2. Vestiges of their international changes and intestine wars, prior to
the discovery of the continent by Columbus.
3. Evidences of wars, migrations and remains of occupancy, subsequent to
the arrival of Europeans.
These are to be studied in the inverse order of their being stated. We
must proceed from the known to the unknown--from the recent, to the
remote.
Ethnography offers a species of proof, to determine the migrations and
divisions in the original family of man, which is to be drawn from
geographical considerations--the relative position of islands, seas and
continents--the means of subsistence as governed and limited by climate,
and soil; the state of ancient arts, agriculture, languages, &c.
Philology denotes the affinities of nations, by the analogies of words,
and forms of syntax, and the place of expressing ideas.
The remains of arts, monuments, inscriptions, hieroglyphics, picture
writing, and architecture, constitute so many means of comparing one
nation with another, and thus determining their affinities; and although
most of our aboriginal nations had made but little progress in these
departments, the state of ruins in Mexico, Central Mexico and Yucatan;
the mounds and fortifications of the West; and even the remains of forts
and barrows in Western New-York, entitle them to consideration.
There is another department of observation on our aborigines, which,
from the light it has shed on the mental characteristics of the Algic,
and some other stocks, offers a new field for investigation. I allude to
the subject of the imaginative legends and tales of the Red Race. Such
tales have been found abundantly in the lodge circles of the tribes
about the Upper Lakes and the source of the Mississippi. They reveal the
sources of many of their peculiar opinions on life, death, and
immortality, and open, if I may so say, a vista to the philosophy of
the Indian mind, and the theory of his religion.
An ample field for investigation is thus before you. And it is one full
of attractions alike for the man of science, research, learned leisure
and philosophy. But it is not alone to these, that the Red man and his
associations, present a field for study and contemplation. His history
and existence on this continent, is blended with the richest sources of
poetry and imagination. His beautiful and sonorous geographical
nomenclature alone, has clothed our hills and lakes and streams, with
the charms of poetic numbers.--The Red man himself, who once roved these
attractive scenes, with his bow and arrows, and his brow crowned with
the highest honors of the war path and the chase, was a being of NOBLE
MOULD. He felt the true sentiment of independence. He was capable of
high deeds of courage, disinterestedness and virtue. His generosity and
hospitality were unbounded. His constancy in professed friendship was
universal, and his memory of a good deed, done to him, or his kindred,
never faded. His breast was animated with a noble thirst of fame. To
acquire this, he trod the war path, he submitted to long and severe
privations. Neither fatigue, hunger or thirst were permitted to gain the
mastery over him. A stoic in endurance he was above complaint, and when
a prisoner at the stake, he triumphed over his enemy in his death song.
The history of such a people must be full of deep tragic and poetic
incidents; and their antiquities, cannot fail to illustrate it.--The
tomb that holds a man, derives all its moral interest _from_ the man,
and would be destitute of it, without him. America is the tomb of the
Red man.
A single objection, to the plan of the institution, remains to be
answered. It may be deemed too intricate and complex to secure unity in
action. The inquiries are admitted to be interesting and capable of
furnishing intellectual aliment for a literary society; but why not
establish it on plain principles, in the ordinary mode? All that is
sought, it may be said, could be accomplished without such a weight of
associated machinery. By organizing it on the basis of the several
tribes, and the several clans of each tribe; spreading over so wide an
area of territory, and adopting so many of the aboriginal peculiarities,
in terms, form of admission, and you have exposed the institution to
serious objections, and to the danger of an early decline. But, are not
these traits, rather the guarantees of its success and perpetuity? It
addresses itself, particularly to the YOUNG. To them, it brings the
attractions of novelty. Much of the ardor of association and desire of
action, peculiar to this age, may find its gratification in these
co-fraternal, and ceremonial observances; and be supposed to act as
stimulants to the higher, and ulterior objects of the association. These
objects are, both in their nature, and associations, of an inspiring
cast. They bring before you, a new world, with its ancient inhabitants,
as themes of contemplation. And these themes spring up, with a freshness
and vigor, well suited to attract the pen and pencil.--Tired with poring
over the dusty volumes, which detail the ruins of the temples and cities
of the eastern hemisphere, the spirit of research asks, whether, in the
very magnificence of the continent, there be not now a temple, whose
history is worth study? Cloyed with the accounts handed down of the
renowned places and renowned men of antiquity, it is inquired, whether
these broad forests and far-spread vistas of woods and waters, do not
conceal something of the foot-prints of past time, which is worth labor
and learning to investigate, and reveal?
Nature is found here, in some of her sublimest moods. She is still in
her questive youth, but it is a youth of gigantic proportions. Her
largest rivers occupy thousands of miles in displaying their winding
channels, between these sources and their outlets, in the sea. Her broad
forests still wave with their leafy honors unshorn. Her lakes occupy a
length and breadth and depth, which give them far more the aspect of
seas. Ships, bear a heavy commerce on their bosoms, and navies have
battled for supremacy upon their ample breasts. It is a region destined
for the human race to develope itself and expand in. It is a seat
prepared for the re-union of the different stocks of mankind. It is an
area of magnificent extent. Higher mountains fill other parts of the
world, and other parts of _this_ continent. The Alps, the Atlas, the
Andes and the Cordilleras reach into the skies, but they encumber the
earth with their vast proportions, and render the surface sterile. They
take away from the area of tillable soil, and add it to waste and
unprofitable districts. If our greatest elevations, are humble compared
to these, they are clothed with verdure, and break into countless
valleys, which afford a habitation to man. No country on the globe
abounds with so many beautiful lakes of every size, and our rivers
display a succession of cataracts and falls, alike attractive to the eye
of taste and art.
Is all this profusion designed to employ the pens of naturalists and
statesmen only? Is there no field in the mighty past, for the
philosopher and the historian? for the ethnologist and the antiquarian?
Is civilized man alone the only object, wanting in the consideration of
its former history? We answer, no. Centuries on centuries have passed
away, since first the Red man planted his foot on this continent. The
very paucity of his knowledge and simplicity of his arts, tell a story
of great antiquity. The diversities of language answer to the same end.
And, for aught that is known, long before the eras of Socrates and
Pythagoras, Plato and Confucius, the Mongol and the Persian. The Tartar
and the Mesopotamean, the Chinese and Japanese, and we know not how many
other shades of the Red man of Asia, were in AWONEO[E] or America. Of
their wonderful histories and wars and overturnings, by land and sea,
of their mixtures and intermixtures of blood and language and lineage
and nationality, we know little, or nothing. But, after all the
centuries of separation, we find in his physiological characteristics
and conformation of visage and expression, the same Asiatic type of
man--whom the first adventurers to these shores, did not hesitate to
pronounce the man of India. Use, has perpetuated the term, and if the
discoveries of geography, have, ages since, shown the appellation of
Indians, in the sense then employed, to be incorrect, physiologists and
ethnographers, have but found stronger and stronger proofs, that Asia,
in preference to every other quarter of the globe, was the true land of
his origin.
[E] Onondaga.
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