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.