"It is plain that the use of letters was entirely unknown to the
Arian nations, to those tribes at least of the race who passed into
Europe: and that it was introduced among them in long after ages by
the Phoenicians, who claim this most important invention, and
certainly have the merit of having communicated it to the nations
of the west."
The words "those tribes at least," are scarcely sufficient to remove the
inconsistency.
A fourth division comprehends those various barbarous nations of unknown
origin which occupied the territories surrounding the Indo-European
race, and were for the most part subdued and expelled by the latter--to
this fourth division he applies the term _Allophyllian_.
This glotto-historical division does not exactly correspond with the
physical division as deduced from the form of the skull. The three
nations first above mentioned, or the inhabitants of the central
regions, from which they at least are supposed, according to this view,
to have emanated, have all the oval skull; though, when we pass to the
nomadic people of high Asia, we get the pyramidal, and, passing from
Egypt to Africa, we get a gradually increasing tendency to the
prognathous form.
It would carry us far beyond the usual bounds of an article in this
Magazine, were we to give even a condensed abstract of the descriptions,
individual and collective, of each of these leading divisions and their
various subdivisions. We will observe generally that the central portion
of the work, which contains a detailed account of the divisions
physical, ethical, and ethnical, of all the most marked varieties of the
human race, accompanied with illustrative pictures and woodcuts, evinces
the most elaborate research, and, as a work of reference, will be
doubtless found of great value. We will, therefore, pass to the fifth
great division of the human race, which is discussed in a later portion
of the work, and which is not very distinctly connected with the other
four--viz. the American. The Sioux tribes, however, who occupy tracts
of land on the Upper Mississippi, are supposed with great probability,
from their physical character, language, and tradition, to be the
descendants of a Tartar race, who have emigrated across the north-west
straits of America.
"The aboriginal people of America are generally considered as a
department of the human family very distinct from the inhabitants
of the Old World. The insulated situation of the continent, and the
fact that it was so long unknown, and the tribes which it contains
so long cut off from intercourse with other nations, are among the
circumstances which have contributed to produce this impression.
The American nations, taken in the aggregate, are neither among
themselves so uniform and unvaried in the physical and moral
qualities, nor is the line of distinction between them and the rest
of mankind so strongly marked and so obvious, as most persons
imagine. Yet it must be admitted that certain characters are
discoverable which are common, or nearly so, to the whole of this
department of nations; that there are strong indications, if not
proofs, of a community of origin, or of very ancient relationship
among them; and that in surveying collectively the people of the
New World, we contemplate human nature under a peculiar aspect. On
comparing the American tribes together, we find reasons to believe
that they must have subsisted as a separate department of nations
from the earliest ages of the world. Hence, in attempting to trace
relations between them and the rest of mankind, we cannot expect to
discover proofs of their derivation from any particular tribe or
nation in the Old Continent. The era of their existence, as a
distinct and insulated race, must probably be dated as far back as
that time which separated into nations the inhabitants of the Old
World, and gave to each branch of the human family its primitive
language and individuality."
The points which are supposed to indicate this relationship of the
American aborigines _inter se_, and their distinction from the
inhabitants of our continents, are, 1st, the structure of their
language, in which--
"Striking analogies of grammatical construction have been
recognised, not only in the more perfect languages, as that of the
Incas, the Aymara, the Guarani, the Mexican, and the Cora, but also
in languages extremely rude. Idioms, the roots of which do not
resemble each other more than the roots of the Sclavonian and
Biscayan, have resemblances of internal mechanism similar to those
which are found in the Sanscrit, the Persian, the Greek, and the
German languages."
And, 2dly, their moral and social state, indicating a people which has
anciently possessed institutions of a highly civilized character, such
as, according to Dr Martius--
"A complicated form of government, regulated despotisms or
monarchies, privileged orders, hierarchical and sacerdotal
ordinances, systematic laws, the results of reflection, and a
settled purpose, connected with marriage and inheritance, and
family relationships, and other customs, which are strongly
contrasted with the simple and unreflective habits of rude and
uncivilized nations.
"The languages of these nations abound, as he says, with words
expressive of metaphysical views and abstract conceptions. Their
opinion respecting a future state, the nature and attributes of
invisible agents, are strikingly different from those of nations
who have never emerged from primitive barbarism. Another fact which
tends, as M. Martius observes, to confirm the opinion that natives
of the New World have fallen from a state of greater refinement, is
their use, from immemorial ages, of certain domesticated animals
and cultivated plants, and the notions which they entertained of
the first acquisition of these possessions. Of such animals and
plants the people of the Old World have their peculiar stock, and
the American nations have their own entirely different.
"In the Old World we know not whence our horses, our dogs, cattle,
and the various kinds of cerealian gramina were obtained, and the
American nations are equally at a loss, when we enquire for the
original stock of the dumb dog of the Mexicans, the llama, the root
of the mandioca, the American corn, and of the quinoa.
"In the ancient world there were traditions of some mythical
benefactors of mankind. Ceres, Triptolemus, Bacchus, Pallas, and
Poseidon, who had contributed their gifts, corn and wine, the
sacred olive, and the horse, and we infer that all these had been
known from periods of remote antiquity.
"In America, likewise, tradition refers the knowledge of cultivated
plants and domestic animals, and the art of tilling the earth, to
some fabulous person who descended from the gods, or suddenly made
his appearance among their ancestors, such as the Manco-Capac of
the Peruvians, and the Xolotl and the Xiuhtlato of the Tollecas and
Chicimecas.
"The remains of ancient sculpture and architecture spread over
Mexico, Yucatan, and Chiapa, as well as over the high plain of
Quito and other parts of South America, and the extensive works of
art, consisting of fortifications and other relics, discovered in
the Tenessi country, as well as in the inland parts of New Mexico
on the Rio Gila, afford some further support to the hypothesis of
M. Martius.
"The possession of arts and acquirements, the most simple
improvements of human life, and such as belong to the very infancy
of human society, distinctively appropriate, and the origin of
which is recorded by mythical legends peculiar to each division of
mankind, seems to carry back the era of their separation to the
first ages of the world."
With regard to the physical character of the Americans, it appears,
according to Dr Martius, that the principal characteristic is the
truncation, or flatness, of the occipital portion of the cranium; the
forehead wide, but low, supposed upon rather insufficient data to be
moulded to this shape by artificial means; and the nose arched. In the
new as in the old continent, the diversities of physical character do
not correspond with the ethnical divisions. The principal criterion of
the latter adopted by Dr Prichard is the affinity of languages; and,
when this is insufficient to found any probable opinions, conjectures
derived from geographical or traditional evidence are called in aid.
Upon these grounds the Americans are arranged and described by the
author, into the details of which, for the same reason as before stated,
we regret not being able to follow him.
Since, however, the first pages of this article were written, a
discovery has been announced connected with the physiology of the
American aborigenes, which, if subsequently verified, will be of much
importance, both as to the anthropological classification of the
Americans, and as to the natural history of man generally. In a letter
addressed to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and
republished in the _Philosophical Magazine_ for July last, is an account
of the researches of Dr Lund, who has been for some time engaged in
geological investigation in Minas Geraes, a province of Brazil. While
examining the caverns of calcareous rocks, he has found in one of them,
mixed with the bones of extinct races of animals, human bones, having
all the character of fossils; they are stated to be in part petrified,
and in part penetrated with iron particles, which gave to them a
metallic lustre resembling bronze; they were of extraordinary weight;
the crania presented the narrow forehead, prominent zygomatic bones, the
facial angle, the maxillary and orbital conformation of the American
race. The depression of the forehead in many instances is said to amount
to a total disappearance. With the bones was found a smooth stone, about
ten inches in circumference, apparently intended to bruise seeds or hard
substances. In other caverns were found human bones, but unaccompanied
with those of other animals. These facts, if confirmed, will furnish us
with most important evidence as to the past state of the Americans, and
the ancient history and physiology of the human race; but the novelty of
the results, and the recent date of the communication, induce us to
abstain from hasty comment.
The general physiological comparison of human races, the similarity of
periodic changes, and the average duration of life, are points upon
which we can very briefly touch. Dr Prichard considers the different
ages at which women are said to be marriageable in different climates to
be very much exaggerated. He states his reasons, which do not appear to
us to be very conclusive. The exceptional cases from the normal
physiology would be more interesting, had we space for them, than the
analogies, for which probably all our readers would be prepared. Thus,
among the most curious national anomalies are the Quichuas and Aymaras,
who, from the constant habit of breathing an attenuated atmosphere, have
their chests enormously expanded; the Mandans, who, without any apparent
cause, have the hair grizzled or grey in youth. Among the instances of
individual peculiarity, no one is more extraordinary than the horned
man, whose entire person was covered with a rugged bark, or hide, having
bristles here and there, which hide he was said to shed annually; and
this peculiar form of monstrosity appears to have been capable of
hereditary transmission, as he had six children with a similar covering.
How he procured a wife to bear these children to him does not appear.
The children were, it is to be presumed, not equally successful, as the
breed of these human rhinoceri has become extinct. Some curious
instances of longevity are collected. Of 15 negroes, the names and
residences of whom are given, the average age is 135 years; from
European nations, there are 1310 recorded instances of persons aged from
100 to 110, and 3 from 180 to 190. We do no more than briefly notice
these exceptions, as we are anxious to devote our small remaining space
to what will by many be considered the most interesting portions of the
book, viz. the author's psychological view of the different races of
mankind, or the comparison of their different mental faculties.
"Though inhabiting, from immemorial times, regions in
juxtaposition, and almost contiguous to each other, no two races of
men can be more strongly contrasted than were the ancient Egyptian
and Syro-Arabian races; one nation, full of energy, of restless
activity, changing many times their manner of existence--sometimes
nomadic, feeding their flocks in desert places--now settled, and
cultivating the earth, and filling their land with populous
villages, and towns, and fenced cities--then spreading themselves,
impelled by the love of glory and zeal of proselytism, over distant
countries; the other, reposing ever in luxurious ease and wealth on
the rich soil, watered by their slimy river, never quitting it for
a foreign clime or displaying, unless forced, the least change in
their position or habits of life. The intellectual character, the
metaphysical belief, and the religious sentiments and practices of
the two nations were equally diverse; one adoring an invisible and
eternal spirit, at whose almighty word the universe started into
existence, and 'the morning stars sang together, and the sons of
God shouted for joy;' the other adorning splendid temples with
costly magnificence, in which, with mysterious and grotesque rites,
they paid a strange and portentous worship to some foul and
grovelling object--a snake, a tortoise, a crocodile, or an ape. The
destiny of the two races has been equally different: both may be
said still to exist; one in their living representatives, their
ever-roving, energetic descendants; the other reposing in their own
land--a vast sepulchre, where the successive generations of thirty
centuries, all embalmed, men, women, and children, with their
domestic animals, lie beneath their dry preserving soil, expecting
vainly the summons to judgment--the fated time for which is to some
of them long past--before the tribunal of Sarapis, or in the hall
of Osymandyas."
We are far from agreeing with this estimate of the ancient Egyptians.
Their progress in mechanical arts, their hieroglyphical literature, and
even their theology, with its mystic trine, marked them as a people far
surpassing their contemporaries; and they were not the less great
because their greatness is now extinct. The Arian{C} tribes, though
unskilled in many of the most useful arts of life, yet had--
"National poetry, and a culture of language and thought, altogether
surprising when compared with their external condition and habits.
They had bards or scalds, _vates_, who were supposed, under divine
impulse, to celebrate the history of ancient times, and connect
them with revelations of the future, and with a refined and
metaphysical system of dogmas, which were handed down from age to
age, and from one tribe to another, as the primeval creed and
possession of the enlightened race. Among them in the West, as
well as in the remote East, the doctrine of metempsychosis held a
conspicuous place, implying belief in an after state of rewards and
punishment, and a moral government of the world. With it was
connected the notion that the material universe had undergone, and
was destined to undergo, a repetition of catastrophes by fire and
water; and after each destruction, to be renewed in fresh beauty,
when a golden age was again to commence, destined in a fated time
to corruption and decay. The emanation of all beings from the soul
of the universe, and their refusion in it, which were tenets
closely connected with this system of dogmas, border on a species
of Pantheism, and are liable to all the difficulties attendant upon
that doctrine.
"Among most of the Indo-European nations, the conservation of
religious dogmas, patriarchal tradition, and national poetry, was
confided, not to accidental reminiscences and popular recitations,
but to a distinct order of persons, who were venerated as mediators
between the invisible powers and their fellow mortals, as the
depositories of sacred lore, and interpreters of the will of the
gods, expressed of old to the first men, and handed down, either
orally in divine poems, or preserved in a sacred literature, known
only to the initiated. In most instances they were an hereditary
caste, Druids, Brahmans, or Magi.
"Among the Allophylian nations, on the other hand a rude and
sensual superstition prevailed, which ascribed life and mysterious
powers to the inanimate objects. The religion of fetisses, of
charms, and spells and talismans, was in the hands not of a learned
caste, the twice-born sons of Brama, but of shamans or sorcerers,
who, by feigning swoons and convulsions, by horrible cries and
yells, by cutting themselves with knives, by whirling and
contortions, assumed the appearance of something preternatural and
portentous, and impressed the multitude with the belief that they
were possessed by demons. Of this latter description were the
wizards of the Finns and Lappes, the angekoks of the Esquimaux; and
such are the shamans of all the countries in Northern Asia, where
neither Buddhism nor Islamism has yet penetrated."
Of the American nations, the prevailing opinion, according to Loskiel,
is--
"'That there is one God, or, as they call him, one Great and Good
Spirit.' It seems, from the testimony of this writer, which is
supported by the evidence of all those who have conversed with the
aboriginal nations of North America, that the conceptions of these
nations respecting the Deity are much more complete and
philosophical than those of the most savage people in the Old
Continent. They suppose him literally to be the creator of heaven
and earth, of men and all other creatures; they represent him as
almighty, and able to do as much good as he pleases; 'nor do they
doubt that he is kindly disposed towards men, because he imparts
power to plants to grow, causes rain and sunshine, and gives fish
and venison to man for his support;' these gifts, however, to the
Indians exclusively. 'They are convinced that God requires of them
to do good, and to eschew evil.' We may observe that, in these
particulars, the Americans resemble the Northern Asiatics. We are
assured by the late traveller, M. Erman, on the authority of the
metropolitan Philophei, who lived among the Ostiaks on the Oby,
that these people had, before Christian missionaries ever came
among them, a belief in the existence of a Supreme Deity, of whose
nature they had pure and exalted ideas, and to whom they affirmed
that they never made offerings, nor had they represented his form;
while to inferior gods, and particularly to Oertidk, who was a sort
of mediator, and whose name, as it was preserved among the Magyars,
Oerdig, was used by the monks as a designator for the devil, they
made divers gifts; they performed before his image dances, which
Erman, who visited the Kolushians on the Sitcka, declares to be
precisely similar to the war-dances of those Americans. Some of the
American people make images of the Manittos.
"Besides the Supreme Deity, the American nations believe in a
number of inferior spirits, whom the Delaware Indians term
Manittos; they are both good and evil. 'From the accounts of the
oldest Indians,' says Loskiel, 'it appears that when war was in
contemplation, they used to admonish each other to hearken to the
good, and not to evil spirits--the former always recommending
peace.' They had formerly no notion of a devil, or evil being, in
the Christian or Eastern sense of the term, but readily adopted,
according to Loskiel, such a belief from the white people. They
have among them preachers, who pretend to have received
revelations, and who dispute and teach different opinions. Some
pretend to have travelled near to the dwelling of God, or near
enough to hear the cocks crow, and see the smoke of the chimneys in
heaven; others declare that no one ever knew the dwelling-place of
God, but that the abode of the Good Spirit is above the blue sky,
and that the road to it is the milky way--a notion, by the way,
which Beausobre and others have traced in the remains of the
Manicheans, and other Eastern philosophers. The Americans believe
in the existence of souls distinct from bodies, and many of them in
the transmigration of souls. According to Loskiel, they declare,
'that Indians cannot die eternally; for even Indian corn is
vivified, and rises again.' The general opinion among them is, that
the souls of the good alone go to a place abounding in all earthly
pleasures, while the wicked wander about dejected and melancholy.
Like other nations, they had sacrifices. 'Sacrifices,' says
Loskiel, 'made with a view to pacify God and the subordinate
deities, are of a very ancient date among them, and considered in
so sacred a light, that unless they are performed in a time and
manner acceptable, illness, misfortune, and death would befall them
and their families.' They offer on these occasions hares, bear's
flesh, and Indian corn. Many nations have, besides other stated
times of sacrifice, one principal festival in two years, when they
sacrifice an animal, and make a point of eating the whole.
"A small quantity of melted fat is poured by the oldest men into
the fire, and in this the main part of the offering consists. The
offerings are made to Manittos. The Manittos are precisely the
Fetisses of the African nations, and of the Northern Asiatics. They
are tutelary beings, often in visible forms. Every Indian has a
guardian Manitto; one has the sun for his Manitto; one the moon;
one has a dream, that he must make his Manitto an owl; one a
buffalo. The Delawares had five festivals in the year, one in
honour of fire, supposed to have been the parent of all the Indian
nations. Like other nations, these people believed in the necessity
of purification from guilt, by fasting and bodily mortification.
Some underwent for this end the pain of being beaten with sticks
from the sole of their feet to their head. 'Some gave the poor
people vomits as the most expeditious mode.'
"Like the Northern Asiatics, the American nations had, instead of a
regular priesthood, jugglers or sorcerers, who pretended to have
supernatural power and knowledge. They appear to conform in every
respect to the schamans of the Siberians, and the Fetiss-seers of
the African nations."
We have, in the above extracts, placed in juxtaposition the leading
psychical characteristics of the five divisions of mankind. There are
some points in which the different races of man seem, in their various
superstitions and creeds, curiously agreed. The doctrine of sacrificial
atonement seems almost universally prevalent, and forms the basis of the
various sacerdotal institutions. The care of the dead is also another
peculiarity, and one in which mankind appear, from the earliest
historical period, to have differed from other animals.
The susceptibility to receive the doctrines of Christianity is a
circumstance of agreement among the various races of mankind, from which
the Bushmen of South Africa are the only exception; and, viewing these
as a branch of the Hottentots, this exception would seem to
disappear--for the latter have been converted. The following is the
satisfactory account of the Hottentot missionaries as to the moral
effect of Christianity:--
"It is the unvarying statement of these missionaries, deduced from
the experience of a hundred years of patient service and laborious
exertions among the rudest and most abject tribes of human beings;
that the moral nature of man must be in the first instance
quickened, the conscience awakened, and the better feelings of the
heart aroused, by the motives which Christianity brings with it,
before any improvement can be hoped for in the outward behaviour
and social state; that the rudest savages have sufficient
understanding to be susceptible of such a change; and that, when it
has once taken place, all the blessings of civilization follow as a
necessary result."
The gypsy tribe, of which Dr Prichard takes no notice, would seem to
form an exception from the great mass of mankind as to the absence of
religious creed. The opinions and theories respecting it we must leave,
as it forms of itself a wide field for discussion; and, having fully
occupied the space allotted to us, we must here bring to a close our
sketch of a work which, notwithstanding the somewhat unreadable
character of the central portion, has supplied to the public a valuable
collection of recorded facts, expressed for the most part in clear,
untechnical language. We have not entered into questions of contrast or
similitude with the opinions of other authors. Had we done so, we must
have adopted a style of criticism interesting only to those who are
specially engaged in the subject, and so incapable of limitation that
every paragraph would serve for an article longer far than that which we
have here written. Dr Prichard appears nowise unwilling to refer to each
author his due share of merit, and is by no means sparing of copious
extracts, taken with no partial view of supporting a theory. At the risk
of being considered only a compiler, he has, at all events, avoided any
affectation of originality.
With regard to the proposition sought to be established by the author,
the book before us does not appear to be conclusive. The question as to
the community of origin of mankind, viewed purely as an inductive one,
appears still involved in obscurity. On the one hand, the fact of
continual degeneration, resulting from the intermarriage of members of
the same family, would require for its explanation either a miraculous
interference in the first periods of human existence, or a gradual
change in the constitution of man, whereby what once was harmless has
become injurious, when the necessity for it is removed; moreover,
according to the evidence contained in this book, the races of mankind
cannot be traced backward to a single pair. But, taking the three great
divisions, the Semitic, the Hamitish, and the Japetic, as derived from
Shem, Ham, and Japhet, the various Allophyllian and American aborigines
would appear to have existed, and to have been spread over the world
before the above nations overran it. On the other hand, supposing that
the mere power of reproduction be not of itself sufficient evidence of
identity of species, the similarity of physical formation, of periodic
changes, and of psychical instincts, are strongly corroborative of this
evidence, and would of themselves lead to the deduction of such
identity. Upon the whole, we consider the merits of the work before us
to consist, not in the demonstration of a theorem, but in presenting to
the reader a compendious record of physical, historical, and
psychological facts and relations. Viewed in this light, it is an
interesting contribution to ethnology; while the size of the book, the
pictorial illustrations, and the absence of unnecessary technicality,
make it a convenient manual for the general reader.