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.”