In 1841, Boucher de Perthes began his discoveries in the valley of

the Somme,[1672] and finally discovered among the animal remains some

flint implements, and formulated his views of the great antiquity of

man in his _Antiquités Celtiques_ (1847), rather for the derision than

for the delectation of his brother geologists. In 1848, the Société

Ethnographique de Paris ceased its sessions; but Boucher de Perthes had

aroused a new feeling, and while his efforts were still in doubt his

disciples[1673] gathered, and amid much ridicule founded the Société

d’Anthropologie de Paris, which has had so numerous a following in

allied associations in Europe and America.

He tells us of the struggles he endured to secure the recognition of

his views in his _De l’homme antédiluvien et de ses œuvres_ (Paris,

1860), and his trials were not over when, in 1863, he found at Moulin

Quignon a human jaw-bone,[1674] which, as he felt, added much strength

to the belief in the man of the glacial gravels.[1675]

* * * * *

The existence of man in the somewhat later period of the caves[1676]

was also claiming constant recognition, and the new society was

broad enough to cover all. In 1857, Dr. Fuhlrott had discovered the

Neanderthal skull in a cave near Düsseldorf.

In 1858, the discovery of flint tools in the Brixham cave, in

Devonshire, was more effective in turning the scientific mind to the

proofs than earlier discoveries of much the same character by McEnery

had been. In March, 1872, Emile Rivière investigated the Mentone caves,

and found a large skeleton, unmistakably human, and the oldest yet

found, supposed to be of the palæolithic period. (Cf. _Découverte d’un

Squelette humain de l’Epoque paléolithique_, Paris, 1873.) All this

evidence is best set forth in the collection of his periodical studies

on the mammals of the Pleistocene, which were collected by William Boyd

Dawkins in his _Cave Hunting: researches on the evidence of caves,

respecting the early inhabitants of Europe_ (London, 1874),[1677] a

book which may be considered a sort of complement to Lyell’s _Antiquity

of Man_ and Lubbock’s _Prehistoric Man_; Dawkins (ch. 9, and _Address_,

Salford, 1877, p. 3) and Lubbock (_Scientific Lectures_, 150) unite

in holding the modern Eskimos to be the representative of this cave

folk. No argument is quite sufficient to convince Southall that the

archæologists do not place the denizens of the caves too far back

(_Recent Origin of Man_, ch. 13), and he rejects a belief in the steady

slowness of the formation of stalagmites (_Epoch of the Mammoth_, 90),

upon which Evans, Geikie, Wallace, Lyell, and others rest much of their

belief in the great antiquity of the remains found beneath the cave

deposits.[1678]

The largest development of cave testimony in America has been made

by Dr. Lund,[1679] a Danish naturalist, who examined several hundred

Brazilian caves, finding in them the bones of man in connection with

those of extinct animals.[1680] The remains of a race, held to be

Indians, found in the caves of Coahuila (Mexico) are described by

Cordelia A. Studley in the _Peabody Mus. Reports_, xv. 233. Edward D.

Cope has studied the contents of a bone cave in the island of Anguilla

(West Indies), in the _Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge_, no.

489 (1883). J. D. Whitney describes a cave in Calaveras County, in the

_Smithsonian Rept._ (1887), and Edward Palmer one in Utah (_Peab. Mus.

Rept._, xi. 269). Putnam explored some in Kentucky (_Ibid._ viii.).

Putnam’s first account of his cave work in Kentucky, showing the use

of them as habitations and as receptacles for mummies, is in the

_Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist._, xvii. 319. J. P. Goodnow made similar

explorations in Arizona (_Kansas City Rev_., viii. 647); E. T. Elliott

in Colorado (_Pop. Sci. Mo._, Oct., 1879), and Leidy in the Hartman

cave, in Pennsylvania (_Philad. Acad. Nat. Sci. Proc._, 1880, p. 348).

Cf. also Haldeman in the _Am. Philos. Soc. Trans._ (1880) xv. 351. Col.

Charles Whittlesey has discussed the “Evidences of the antiquity of

man in the United States,” in describing some cave remains of doubtful

age.[1681] W. H. Dall’s _On the remains of later prehistoric man

obtained from caves in the Catherine archipelago, Alaska territory, and

especially from the caves of the Aleutian islands_ (Washington, 1878)

is included in the _Smithsonian contributions to knowledge_, xxii.

* * * * *

Throughout the world, naturalists have found on streams and on the

seacoast, heaps of the refuse of the daily life of primitive peoples.

Beneath the loam which has covered them there are found the shells of

edible mollusks and other relics of food, implements, ornaments and

vessels, of stone, clay, and bone. Sometimes it happens that natural

superposed accumulations will mark them off in layers, and distinguish

the usages of successive periods.[1682]

[Illustration: OSCAR PESCHEL.

From the engraving in the 1877 ed. of his _Gesch. des Zeitalters der

Entdeckungen_. His _Abhandlungen zur Erd-und Völker-Kunde_, continuing

his contributions to _Das Ausland_ and other periodicals, and edited

by J. Löwenberg, was published at Leipzig, in 3 vols. in 1877-79, the

preface containing an account of Peschel’s services in this field.]

In the Old World such heaps upon the Danish coast have attracted the

most attention under the name of Kjœkkenmœddinger, or Kitchen-middens,

and their teachings have enlivened the recitals of nearly all the

European archæologists who have sought to picture the condition of

these early races.

It seems to be the general opinion that in the Old World this

shell-heap folk succeeded, if they do not in part constitute the

contemporaries of, the men of the caves.[1683]

[Illustration: JEFFRIES WYMAN.

From a photograph taken in 1868, furnished by his family. The portrait

in the _Peabody Museum Report_, no. viii., represents him somewhat

later in life, with a beard. He died Sept. 4, 1874. There are accounts

of Wyman in the same _Report_, by Asa Gray, who also made an address

on Wyman before the Boston Society of Nat. Hist. (cf. _Pop. Science

Monthly_, Jan., 1875), with commemorations by O. W. Holmes (_Atlantic

Monthly_, Nov., 1874, and _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, xiv. 4), by F. W.

Putnam in the _Proc. Amer. Acad._ with a list of his publications; by

Packard in the _Mem. Nat. Acad._, and B. G. Wilder (_Old and New_,

Nov., 1874).]

These accumulations are known usually in America as shell heaps, and

it is generally characteristic of them that, while they contain pottery

and bone implements, the stone instruments are far less numerous,

and generally occur in the upper layers in those of Florida, but

they are scattered through all the layers in those of New England.

Professor Jeffries Wyman, whose name is in this country particularly

associated with shell-heap investigations, could not find[1684] that

any one had in the scientific spirit called attention to the subject

in America earlier than Caleb Atwater in the _Archæologia Americana_

(vol. i., 1820), who had observed such deposits on the Muskingum River

in Ohio. They had not passed unnoticed, however, by some of the early

explorers. Putnam (_Essex Inst. Bulletin_, xv. 86) notes that J. T.

Ducatel observed those on the Chesapeake in 1834. The earliest more

particular mention of the inland mounds seem to have been made in

Prinz Maximilian’s _Travels in the United States_.[1685] Foster, in

his _Prehistoric Races of the U. S._ (ch. 4,—a special survey of the

American heaps), says that Professor Vanuxem was the first to describe

the sea-side mounds in 1841, in the _Proc. Amer. Asso. Geologists_ (i.

22).[1686]

[Illustration: SHELL HEAPS ON CAPE COD.]

There has been as yet little found in America from which to develop

the evidence of early man from any lake or river dwellings, while

so much has been done in Europe.[1687] In some parts of Florida the

Indians are reported to have built houses on piles; and in South

America tree-houses and those on platforms are well known. Mr. Hilborne

T. Cresson has reported (_Peabody Mus. Rept_., xxii. for 1888) the

discovery of pile ends in the Delaware River, and has shown that two of

these river stations are earlier than the third, as is evident from the

rude implements of argillite found in the two when compared with those

discovered in the third, where implements of jasper and quartz and

fragments of pottery were associated with those of argillite.

[Illustration: PUEBLO REGION.

From a map, “Originalkarte der Urwohnsitze der Azteken und Verwandten

Pueblos in New Mexico, zusammengestellt von O. Loew,” in Petermann’s

_Mittheilungen über wichtige neue Erforschungen auf dem Gesammtgebiete

der Geographie_, xxii. (1876), table xii. The small dotted circles

stand for inhabited pueblos; those with a perpendicular line

attached are ruins; and when this perpendicular line is crossed it

is a Mexicanized pueblo. See the map in Powell’s _Second Rept. Bur.

Ethnol._ (1880-81) p. 318, which marks the several classes: inhabited,

abandoned, ruined pueblos, cavate houses, cliff houses, and tower

houses.]

The earliest discoveries of the cliff houses of the Colorado region

were made by Lieut. J. H. Simpson, and his descriptions appeared in his

_Journal of a Military Reconnoissance_, in 1849.[1688] No considerable

addition was made to our knowledge of the cliff dwellers till in

1874-75, when special parties of the Hayden Geological Survey were

sent to explore them (_Hayden’s Report_, 1876), whence we got accounts

of those of southwestern Colorado by W. H. Holmes, including the

cavate-houses and cliff-dwellers of the San Juan, the Mancos, and the

ruins in the McElmo cañon.[1689] W. H. Jackson gives a revised account

of his 1874 expedition in the _Bulletin_ of the Survey (vol. ii. no.

1), adding thereto an account of his explorations of 1875. Jackson also

gives a chapter on the ruins of the Chaco cañon.[1690]

* * * * *

In coming to the class of ruins lying in a few instances just within,

but mostly to the north of, the Mexican line, we encounter the Pueblo

race, whose position in the ethnological chart is not quite certain,

be their connection with the Nahuas and Aztecs,[1691] or with the

moundbuilders,—red Indian if they be,—or with the cliff-dwellers, as

perhaps is the better opinion. Their connection with savage nations

farther north is not wholly determinable, as Morgan allows, on physical

and social grounds, and perhaps not as definitely settled by their

architecture as Cushing seems to think.[1692]

The Spaniard early encountered these ruins,[1693] and perhaps the

best summary of the growth of our knowledge of them by successive

explorations is in Bancroft’s _Nat. Races_, iv. ch. 11.[1694] In the

century after the Spanish conquest, we have one of the best accounts

in the _Memorial_ of Fray Alonso Benavides, published at Madrid in

1630.[1695] The most famous of the ruins of this region, the Casa

Grande of the Gila Valley in Arizona,[1696] is supposed to have been

seen (1540) by Coronado, then in a state of ruin; but we get no clear

description till that given by Padre Mange, who accompanied Padre Kino

to see the ruins in 1697.[1697]

There are few descriptions[1698] of the antiquities of this country

previous to the military examination of it which was made during the

Mexican War. Such is recorded in W. H. Emory’s _Notes of a Military

Reconnoissance from Fort Leavenworth in Missouri to San Diego in

California_,[1699] which gives us some of the earliest representations

of these antiquities, including the ruins of Pecos.[1700] In 1849,

Col. Washington, the governor of New Mexico, organized an expedition

against the Navajos, and Lieut. James H. Simpson gives us the first

detailed account of the Chaco cañon in his _Journal of a Military

Reconnoissance_ (Philad., 1852).[1701] He also covered (p. 90), among

the other ruins of this region, the old and present habitations of the

Zuñi, but these received in some respects more detailed examination

in Capt. L. Sitgreave’s _Report of an Expedition down the Zuñi and

Colorado rivers_ (Washington, 1853),[1702] accompanied by a map and

other illustrations.[1703] New channels of information were opened

when the United States government undertook to make surveys (1853) for

a trans-continental line of railways; and a great deal of material is

embodied in Whipple’s report on the Indian tribes in the _Pacific R. R.

Reports_, vol. iii. The running of the boundary line between the United

States and Mexico also contributed to our knowledge. The commissioner

during 1850-53 was John Russell Bartlett, who, on the failure of the

government promptly to publish his report, printed his _Personal

narrative of explorations and incidents_ (N. Y., 1854), and made in

some parts of it an important contribution to our knowledge of the

antiquities of this region.[1704]

No considerable advance was now made in this study for about a score

of years. Major Powell first published his account of his adventurous

exploration (1869) of the Colorado cañon in _Scribner’s Monthly_ (Jan.,

Feb., Mar.) in 1875, and it was followed by his official _Exploration

of the Colorado River_ (Washington, 1875), making known the existence

of ruins in the cañon’s gloomy depths. The _Reports_ of the U. S.

Geological Survey, including the accounts by W. H. Jackson and W. H.

Holmes, give much valuable and original information; and a good deal of

what has been included in the _Reports of the Chief of Engineers_ (U.

S. Army) for 1875 and 1876 will also be found in the seventh volume,

edited by F. W. Putnam, of _Wheeler’s Survey_,[1705] including the

pueblos of Acoma, Taos, San Juan, and the ruin[1706] on the Animas

River.

The latest examinations of these Pueblo remains, of which we have

published accounts, are those made by A. F. Bandelier for the

Archæological Institute of America. He has given his results in his

“Historical introduction to studies among the sedentary Indians of New

Mexico,” and in his “Report on the ruins of Pecos,” which constitutes

the initial volume of _Papers, American series_, of the Institute

(Boston, 1881).[1707] He believes Pecos to be Cicuye, visited by

Alvarado in 1541,—a huge pile with 585 compartments, finally abandoned

in 1840. In October, 1880, he examined the region west of Santa Fé

(_Second Rept. Archæol. Inst._). His explorations also determined

the eastern limits of the sedentary occupation of New Mexico (_Fifth

Report_). He renewed his studies in 1882 (_First Bull. Archæol. Inst._,

Jan., 1883), and thought the ruins showed successive occupiers, and

divides them into cave dwellings, cliff houses, one-story buildings,

and those of more than one, with each higher one retreating from the

front of the next lower.

[Illustration: THE PUEBLO REGION.

A reduction of the map accompanying Bandelier’s report on his

investigations in New Mexico, in the _Fifth Rept. of the Archæological

Institute of America_ (Cambridge, 1884).]

The most essential sources of information have thus been enumerated,

but there is not a little fugitive and comprehensive treatment of

the subject worth the student’s attention who follows a course of

investigation.[1708]

* * * * *

The literature of the moundbuilders, and of the controversies arising

out of the mysterious relics of their life, is commensurate with the

very wide extent of territory covered by their traces.[1709] It was

long before any intelligent notice was taken of the mounds by those who

traversed the wilderness. De Soto, in 1540, could get no traditions

concerning them beyond the assurances that the peoples he encountered

had built them, or some of them. We read of them also in Garcilasso

de la Vega, Biedma and the Knight of Elvas, on the Spanish side; but

on the French at a later day we learn little or nothing from Joutel,

Tonti, and Hennepin, though something from Du Pratz, La Harpe and some

of the missionaries. Kalm,[1710] the Swede, in 1749, was about the

first to make any note of them. Carver found them near Lake Pepin in

1768. In 1772 the missionary David Jones[1711] made observations upon

those in Ohio. Adair did not wholly overlook them in his _American

Indians_ in 1775. Prof. James Dunbar, of Aberdeen, in his _Essays on

the history of mankind in rude and uncultivated ages_ (Lond., 1780),

uses what little Kalm and Carver afforded. Jefferson in his _Notes on

Virginia_ (1782) speaks of them as barrows “all over the country,” and

“obvious repositories of the dead.”[1712] Arthur Lee makes reference

to them in 1784. A map of the Northwest Territory, published by John

Fitch about 1785, places in the territory which is now Wisconsin the

following legend: “This country has once been settled by a people

more expert in the art of war than the present inhabitants. Regular

fortifications, and some of these incredibly large, are frequently

to be found. Also many graves and towers like pyramids of earth.” In

1786 Franklin thought the works at Marietta might have been built

by De Soto; and Noah Webster, in a paper in Roberts’ _Florida_,

assented.[1713] B. S. Barton, in his _Observations in some parts of

Natural History_ (London, 1787), credited the Toltecs with building

them, whom he considered the descendants of the Danes.

As the century draws to a close, we find occasional and rather

bewildered expression of interest in the _Observations on the Ancient

Mounds_ by Major Jonathan Heart;[1714] in the _Missions_ of Loskiel;

in the _New Views_ of Dr. Smith Barton; in the _Carolina_ of William

Bartram; and in the travels of Volney. In 1794 Winthrop Sargent

reported in the _Amer. Philos. Soc. Trans._, iv., on the exploration of

the mounds at Cincinnati. The present century soon elicited a variety

of observations, but there was little of practical exploration. A New

England minister, Thaddeus Mason Harris, passed judgment upon those in

Ohio, when he journeyed thither in 1803.[1715] The commissioner of the

United States to run the Florida boundary, Andrew Ellicott, describes

some near Natchez in his _Journal_ (1803). Bishop Madison communicated

through Professor Barton some opinions about those in Western Virginia,

which appear in the _Transaction_ of the American Philosophical

Society, taking different grounds from Dr. Harris, who had thought them

works of defence. The explorations of Lewis and Clark (1804-6) up the

Missouri, and of Pike (1805-7) up the Mississippi, produced little.

Robin, the French naturalist, in 1805,[1716] Major Stoddard[1717]

and Breckenridge[1718] later, saw some in Louisiana, Missouri, and

Illinois. A leading periodical, _The Portfolio_, contributed something

to the common stock in 1810 and 1814, giving plans of some of the

mounds. Those in Ohio were again the subject of inquiry by F. Cuming in

his _Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country_ (Pittsburg, 1810), and

by Dr. Daniel Drake in his _Picture of Cincinnati and the Miami Valley_

(Cinn., 1815). John Heckewelder, the Moravian missionary, accounted for

the ancient fortifications through the traditions of the Delawares,

who professed once to have inhabited this country, but it has been

suspected that the worthy missionary was imposed upon.[1719] DeWitt

Clinton, in 1811, before the New York Historical Society, and again in

1817, before the Literary and Philosophical Society of New York, had

given some theories in which the Scandinavians figured as builders of

the mounds in that State.

It was thus at a time when there was much speculation and not much

real experimental knowledge respecting these remains that, under the

auspices of the then newly founded American Antiquarian Society,

Mr. Caleb Atwater, of Ohio, was employed to explore and survey a

considerable number of these works. He embodied his results in the

initial volume of the publication of that society, the _Archæologia

Americana_.[1720] After pointing out scattered evidences of the traces

of European peoples, found in coins and other relics throughout the

country, Atwater proceeds to his description of the earthworks, mainly

of Ohio; and beside giving many plans,[1721] he enters into the

question of their origin, and expresses a belief in the Asiatic origin

of their builders, and in their subsequent migration south to lay, as

he thinks, the foundations of the Mexican and Peruvian civilizations.

[Illustration: COL. CHARLES WHITTLESEY.

After a photograph kindly furnished by the Hon. C. C. Baldwin, of

Cleveland, Ohio, who has printed a memorial of his friend with a list

of his writings in _Tract 68 of the Western Reserve Hist. Soc._]

During the next twenty-five years there cannot be said to have been

much added to a real knowledge of the subject. Yates and Moulton in

their _Hist. New York_ (1824) borrowed mainly from Kirkland (1788)

the missionary. Humboldt had no personal contact with the remains to

give his views any value (1825). Warden in his _Recherches_ (1827)

gave some new plans and rearranged the old descriptions. There was

some sober observation in M’Culloh’s _Researches_ (3d ed., 1829); some

far from sober in Rafinesque (1838); some compiled descriptions with

worthless comment in Josiah Priest’s _American Antiquities_ (Albany,

1838); something like scientific deductions in S. G. Morton’s study of

the few moundbuilders’ skulls then known, in his _Cranea Americana_

(1839); with an attempt at summing up in Delafield (1839) and Bradford

(1841). This is about all that had been added to what Atwater did, when

E. G. Squier and E. H. Davis eclipsed all labors preceding theirs, and

began the series of the _Smithsonian Contributions_ with their _Ancient

Monuments of the Mississippi Valley_ (Washington, 1847 and 1848).[1722]

During the preceding two years they had opened over two hundred mounds,

and explored about a hundred earthwork enclosures, and had gathered a

considerable collection of specimens of moundbuilders’ relics.[1723]

They had begun their work under the auspices of the American

Ethnological Society, but the cost of the production of the volume

exceeded the society’s resources, and the transfer was made to the

Smithsonian Institution. The work took a commanding position at once,

and still remains of essential value, though some of the grounds of its

authors are not acceptable to present observers; and indeed in his work

on the mounds of New York, which the Smithsonian Institution included

in the second volume of their _Contributions_, Squier found occasion to

alter some of his opinions in his earlier work, or at least to ascribe

the mounds of that State to the Iroquois. The third volume of the same

_Contributions_ (1852) introduces to us one of the ablest of the local

investigators in a paper by Charles Whittlesey, of “Descriptions of

Ancient Works in Ohio,”—the forerunner of numerous papers which he has

given to the public in elucidation of the mounds.[1724] Three years

later (1855), in the seventh volume of the _Smithsonian Contributions_,

a new field in the emblematic and animal mounds of the northwest

was for the first time brought to any considerable extent to public

attention in the paper by Increase A. Lapham, on the “Antiquities of

Wisconsin.” Lapham had made his explorations under the auspices of the

American Antiquarian Society,[1725] and his manuscript had been revised

by Haven, when it was decided to consign it for publication to the

Smithsonian Institution.

[Illustration: INCREASE A. LAPHAM.

Engraved from a photograph dated 1863, kindly furnished by his friend,

Prof. J. D. Whitney. Lapham died in 1875. Cf. _Amer. Journal of

Science_, x. 320; xi. 326, 333; _Trans. Wisc. Acad. Science_, iii. 264.]

The animal mounds had been indeed earlier mentioned, and the great

serpent mound of Ohio had long attracted attention; but it was in the

territory now known as Wisconsin that these mounds were found chiefly

to abound. Long, in 1823, speaks of mounds in this region; but the

forest coverings seem to have prevented any observer detecting their

shapes till Lapham first noted this peculiarity in 1836. In April,

1838, R. C. Taylor was the earliest to figure them in the _Amer.

Journal of Science_ (Silliman’s), and again they were described by S.

Taylor in _Ibid._, 1842. Prof. John Locke referred to them in a _Report

on the mineral lands of the United States_, made to Congress in 1844.

William Pidgeon, who had been a trader among the Indians, published in

his _Traditions of De-coo-dah, and Antiquarian researches: comprising

extensive exploration, surveys and excavations of the Mound Builders in

America; the traditions of the last Prophet of the Elk Nation, relative

to their origin and use, and the evidences of an ancient population

more numerous than the present Aborigines_ (N. Y., 1853; again 1858)

what he pretended was in large part the results of his intercourse

with an Indian chief, involving some theories as to the symbolism of

the mounds. The book contained so many palpable perversions, not to

say undisguised fictions, that the Smithsonian Institution refused to

publish it;[1726] and the book has never gained any credit, though some

unguarded writers have unwittingly borrowed from it.[1727]

In the eighth volume of the _Smithsonian Contributions_,[1728] Haven,

the librarian of the Amer. Antiq. Soc., summed up the results of mound

exploration as they then stood. The steady and circumspect habit of

Haven’s mind was conspicuous in his treatment of the mounds. It is

to him that the later advocates of the identity of their builders

with the race of the red Indians look as the first sensibly to affect

public opinion in the matter.[1729] He argued against their being a

more advanced race (p. 154), and in his _Report_ of the Am. Antiq.

Soc., in 1877 (p. 37), he held that it might yet be proved that the

moundbuilders and red Indians were one in race, as M’Culloh had already

suggested.

At the time when Haven was first intimating (1856) that this view

might yet become accepted, it was doubtless held to be best established

that those who built the mounds were quite another race from those

who lived among them when Europeans first knew the country. The fact

that the Indians had no tradition of their origin was held to be

almost conclusive, though it is alleged that the southern Indians in

later times retained no recollections of the expedition of De Soto,

and Dr. Brinton thinks that it is common for Indian traditions to die

out.[1730] It is not till recent years that any considerable number of

moundbuilder skulls have been known, and from the scant data which the

early craniologists had, their opinion seems to have coincided with

those in favor of a vanished race.[1731] It was a favorite theory, not

yet wholly departed, that they were in some way connected with the more

southern peoples, the Pueblo Indians, the Aztecs, or the Peruvians;

either that they came from them, or migrated south and became one with

them.[1732] The bolder theory, that we see their descendants in the red

Indians, is perhaps gaining ground, and it has had the support of the

Bureau of Ethnology and some able expounders.[1733]

[Illustration: THE GREAT SERPENT MOUND.

This follows a survey given in Squier’s _Serpent Symbol_ (N. Y.,

1851), p. 137. It is criticised by Putnam in _Peabody Museum Reports_,

xviii. 348, and _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, Oct., 1883. Putnam has

recently purchased over sixty acres about the effigy, which is to

be held by the trustees of the Peabody Museum as a park (_Repts._,

xxi. 14); and his recent explorations show that the projections in

the side of the head (shaded dark in the cut) are not a part of the

construction. He also finds two distinct periods of occupation in this

region, to the oldest of which he attributes this work (_Peab. Mus.

Rept._ 1888). W. H. Holmes made a survey in 1886 (_Amer. Antiquarian_,

May, 1887, ix. 141; _Science_, viii. 624, Dec. 31, 1886). Cf. J. P.

MacLean, in _Amer. Antiquarian_, vii. 44, and his _Moundbuilders_, p.

56; Baldwin’s _Anc. America_, 29. T. H. Lewis describes a snake mound

in Minnesota (_Science_, ix. 393). On the serpent symbol see S. D.

Peet, in _Amer. Antiquarian_, viii. 197; ix. 13, where he manifests a

somewhat omnivorous appetite.]

Of the opposing theory of a disappeared race, Capt. Heart in reply to

Barton (_Amer. Philolog. Asso. Proc._ iii.) gave, as Thomas thinks,

“the earliest clear and distinct expression,” but Squier and Davis may

be considered as first giving it definite meaning; and though Squier

does not seem to have actually revoked this judgment as respects the

mounds in the Mississippi valley, he finally reached the conclusion

that those in New York were really the work of the Iroquois.[1734]

This ancient-race theory, sometimes amounting to a belief in their

autochthonous origin, has impressed the public through some of the

best known summaries of American antiquities, like those of Baldwin,

Wilson, and Short,[1735] and has been adopted by men of such reputation

as Lyell.[1736] The position taken by Professor F. W. Putnam, the

curator of the Peabody Museum of Archæology at Cambridge, is much like

that taken earlier by Warden in his _Recherches_, that both views

are, within their own limitations, correct, and, as Putnam expresses

it, “that many Indian tribes built mounds and earthworks is beyond

doubt; but that all the mounds and earthworks of North America are

by these same tribes, or their immediate ancestors, is not thereby

proved.”[1737] Thomas (_Fifth Report, Bureau Ethnol._) holds this

statement to be too vague. It is certainly shown in the whole history

of archæological study that uncompromising demarcations have sooner or

later to be abandoned.

Morgan finds it difficult to dissociate the mounds with his favorite

theory of communal life.[1738] There is no readier way of marking the

development of opinion on this question than to follow the series

of the _Annual Reports_ of the Smithsonian Institution, as hardly

a year has passed since 1861 but these _Reports_ have had in them

contributions on the subject.[1739] Among periodicals, the more

constant attention to the mounds is conspicuous in the _American

Antiquarian_.[1740]

The basis for estimating the age of the mounds is threefold. In the

first place, there are very few found on the last of the river terraces

to be reclaimed from the stream. In the second place, the decay of the

skeletons found in them can be taken as of some indication, if due

regard be had to the kind of earth in which they are buried. Third,

the age of trees upon them has been accepted as carrying them back a

certain period, at least, though this may widely vary, if you assume

their growth to be subsequent to the abandonment of the mounds, or

if, as Brinton holds,[1741] the trees were planted immediately upon

the building. The dependence upon counting the rings is by no means a

settled opinion as to all climes; but in the temperate zone the best

authorities place dependence upon it. Unfortunately it cannot carry us

back much over 600 years.[1742]

* * * * *

The early attempts to disclose the ethnological relations of the

moundbuilders on cranial evidence were embarrassed by the fewness

of the skulls then known. Morton (_Crania Americana_) called the

four examined by him identical with those of the red Indian.[1743]

At present, considerable numbers are available; but still Wilson

(_Prehistoric Man_, ii. 128) holds that “we lack sufficient data,” and

in the consideration of them sufficient care has not always been taken

to distinguish intrusive burials of a later date.[1744]

J. W. Foster (_Prehist. Races_, ch. 8; _Amer. Assoc. Adv. Sci.

Trans._, 1872; and _Amer. Naturalist_, vi. 738) held to a lower type

of skull, on this evidence, than Wilson (_Prehist. Man_, ii. ch. 20)

contended for. There are examples of the wide difference of views

(MacLean, 142), when some, like Morgan, connect them with the Pueblo

skulls (_No. Amer. Rev._, cix., Oct., 1869), and others, like Morton,

Winchell, Wilson, Brasseur, and Foster, find their correspondences

in those of Mexico and Peru.[1745] Putnam, whose experience with

mound skulls is greatest of all, holds to the southern short head

and the northern long head (_Rept._ 1888). Probably we have no

better enumeration of the variety of objects and relics found in the

mounds, though much has since been added to the collection, than in

Rau’s _Catalogue of the Archæological Collection of the National

Museum_ (Washington, 1876).[1746] Unfortunately he shows little or

no discrimination between discoveries in the mounds and those of

the surface. The interest in such collections has naturally brought

prominently to the attention of every student of such collections

the tricks of fraudulent imitators, and there are several well-known

instances of protracted controversies on the genuineness of certain

relics.[1747]

There remains in this survey of the literature of the mounds in

all their varieties, to go over it, finally, in relation to their

geographical distribution:[1748]—

New England is almost destitute of these antiquities. The one that has

attracted some attention is what is described as a fortification in

Sanbornton, in New Hampshire, which when found was faced with stone

externally, and the walls were six feet thick and breast-high, when

described about one hundred and fifteen years ago. There is a plan

of it, with a descriptive account, preserved in the library of the

American Antiq. Society,[1749] and another plan and description in M.

T. Runnels’s _Hist. of Sanbornton_ (Boston, 1882), i. ch. 4. Squier

also figured it.

[Illustration: CINCINNATI TABLET.

After a cut in Wilson’s _Prehistoric Man_, i. 274, engraved from a

rubbing taken from the original. Wilson adds: “Mr. Whittlesey has

included this tablet among his Archæological Frauds; but the result

of inquiries made by me has removed from my mind any doubt of its

genuineness.” Cf. other cuts in M. C. Read, _Archæol. of Ohio_ (1888);

Squier and Davis, fig. 195; Short, p. 45; MacLean, 107; and _Second

Rept. Bur. of Ethnol._, pp. 133-34.]

As we move westward, the mounds begin to be numerous in the State

of New York, and particularly in the western part of it. One of the

earliest descriptions of them, after that of the missionary Kirkland

(about 1788), is in the “Journal of the Rev. John Taylor while on

a mission through the Mohawk and Black River Country in 1802,”

which was first printed, with plans of the works examined, in the

_Documentary Hist. New York_ (vol. iii. quarto ed.). In 1818 DeWitt

Clinton published at Albany his _Memoir on the Antiquities of the

western part of New York_, in which he attributes their origin to

the Scandinavians.[1750] They were again described in David Thomas’s

_Travels through the western country in 1816_ (Auburn, 1819). There is

not much else to note for twenty-five years. In 1845, Schoolcraft made

to the N. Y. Senate his _Report on the Census of the Iroquois Indians_

(Albany and N. Y., 1846, 1847, 1848), which is better known, perhaps,

in the trade edition, _Notes on the Iroquois; or Contributions to the

Statistics, Aboriginal History, Antiquities and General Ethnology

of Western New York_ (N. Y. 1846). In 1850, the _Third Report_ of

the Regents of the University of the State of N. Y. contains F. B.

Hough’s paper on the earthwork enclosures in the State, with cuts.

The same year (1850) came the essential authority on the New York

mounds, E. G. Squier’s _Aboriginal Monuments of the State of N. Y.,

comprising the results of original surveys and explorations, with an

illustrative appendix_ (Washington, 1850), which the next year made

part of the second volume of the _Smithsonian Contributions_.[1751] He

enumerates in New York about 250 defensive structures, beside burial

mounds and in his appendix describes those in New Hampshire and some in

Pennsylvania.[1752] Some new explorations of the New York mounds were

made in 1859 by T. Apoleon Cheney, who describes them, giving plans and

cuts, in the _Thirteenth Report_ of the Regents of the University.[1753]

[Illustration: ANCIENT WORKS ON THE MUSKINGUM.

Reduced from an early engraving in T. M. Harris’s _Journal of a Tour

into the territory northwest of the Alleghany, 1803_ (Boston, 1805).

Harris’s plan in relation to the new town of Marietta is given in Vol.

VII. p. 540. To follow down the plans chronologically, we find that of

Winthrop Sargent, communicated to the Amer. Academy in 1787, reproduced

in their _Memoirs_, new ser. v. part i. The _Columbian Mag._, May,

1787, vol. i. 425, and the _N. Y. Mag._ (1791) had plans. One was in

Schultz’s _Travels_ (1807), 146. Atwater, of course, gave one in 1820.

A survey by S. Dewitt, 1822, is in Josiah Priest’s _Amer. Antiquities_,

3d ed., Albany, 1833. Others are in the _Amer. Pioneer_, Oct., 1842,

June 1843, and in S. P. Hildreth’s _Pioneer History_, 212 (Jan., 1843).

Whittlesey made the survey in Squier and Davis (who also give a colored

view), and it is reduced in Foster. Cf. also _Amer. Antiquarian_, Jan.,

1880; _Mag. Amer. Hist._, 1885, p. 547; Henry A. Shepard’s _Antiquities

of Ohio_ (Cinn., 1887); Nadaillac’s _L’Amérique préhistorique_, 105,

and _Les prem. Hommes_, ii. 33.]

It was, however, in Ohio that the interest in these mounds was first

incited, and that the more thorough exploration has been made.[1754]

The earliest pioneers reported upon them. Cutler described them in

1789 in a letter to Jeremy Belknap.[1755] Benj. S. Barton described a

mound at Cincinnati in 1799.[1756] Dr. Harris in 1805 was seemingly

the earliest traveller to note them in _Journal of a Tour_, where he

gives one of the earliest engravings. A plan of those at Circleville,

with description by J. Kilbourne, is given in the _Ohio Gazetteer_

(Columbus, 1817). Caleb Atwater, in 1820, was more familiar with them

than with others of his broader field. Warden in his _Recherches_

noted the early describers. Gen. Harrison discussed the mounds in his

_Discourse on the Aborigines of the Valley of the Ohio_ (Cincinnati,

1838). Squier and Davis, of course, brought them within their

range,[1757] and Col. Whittlesey supplemented their work in the third

volume of the _Smithsonian Contributions_. Whittlesey and Matthew C.

Read contributed the Report on the Archæology of Ohio, which forms

the second portion of the _Final Report of the Ohio State Board of

Centennial Managers_ (Columbus, 1877), and in it is a list of the

ancient enclosures, which is not, as Short says (p. 82), as complete

as it should be. A survey of the mounds was made by E. B. Andrews,

and published in the _Peabody Mus. Repts._ (no. x.), 1877. The Ohio

State Archæological and Historical Society started in June, 1887, the

_Ohio archæological and historical Quarterly_, which has vigorously

entered the field, and in it (March, 1888) G. F. Wright has reported

on the present condition of the mounds. M. C. Read’s _Archæology of

Ohio_ (Cleveland, 1888) was published by the Western Reserve Historical

Society, whose series of Tracts is of importance for the study of the

mounds.[1758] Henry A. Shepard’s _Antiquities of the State of Ohio_

(Cincinnati, 1887) summarizes the discoveries to date.[1759] Thomas

(_Fifth Rept. Bur. Ethnol._) claims that the Ohio mounds were built

by Indians, but not by the Indians, nor by the ancestors of them, who

inhabited this region at the coming of the whites; but by an Indian

race driven south, of whom he finds the modern representatives in the

Cherokees.

[Illustration: MAP OF A SECTION OF TWELVE MILES _of the_ SCIOTO VALLEY.

_WITH ITS_ ANCIENT MONUMENTS.

_LITH. OF SARONY & MAJOR, 117, FULTON ST. N. Y._

From E. G. Squier’s _Aboriginal Monuments of the Mississippi Valley_

(N. Y., 1847), taken from _Amer. Ethnol. Soc. Trans._, ii. The letters

A, B, C, etc. mark the ancient works. Enclosures are shown by broken

lines. The mounds are designated by small dots. Some of the best maps

which we have showing the geographical positions of groups of mounds

accompany Thomas’s paper in the _Fifth Rept., Bur. Ethnol._]

The works at Marietta, on the Muskingum River, were the earliest

observed. Taking the southern and southeastern counties, there are

no very conspicuous examples elsewhere, though the region is well

dotted with earthworks.[1760] Those at Cincinnati were, after those at

Marietta, the earliest to be noticed.[1761] The adjacent Little Miami

Valley is the region which Professor Putnam and Dr. Metz have been of

late so successfully working.[1762]

[Illustration: THE WORKS AT NEWARK, OHIO.

After a cut in Wilson’s _Prehistoric Man_, i. 269, made from surveys

“executed while the chief earthworks could still be traced in all

their integrity;” and they “illustrate rites and customs of an ancient

American people, without a parallel among the monumental memorials of

the old world.” Cf. Atwater, Warden, Squier and Davis, and MacLean.]

Of all the works in the central portions of Ohio, and indeed of all

in any region, those at Newark, in Licking County, are the most

extensive, and have been often described.[1763] In the east[1764] and

west[1765] there are other of these earthworks; but those in the north

have been particularly examined by Col. Whittlesey and others.[1766]

The enclosure called Fort Azatlan, at Merom on the Wabash River, is

the most noticeable in Indiana.[1767] In Illinois, the great Cahokia

truncated pyramid, 700 feet long by 500 wide and 90 high, is the most

important.[1768]

Henry Gillman, of Detroit, has been the leading writer on the mounds

of Michigan.[1769] The supposed connection of their builders with the

ancient copper mines of Lake Superior is considered in another place.

Thomas (_Fifth Rept., Bur. Ethnol._) contends that much of the copper

found in the mounds was of European make, and had no relation to any

aboriginal mining.

Wisconsin is the central region of what are known as the animal,

effigy, symbolic, or emblematic mounds. Mention has been made elsewhere

of the earliest notices of this kind of earthwork. The most extensive

examination of them is the _Antiquities of Wisconsin as surveyed and

described by I. A. Lapham_ (Washington, 1855), with a map showing the

sites.[1770] The consideration of these effigy mounds has given rise to

various theories regarding their significance, whether as symbols or

to totems.[1771] It is Thomas’s conclusion that the effigy mounds and

the burial mounds of Wisconsin were the work of the same people (_Fifth

Rept., Bur. Ethnol._).

The existence of what is called an elephant or mastodon mound in Grant

County has been sometimes taken to point to the age of those extinct

animals as that of the erection of the mounds.[1772] Putnam, referring

to the confined area in which these effigy mounds are found, says that

the serpent mound, the alligator mound,[1773] and Whittlesey’s effigy

mound in Ohio, and two bird mounds in Georgia,[1774] are the only other

works in North America to which they are at all comparable.[1775]

When Lewis and Clark explored the Missouri River in 1804-6, they

discovered mounds in different parts of its valley; but their

statements were not altogether confirmed till the parties of the United

States surveyors traversed the region after the civil war, as is

particularly shown in Hayden’s _Geological Survey, 6th Rept._, in 1872.

Within the present State of Missouri the mounds which have attracted

most notice are those near the modern St. Louis.[1776] In Iowa (Clayton

County) there is said to be the largest group of effigy mounds west

of the Mississippi.[1777] The mounds of Iowa and the neighboring

region are also discussed by Thomas in the _Fifth Rept. Bur. Ethnol._

O. H. Kelley has reported on the remains of an ancient town in

Minnesota.[1778] In Kansas there is little noticeable,[1779] and there

is not much to record in Dacotah,[1780] Utah,[1781] California,[1782]

and Montana.[1783] We find scant accounts of the mounds in Oregon and

Washington in the narrative of the Wilkes Exploring Expedition and

in the earlier story of Lewis and Clark. Some of the mounds are of

doubtful artificiality.[1784]

Along the lower portion of the Mississippi, but not within three

hundred miles of its mouth, we find in Louisiana other mound

constructions, but not of unusual significance.[1785]

The first effigy mound, a bear, which was observed south of the Ohio,

is near an old earthwork in Greenup County, Kentucky.[1786] The mounds

of this State early attracted notice.[1787] Bishop Madison[1788]

thought them sepulchral rather than military. In the _Western Review_

(Dec., 1819) one was described near Lexington. Rafinesque added a

not very sane account of them to Marshall’s _History of Kentucky_,

in 1824, which was also published separately, and since then all the

general histories of Kentucky have given some attention to these

antiquities.[1789]

In Tennessee we find in connection with the earthworks the stone

graves, which the explorations of Putnam, about ten years ago, brought

into prominence.[1790] The chief student of the aboriginal mounds

in Georgia has been Col. C. C. Jones, Jr., who has been writing on

the subject for nearly forty years.[1791] The mounds in the State of

Mississippi, as including the region of the Natchez Indians, derive

some added interest because of the connection sometimes supposed

to exist between them and the race of the mounds.[1792] The same

characteristics of the mounds extend into Alabama.[1793] The mounds in

Florida attracted the early notice of John and William Bartram, and

are described by them in their _Travels_, and have been dwelt upon

by later writers.[1794] The seaboard above Georgia has not much of

interest.[1795] Concerning the mounds along the Canadian belt there is

hardly more to be said.[1796]

* * * * *

Lubbock classes the signs of successive periods in North America thus:

original barbarism, mounds, garden beds, and then the relapse into

barbarism of the red Indian. The agricultural age thus follows that of

the mound erection, in his view, though, as Putnam says, there seems

enough evidence that the constructors of the old earthworks were an

agricultural race.[1797]

* * * * *

There is another class of relics which, outside the hieroglyphics of

Central America, has as yet had little comprehensive study, though the

general books on American archæology enumerate some of the inscriptions

on rocks, which are so widely scattered throughout the continent.[1798]

Out of all this discussion has risen the new science of Anthropology,

broad enough in its scope to include not only archæology in its

general acceptation, but to sweep into its range of observation

various aspects of ethnology and of geology. It is a new science

as at present formulated; but under other conditions it is traced

from its origin with the ancients in a paper by T. Bendyshe in the

_Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of London_ (vol. i. 335).

Its progress in America is treated by O. T. Mason in the _American

Naturalist_ (xiv. 348; xv. 616). The most approved methods of modern

research are explained in Emil Schmidt’s _Anthropologische Methoden;

Anleitung zum beobachten und sammeln für Laboratorium und Reise_

(Leipzig, 1888). “The methods of archæological investigation are as

trustworthy as those of any natural science,” says Lubbock (_Scientific

Lectures_, 139). Beside the publications of the various Archæological,

Anthropological, and Ethnological Societies and Congresses[1799]

of both hemispheres, we find for Europe a considerable centre of

information in the _Materiaux pour l’histoire primitive et naturelle

(philosophique) de l’homme_,[1800] and for America in the publications

of the Smithsonian Institution,[1801] in the _Comptes rendus_ of the

successive Congresses of Américanistes, and in such periodicals as the

_American Antiquarian_, the _American Anthropologist_, and the _Folk

Lore Journal_.

[Illustration: MAJOR POWELL.]

The broad subject of prehistoric archæology is covered in a paper

by Lubbock, which is included in his _Scientific Lectures_ (Lond.,

1879);[1802] in H. M. Westropp’s _Prehistoric Phases, or Introductory

Essays on Prehistoric Archæology_ (Lond., 1872); in Stevens’s _Flint

Chips_ (1870); by Dr. Brinton in the _Iconographic Encyclopædia_, vol.

ii.; and more popularly in Charles F. Keary’s _Dawn of History, an

introd. to prehistoric study_ (N. Y., 1879), and in Davenport Adams’s

_Beneath the Surface, or the Underground World_.

The French have contributed a corresponding literature in Louis

Figuier’s _L’Homme Primitif_ (Paris, 1870);[1803] in Zaborowski’s

_L’homme préhistorique_ (Paris, 1878); and in the Marquis de

Nadaillac’s _Les premiers hommes et les temps préhistoriques_ (Paris,

1881), and his _Mœurs et monuments des peuples préhistoriques_ (Paris,

1888), not to mention others.[1804]

The principal comprehensive works covering the prehistoric period in

North America, are J. T. Short’s _North Americans of Antiquity_ (N.

Y., 1879, and later); the _L’Amérique préhistorique_ of Nadaillac

(Paris, 1883);[1805] Foster’s _Prehistoric Races of the United States_

(Chicago, 1873; 6th ed., 1887); and the compact popular _Ancient

America_ (N. Y., 1871) of John D. Baldwin. Beside Bancroft’s _Native

Races_, there are various treatises of confined nominal scope, but

covering in some degree the whole North American field, which are noted

in other pages.[1806]

The purely ethnological aspects of the American side of the subject

are summarily surveyed in A. H. Keane’s “Ethnology of America,”

appended to Stanford’s _Compendium of Geography, Cent. America_,

etc. (London, 2nd ed., 1882), and there are papers on Ethnographical

Collections in the _Smithsonian Report_ (1862).[1807] The great

repository of material, however, is in the _Contributions to North

American Ethnology_, being a section of Major Powell’s _Survey of the

Rocky Mountain Region_, and in the _Annual Reports_ of the Bureau of

Ethnology since 1879, made under Major Powell’s directions, and in the

_Reports of the Peabody Museum_.[1808]

APPENDIX.

I.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ABORIGINAL AMERICA.

_By the Editor._

THE student will find a general survey of “Les Sources de l’histoire

anté-Colombienne du nouveau monde, par Léon de Rosny,” in the _Revue

Orientale et Américaine_ (_Mém. de la soc. d’ethnographie_) _session

de 1877_ (p. 139). Bancroft in his _Native Races_ (v. 136) makes a

similar grouping of the classes of sources relating to the primitive

Americans.[1809] These classes are defined in Daniel G. Brinton’s

_Review of the data for the study of the prehistoric chronology of

America_ (Salem, 1887), from the _Proceedings of the Amer. Asso. for

the Advancement of Science_ (vol. xxxvi.), as conveniently divided into

groups pertaining to legendary, monumental, industrial, linguistic,

physical, and geological phenomena.

There have been given in the Introduction of the present volume the

titles of general bibliographies of American histories, most of which

include more or less of the titles pertaining to aboriginal times.

It is the purpose of the present brief essay to enumerate, in an

approximately chronological order, the titles of some of those and of

others which are useful to the archæologist. So far as they are of

service to the student of the American languages, an extended list will

be found prefixed to Pilling’s _Proof-Sheets_ (p. xi).

The earliest American bibliography was that of Antonio de Leon,

usually called Pinelo,—_Epitome de la Biblioteca oriental y occidental

náutica y Geográfica_ (Madrid, 1629),—but which is usually found in

the edition of Gonzales de Barcía, “Añadido y enmendado nuevamente”

(Paris, 1737-1738), in which the American titles, including numerous

manuscripts, are given in the second volume.[1810]

The _Bibliotheca Hispana Nova_ of Nicolás Antonio was first published

at Rome in 1672, but in a second edition at Madrid in 1783-88.[1811]

Passing by the _Bibliotheca Mexicana_ of Eguiara y Eguren,[1812] and

the early edition of Beristain, we note the new edition of the latter,

prepared not by Juan Evangelista Guadalajara, as Brasseur notes,[1813]

but by another, as the title shows,—_Biblioteca Hispano-Americana

Septentrional, ó catalogo y noticia de los Literatos que ó nacidos,

ó educados, ó florecientes en la America Septentrional Española, han

dado á luz algun escrito ó lo han dexado preparado para la prensa por

José Mariano Beristain y Martin de Souza. Segunda edicion, por Fortino

Hipólito Vera_ (Amecameca, 1883).

Dr. Robertson intimates that the lists of books which writers of

the seventeenth century had been in the habit of prefixing to their

books as evidence of their industry had come to be regarded as an

ostentatious expression of their learning, and with some hesitancy he

counted out to the reader his 717 titles; but Clavigero, as elsewhere

pointed out,[1814] was richer in such resources. Humboldt, in his

_Vues_,[1815] gives a list of the authors which he cites.

The class of dealers’ catalogues—we cite only such as have decided

bibliographical value—begins to be conspicuous in Paul Trömel’s

_Bibliothèque Américaine_ (Leipzig, 1861), the best of the German ones,

and in Charles Leclerc’s _Bibliotheca Americana_ (Paris, 1867), much

improved in his _Bibliotheca Americana. Histoire, géographie, voyages,

archéologie et linguistique des deux Amériques et des îles Philippines_

(Paris, 1878), with later supplements, constituting the best of the

French catalogues, provided with an excellent index and a linguistic

table, rendered necessary by the classified plan of the list.

The list formed by students in this field begins with the _Bibliotheca

Americana Vetustissima_ of Harrisse (New York, 1866; additions, Paris,

1872), and includes the _Bibliothèque Mexico-Guatémalienne, précédée

d’un coup d’œil sur les études américaines dans leurs rapports avec

les études classiques, et suivie du tableau, par ordre alphabétique,

des ouvrages de linguistique Américaine contenus dans le même volume_

(Paris, 1871) of the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, who at that time had

been twenty-five years engaged in the studies and travels which led to

the gathering of his collection. The library, almost entire, was later

joined to that of Alphonse L. Pinart, and was included in the latter’s

_Catalogue de livres rares et précieux, manuscrits et imprimés_ (Paris,

1883).

In 1866, Icazbalceta published at Mexico his _Apuntes para un Catálogo

de Escritores en lenguas indígenas de América_,[1816] but of his great

bibliographical work only one volume has as yet appeared: _Bibliografía

Américana del Siglo xvi. Primera parte_. _Catálogo razonado de libros

impresos en México de 1539 à 1600, con biografías de autores y otras

ilustraciones, precedido de una noticia acerca de la introducción de la

imprenta en México_ (México, 1886).

Bandelier has embodied some of the results of his study in his “Notes

on the Bibliography of Yucatan and Central America,” in the _Amer.

Antiq. Soc. Proc._, n. s., i. pp. 82-118.

The catalogues of collections having special reference to aboriginal

America are the following:—

_Catalogue de la Bibliothèque de José Maria Andrade, 7,000 pièces et

volumes, ayant rapport au Méxique ou imprimés dans ce pays_ (Leipzig,

1869).[1817]

_Bibliotheca Mejicana_: _Books and manuscripts almost wholly relating

to the history and literature of North and South America, particularly

Mexico_ (London, 1869). This collection was formed by Augustin Fischer,

chaplain to the Emperor Maximilian; but there were added to the

catalogue some titles from the collection of Dr. C. H. Berendt.

_Catalogue of the library of E. G. Squier, edited by Joseph Sabin_ (N.

Y., 1876).

_Bibliotheca Mexicana, or A Catalogue of the library of the rare books

and important MSS. relating to Mexico and other parts of Spanish

America, formed by the late Señor Don José Fernando Ramirez_ (London,

1880). This catalogue was edited by the Abbé Fischer.[1818]

The most useful guides to the literature of aboriginal America,

however, are some compiled in this country. First, the comprehensive

though not yet complete bibliography, Joseph Sabin’s _Dictionary of

books relating to America_, now being continued since Sabin’s death,

and with much skill, by Wilberforce Eames. Second, the voluminous

_Proof-sheets of a Bibliography of the languages of the North

American Indians_ (Washington, 1885), prepared by James Constantine

Pilling, tentatively, in a large quarto volume, distributed only to

collaborators, and out of which, with emendations and additions, he is

now publishing special sections of it, of which have already appeared

those relating to the Eskimo and Siouan tongues. His enumeration

so much exceeds the range of purely linguistic monographs that the

treatises become in effect general bibliographies of aboriginal America.

Third, _An Essay towards an Indian bibliography, being a Catalogue

of books relating to the history, antiquities, languages, customs,

religion, wars, literature and origin of the American Indians, in the

library of Thos. W. Field, with bibliographical and historical notes

and synopses of the contents of some of the works least known_ (N. Y.,

1873). The sale of Mr. Field’s library took place in New York, May,

1875, from a Catalogue not so elaborate, but still of use. These books

are not so accurately compiled as to be wholly trustworthy as final

resorts.

Finally, the list prefixed to Bancroft’s _Native Races_, vol. i.,

and the references of his foot-notes, throughout his five volumes

(condensed often in Short’s _North Americans of Antiquity_), are

on the whole the most serviceable aids to the general student, but

unfortunately the index of the set is of no use in searching for

bibliographical detail.

The reader will remember that the bibliographies of sectional or

partial import in the field of American archæology are referred to

elsewhere in the present volume.

II.

THE COMPREHENSIVE TREATISES ON AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES.

_By the Editor._

AT the time when Bancroft published his _Native Races_ (1875),

he referred to John D. Baldwin’s _Ancient America_ (N. Y., 1871)

as the only preceding, comprehensive book on America before the

Spaniards.[1819] It still remains a convenient book of small compass;

but its absence of references to sources precludes its usefulness for

purposes of study, and it is not altogether abreast of the latest

views. To the popular element a moderate share of the indexical

character, rendering the book passably serviceable to the average

reader, has been added in the somewhat larger _North Americans

of Antiquity, their origin, migrations, and type of civilization

considered, by John T. Short_ (N. Y., 1880,—somewhat improved in later

editions), though it will be observed that the Peruvian and other

South American antiquities have not come within his plan. The latest

of these comprehensive books is the Marquis de Nadaillac’s (Jean F.

A. du Pouget’s) _L’Amérique préhistorique_ (Paris, 1883), which in an

English version by N. D’Anvers was published with the author’s sanction

in London in 1882. With revision and some modifications by W. H.

Dall, which have not met the author’s sanction, it was republished as

_Prehistoric America_ (N. Y., 1884). It is a work of more theoretical

tendency than the student wishes to find at the opening stage of his

inquiry.

But as a compend of every department of archæological knowledge up to

about fifteen years ago no advance has yet been made upon Bancroft’s

_Native Races_ as indicative of every channel of investigation which

the student can pursue. Upon the monuments of the moundbuilders (iv.

ch. 13) and the antiquities of Peru (iv. ch. 14) the treatment is

condensed and without references, as occupying a field beyond his

primary purpose of covering the Pacific slope of North America and the

immediately adjacent regions. Mention is made elsewhere of Bancroft’s

methods of compilation, and it may suffice to say that in the five

volumes of his _Native Races_ he has drawn and condensed his matter

from the writings of about 1200 writers, whose titles he gives in a

preliminary list.[1820] The method of arranging the departments of the

work is perhaps too far geographical to be always satisfactory to the

special student,[1821] and he seems to be aware of it (for instance, i.

ch. 2); but it may be questioned if, while writing with, or engrafting

upon, an encyclopædic system, what might pass for a continuous

narrative, any more scientific plan would have been more successful.

Bancroft’s opinions are not always as satisfactory as his material.

The student who uses the _Native Races_ for its groups and references

will accordingly find a complemental service in Sir Daniel Wilson’s

_Prehistoric Man_ (London, 1876), in which the Toronto professor

conducts his “researches into the origin of civilization in the old and

the new world,” by primarily treating of the early American man, as the

readiest way of understanding early man in Europe. His system is to

connect man’s development topically in the directions induced by his

habits, industries, dwellings, art, records, migrations, and physical

characterizations.

Another and older book, in some respects embodying like purposes,

and though produced at a time when archæological studies were much

less advanced than at present, is Alexander W. Bradford’s _American

Antiquities and researches into the origin and history of the red

race_ (N. Y., 1841).[1822] The first section of the book is strictly

a record of results; but in the final portion the author indulges

more in speculative inquiry. Even in this he has not transcended the

bounds of legitimate hypothesis, though some of his postulates will

hardly be accepted nowadays, as when he contends that the red Indians

are the degraded descendants of the people who were connected with the

so-called civilization of Central America.[1823]

The periodical literature of a comprehensive sort is not so

extensive as treatments of special aspects; but the student will find

Poole’s _Index_ and Rhee’s _Catalogue and Index of the Smithsonian

publications_ serviceable.

III.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE INDUSTRIES AND TRADE OF THE AMERICAN

ABORIGINES.

_By the Editor._

WHILE we have a moderate list of works on the general subject of

prehistoric art and industries,[1824] we lack any comprehensive survey

of the subject as respects the American continent, and must depend on

sectional and local treatment. Humboldt in the introduction to his

_Atlas_ of his _Essai politique_ (Paris, 1813) was among the earliest

to grasp the material which illustrates the origin and first progress

of the arts in America. The arts of the southern regions and western

coasts of North America are best followed in those portions of the

chapters on the Wild Tribes, devoted to the subject, which make up

the first volume of Bancroft’s _Native Races_,[1825] and for Mexican

and Maya productions some chapters (ch. 15, 24) in the second volume.

Prescott’s treatment of the more advanced peoples of this region is

scant (_Mexico_, i., introd., ch. 5). The art in stone of the Pueblo

Indians is beautifully illustrated in Putnam’s portion of Wheeler’s

_Report_ of his survey, and comparison may be made with Hayden’s

_Annual Rept._ (1876) of the U. S. Geol. and Geographical Survey.

The work of Putnam and his collaborators in the archæological volume

(vii.) of Wheeler’s _Survey_ is probably the most complete account of

the implements, ornaments and utensils of any one people (those of

Southern California) yet produced; and its illustrations have not been

surpassed. Passing north, we shall get some help from E. L. Berthoud’s

paper on the “Prehistoric human art from Wyoming and Colorado,” in his

“Journal of a reconnaissance in Creek Valley, Col.,” published by the

Colorado Acad. of Nat. Sciences (_Proceedings_, 1872, p. 46). In the

_Pacific Rail Road Reports_ (vol. iii. in 1856) there is a paper by

Thomas Ewbank in “Illustrations of Indian antiquities and arts.” S. S.

Haldeman has described the relics of human industry found in a rock

shelter in southeastern Pennsylvania (_Compte Rendu, Cong. des Amér._,

Luxembourg, ii. 319; and _Transactions Amer. Philos. Soc._, 1878). The

best of all the more comprehensive monographs is Charles C. Abbott’s

_Primitive industry: or illustrations of the handiwork, in stone, bone

and clay, of the native races of the Northern Atlantic seaboard of

America_ (Salem, 1881). Morgan’s _League of the Iroquois_ touches in

some measure of the arts of that confederacy, his earliest study being

in the _Fifth Report of the Regents of the State of New York_ (1852).

For the Canada regions, the _Annual Reports of the Canadian Institute_,

appended to the _Reports_ of the Minister of Education, Ontario,

contain accounts of the discovery of objects of stone, horn, and shell.

(See particularly the sessions of 1886-87.) Dawson in his _Fossil men_

(ch. 6) considers what he accounts the lost arts of the primitive races

of North America. On the other hand, Professor Leidy found still in use

among the present Shoshones split pebbles resembling the rudest stone

implements of the palæolithic period (_U. S. Geological Survey_, 1872,

p. 652).

Many archæologists have remarked on the uniform character of many

prehistoric implements, wherever found, as precluding their being

held as ethnical evidences. The system of quarrying[1826] for flint

best fitted for the tool-maker’s art has been observed by Wilson

(_Prehistoric man_, i. 68) both in the old and new world, and in

his third chapter (vol. i.) we have a treatise on the ancient

stone-worker’s art.[1827]

Treating the subject topically, we find the late Charles Rau making

some special studies of the implements used in native agriculture[1828]

in the _Smithsonian Reports_ for 1863, 1868, and 1869.[1829] The

agriculture of the Aztecs and Mayas is treated in Max Steffen’s _Die

Landwirtschaft bei den altamerikanischen Kulturvölkern_ (Leipzig,

1883).[1830]

The working of flint or obsidian into arrowpoints or cutting implements

is a process by pressure that has not been wholly lost. Old workshops,

or the chips of them, have been discovered, and they are found in

numerous localities (Wilson’s _Prehistoric Man_, i. 75, 79; Abbott’s

_Primitive Industry_, and Putnam in the _Bull. Essex Institute_),

but Powell in his _Report of Explorations of the Colorado of the

West_ (1873) does not, as Wilson says he does, describe the present

ways.[1831]

Wilson (_Prehistoric Man_, i. ch. 4 and 7) in an essay on the bone and

ivory workers substitutes for the corresponding words usually employed

in classifying stone implements the terms palæotechnic and neotechnic,

as indicating periods of progress, in order that the art of making

tools in horn, bone, shell, and ivory might have a better recognition,

as of equal importance with that of making such in stone. Separate

treatises are few. Morgan has a paper on the bone implements of the

Arickarees in the _21st Rept. of the Regents of the University of the

State of N. Y._ (1871), and Rau’s monograph on _Prehistoric fishing in

Europe and North America, one of the Smithsonian Contributions_ (1884),

involves the making of fish-hooks of bone. See also Putnam in the

_Peabody Museum Reports_, and in _Wheeler’s Survey_, vol. vii.; Wyman’s

contributions on the shell heaps, and the _Journal of the Cincinnati

Soc. of Nat. Hist_. for such as have been found in the ash-pits of

Madisonville. On shell-work there is a section in Foster’s _Prehistoric

Races_ (p. 234); a paper by W. H. Holmes in the _Second Rept. of the

Bureau of Ethnology_ (p. 179); and one on American shell-work and its

affinities by Miss Buckland in the _Journal Anthropol. Inst._, xvi. 155.

From the primitive materials of stone, bone, horn, or shell, we pass

to metals; but as Wilson (i. p. 174) says, “if metal could be found

capable of being wrought and fashioned without smelting or moulding,

its use was perfectly compatible with the simple arts of the stone

period, as a mere malleable stone;” and to the present day, he adds,

the rude American race has no knowledge of working metal, except by

pounding or grinding it cold.[1832] The story which Brereton tells

in his account of Gosnold’s visit (1602) to New England, about the

finding of abundant metal implements in use among the natives, is

questioned (Baldwin’s _Ancient America_, p. 62). We have the evidences

of the early mining[1833] of copper extending for over a hundred miles

along the southern shores of Lake Superior and on Isle Royale, in the

abandoned trenches and tools first discovered in 1847; and in one case

there was found a mass of native copper (ten feet by three and two, and

weighing over six tons) which had been elevated on a wooden frame prior

to removal, and was discovered in this condition.[1834] There are also

indications that the manufacture of copper tools was carried on in the

neighborhood of the mines (Wilson, i. 213); and chemical tests have

shown that a popular belief in the tempering of metal by these early

peoples is without foundation.[1835]

It seems to be a fact that while in the use of metals an intermediate

stage of pure copper, as coming between the use of bone and stone

and the use of alloyed metals, was not until comparatively recently

suspected in Great Britain, the “peculiar interest attaches to the

metallurgy of the new world that there all the earlier stages are

clearly defined: the pure native metal wrought by the hammer without

the aid of fire; the melted and moulded copper; the alloyed bronze;

and the smelting, soldering, graving, and other processes resulting

from accumulating experience and matured skill” (Wilson, i. 230).

It is in the regions extending from Mexico to Peru that the art of

alloying introduces us to the American bronze age. Columbus in his

fourth voyage found in a vessel which had come alongside from Yucatan

crucibles to melt copper, as Herrera tells us; and Humboldt was among

the earliest to discover tools alloyed of copper and tin, and many such

alloys have since been recognized among Peruvian bronzes (Wilson, i.

239). In Mexico, metallurgic arts were carried perhaps even farther

in casting and engraving, and not only the results but the evidences

of their mining places have remained to our day (_Ibid._ i. 248). It

seems evident, however, that experimenting with them had not carried

them so near the perfect combination for tool-making (one part tin to

nine parts copper) as the bronze people of Europe had reached, though

they fell considerably short of the exact standard (_Ibid._ i. 234).

Doubt has sometimes been expressed of Mexican mining for copper, as

by Frederick von Hellwald (_Compte Rendu, Cong. des Américanistes_,

1877, i. 51); but Rau indicated the references[1836] to Short (p.

94), which forcibly led him to the conclusion that the Mexicans mined

copper to turn into tools.[1837] Among the Mayas, Nadaillac (p. 269)

contends that only copper and gold were in use. Bancroft (ii. 749)

thinks the use of copper doubtful, and if used, that it must have

been got from the north. He cites the evidences of the use of gold.

William H. Holmes discusses _The use of gold and other metals among

the ancient inhabitants of Chiriqui, Isthmus of Darien_ (Washington,

1887). As to iron, that found in the Ohio mounds, only of late years,

has been proved to be meteoric iron by Professor Putnam (_Amer. Antiq.

Soc. Proc._, Apr., 1883). Bancroft (i. 164) says iron was in use among

the British Columbian tribes before contact with the whites, but it

was probably derived through some indirect means from the whites.

Though iron ore abounds in Peru, and the character of the Peruvian

stone-cutting would seem to indicate its use, and though there is a

native word for it, no iron implements have been found.[1838] There is

not much recorded of the use of silver. It has been found by Putnam in

the mounds in thin sheets, used as plating for other metals.[1839] He

has also found native silver in masses, and in one case a small bit of

hammered gold.

* * * * *

Wilson, in 1876, while regretting the dispersion of the William

Bullock collection of pottery, the destruction of that formed by

Stephens and Catherwood, and the transference to an English museum

of most of the specimens gathered by Squier and Davis, lamented that

no American collection[1840] had been yet formed adequate to the

requirements of the students of American archæology and ethnology.

Since that date, however, the collections in the National Museum

(Smithsonian Institution) at Washington and in the Peabody Museum at

Cambridge have largely grown; and especially for the fictile art and

work in stone of Spanish North America the Museo Nacional in Mexico has

assumed importance. The collection in the possession of the American

Philosophical Society in Philadelphia,[1841] since transferred to the

Philadelphia Academy, is also of value for the study of the pottery of

middle America.

Rau has supplied a leading paper on American pottery in the

_Smithsonian Report_, 1866; and E. A. Barber has touched the subject

in papers at the Copenhagen, Luxembourg, and Madrid meetings of the

Congrès des Américanistes, and in the _American Antiquarian_ (viii.

76).[1842] W. H. Holmes has a paper on the origin and development of

form and of ornament in ceramic art in the _Fourth Report, Bureau of

Ethnology_, p. 437.

For local characters there are various monographs.[1843]

There is no satisfactory evidence that the potter’s wheel was known

to any American tribe; but Wilson, in his chapter on ceramic art

(_Prehistoric Man_, ii. ch. 16), feels convinced that the early potter

employed some sort of mechanical process, giving a revolving motion to

his clay.

[Illustration: MEXICAN CLAY MASK.

After a cut in _Wilson’s Prehistoric Man_, ii. p. 33, of an example in

the collections of the American Philosophical Society, in a totally

different style from the usual Mexican terra-cottas; and Wilson remarks

of it that one will look in vain in it for the Indian physiognomy.

Tyler, _Anahuac_, 230, considers it a forgery.]

Modelling in clay for other purposes than the making of vessels is

also considered in this same seventeenth chapter of Wilson, and the

subject runs, as respects masks, figurines, and general ornamentation,

into the wide range of aboriginal art, which necessarily makes part of

all comprehensive histories of art. W. H. Dall has a paper on Indian

masks in the _Third Report, Bureau of Ethnology_, p. 73. The subject is

further treated by Wilson in a paper on “The artistic faculty in the

aboriginal races,” in the _Proceedings_ (iii., 2d part, 67, 119) of the

Royal Society of Canada, and again in a general way by Nadaillac on

_L’art préhistorique en Amérique_ (Paris, 1883), taken from the _Revue

des deux Mondes_, Nov. 1, 1883.[1844]

* * * * *

As regards the textile art in prehistoric times, see for a general view

W. H. Holmes in the _American Antiquarian_, viii. 261; and the same

archæologist has treated the subject on the evidences of the impression

of textures as preserved in pottery, in the _Third Rept. Bur. of

Ethnology_, p. 393. Cf. Sellers in _Popular Science Journal_, and Wyman

in _Peabody Museum Reports_.

J. W. Foster first made (1838) the discovery of relics of textile

fabrics of the moundbuilders; but he did not announce his discovery

till at the Albany meeting (1851) of the American Association for

the Advancement of Science (_Transactions_, 1852, vol. vi. p. 375).

He tells the story in his _Prehistoric Races_, p. 222, and figures

the implements, found in the mounds, supposed to be employed in the

making their cloth with warp and woof. Putnam has since made similar

discoveries (_Peabody Museum Reports_). The subject is also treated

in the _Proceedings_ of the Davenport Academy and of the American

Association for the Advancement of Science. The fabrics were preserved

by being placed in contact with copper implements.

The Indians of New Mexico were found by the Spaniards in possession

of the art of weaving. Cf. Washington Matthews on the Navajo weavers,

in the _Third Rept. Bur. of Ethnology_, p. 371, and Bancroft (i.

582), who also records the making of fabrics by the wild tribes of

Central America (_Ibid._ i. 766-67). He also notes the references to

the textile manufactures of the Nahuas and Mayas (ii. 484, 752). The

richest accumulation of graphic data relative to the fabrics of Peru is

contained in the great work on the _Necropolis of Ancon_.

Feather-work was an important industry in some parts of the continent.

The subject is studied in Ferdinand Denis’ _Arte plumaria: Les plumes,

leur valeur et leur emploi dans les arts au Méxique, au Pérou, au

Brésil et dans les Indes et dans l’Océanie_ (Paris, 1875).[1845]

Lewis H. Morgan’s _Houses and House-life of the American Aborigines_

(Washington, 1881) is the completest study of the habitations of

the early peoples; but it is written too exclusively in the light

of universal communal custom, and this must be borne in mind in

using it. The edifices of middle America and Peru have been given a

bibliographical apparatus in another part of the present volume; but

references may be made to Wilson’s _Prehistoric Man_ (ii. ch. 16),

Viollet le Duc’s _Habitations of Man_, translated by R. Bucknall

(Boston, 1876), and to Bandelier’s _Archæological Tour_, 226, where he

quotes as typical the description of a native house in 1583, drawn by

Juan Bautista Pomar.

There is no good comprehensive account of American prehistoric trade.

The T-shaped pieces of copper in use by the Mexicans came nearest to

currency as we understand it, unless it be the wampum of the North

American Indians, and the shell money in use on the Pacific coast;

but it should be remembered that copper axes and copper plates served

such a purpose with some tribes.[1846] The Peruvians used weights, but

the Mexicans did not. The latter had, however, a system of measures

of length.[1847] The canoe was a great intermediary in the practice

of barter.[1848] The Peruvians alone understood the use of sails,

and the earliest Spanish navigators on the Pacific were surprised at

what they thought were civilized predecessors in those seas when they

espied in the distance the large white sails of the Peruvian rafts of

burden.[1849] The chief source of trade in such conditions was barter,

and we know how the Mexican travelling merchants got information

that was availed of by the Mexican marauders in their invasions.

Bandelier[1850] gives us the references on the barter system, the

traders, and the currency in that country, and we need to consult Dr.

W. Behrnauer’s _Essai sur le Commerce dans l’ancien Méxique et en

Pérou_, in the _Archives de la Soc. Amér. de France_ (n. s., vol. i.).

All the treatises on the mounds of the Ohio Valley derive

illustrations of intertribal traffic from the shells of the coast, the

copper of Lake Superior, the mica of the Alleghanies, the obsidian of

the Rocky Mountains or of Mexico, and the unique figurines which the

explorations of the mounds have disclosed. Charles Rau has a paper on

this aboriginal trade in North America, published in the _Archiv für

Anthroplogie_ (Braunschweig, 1872, vol. iv.), which was republished

in English in the _Smithsonian Report_, 1872, p. 249. Bancroft’s

references under “Commerce” (v. p. 668) will help the student out in

various particulars.

IV.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON AMERICAN LINGUISTICS.

_By the Editor._

IT cannot be said that the study of American linguistics has

advanced to a position wholly satisfactory. It is beset with all the

difficulties belonging to a subject that has not been embraced in

written records for long periods, and it is open to the hazards of

articulation and hearing, acting without entire mutual confidence.

And yet we may not dispute Max Müller’s belief,[1851] that it is the

science of language which has given the first comprehensive impulse to

the study of mankind.

Out of the twenty distinct sounds which it is said the voice of

man can produce,[1852] there have been built up from roots and

combinations a great diversity of vocabularies. Comparisons of these,

as well as of the methods of forming sentences, have been much used

in investigations of ethnical relations. Of these opposing methods,

neither is sufficiently strong, it is probable, to be pressed without

the aid of the other, though the belief of the Bureau of Ethnology at

Washington, under the influence of Major Powell, practically discards

all tests but the vocabulary, in tracing ethnological relations. It

is held that this one test of words satisfies, as to customs, myths,

and other ethnological traits, more demands of classifications than

any other. Granted that it does, there are questions yet unsolvable

by it; and many ethnologists hold that there are still other tests,

physiological, for instance,[1853] which cannot safely be neglected

in settling such complex questions. The favorite claim of the Bureau

is that its officers are studying man as a human being, and not as an

animal; but it is by no means sure that the physical qualities of man

are so disconnected with his mind and soul as to be unnecessary to

his interpretation. Even if language be given the chief place in such

studies, there is still the doubt if the vocabulary can in all ways

be safely followed to the exclusion of the structure of the language;

and it is not to be forgotten, as Haven recognized thirty years ago,

that “one of the greatest obstacles to a successful and satisfactory

comparison of Indian vocabularies is caused by the capricious and

ever-varying orthography applied by writers of different nations.” This

is a chance of error that cannot be eliminated when we have to deal

with lists of words made in the past, by persons not to be communicated

with, in whom both national and personal peculiarities of ear and vocal

organs may exist to perplex. A part of the difficulty is of course

removed by trained assistants acting in concert, though in different

fields; but the individual sharpness or dulness of ear and purity and

obscurity of articulation will still cause diversity of results,—to say

nothing of corresponding differences in the persons questioned. There

is still the problem, broader than all these divisionary tests, whether

language is at all a safe test of race, and on this point there is

room for different opinions, as is shown in the discussions of Sayce,

Whitney, and others.[1854] “Any attempt,” says Max Müller, “at squaring

the classification of races and tongues must necessarily fail.”[1855]

On the other hand, George Bancroft (Final revision, ii. 90) says that

“the aspect of the red men was so uniform that there is no method of

grouping them into families but by their languages.”

It is the wide margin for error, already indicated, that vitiates

much that has already been done in philological comparisons, and the

over-eager recognition at all times of what is thought to be the

word-shunting of “Grimm’s Law” has doubtless been responsible for other

confusions.[1856]

Most of the general philological treatises touch more or less

intimately the question of language as a test of race,[1857] and

all of them engage in tracing affinities, each with confidence in

a method that others with equal assurance may belittle.[1858] Thus

Bancroft,[1859] reflecting an opinion long prevalent, says that

“positive grammatical rules carry with them much more weight than mere

word likenesses,”[1860] while, on the contrary, Dawson[1861] says that

“grammar is, after all, only the clothing of language. The science

consists in its root-words; and multitudes of root-words are identical

in the American languages over vast areas.” This last proposition is,

as we have seen, the principle on which this inquiry is now conducted

with governmental patronage. “Each American language,” says George

Bancroft, in his chapter on the dialects of North America, “was

competent of itself, without improvement of scholars, to exemplify

every rule of the logician and give utterance to every passion.” In

accordance with such perhaps extreme views, it has been usually said

that the American languages are in development in advance of aboriginal

progress in other respects. It is another common observation that while

a certain resemblance runs through all the native tongues,[1862] there

is no such general resemblance to the old-world languages;[1863] but

at the same time the linguistic proof of the unity of the American

race is not irrefragable,[1864] and it would take tens of thousands of

years, as Brinton holds, if there had been a single source, for the

eighty stocks of the North American and for the hundred South American

speeches to have developed themselves in all their varieties.[1865]

Proceeding beyond stocks to dialects, and counting varieties, Ludewig,

in his _Literature of the American Languages_, gave 1,100 different

American languages; but an alphabetical list given by H. W. Bates in

his _Central America, West Indies and South America_ (London, 1882,

2d ed.)[1866] affords 1,700 names of such. The number, of course,

depends on how exclusive we are in grouping dialects. Squier, for

instance, gives only 400 tongues for both North and South America;

for, as Nadaillac says, “philology has no precise definition of what

constitutes a language.”[1867]

The most comprehensive survey of the bibliography of American

linguistics, excluding South America, is in Pilling’s _Proof-sheets

of a bibliography of the languages of the North American Indians_

(Washington, 1885), a tentative issue of the Bureau of Ethnology,

already mentioned. Pilling also earlier catalogued the linguistic

MSS. in the library of the Bureau of Ethnology, in Powell’s _First

Report_ of that Bureau (p. 553), in which that bibliographer also gave

a sketch of the history of gathering such collections. A section of

the _Bibliotheca Americana_ of Charles Leclerc (Paris, 1878) is given

to linguistics, and it affords by groups one of the best keys to the

literature of the aboriginal languages which we yet have, and it has

been supplemented by additional lists issued since by Maisonneuve

of Paris. Ludewig’s _Literature of American Aboriginal Languages,

with additions by W. Turner_ (London, 1858), was up to date, thirty

years ago, a good list of grammars and dictionaries, but the increase

has been considerable in this field since then (Pilling’s _Eskimo

Languages_, p. 62). The libraries of collectors of Spanish-American

history, as enumerated elsewhere,[1868] have usually included much on

the linguistic history, and the most important of the printed lists

for Mexico and Central America is that of Brasseur de Bourbourg’s

_Bibliothèque Mexico-Guatémalienne, précédée d’un coup d’œil sur les

études américaines dans leurs rapports avec les études classiques, et

suivi du tableau, par ordre alphabétique, des ouvrages de linguistique

américaine contenus dans le même volume_ (Paris, 1871). This list is

repeated with additions in the _Catalogue de Alphonse L. Pinart et ...

de Brasseur de Bourbourg_ (Paris, 1883). Field’s _Indian Bibliography_

characterizes some of the leading books up to 1873; but the best source

up to about the same date for a large part of North America is found

in the notes in that section of Bancroft’s _Native Races_, vol. iii.,

given to linguistics.[1869] The several _Comptes Rendus_ of the Congrès

des Américanistes have sections on the same subject, and the second

volume of the _Contributions to North American Ethnology_, published

by the U. S. Geological Survey (Powell’s), has been kept back for the

completion of the linguistic studies of the government officials, which

will ultimately, under the care of A. S. Gatschet, compose that belated

volume. Major Powell, in his conduct of ethnological investigations

for the United States government, has found efficient helpers in James

C. Pilling, J. Owen Dorsey, S. R. Riggs, A. S. Gatschet, not to name

others. Powell outlined some of his own views in an address on the

evolution of language before the Anthropological Society of Washington,

of which there is an abstract in their _Transactions_ (1881), while the

paper can be found in perfected shape as “The evolution of language

from a study of the Indian languages,” in the _First Report of the

Bureau of Ethnology_.

Among the earliest of the students of the native languages in the

north were the Catholic missionaries in Canada and in the northwest,

and there is much of interest in their observations as recorded in the

_Jesuit Relations_. We find a _Dictionnaire de la langue huronne_ in

the _Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons_ (Paris, 1632, etc.).

The most conspicuous of the English publications of the seventeenth

century was the Natick rendering of the _Bible_ for the Massachusetts

Indians, undertaken by the Apostle John Eliot, as he was called, at

the expense of the London Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

Eliot also published a _Grammar of the Massachusetts Indian Language_

(Cambridge, 1666), which, with notes by Peter S. Duponceau and an

introduction by John Pickering, was printed for the Mass. Hist.

Society in 1822, as was John Cotton’s _Vocabulary of the Massachusetts

Indian Language_ (Cambridge, 1830). Roger Williams’ _Key into the

language of America_ has been elsewhere referred to.[1870] The Rev.

Jonathan Edwards wrote a paper on the language of the Mohegan Indians,

which, with annotations by Pickering, was printed in the _Mass. Hist.

Soc. Coll._ in 1823, and is called by Haven (_Archæol. U. S._, 29)

the earliest exposition of the radical connection of the American

languages. Dr. James Hammond Trumbull, the most learned of the students

of these eastern languages, has furnished various papers on them in

the publications of the American Philological Association and of the

American Antiquarian Society,[1871] and has summarized the literature

of the subject, with references, in the _Memorial Hist. of Boston_

(vol. i.).

In the eighteenth century there were several philological recorders

among the missionaries. Sebastian Rasle made a _Dictionary of the

Abnake Language_, now preserved in MS. in Harvard College library,

which, edited by John Pickering, was published as a volume of the

_Memoirs_ of the Amer. Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1833. A

grammatical sketch of the Abnake as outlined in Rasle’s _Dictionary_

is given by M. C. O’Brien in the _Maine Hist. Soc. Coll._, vol. ix.

The publications of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia

have preserved for us the vocabularies and grammars of the Delaware

language, collected and arranged by John Heckewelder[1872] and

David Zeisberger, while the latter Moravian missionary collected a

considerable MS. store of linguistic traces of the Indian tongues, a

part of which is now preserved in Harvard College library.[1873] One of

this last collection, an _Indian Dictionary; English, German, Iroquois_

(_the Onondaga_), _and Algonquin_ (_the Delaware_) (Cambridge, 1887,)

has been carefully edited for the press by Eben Norton Horsford. Dr.

John G. Shea published a _Dictionnaire Français-Onontagué, édité

d’après un manuscrit du 17^e siècle_ (N. Y., 1859), which is preserved

in the Mazarin library in Paris.

There was no attempt made to treat the study of the American languages

in what would now be termed a scientific spirit by any English

scholar till towards the end of the eighteenth century. The whole

question of the origin of the Indians had for a long time been the

subject of discussion, and it had of necessity taken more or less

of a philological turn from the beginning; but the inquiry had been

simply a theoretical one, with efforts to substantiate preconceived

beliefs rather than to formulate inductive ones, as in such works

as—not to name others—Adair’s _American Indians_ (London, 1775), where

every trace was referable to the Jews, and Count de Gebelin’s _Monde

Primitif_ (Paris, 1781), where a comparison of American and European

vocabularies is given.[1874]

A much closer student appeared in Benjamin Smith Barton, of

Philadelphia, though he was not wholly emancipated from these same

prevalent notions of connecting the Indian tongues with the old-world

speeches. He says that he was instigated to the study by Pallas’

_Linguarum totius orbis Vocabularia comparativa_ (Petropolis, 1786,

1789), and the result was his _New View of the Origin of the tribes

and nations of America_ (Philad., 1797; again, 1798). He sets forth

in his introduction his methods of study. Charlevoix had suggested

that the linguistic test was the only one in studying the ethnological

connections of these peoples; but Barton asserted that there were other

manifestations, equally important, like the physical aspects, the

modes of worship, and the myths. He examined forty different Indian

languages, and thinks they show a common origin, and that remotely a

connection existed between the old and new continents.

The most eminent American student[1875] of this field in the early half

of this century was Albert Gallatin. He began his observations in 1823,

at the instance of Humboldt, and two years later he took advantage of a

representative convocation of Indian tribes, then held in Washington,

to continue his studies of their speech. In 81 tribes brought under his

notice he found what he thought to be 27 or 28 linguistic families.

This was a wider survey than had before been made, and he regretted

that he was not privileged to profit by the vocabularies collected by

Lewis and Clark, which had unfortunately been lost. At the request of

the Amer. Antiquarian Society, he wrote out and enlarged this study in

the second volume of their _Collections_ in 1836, and advanced views

that he never materially changed, believing in a very remote Asiatic

origin of the tongues, and without excepting the Eskimos from his

conclusions. In 1845, in his _Notes on the semi-civilized nations of

Mexico_, his conclusions were much the same, but he made an exception

in favor of the Otomis. At this time he counted more than a hundred

languages, similar in structure but different in vocabularies, and he

argued that a very long period was necessary thus to differentiate the

tongues. At the age of eighty-seven Gallatin gave his final results in

vol. ii. of the _Transactions of the American Ethnological Society_

(1848). Gallatin published a review[1876] of the volume on Ethnography

and Philology, which had been prepared by Horatio Hale as the seventh

volume of the _Publications of the Wilkes United States Exploring

Expedition_ (1838-42), and Hale himself, then in the beginning of his

reputation as a linguistic scholar,[1877] published some papers of his

own in the same volume of the _Transactions_.[1878]

The two Americans who have done more than others, without the aid of

the government, to organize aboriginal linguistic studies are Dr. John

Gilmary Shea of Elizabeth, New Jersey, and Dr. Daniel Garrison Brinton

of Philadelphia. Of _Shea’s Library of American Linguistics_ he has

given an account in the _Smithsonian Rept._, 1861.[1879]

Dr. Brinton has set forth the purposes of his linguistic studies in

an address before the Pennsylvania Historical Society, _American

Aboriginal Languages and why we should study them_ (Philad., 1885,—from

the _Pennsylvania Magazine of History_, 1885, p. 15). In starting his

_Library of Aboriginal American Literature_, he announced his purpose

to put within the reach of scholars authentic materials for the study

of the languages and culture of the native races, each work to be

the production of the native mind, and to be printed in the original

tongue, with a translation and notes, and to have some intrinsic

historical or ethnological importance.[1880]

The other considerable collections are both French. Alphonse L.

Pinart published a _Bibliothèque de linguistique et d’ethnographie

Américaines_ (Paris and San Francisco, 1875-82).[1881]

The publishing house of Maisonneuve et Compagnie of Paris, which has

done more than any other business firm to advance these studies, has

conducted a _Collection linguistique Américaine_, of much value to

American philologists.[1882]

Other French studies have attracted attention. Pierre Etienne Duponceau

published a _Mémoire sur le système grammatical des langues de quelques

nations indiennes de l’Amérique du Nord_ (Paris, 1838).[1883] He

conducted a correspondence with the Rev. John Heckewelder respecting

the American tongues, which is published in the _Transactions of

the Amer. Philosophical Society_ (Phil., 1819), and he translated

Zeisberger’s _Delaware Grammar_.

The studies of the Abbé Jean André Cuoq have been upon the Algonquin

dialects,[1884] and published mainly in the _Actes de la Société

philologique_ (Paris, 1869 and later). His monographic _Etudes

philologiques sur quelques langues sauvages de l’Amérique_ was printed

at Montreal, 1866. It was the result of twenty years’ missionary work

among the Iroquois and Algonquins, and besides a grammar contains a

critical examination of the works of Duponceau and Schoolcraft. Lucien

Adam has been very comprehensive in his researches, his studies being

collected under the titles of _Etudes sur six langues Américaines_

(Paris, 1878) and _Examen grammatical comparé de seize langues

Américaines_ (Paris, 1878).[1885]

The papers of the Count Hyacinthe de Charencey have been in the first

instance for the most part printed in the _Revue de Linguistique_, the

_Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne_, and the _Mémoires de l’Académie de

Caen_, and have wholly pertained to the tongues south of New Mexico;

but his principal studies are collected in his _Mélanges de philologie

et de paléographie Américaines_ (Paris, 1883).[1886]

The most distinguished German worker in this field, if we except the

incidental labors of Alexander and William von Humboldt,[1887] is J. C.

E. Buschmann, whose various linguistic labors cover the wide field of

the west coast of North America from Alaska to the Isthmus, with some

of the regions adjacent on the east. He published his papers in Berlin

between 1853 and 1864, and many of them in the _Mémoires de l’Académie

de Berlin_.[1888]

Dr. Carl Hermann Berendt has published his papers in Spanish, English,

and German, and some of them will be found in the _Smithsonian

Reports_, in the Berlin _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, and in the

_Revista de Mérida_. Under the auspices of the American Ethnological

Society, a fac-simile reproduction of his graphic _Analytical Alphabet

for the Mexican and Central American languages_ was published in 1869,

the result of twelve years’ study in those countries.[1889]

* * * * *

The languages of what are called the civilized nations of the central

regions of America deserve more particular attention.

In the Mexican empire the Aztec was largely predominant, but not

exclusively spoken, for about twenty other tongues were more or less

in vogue in different parts. Humboldt and others have found occasional

traces in words of an earlier language than the Aztec or Nahua, but

different from the Maya, which in Brasseur’s opinion was the language

of the country in those pre-Nahua days. Bancroft, contrary to some

recent philologists, holds the speech of the Toltec, Chichimec, and

Aztec times to be one and the same.[1890] It was perhaps the most

copious and most perfected of all the aboriginal tongues; and in

proof of this are cited the opinions of the early Spanish scholars,

the successes of the missionaries in the use of it in imparting the

subtleties of their faith, and the literary use which was made of it by

the native scholars, as soon as they had adapted the Roman alphabet to

its vocabulary and forms.[1891]

The Maya has much the same prominence farther south that the Nahua has

in the northerly parts of the territory of the Spanish conquest, and a

dialect of it, the Tzendal, still spoken near Palenqué, is considered

to be the oldest form of it, though probably this dialect was a

departure from the original stock. It is one of the evidences that the

early Mayas may have come by way of the West India islands that modern

philologists say the native tongues of those islands were allied to

the Maya. Bancroft (iii. 759, with other references, 760) refers to

the list of spoken tongues given in Palacio’s _Carta al Rey de España_

(1576) as the best enumeration of the early Spanish writers.[1892] For

its literary value we must consult some of the authorities like Orozco

y Berra, mentioned in connection with the Aztec. Squier published a

_Monograph of authors who have written on the languages of Central

America, and collected vocabularies and composed works in the native

dialects of that country_ (Albany, 1861,—100 copies), in which he

mentions 110 such authors, and gives a list of their printed and MS.

works. Those who have used these native tongues for written productions

are named in Ludewig’s _Literature of the Amer. Aborig. Languages_

(London, 1858) and in Brinton’s _Aboriginal American Authors_ (Phila.,

1883).[1893]

The philology of the South American peoples has not been so

well compassed as that of the northern continent. The classified

bibliographies show the range of it under such heads as Ande (or

Campa), Araucanians (Chilena), Arrawak, Aymara, Brazil (the principal

work being F. P. von Martius’s _Beiträge zur Ethnographie und

Sprachenkunde Amerika’s, zumal Brasiliens_, Leipzig, 1867, with a

second part called _Glossaria linguarum brasiliensium, Erlangen_,

1863), Chama, Chibcha (or Muysca, Mosca), Cumanagota, Galibi, Goajira,

Guarani, Kiriri (Kariri), Lule, Moxa, Paez, Quichua, Tehuelhet,

Tonocote, Tupi, etc.

V.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE MYTHS AND RELIGIONS OF AMERICA.

_By the Editor._

THE earliest scholarly examination of the whole subject, which has been

produced by an American author, is Daniel G. Brinton’s _Myths of the

New World, a treatise on the symbolism and mythology of the Red Race

of America_ (N. Y., 1868; 2d ed., 1876). It is a comparative study,

“more for the thoughtful general reader than for the antiquary,” as

the author says. “The task,” he adds, “bristles with difficulties.

Carelessness, prepossessions, and ignorance have disfigured the subject

with false colors and foreign additions without number” (p. 3).

After describing the character of the written, graphic, or symbolic

records, which the student of history has to deal with in tracing North

American history back before the Conquest, he adds, while he deprives

mythology of any historical value, that the myths, being kept fresh

by repetition, were also nourished constantly by the manifestations

of nature, which gave them birth. So while taking issue with those

who find history buried in the myths, he warns us to remember that

the American myths are not the reflections of history or heroes.

In the treatment of his subject he considers the whole aboriginal

people of America as a unit, with “its religion as the development

of ideas common to all its members, and its myths as the garb thrown

around those ideas by imaginations more or less fertile; but seeking

everywhere to embody the same notions.”[1894] This unity of the

American races is far from the opinion of other ethnologists.

Brinton gives a long bibliographical note on those who had written on

the subject before him, in which he puts, as the first (1819) to take a

philosophical survey, Dr. Samuel Farmer Jarvis in a _Discourse on the

religion of the Indian tribes of North America_, printed in the _N. Y.

Hist. Soc. Collections, iii._ (1821). Jarvis confined himself to the

tribes north of Mexico, and considered their condition, as he found

it, one of deterioration from something formerly higher. There had

been, of course, before this, amassers of material, like the Jesuits in

Canada, as preserved in their _Relations_,[1895] sundry early French

writers on the Indians,[1896] the English agents of the Society for the

Propagation of the Gospel in New England, and the Moravian missionaries

in Pennsylvania and the Ohio country, to say nothing of the historians,

like Loskiel (_Geschichte der Mission_, 1789), Vetromile (_Abnakis and

their History_, New York, 1866), Cusick (_Six Nations_), not to mention

local observers, like Col. Benjamin Hawkins, _Sketch of the Creek

Country (Georgia Hist. Soc. Collections_, 1848, but written about 1800).

If the placing of Brinton’s book as the earliest scholarly

contribution is to be contested, it would be for E. G. Squier’s

_Serpent Symbol in America_ (N. Y., 1851);[1897] but the book is not

broadly based, except so far as such comprehensiveness can be deduced

from his tendency to consider all myths as having some force of nature

for their motive, and that all are traceable to an instinct that

makes the worship of fire or of the sun the centre of a system.[1898]

With this as the source of life, Squier allies the widespread phallic

worship. In Bancroft’s _Native Races_ (iii. p. 501) there is a summary

of what is known of this American worship of the generative power.

Brinton doubts (_Myths_, etc., 149) if anything like phallic worship

really existed, apart from a wholly unreligious surrender to appetite.

Another view which Squier maintains is, that above all this and

pervading all America’s religious views there was a sort of rudimentary

monotheism.[1899]

When we add to this enumeration the somewhat callow and wholly

unsatisfactory contributions of Schoolcraft in the great work on

the _Indian Tribes of the United States_ (1851-59), which the U. S.

government in a headlong way sanctioned, we have included nearly all

that had been done by American authors in this field when Bancroft

published the third volume of his _Native Races_. This work constitutes

the best mass of material for the student—who must not confound

mythology and religion—to work with, the subject being presented

under the successive heads of the origin of myths and of the world,

physical and animal myths, gods, supernatural beings, worship and

the future state; but of course, like all Bancroft’s volumes, it

must be supplemented by special works pertaining to the more central

and easterly parts of the United States, and to the regions south of

Panama. The deficiency, however, is not so much as may be expected

when we consider the universality of myths. “Unfortunately,” says this

author, “the philologic and mythologic material for such an exhaustive

synthesis of the origin and relations of the American creeds as Cox has

given to the world in the Aryan legends in his _Mythology of the Aryan

Nations_ (London, 1870) is yet far from complete.”

In 1882 Brinton, after riper study, again recast his views of a leading

feature of the subject in his _American hero-myths; a study in the

native religions of the western continent_ (Philad., 1882), in which

he endeavored to present “in a critically correct light some of the

fundamental conceptions in the native beliefs.” His purpose was to

counteract what he held to be an erroneous view in the common practice

of considering “American hero-gods as if they had been chiefs of

tribes at some undetermined epoch,” and to show that myths of similar

import, found among different peoples, were a “spontaneous production

of the mind, and not a reminiscence of an historic event.” He further

adds as one of the impediments in the study that he does “not know

of a single instance on this continent of a thorough and intelligent

study of a native religion made by a Protestant missionary.”[1900]

After an introductory chapter on the American myths, Brinton in this

volume takes up successively the consideration of the hero-gods of

the Algonquins and Iroquois, the Aztecs, Mayas, and the Quichuas of

Peru. These myths of national heroes, civilizers, and teachers are,

as Brinton says, the fundamental beliefs of a very large number of

American tribes, and on their recognition and interpretation depends

the correct understanding of most of their mythology and religious

life,—and this means, in Brinton’s view, that the stories connected

with these heroes have no historic basis.[1901]

The best known of the comprehensive studies by a European writer is

J. G. Müller’s _Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen_ (Basle,

1855; again in 1867), in which he endeavors to work out the theory that

at the south there is a worship of nature, with a sun-worship for a

centre, contrasted at the north with fetichism and a dread of spirits,

and these he considers the two fundamental divisions of the Indian

worship. Bancroft finds him a chief dependence at times, but Brinton,

charging him with quoting in some instances at second-hand, finds him

of no authority whatever.

One of the most reputable of the German books on kindred subjects

is the _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_ (Leipzig, 1862-66) of Theodor

Waitz. Brinton’s view of it is that no more comprehensive, sound, and

critical work on the American aborigines has been written; but he

considers him astray on the religious phases, and that his views are

neither new nor tenable when he endeavors to subject moral science to a

realistic philosophy.[1902]

In speaking of the scope of the comprehensive work of H. H. Bancroft we

mentioned that beyond the larger part of the great Athapascan stock of

the northern Indians his treatment did not extend. Such other general

works as Brinton’s _Myths of the New World_, the sections of his

_American Hero-Myths_ on the hero-gods of the Algonquins and Iroquois,

and the not wholly satisfactory book of Ellen R. Emerson, _Indian

myths; or, Legends, traditions, and symbols of the aborigines of

America, compared with those of other countries, including Hindostan,

Egypt, Persia, Assyria, and China_ (Boston, 1884), with aid from such

papers as Major J. W. Powell’s “Philosophy of the North American

Indians” in the _Journal of the Amer. Geographical Society_ (vol. viii.

p. 251, 1876), and his “Mythology of the North American Indians” in

the _First Annual Rept. of the Bureau of Ethnology_ (1881), and R.

M. Dorman’s _Origin of primitive superstition among the aborigines

of America_ (Philad., 1881), must suffice in a general way to cover

those great ethnic stocks of the more easterly part of North America,

which comprise the Iroquois, centred in New York, and surrounded by

the Algonquins, west of whom were the Dacotas, and south of whom were

the Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, sometimes classed together as

Appalachians.[1903]

The mythology of the Aztecs is the richest mine, and Bancroft in his

third volume finds the larger part of his space given to the Mexican

religion.

Brinton (_Amer. Hero Myths_, 73, 78), referring to the “Historia de los

Méxicanos por sus Pinturas” of Ramirez de Fuenleal, as printed in the

_Anales del Museo Nacional_ (ii. p. 86), says that in some respects it

is to be considered the most valuable authority which we possess,[1904]

as taken directly from the sacred books of the Aztecs, and as explained

by the most competent survivors of the Conquest.[1905]

We must also look to Ixtlilxochitl and Sahagún as leading sources. From

Sahagún we get the prayers which were addressed to the chief deity,

of various names, but known best, perhaps, as Tezcatlipoca; and these

invocations are translated for us in Bancroft (iii. 199, etc.), who

supposes that, consciously or unconsciously, Sahagún has slipped into

them a certain amount of “sophistication and adaptation to Christian

ideas.” From the lofty side of Tezcatlipoca’s character, Bancroft

(iii. ch. 7) passes to his meaner characteristics as the oppressor of

Quetzalcoatl.

The most salient features of the mythology of the Aztecs arise from

the long contest of Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl, the story of which

modified the religion of their followers, and, as Chavero claims,

greatly affected their history.[1906] This struggle, according as the

interpreters incline, stands for some historic or physical rivalry, or

for one between St. Thomas and the heathen;[1907] but Brinton explains

it on his general principles as one between the powers of Light and

Darkness (_Am. Hero Myths_, 65).

The main original sources on the character and career of Quetzalcoatl

are Motolinía, Mendieta, Sahagún, Ixtlilxochitl, and Torquemada, and

these are all summarized in Bancroft (iii. ch. 7).

It has been a question with later writers whether there is a foundation

of history in the legend or myth of Quetzalcoatl. Brinton (_Myths of

the New World_, 180) has perhaps only a few to agree with him when he

calls that hero-god a “pure creature of the fancy, and all his alleged

history nothing but a myth,” and he thinks some confusion has arisen

from the priests of Quetzalcoatl being called by his name.

Bandelier (_Archæol. Tour_) takes issue with Brinton in deeming

Quetzalcoatl on the whole an historical person, whom Ixtlilxochitl

connects with the pre-Toltec tribes of Olmeca and Xicalanca, and

whom Torquemada says came in while the Toltecs occupied the country.

Bandelier thinks it safe to say that Quetzalcoatl began his career

in the present state of Hidalgo as a leader of a migration moving

southward, with a principal sojourn at Cholula, introducing arts and a

purer worship. This is substantially the view taken by J. G. Müller,

Prescott, and Wuttke.

[Illustration: QUETZALCOATL.

After a drawing in Cumplido’s Mexican ed. of Prescott’s _Mexico_, vol.

iii. Images of him are everywhere (Nadaillac, 273-74). Cf. Eng. transl.

of Charnay, p. 87.]

Bancroft (iii. 273) finds the _Geschichte der Amer. Urreligionen_

(p. 577) of Müller to present a more thorough examination of the

Quetzalcoatl myth than any other,[1908] but since then it has been

studied at length by Bandelier in his _Archæological Tour_ (p. 170

etc.), and by Brinton in his _Amer. Hero Myths_, ch. 3.[1909]

* * * * *

What Tylor (_Primitive Culture_, ii. 279) calls “the inexplicable

compound, parthenogenetic deity, the hideous, gory Huitzilopochtli”

(Huitziloputzli, Vitziliputzli), the god of war,[1910] the protector of

the Mexicans, was considered by Boturini (_Idea_, p. 60) as a deified

ancient war-chief. Bancroft in his narrative (iii. 289, 294; iv. 559)

quotes the accounts in Sahagún and Torquemada, and (pp. 300-322)

summarizes J. G. Müller’s monograph on this god, which he published in

1847, and which he enlarged when including it in his _Urreligionen_.

Acosta’s description of the Temple of Huitzilopochtli is translated in

Bancroft (iii. 292). Solis follows Acosta, while Herrera copies Gomara,

who was not, as Solis contends, so well informed.

As regards the Votan myth of Chiapas, Brinton tells us something in

his _American Hero Myths_ (212, with references, 215); but the prime

source is the Tzendal manuscript used by Cabrera in his _Teatro

Critico-Americano_.[1911] No complete translation has been made, and

the abstracts are unsatisfactory. Bancroft aids us in this study of

worship in Chiapas (iii. 458), as also in that of Oajaca (iii. 448),

Michoacan[1912] (iii. 445), and Jalisco (iii. 447).

[Illustration: THE MEXICAN TEMPLE.

Reduced from a drawing in Icazbalceta’s _Coleccion de Documentos_,

i. p. 384. There were two usual forms of the Mexican temple: one of

this type, and the other with two niche-like pavilions on the top. Cf.

drawings in Clavigero (Casena, 1780), ii. 26, 34; Eng. tr. by Cullen,

i. 262, 373; Stevens’s Eng. tr. Herrera (London, 1740, vol. ii.).]

“The religion of the Mayas,” says Bancroft (iii. ch. 11), “was

fundamentally the same as that of the Nahuas, though it differed

somewhat in outward forms. Most of the gods were deified heroes....

Occasionally we find very distinct traces of an older sun-worship

which has succumbed to later forms, introduced according to vague

tradition from Anahuac.” The view of Tylor (_Anahuac_, 191) is that the

“civilization,” and consequently the religions, of Mexico and Central

America were originally independent, but that they came much into

contact, and thus modified one another to no small extent.”

Modern scholars are not by any means so much inclined as Las Casas and

the other Catholic fathers were to recognize the dogma of the Trinity

and other Christian notions, which have been thought to be traceable in

what the Maya people in their aboriginal condition held for faith.

The most popular of their deified heroes were Zamná and Cukulcan, not

unlikely the same personage under two names, and quite likely both

are correspondences of Quetzalcoatl. We can find various views and

alternatives on this point among the elder and recent writers. The

belief in community of attributes derives its strongest aid from the

alleged disappearance of Quetzalcoatl in Goazacoalco just at the epoch

when Cukulcan appeared in Yucatan. The centres of Maya worship were at

Izamal, Chichen-Itza, and the island of Cozumel.

The hero-gods of the Mayas is the topic of Brinton’s fourth chapter in

his _American Hero Myths_, with views of their historical relations of

course at variance with those of Bancroft. As respects the material,

he says that “most unfortunately very meagre sources of information

are open to us. Only fragments of their legends and hints of their

history have been saved, almost by accident, from the general wreck of

their civilization.” The heroes are Itzamná, the leader of the first

immigration from the east, through the ocean pathways; and Kukulcan,

the conductor of the second from the west. For the first cycle of

myths Brinton refers to Landa’s _Relation_, Cogolludo’s _Yucatan_, Las

Casas’s _Historia Apologética_, involving the reports of the missionary

Francisco Hernandez, and to Hieronimo Roman’s _De la Republica de las

Indias Occidentales_.

[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF MEXICO.

After plate (reduced) in Herrera.]

The Kukulcan legends are considered by Brinton to be later in date

and less natural in character, and Hernandez’s Report to Las Casas

is the first record of them. Brinton’s theory of the myths does not

allow him to identify the Quetzalcoatl and Kukulcan hero-gods as one

and the same, nor to show that the Aztec and Maya civilizations had

more correspondence than occasional intercourse would produce; but he

thinks the similarity of the statue of “Chac Mool,” unearthed by Le

Plongeon at Chichen-Itza, to another found at Tlaxcala compels us to

believe that some positive connection did exist in parts of the country

(_Anales del Museo Nacional_, i. 270).[1913] “The Nahua impress,”

says Bancroft (iii. 490), “noticeable in the languages and customs of

Nicaragua, is still more strongly marked in the mythology. Instead of

obliterating the older forms of worship, as it seems to have done in

the northern parts of Central America, it has here and there passed by

many of the distinct beliefs held by different tribes, and blended with

the chief elements of a system which is traced to the Muyscas in South

America.”

The main source of the Quiché myths and worship is the _Popul Vuh_,

but Bancroft (iii. 474), who follows it, finds it difficult to make

anything comprehensible out of its confusion of statement. But

prominent among the deities seem to stand Tepeu or Gucumatz, whom it is

the fashion to make the same with Quetzalcoatl, and Hurakan or Tohil,

who indeed stands on a plane above Quetzalcoatl. Brinton (_Myths_,

156), on the contrary, connects Hurakan with Tlaloc, and seems to

identify Tohil with Quetzalcoatl. Bancroft (iii. 477) says that

tradition, name, and attributes connect Tohil and Hurakan, and identify

them with Tlaloc.

[Illustration: TEOYAOMIQUI.

The idol dug up in the Plaza in Mexico is here presented, after a cut,

following Nebel, in Tylor’s _Anahuac_, showing the Mexican goddess of

war, or death. Cf. cut in _American Antiquarian_, Jan., 1883; Powell’s

_First Rept. Bur. Ethn._, 232; Bancroft, iv. 512, 513, giving the front

after Nebel, and the other views after Léon y Gama. Bandelier (_Arch.

Tour_, pl. v) gives a photograph of it as it stands in the court-yard

of the Museo Nacional.

Gallatin (_Am. Ethn. Soc. Trans._, i. 338) describes Teoyaomiqui

as the proper companion of Huitzilopochtli: “The symbols of her

attributes are found in the upper part of the statue; but those from

the waist downwards relate to other deities connected with her or with

Huitzilopochtli.” Tylor (_Anahuac_, 222) says: “The antiquaries think

that the figures in it stand for different personages, and that it

is three gods: Huitzilopochtli the god of war, Teoyaomiqui his wife,

and Mictlantecutli the god of hell.” Léon y Gama calls the statue

Teoyaomiqui, but Bandelier, _Archæol. Tour_, 67, thinks its proper name

is rather Huitzilopochtli. Léon y Gama’s description is summarized in

Bancroft, iii. 399, who cites also what Humboldt (_Vues_, etc., ii.

153, and his pl. xxix) says. Bancroft (iii. 397) speaks of it as “a

huge compound statue, representing various deities, the most prominent

being a certain Teoyaomiqui, who is almost identical with, or at least

a connecting link between, the mother goddess” and Mictlantecutli, the

god of Mictlan, or Hades. Cf. references in Bancroft, iv. 515.]

Brinton’s _Names of the gods in the Kiché myths, a monograph on Central

American mythology_ (Philad. Am. Philos. Soc., 1881), is a special

study of a part of the subject.

Brinton (_Myths_, etc., 184) considers the best authorities on the

mythology of the Muyscas of the Bogota region to be Piedrahita’s

_Historia de las Conquistas del Nuevo Reyno de Granada_ (1668, followed

by Humboldt in his _Vues_) and Simm’s _Noticias historiales de las

Conquistas de Tierra Firme en el Nuevo Reyno de Granada_, given in

Kingsborough, vol. viii.

The mythology of the Quichuas in Peru makes the staple of chap. 5 of

Brinton’s _Amer. Hero-Myths_. Here the corresponding hero-god was

Viracocha. Brinton depends mainly on the _Relacion Anónyma de los

Costumbres Antiguos de los Naturales del Piru, 1615_ (Madrid, 1879);

on Christoval de Molina’s account of the fables and religious customs

of the Incas, as translated by C. R. Markham in the Hakluyt Society

volume, _Narratives of the Rites and Laws of the Yncas_ (London, 1873);

on the _Comentarios reales_ of Garcilasso de la Vega; on the report

made to the viceroy Francisco de Toledo, in 1571, of the responses to

inquiries made in different parts of the country as to the old beliefs

which appear in the “Informacion de las idolatras de los Incas é

Indios,” printed in the _Coleccion de documentos ineditos del archivo

de Indias_, xxi. 198; and in the _Relacion de Antigüedades deste Reyno

del Piru_, by Juan de Santa Cruz Pachicuti.

[Illustration: ANCIENT TEOCALLI, OAXACA, MEXICO.

After a cut in Squier’s _Serpent Symbol_, p. 78.]

Brinton dissents to D’Orbigny’s view in his _L’homme Américaine_, that

the Quichua religion is mainly borrowed from the older mythology of the

Aymaras.

Francisco de Avila’s “Errors and False Gods of the Indians of

Huarochiri” (1608), edited by Markham for the Hakluyt Society in the

volume called _Narratives of the Rites and Laws of the Yncas_, is a

treatment of a part of the subject.

Adolf Bastian’s _Ein Jahr auf Reisen—Kreuzfahrten zum Sammelbehuf aus

Transatlantischen Feldern der Ethnologie_, being the first volume of

his _Die Culturländer des Alten America_ (Berlin, 1878), has a section

“Aus Religion and Sitte des Alten Peru.”

VI.

ARCHÆOLOGICAL MUSEUMS AND PERIODICALS.

_By the Editor._

THE oldest of existing American societies dealing with the scientific

aspects of knowledge is the American Philosophical Society of

Philadelphia, whose _Transactions_ began in 1769, and made six volumes

to 1809. A second series was begun in 1818.[1914] What are called

the _Transactions of the Historical and Literary Committee_ make two

volumes (1819, 1838), the first of which contains contributions by

Heckewelder and P. S. Duponceau on the history and linguistics of the

Lenni Lenape. Its _Proceedings_ began in 1838. The American Academy

of Arts and Sciences was instituted at Boston in 1780, a part of its

object being “to promote and encourage the knowledge of the antiquities

of America,”[1915] and its series of _Memoirs_ began in 1783,[1916]

and its _Proceedings_ in 1846. These societies have only, as a rule,

incidentally, and not often till of late years, illustrated in their

publications the antiquities of the new world; but the American

Antiquarian Society was founded in 1812 at Worcester, Mass., by Isaiah

Thomas, with the express purpose of elucidating this department of

American history. It began the _Archæologia Americana_ in 1820, and

some of the volumes are still valuable, though they chiefly stand for

the early development by Atwater, Gallatin, and others of study in this

direction. In the first volume is an account of the origin and design

of the society, and this is also set forth in the memoir of Thomas

prefixed to its reprint of his _History of Printing in America_, which

is a part of the series. The _Proceedings_ of the society were begun in

1849, and they have contained some valuable papers on Central American

subjects. The Boston Society of Natural History[1917] published the

_Boston Journal of Natural History_ from 1834 to 1863, and in 1866

began its _Memoirs_. Col. Whittlesey gave in its first volume a paper

on the weapons and military character of the race of the mounds,

and subsequent volumes have had other papers of an archæological

nature; but they have formed a small part of its contributions. Its

_Proceedings_ have of late years contained some of the best studies of

palæolithic man. The American Ethnological Society, founded by Gallatin

(New York), began its exclusive work in a series of _Transactions_

(1845-53, vols. i., ii., and one number of vol. iii.), but it was

not of long continuance, though it embraced among its contributors

the conspicuous names of Gallatin, Schoolcraft, Catherwood, Squier,

Rafn, S. G. Morton, J. R. Bartlett, and others. Its _Bulletin_ was

not continued beyond a single volume (1860-61).[1918] The society was

suspended in 1871.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science began its

publications with the _Proceedings_ of its Philadelphia meeting in

1848. Questions of archæology formed, however, but a small portion of

its inquiries[1919] till the formation of a section on Anthropology a

few years ago.

The American Geographical Society has published a _Bulletin_

(1852-56); _Journal_ (or _Transactions_) (1859), etc., and

_Proceedings_ (1862-64). Some of the papers have been of archæological

interest.

The Anthropological Institute of New York printed its transactions in a

_Journal_ (one vol. only, 1872-73).

The Archæological Institute of America was founded in Boston in 1879,

and has given the larger part of its interest to classical archæology.

The first report of its executive committee said respecting the field

in the new world: “The study of American archæology relates, indeed,

to the monuments of a race that never attained to a high degree of

civilization, and that has left no trustworthy records of continuous

history.... From what it was and what it did, nothing is to be

learned that has any direct bearing on the progress of civilization.

Such interest as attaches to it is that which it possesses in common

with other early and undeveloped races of mankind.” Appended to this

report was Lewis H. Morgan’s “Houses of the American Aborigines,

with suggestions for the exploration of the ruins in New Mexico,”

etc.,—advancing his well-known views of the communal origin of the

southern ruins. Under the auspices of the Institute, Mr. A. F.

Bandelier, a disciple of Morgan, was sent to New Mexico for the

study of the Pueblos, and his experiences are described in the

second _Report_ of the Institute. In their third _Report_ (1882) the

committee of the Institute say: “The vast work of American archæology

and anthropology is only begun.... Other nations, with more or less

of success, are trying to do our work on our soil. It is time that

Americans bestir themselves in earnest upon a field which it would

be a shame to abandon to the foreigner.” Still under the pay of the

Institute, Mr. Bandelier, in 1881, devoted his studies to the remains

at Mexico, Cholula, Mitla, and the ancient life of those regions. At

the same time, Aymé, then American consul at Merida, was commissioned

to explore certain regions of Yucatan, but the results were not

fortunate.

The Institute began in 1881 the publication of an _American Series_ of

its _Papers_, the first number of which embodied Bandelier’s studies

of the Pueblos, and the second covered his Mexican researches. In 1885

the _American Journal of Archæology_ was started at Baltimore as the

official organ of the Institute, and occasional papers on American

subjects have been given in its pages. The editors were called upon

to define more particularly their relations to archæology in America

in the number for Sept., 1888. In this they say: “The archæology of

America is busied with the life and work of a race or races of men in

an inchoate, rudimentary, and unformed condition, who never raised

themselves, even at their highest point, as in Mexico and Peru,

above a low stage of civilization, and never showed the capacity of

steadily progressive development.... These facts limit and lower the

interest which attaches ... to crude and imperfect human life.... A

comparison of their modes of life and thought with those of other races

in a similar stage of development in other parts of the world, in

ancient and modern times, is full of interest as exhibiting the close

similarity of primitive man in all regions, resulting from the sameness

of his first needs, in his early struggle for existence.” The editors

rest their reasons for giving prominence to classical archæology upon

the necessity of affording by such complemental studies the means of

comparison in archæological results, which can but advance to a higher

plane the methods and inductions of the prehistoric archæology of

America.

The American Folk-Lore Society was founded in Jan., 1888, and _The

Journal of American Folk-Lore_ was immediately begun. A large share

of its papers is likely to cover the popular tales of the American

aborigines.

The Anthropological Society of Washington is favorably situated to

avail itself of the museums and apparatus of the American government,

and members of the Geological Survey and Ethnological Bureau have

been among the chief contributors to its _Transactions_,[1920] which

in January, 1888, were merged in a more general publication, _The

American Anthropologist_. A National Geographic Society was organized

in Washington in 1888.

There are numerous local societies throughout the United States whose

purpose, more or less, is to cover questions of archæological import.

Those that existed prior to 1876 are enumerated in Scudder’s _Catalogue

of Scientific Serials_; but it was not easy always to draw the line

between historical associations and those verging upon archæological

methods.[1921]

The oldest of the scientific periodicals in the United States to

devote space to questions of anthropology is Silliman’s _American

Journal of Science and Arts_ (1818, etc.). The _American Naturalist_,

founded in 1867, also entered the field of archæology and anthropology.

The same may be said in some degree of the _Popular Science Monthly_

(1877, etc.), _Science_ (1883), and the _Kansas City Review_. The chief

repository of such contributions, however, since 1878, has been _The

American Antiquarian_ (Chicago), edited by Stephen D. Peet. Its papers

are, unluckily, of very uneven value.[1922]

The best organized work has been done in the United States by the

Peabody Museum of American Archæology and Ethnology, in Cambridge,

Mass., and by certain departments of the Federal government at

Washington.

The Peabody Museum resulted from a gift of George Peabody, an American

banker living in London, who instituted it in 1866 as a part of Harvard

University.[1923] It was fortunate in its first curator, Dr. Jeffries

Wyman, who brought unusual powers of comprehensive scrutiny to its

work.[1924] He died in 1874, and was succeeded by one of his and of

Agassiz’s pupils, Frederick W. Putnam, who was also placed in the chair

of archæology in the university in 1886. The _Reports_, now twenty-two

in number, and the new series of _Special Papers_ are among the best

records of progress in archæological science.

The creation of the Smithsonian Institution in 1846, under the bequest

of an Englishman, James Smithson, and the devotion of a sum of about

$31,000 a year at that time arising from that gift, first put the

government of the United States in a position “to increase and diffuse

knowledge among men.”[1925]

The second _Report_ of the Regents in 1848 contains approvals of a

manuscript by E. G. Squier and E. H. Davis, which had been offered to

the Institution for publication, and which had been commended by Albert

Gallatin, Edward Robinson, John Russell Bartlett, W. W. Turner, S. G.

Morton, and George P. Marsh. Thus an important archæological treatise,

_The Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, comprising the

results of extensive original surveys and explorations_ (Washington,

1848), became the first of the _Smithsonian Contributions to

Knowledge_. The subsequent volumes of the series have contained other

important treatises in similar fields. Foremost among them may be

named those of Squier on the Aboriginal Monuments of New York (vol.

ii., 1851); Col. Whittlesey on _The Ancient Works in Ohio_ (vol. iii.,

1852); S. R. Riggs’ _Dakota Grammar and Dictionary_ (vol. iv., 1852);

I. A. Lapham’s _Antiquities of Wisconsin_ (vol. vii., 1855); S. F.

Haven’s _Archæology of the United States_ (vol. viii., 1856); Brantz

Mayer’s _Mexican History and Archæology_ (vol. ix., 1857); Whittlesey

on _Ancient Mining on Lake Superior_ (vol. xiii., 1863); Morgan’s

_Systems of Consanguinity of the human family_ (vol. xvii., 1871);—not

to name lesser papers. To supplement this quarto series, another in

octavo was begun in 1862, called _Miscellaneous Collections_; and in

this form there have appeared J. M. Stanley’s _Catalogue of portraits

of No. Amer. Indians_ (vol. ii., 1862); a _Catalogue of photographic

portraits of the No. Amer. Indians_ (vol. xiv., 1878).

Of much more interest to the anthropologist has been the series of

_Annual Reports_ with their appended papers,—such as Squier on _The

Antiquities of Nicaragua_ (1851); W. W. Turner on _Indian Philology_

(1852); S. S. Lyon on _Antiquities from Kentucky_ (1858), and many

others.

The sections of correspondence and minor papers in these reports soon

began to include communications about the development of archæological

research in various localities. They began to be more orderly arranged

under the sub-heading of Ethnology in the Report for 1867, and this

heading was changed to Anthropology in the _Report_ for 1879. Charles

Rau (d. 1887) had been a leading contributor in this department, and

no. 440 of the Smithsonian publications was made up of his _Articles on

Anthropological Subjects, contributed from 1863 to 1877_ (Washington,

1882). No. 421 is Geo. H. Boehmer’s _Index to Anthropological Articles

in the publications of the Smithsonian Institution_ (Washington, 1881).

Among the later papers those of O. T. Mason of the Anthropological

Department of the National Museum are conspicuous.

The last series is the _Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology_, placed by

Congress in the charge of the Smithsonian. The _Reports of the American

Historical Association_ will soon be begun under the same auspices.

Major J. W. Powell, the director of the Bureau of Ethnology, said that

its purpose was “to organize anthropologic research in America.”[1926]

It published its first report in 1881, and this and the later reports

have had for contents, beside the summary of work constituting the

formal report, the following papers:—

Vol. i.: J. W. POWELL. The evolution of language.—Sketch of the

mythology of the North American Indians.—Wyandot government.—On

limitations to the use of some anthropologic data.—H. C. YARROW.

A further contribution to the study of mortuary customs among the

North American Indians.—E. S. HOLDEN. Studies in Central American

picture-writing.—C. C. ROYCE. Cessions of land by Indian tribes to

the United States: illustrated by those in Indiana.—G. MALLERY.

Sign language among North American Indians compared with that among

other peoples and deaf-mutes.—J. C. PILLING. Catalogue of linguistic

manuscripts in the library.—Illustration of the method of recording

Indian languages. From the manuscripts of J. O. Dorsey, A. S. Gatschet,

and S. R. Riggs.

Vol. ii.: F. H. CUSHING. Zuñi fetiches.—_Mrs._ E. A. SMITH. Myths

of the Iroquois.—H. W. HENSHAW. Animal carvings from mounds of the

Mississippi Valley.—W. MATTHEWS. Navajo silversmiths.—W. H. HOLMES. Art

in shell of the ancient Americans.—J. STEVENSON. Illustrated catalogue

of the collections obtained from the Indians of New Mexico and Arizona

in 1879;—Illustrated catalogue of the collections obtained from the

Indians of New Mexico in 1880.

Vol. iii.: CYRUS THOMAS. Notes on certain Maya and Mexican

manuscripts.—W. (C.) H. DALL On masks, labrets, and certain aboriginal

customs, with an inquiry into the bearing of their geographical

distribution.—J. O. DORSEY. Omaha sociology.—WASHINGTON MATTHEWS.

Navajo weavers.—W. H. HOLMES. Prehistoric textile fabrics of the United

States, derived from impressions on pottery;—Illustrated catalogue of a

portion of the collections made by the Bureau of Ethnology during the

field season of 1881.—JAMES STEVENSON. Illustrated catalogue of the

collections obtained from the Pueblos of Zuñi, New Mexico, and Wolpi,

Arizona, in 1881.

Vol. iv.: GARRICK MALLERY. Pictographs of the North American

Indians.—W. H. HOLMES. Pottery of the ancient Pueblos;—Ancient

pottery of the Mississippi Valley;—Origin and development of form and

ornament in ceramic art.—F. H. CUSHING.. A study of Pueblo pottery as

illustrative of Zuñi culture growth.

Vol. v.: CYRUS THOMAS. Burial mounds of the northern sections of the

United States.—C. C. ROYCE. The Cherokee nation of Indians.—WASHINGTON

MATTHEWS. The Mountain Chant: a Navajo ceremony.—CLAY MACCAULEY. The

Seminole Indians of Florida.—_Mrs._ TILLY E. STEVENSON. The religious

life of the Zuñi child.

* * * * *

What is known as the United States National Museum is also in charge of

the Smithsonian Institution,[1927] and here are deposited the objects

of archæological and historical interest secured by the government

explorations and by other means. The linguistic material is kept

in the Bureau of Ethnology. The skulls and physiological material,

illustrative of prehistoric times, are deposited in the Army Medical

Museum, under the Surgeon-General’s charge.

Major Powell, while in charge of the Geographical and Geological Survey

of the Rocky Mountain Region, had earlier prepared five volumes of

_Contributions to Ethnology_, all but the second of which have been

published. The first volume (1877) contained W. H. Dall’s “Tribes of

the Extreme Northwest” and George Gibbs’ “Tribes of Western Washington

and Northwestern Oregon.” The third (1877): Stephen Powers’ “Tribes

of California.” The fourth (1881): Lewis H. Morgan’s “Houses and

house life of the American Aborigines.” The fifth (1882): Charles

Rau’s “Lapidarian sculpture of the Old World and in America,” Robert

Fletcher’s “Prehistoric trephining and cranial Amulets,” and Cyrus

Thomas on the Troano Manuscript, with an introduction by D. G. Brinton.

Among the _Reports_ of the geographical and geological explorations

and surveys west of the 100th meridian conducted by Capt. Geo. M.

Wheeler, the seventh volume, _Report on Archæological and Ethnological

Collections from the vicinity of Santa Barbara, California, and from

ruined pueblos of Arizona and New Mexico and certain Interior Tribes_

(Washington, 1879), was edited by F. W. Putnam, and contains papers

on the ethnology of Southern California, wood and stone implements,

sculptures, musical instruments, beads, etc.; the Pueblos of New

Mexico, their inhabitants, architecture, customs, cliff houses and

other ruins, skeletons, etc.; with an _Appendix_ on Linguistics,

containing forty Vocabularies of Pueblo and other Western Indian

Languages and their classification into seven families.

The _Reports_ of the Geological and Geographical Survey of the

Territories, under the charge of F. V. Hayden, brought to us in those

of 1874-76 the knowledge of the cliff-dwellers, and they contain among

the miscellaneous publications such papers as W. Matthews’ _Ethnography

and Philology of the Hidatsa Indians_ and W. H. Jackson’s _Descriptive

Catalogue of photographs of No. Amer. Indians_.

There are other governmental documents to be noted: _The Exploration

of the Red River of Louisiana in 1852_, by R. B. Marcy and G. B.

McClellan (Washington, 1854), contains a vocabulary of the Comanches

and Witchitas, with some general remarks by W. W. Turner. There is help

to be derived from the geographical details, and from something on

ethnology, in the _Reports of Explorations and Surveys for a Railroad

from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean_ (Washington, 1856-60,

in 12 vols.); in W. H. Emory’s _Report on the United States and Mexican

Boundary Survey_ (Washington, 1857-58, in 2 vols.); J. H. Simpson’s

_Report of Explorations across the great basin of the territory of Utah

in 1859_ (Washington, 1876); J. N. Macomb’s _Report of the Exploring

Expedition from Santa Fé to the Junction of the Grand and Green Rivers

of the Great Colorado of the West in 1859_ (Washington, 1876).

There were also published, under the auspices of the government,

the conglomerate and very unequal work of Henry R. Schoolcraft,

_Historical and Statistical Information respecting the history,

conditions, and prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United

States, collected and prepared under the direction of the Bureau

of Indian Affairs_ (Philad., 1851-57, in 6 vols., with a trade

edition of the same date). An act of Congress (March 3, 1847)

authorized its publication. As reissued it is called _Archives

of aboriginal knowledge, containing original papers laid before

Congress, respecting the Indian tribes of the United States_

(Philadelphia, 1860, ’68, 6 vols.). It has the following divisions:

General history.—Manners and customs.—Antiquities.—Geography.—Tribal

organization, etc.—Intellectual capacity.—Topical history.—Physical

type.—Language.—Art.—Religion and mythology.—Demonology, magic,

etc.—Medical knowledge.—Condition and prospects.—Statistics and

population.—Biography.—Literature.—Post-Columbian history.—Economy and

statistics. An edition of vols. 1-5 (1856) is called _Ethnological

researches respecting the Red Men of America, Information respecting

the history_, etc. The sixth volume is in effect a summary of the

preceding five.[1928]

At a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of

Science, a committee was charged with preparing a memorial to Congress,

urging action to insure the preservation of certain national monuments.

There is a summary of their report in _Science_, xii. p. 101.

* * * * *

Of all European countries, the most has been done in France, by way of

periodical system and corporate organizations, to advance the study

of American anthropology, ethnology, and archæology. The _Annales des

voyages, de la géographie et de l’histoire, traduits de toutes les

langues Européennes; des relations originales, inédites_,[1929] the

publication of which was begun by Malte-Brun in 1808 and continued

to 1814, and the _Nouvelles Annales des Voyages_, begun in 1819

and continued with a slightly varying title till 1870, are sources

occasionally of much importance. At a later day, Edouard Lartet and

others have used the _Annales des Sciences Naturelles_ as a medium

for their publications. We hardly trace here, however, any corporate

movement before the institution of the Société de Géographie de Paris

in 1820. In 1824 it issued the first volume of its _Recueil de Voyages

et de Mémoires_, which reached seven volumes in 1864, and had included

(vol. ii.) an account of Palenqué and the researches of Warden on the

antiquities of the United States. Since this society began the issue

of its _Bulletin_ in 1827, it has occasionally given assistance in the

study of American archæology.

The earliest distinctive periodical on the subject was the _Revue

Américaine_, of which, in 1826-27, three volumes, in monthly parts,

were published in Paris.[1930] In 1857 a movement was inaugurated

which engaged first and last the coöperation of some eminent scholars

in these studies, like Aubin, Buschmann, V. A. Malte-Brun, Abbé

Brasseur de Bourbourg, Jomard, Alphonse Pinart, Cortambert, Léon de

Rosny, Waldeck, Abbé Domenech, Charencey, etc. The active movers were

first known as the Comité d’Archéologie Américaine, and they issued

an _Annuaire_ (1863-67) and one volume, at least, of _Actes_ (1865),

as well as a collection of _Mémoires sur l’archéologie Américaine_

(1865). This organization soon became known as the Société Américaine

de France, and under the auspices of this name there has been a series

of publications of varying designation.[1931] Its _Annuaire_ began

in 1868, and has been continued. The general name of _Archives de la

Société Américaine de France_ covers its other publications, which

more or less coincide with the _Revue Orientale et Américaine par Léon

de Rosny_, the first series of which appeared in Paris in 10 vols.,

in 1859-65, followed by a second, the first volume of which (vol. xi.

of the whole) is called _Revue Américaine, publié sous les auspices

de la Société d’Ethnographie et du Comité d’Archéologie Américaine_,

and is at the same time the fourth volume of the _Actes de la Société

d’Ethnographie Américaine et Orientale_. The whole series is sometimes

cited as the _Mémoires de la Société d’Ethnographie_.[1932] The

series, already referred to, of the _Archives de la Soc. Amér. de

France_ is made up thus: Première série: vol. i., _Revue Orientale et

Américaine_; ii., _Revue Américaine_; iii. and iv., _Revue Orientale et

Américaine_.[1933] The nouvelle série has no sub-titles, and the three

volumes bear date 1875, 1876, 1884.

The student of comparative anthropology will resort to the _Materiaux

pour l’histoire positive et philosophique_ (later _primitive et

naturelle_) _de l’homme_, the publication of which was begun at Paris

in 1864 by Gabriel de Mortillet, and has been continued by Trutot,

Cartailhac, Chautre, and others. This publication has contained

abstracts of the proceedings of an annual gathering in Paris, whose

_Comptes rendu_ have been printed at length as of the _Congrès

international d’anthropologie et d’archéologie préhistoriques_ (1865,

etc.).[1934]

Léon de Rosny published but a single volume of a projected series,

_Archives paléographiques de l’Orient et de l’Amérique_ (Paris,

1870-71), which contains some papers on Mexican picture-writing. Rosny

and others, who had been active in the movement begun by the Comité

d’Archéologie Américaine, were now instrumental in organizing the

periodical gathering in different cities of Europe, which is known

as the _Congrès international des Américanistes_. The first session

was held at Nancy in 1875, and its _Compte Rendu_ was published

in two volumes (Nancy and Paris, 1876). The second meeting was at

Luxembourg in 1877 (_Compte Rendu_, Paris, 1878, in 2 vols.); the third

at Brussels in 1879 (_Compte Rendu_); the fourth at Madrid in 1881

(_Congreso internacional de Américanistas. Cuarta reunion_, Madrid,

1881); the fifth at Copenhagen (_Compte Rendu_, Copenhagen, 1884); and

others at Chalons-sur-Marne, Turin, and Berlin. The papers are printed

in the language in which they were read.

The _Mémoires de la Société d’Ethnographie_ (founded in 1859) began

to appear in 1881, and its third volume (1882) is entitled _Les

Documents écrits de l’Antiquité Américaine, compte rendu d’une mission

scientifique en Espagne et en Portugal, par Léon de Rosny, avec une

carte et 10 planches_. The fourth volume is P. de Lucy-Fossarieu’s

_Ethnographie de l’Amérique Antarctique_ (Paris, 1884). In the second

volume of a new series there is an account by V. Devaux of the work in

American ethnology done by Lucien de Rosny as a preface to a posthumous

work[1935] of Lucien de Rosny, _Les Antilles, étude d’Ethnographie et

d’Archéologique Américaines_ (Paris, 1886).

Latterly there has been a consolidation of interests among kindred

societies under the name of Institution Ethnographique, whose initial

_Rapport annuel sur les récompenses et encouragements décernés en 1883_

was published at Paris in 1883. This society now comprises the Société

d’Ethnographie, Société Américaine de France, Athénée Oriental, and

Société des Etudes Japonaises.

* * * * *

In England, organized efforts for the record of knowledge began with

the creation of the Royal Society, though certain sporadic attempts

had earlier been known. America was represented among its founders

in the younger John Winthrop, and Cotton Mather was a contributor

to its transactions, and there has occasionally been a paper in its

publications of interest to American archæologists.[1936] The Society

of Antiquaries began to print its _Archæologia_ in 1779 and its

_Proceedings_ in 1848, and the American student finds some valuable

papers in them. The British Association for the Advancement of Science

began its _Reports_ with the meeting of 1831, and it has had among its

divisions a section of anthropology. In 1830 the Royal Geographical

Society began its _Journal_ with a preliminary issue (1830-31, in

2 vols.), though its regular series first came out in 1832. Its

_Proceedings_ appeared in 1855, and both publications are a conspicuous

source in many ways relating to early American history.[1937] Closely

connected with its interest has been the publication begun under the

editing of C. R. Markham, and called successively _Ocean Highways_

(1869-73, vol. i.-v.), with an added title of _Geographical Review_

(1873-74), and lastly as _The Geographical Magazine_ (vol. i.-iii.,

1874-76).

The Ethnological Society published four volumes of a _Journal_[1938]

between 1844 and 1856, and resuming published two more volumes in

1869-70. Its contents are mainly of interest in comparative study,

though there are a few American papers, like D. Forbes’s on the Aymara

Indians of Peru. This society’s _Transactions_ was issued in two

volumes, 1859-60; and again in seven volumes, 1861-69.

Meanwhile, some gentlemen, not content with the restricted field of

the Ethnological Society, founded in London an Anthropological Society,

which began the publication of _Memoirs_ (1863-69, in 3 vols.); and in

this publication Bollaert issued his papers on the population of the

new world, on the astronomy of the red man, on American paleography, on

Maya hieroglyphics, on the anthropology of the new world, on Peruvian

graphic records,—not to name other papers by different writers. The

_Transactions_ and _Journal_ of the society, as well as the _Popular

Magazine of Anthropology_ (1866), made part in one form or another of

the _Anthropological Review_, begun in 1863, and discontinued in 1870,

when the _Journal of Anthropology_ succeeded, but ceased the next year.

The _Proceedings_ of the society make one volume, 1873-75, under the

title of _Anthropologia_, and the society also maintained a series

of translations of foreign treatises, the first of which was Theodor

Waitz’s _Introduction to Anthropology_, ed. from the German by J. F.

Collingwood (1863); and this was followed by a version by James Hunt,

the president of the society, of Professor Carl Vogt’s _Lectures on

Man, his place in Creation and in the history of the Earth_ (1864), and

by other works of Broca, Pouchet, Blumenbach, etc.

What is known as the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and

Ireland united some of these separate endeavors and began its _Journal_

in 1871. The _Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society_ has also at

times been the channel by which some of the leading anthropologists

have published their views, and a few papers of archæological import

have been given in the _Transactions_ (1884, etc.) of the Royal

Historical Society. Professedly broader relations belong to the

_Transactions_ (_Comptes rendus_) of the International Congress of

prehistoric (anthropology and) archæology, which began its sessions in

1866.[1939] The latest summary is the _Archæological Review, a journal

of historic and prehistoric antiquities_, edited by G. L. Gomme, of

which the first number appeared in March, 1888, which has for a main

feature a bibliographical record of past and current archæological

literature.[1940]

It is, however, in the volumes of the Hakluyt Society’s publications,

beginning in 1847, in the annotated reprint of the early writers on

American nations and on the European contact with them, that the most

signal service has been done in England to the study of the early

history of the new world. They are often referred to in the present

History.

* * * * *

In Germany a _Magazin für die Naturgeschichte des Menschen_ was

published at Zittau as early as 1788-1791.

Wagner published at Vienna, in 1794-96, two volumes of _Beiträge zur

philosophischen Anthropologie_; and Heynig’s _Psychologisches (zugleich

Anthropologisches) Magazin_ was published at Altenburg in 1796-97.

The Berliner Akademie der Wissenschaft began its _Abhandlungen_ in

1804, but it was not till long after that date that Buschmann and

others used it as a channel of their views.

Vertuch’s _Archiv für Ethnographie und Linguistik_ (Weimar, 1807) only

reached a single number.

The _Zeitschrift für physische Aerzte_, which was published by Nasse,

at Leipzig, 1818-22, was succeeded by the _Zeitschrift für die

Anthropologie_ (Leipzig, 1823-24), and this was followed by a single

volume, _Jahrbücher für Anthropologie_ (Leipzig, 1830).

Bran’s _Ethnographisches Archiv_ was published at Jena from 1818 to

1829.

It was not till after 1860 that the new interest began to manifest

itself, though Fechner’s _Centralblatt für Naturwissenschaften und

Anthropologie_ was published at Leipzig in 1853-54.

Ecker’s _Archiv für Anthropologie_ was published at Braunschweig

in 1866-68, which came in 1870 under the direction of the Deutsche

Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte, which

also began a _Correspondenzblatt_ in 1870, and a series, _Allgemeine

Versammlung_, in 1873. This is the most important of the German

societies.

Bastian’s _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_ was begun at Berlin in 1869, and

later added a _Supplement_.

The Anthropologische Gesellschaft of Vienna began its _Mittheilungen_

in 1870; and in 1887 the Prähistorische Commission of the Kais.

Akad. der Wissenschaften at Vienna printed the first number of its

_Mittheilungen_.

The _Verein für Anthropologie_ in Leipzig published but a single number

of a _Bericht_ in 1871.