHER ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Larry Harrison, Cindy Beyer and the online
+Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at
+http://www.pgdpcanada.net with images provided by The
+Internet Archives-US
+
+
+
+
+
+ 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
+
+Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
+spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
+
+Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
+occur.
+
+A cover was created for this eBook.
+
+[The end of _The Lost Atlantis and Other Ethnographic Studies_, by
+Daniel Wilson.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lost Atlantis and Other
+Ethnographic Studies, by Daniel Wilson
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Produced by Larry Harrison, Cindy Beyer and the online
-Project Gutenberg team at
+Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at
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