The differentiation of the species Man into various races, with permanent
traits and inhabiting definite areas, took place early in the present
geologic epoch. Of these races there are four which are well-marked,
each developed in one of the continental areas as they existed at the
time referred to. They are the Eurafrican or white, the Austafrican or
black, the Asian or yellow, and the American or red race. The color-names
given them are merely approximations, and are retained for the sake of
convenience, and as expressing a general and obvious characteristic.[1]
The American race was that which was found occupying the whole of the
New World when it first became revealed to Europeans. Its members are
popularly known as “Indians,” or “American Indians,” because Columbus
thought that the western islands which he discovered were part of India;
and his error has been perpetuated in the usually received appellation
of its inhabitants. To the ethnographer, however, they are the only
“Americans,” and their race is the “American Race.”
When investigation proved that the continent was not a part of Asia, but
a vast independent land-area surrounded by wide oceans, the learned began
to puzzle themselves with the problem of the origin of its inhabitants.
The Hebrew myths of the creation of man and of a universal deluge in
which the whole species perished except a few in Western Asia, for a
long time controlled the direction of such speculations. The wildest as
well as the most diverse hypotheses were brought forward and defended
with great display of erudition. One of the most curious was that which
advanced the notion that the Americans were the descendants of the ten
“lost tribes of Israel.” No one, at present, would acknowledge himself a
believer in this theory; but it has not proved useless, as we owe to it
the publication of several most valuable works.[2]
Another equally vain dream was that of “the lost Atlantis,” a great
island or land-connection which was imagined to have existed within
recent times between Northern Africa and South America. A reminiscence
of it was supposed to have survived in a story of the Egyptian priests
preserved by Plato, that beyond the Pillars of Hercules was a great
island which had since sunk in the sea. The account may have referred
to the Canary Islands, but certainly not to any land-bridge across the
Atlantic to the American Continent. Such did exist, indeed, but far
back in the Eocene period of the Tertiary, long before man appeared on
the scene. The wide difference between the existing flora and fauna of
Africa and South America proves that there has been no connection in the
lifetime of the present species.[3]
Scarcely less incredible are the theories which still have some
distinguished advocates, that the continent was peopled from Polynesia,
or directly from Japan or China. Several laborious works have been
compiled with reference to “Fu Sang,” a land referred to as east of
China, and identified by these writers with Mexico. A distinguished
ethnologist has recently published a map showing the courses by which he
supposes the Japanese arrived in America.[4]
It is not impossible that in recent centuries some junks may have drifted
on the Northwest coast. But their crews would undoubtedly have been
promptly slaughtered; and it is only in later ages that the Chinese
or Japanese constructed such junks. The theory, therefore, offers no
solution to the problem. Still less does that in reference to the
Polynesians. They had no such craft as junks, and though bold navigators,
were wholly unprepared to survive so long a voyage as from the nearest
of the islands of Oceanica to the coast of America. Moreover, we have
satisfactory proof that the eastern islands of Polynesia were peopled
from the western islands at a recent date, that is, within two thousand
years.
Probably the favorite theory at the present day is that the first
inhabitants of the New World came from northeastern Asia, either by
the Aleutian islands or across Behring Strait. Concerning the Aleutian
islands we know by the evidence of language and archæology that they
were first peopled from America, and not from Asia. Moreover, they
are separated one from the other in places by hundreds of miles of a
peculiarly stormy and dangerous sea.[5]
It is otherwise with Behring Straits. From East Cape in Siberia one can
see the American shore, and when first explored the tribes on each side
were in frequent communication. No doubt this had been going on for a
long time, and thus they had influenced each other in blood and culture.
But so long as we have any knowledge of the movings at this point, they
have been _from_ America into Asia, the Eskimos pushing their settlements
along the Asian coast. It will be replied that we should look to a period
anterior to the Eskimos. Any migration at that remote epoch is refuted
by other considerations. We know that Siberia was not peopled till late
in the Neolithic times, and what is more, that the vicinity of the strait
and the whole coast of Alaska were, till a very modern geologic period,
covered by enormous glaciers which would have prevented any communication
between the two continents.[6] These considerations reduce any possible
migrations at this point to such as may have taken place long after
America, both North and South, possessed a widespread population.
The question which should be posed as preliminary to all such
speculations is, _When_ did man first appear on this isolated continent?
To answer this we must study its later geological history, the events
which have occurred since the close of the Tertiary, that is, during the
Quaternary age.
In North and also in South America that age was characterized by one
notable event, which impressed its presence by lasting memorials on the
surface of the continent. This was the formation of a series of enormous
glaciers, covering the soil of nearly half the temperate zones with a
mass of ice thousands of feet in thickness. The period of its presence
is called the Great Ice Age or the Glacial Epoch. Beyond the immediate
limits of the ice it may not have been a season of extreme cold, for
glaciers form more rapidly when the temperature is not much below the
freezing point. Nor was it continuous. The ice sheet receded once,
if not twice, causing an “interglacial” epoch, when the climate was
comparatively mild. After this interim it seems to have advanced again
with renewed might, and to have extended its crystalline walls down to
about the fortieth parallel of latitude, touching the Atlantic near
Boston and New York harbors, and stretching nearly across the continent
in an irregular line, generally a little north of the Ohio and a little
south of the Missouri rivers. Enormous ice masses covered the Pacific
Slope as far south as the mouth of the Columbia river, and extended over
1200 miles along the coast, submerging the whole of Queen Charlotte and
Vancouver islands and the neighboring coast of British Columbia, which at
that time were depressed about two hundred feet below the present level.
The ice also covered for four hundred miles or more the plateau or Great
Basin between the Rocky Mountains and the Coast Range, rising in some
places in a solid mass five or six thousand feet above the soil.[7]
The melting of the second glacial inroad began at the east, and on the
Pacific coast has not yet ceased. Its margin across the continent is
still distinctly defined by a long line of débris piled up in “moraines,”
and by a fringe of gravel and sand called the “overwash,” carried from
these by the mighty floods which accompanied the great thaw. This period
of melting is the “Post-glacial Era.” It was accompanied by extensive
changes in the land-levels and in temperature.
In the glacial and early post-glacial periods, the northern regions of
the continent and the bottom of the Northern Atlantic were considerably
above their present levels; but in the late post-glacial or “Champlain”
period the land had sunk so much that at Lake Champlain it was five
hundred feet lower than now, and at New York Harbor ten feet lower. The
St. Lawrence river was then an arm of the sea, Lake Champlain was a deep
bay, and the mouth of the Delaware river was where the city of Trenton
now stands, the river itself being a wide inlet.[8]
The climate, which in the early post-glacial period had been so cold
that the reindeer enjoyed an agreeable home as far south as Kentucky,
changed to such mildness that two species of elephants, the giant sloth
and the peccary, found congenial pasturage in the Upper Ohio and Delaware
Valleys.[9]
The interest which this piece of geologic history has for us in this
connection is the presence of man in America during all the time that
these tremendous events were taking place. We know he was there, from
the evidence he has left behind him in the various strata and deposits
attributable to the different agencies I have described. How far back
his most ancient relics carry us, is not quite clear. By some, the
stone implements from Table Mountain, California, and a skull found in
the auriferous gravel in Calaveras county, California, are claimed to
antedate any relics east of the mountains. These stone utensils are,
however, too perfect, they speak for a too specialized condition of the
arts, to be attributable to a primitive condition of man; and as for
the Calaveras skull, the record of its discovery is too unsatisfactory.
Furthermore, in a volcanic country such as the Pacific coast, phenomena
of elevation and subsidence occur with rapidity, and do not offer the
same evidence of antiquity as in more stable lands.
This is an important point, and applies to a series of archæological
discoveries which have been announced from time to time from the Pacific
coast. Thus, in Nicaragua, human foot-prints have been found in compact
tufa at a depth of twenty-one feet beneath the surface soil, and overlaid
by repeated later volcanic deposits. But a careful examination of all
their surroundings, especially of the organic remains at a yet greater
depth, leads inevitably to the conclusion that these foot-prints cannot
be ascribed to any very remote antiquity.[10] The singular changes in
the Pacific seaboard are again illustrated along the coast of Ecuador
and Peru. For some sixty miles north and south near the mouth of the
Esmeraldas river there is a deposit of marine clay six or eight feet
thick underlying the surface soil in a continuous stratum. Under this
again is a horizon of sand and loam containing rude stone implements, and
what is significant, fragments of rough pottery and gold ornaments.[11]
This shows conclusively that an extensive and prolonged subsidence took
place in that locality not only after man reached there, but after he had
developed the important art of the manufacture of clay vessels. This was
certainly not at the beginning of his appearance on the scene; and the
theory of any vast antiquity for such relics is not tenable.
The lowest, that is, the oldest, deposit on the eastern coast in which
any relics of human industry are claimed to have been found, is that
known as the “Columbian gravel.” This is considered by geologists to
have been formed in the height of the first glacial period. From its
undisturbed layers have been exhumed stones bearing the marks of rough
shaping, so as to serve the purpose of rude primitive weapons.[12]
During the first or main Inter-glacial Period was deposited the “modified
drift.” In a terrace of this material on the Mississippi, near Little
Falls, Minnesota, Miss Babbitt found numerous quartz chips regarded by
competent archæologists as artificial products.[13] They represent the
refuse of an early workshop near the quartz veins in that vicinity,
and were cast aside by the pristine implement-maker when the Minnesota
glacier was receding for the last time, but still lifted its icy walls
five or ten miles above the present site of Little Falls.
The extensive beds of loess which cover many thousand square miles in
the Central United States are referred to the second Glacial Epoch.
Professor Aughey reports the finding of rudely chipped arrowhead in this
loess as it occurs in the Missouri Valley. They lay immediately beneath
the vertebra of an elephant, an animal, I need scarcely add, long since
extinct. Another proof of man’s presence about that date is a primitive
hearth discovered in digging a well along the old beach of Lake Ontario.
According to that competent geologist, Professor Gilbert, this dated from
a period when the northern shore of that body of water was the sheer wall
of a mighty glacier, and the channel of the Niagara river had not yet
begun to be furrowed out of the rock by the receding waters.[14] Other
finds which must be referred to about this epoch are those by McGee of a
chipped obsidian implement in the lacustrine marls of western Nevada; and
that of a fragment of a human skull in the westernmost extension of the
loess in Colorado.[15]
More conclusive than these are the repeated discoveries of implements,
chipped from hard stones, in deposits of loess and gravels in Ohio and
Indiana, which deposits, without doubt, represent a closing episode
of the last Glacial Epoch. There may be some question about the
geologic age of the former finds, but about these there is none. They
prove beyond cavil that during the closing scenes of the Quaternary
in North America, man, tool-making, fire-using man, was present and
active.[16] This decision is not only confirmed, but greatly extended,
by the researches of Dr. C. C. Abbott and others in the gravels about
Trenton, on the Delaware. These were laid down contemporaneously with
the terminal moraine in Ohio and Indiana, from which the palæoliths were
exhumed. Abbott’s discoveries include several hundred stone implements
of the true palæolithic or “Chelléen” type, and some fragments of human
skeletons.[17] They reveal to us not only the presence of man, but a well
defined stage of culture strictly comparable to that of the “river drift”
men of the Thames and the Somme in western Europe, which has been so ably
described by De Mortillet.[18]
Such discoveries have not been confined to the northern portion of the
continent. Barcena reported the relics of man in a quaternary rock in the
valley of Mexico.[19] The geologists of the Argentine Republic describe
others which must be referred to a very remote age. The writers who have
given the most information about them are Ameghino and Burmeister. They
found bone and stone implements of rude form and the remains of hearths
associated with bones of the extinct horse, the glyptodon, and other
animals now unknown. The stratigraphic relations of the finds connected
them with the deposits of the receding Austral glacier.[20]
Such facts as these place it beyond doubt that man lived in both North
and South America at the close of the Glacial Age. It is not certain
that this close was synchronous in both the northern and southern
hemispheres, nor that the American glacier was contemporary with the
Ice Age of Europe. The able geologist, Mr. Croll, is of opinion that if
there was a difference in time, the Ice Age of America was posterior to
that of Europe. In any case, the extreme antiquity of man in America is
placed beyond cavil. He was here long before either northern Asia or the
Polynesian islands were inhabited, as it is well known they were first
populated in Neolithic times.
The question naturally arises, did he not originate upon this continent?
The answer to this is given by Charles Darwin in his magistral
statement--“Our progenitors diverged from the catarhine stock of the
anthropoids; and the fact that they belonged to this stock clearly
shows that they inhabited the Old World.”[21] In fact, all the American
monkeys, whether living or fossil, are platyrhine, have thirty-four
teeth, and have tails, characteristics which show that none of the higher
anthropoids lived in the New World.
We are obliged, therefore, to look for the original home of the American
glacial man elsewhere than in America. Some interesting geological
facts throw an unexpected light upon our investigations. I have already
remarked that in the various recent oscillations of the earth’s crust,
there occurred about the middle and later Glacial Epoch an uplift of the
northern part of the continent and also of the northern Atlantic basin.
In the opinion of Professor James Geikie this amounted to a vertical
elevation of three thousand feet above the present level, and resulted in
establishing a continuous land connection between the higher latitudes of
the two continents, _which remained until the Post-glacial period_.[22]
Dr. Habernicht also recognizes this condition of affairs and places
it during the “old stone” age in Europe,[23] which corresponds to the
position assigned it by McGee.
Very recently, Professor Spencer has summed up the evidence in favor of
the elevation of the northern portions of America and the north Atlantic,
about the early Pliocene times, and considers that it proves beyond a
doubt that it must have reached from 2000 to 3000 feet above the present
level.[24]
Further testimony to the existence of this land bridge is offered by the
glacial striæ on the rocks of Shetland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland and
south Greenland. These are in such directions and of such a character
that Mr. James Croll, a high authority, maintains that they must have
been produced by _land ice_, and that the theory of a land connection
between these localities “can alone explain all the facts.”[25] A
comparison of the flora and fauna in the higher latitudes of the two
continents reveals marked identities which require some such theory to
explain them. Thus, certain species of land snails occur both in Labrador
and Europe, and the flora of Greenland, although American in the north,
is distinctly European in the south.[26]
Again, in certain very late Pliocene formations in England, known as
the Norwich crag and the red crag of Suffolk, “no less than eighteen
species of American mollusca occur, only seven of which still live on
the Scandinavian coast, the remainder being confined to North America.”
In consequence of such facts the most careful English geologists of
to-day hold that the land communication, which certainly existed between
Europe and North America in Eocene times by way of Iceland and Greenland,
which was then a part of the American continent, continued to exist
through the Miocene and Pliocene Epochs. This land bridge formed a
barrier of separation between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, so that the
temperature of the higher latitudes was much milder than at present.[27]
The evidence, therefore, is cumulative that at the close of the last
Glacial Epoch, and for an indeterminate time previous, the comparatively
shallow bed of the North Atlantic was above water; and this was about the
time that we find men in the same stage of culture dwelling on both its
shores.
The attempt has often been made by geologists to calculate the remoteness
in time of the close of the Ice Age, and of these vestiges of human
occupation. The chronometers appealed to are the erosion of river
valleys, especially of the gorge of Niagara, the filling of lake beds,
the accumulation of modern detritus, etc. Professor Frederick Wright,
who has studied the problem of the Niagara gorge with especial care,
considers that a minimum period of twelve thousand years must have
elapsed since its erosion began.[28] But as Professor Gilbert justly
remarks, whatever the age of the great cataract may be, the antiquity of
man in America is far greater, and reaches into a past for which we have
found no time-measure.[29]
The same may be said for Europe. De Quatrefages and many other students
of the subject consider that the evidence is sufficient to establish
the presence of man near the Atlantic coast in the Pliocene Epoch; and
excellent English geologists have claimed that the caves in the valley of
the River Clwyd, in north Wales, whose floors contain flint implements,
had their entrance blocked by true glacial deposits, so that man was
there present before the Great Ice Age began.
From this brief presentation of the geologic evidence, the conclusion
seems forced upon us that the ancestors of the American race could have
come from no other quarter than western Europe, or that portion of
Eurafrica which in my lectures on general ethnography I have described as
the most probable location of the birth-place of the species.[30]
_Scheme of the Age of Man in America._
-------------+-------------------+---------------------+-----------------
AGE. | PERIOD. | GEOLOGICAL | HUMAN RELICS.
| | CHARACTERS. |
-------------+-------------------+---------------------+-----------------
| {|Auriferous gravels of|Calaveras
{|1. Pre-glacial. {| California (?). | skull (?).
{| {|Lower lake beds in |
{| {| Great Basin. |
{| | |
{| {|Attenuated drift. |Palæoliths from
{| {|Columbia formation. | Claymont, Del.
{| {|Sinking of Atlantic |
{|2. First glacial. {| Coast. |
{| {|Old glacial drift in |
{| {| Mississippi Valley.|
{| {|Brick clays. |
{| | |
{| {|Modified drift of |Flint chips
{| {| Minnesota | and rude
{| {|Medial Gravels in | implements.
{|3. Inter-glacial. {| Great Basin. |
{| {|Pampas formation. |Bone and stone
{| {|New glacial drift and| implements.
Quaternary {| {| till. fiords. |
{| | |
or {| {| |
{| {|Moraines of Ohio |Palæolithic
Pleistocene.{| {| Valley. | implements
{|4. Second glacial.{|Loess of central | from the
{| {| United States. | moraines.
{| {|British America and |
{| {| N. Atlantic |
{| {| elevated. |
{| | |
{| {|Trenton gravels. |Palæolithic
{| {| | implements
{| {| | from Trenton.
{| {|Completion of Great |Brachycephalic
{| {| Lakes. | skulls from
{| {| | Trenton.
{|5. Post-glacial. {| |
{| {|Elevation of North |Hearth on former
{| {| Atlantic subsiding.| shore of L.
{| {| | Ontario.
{| {|Reindeer in Ohio |Skulls of
{| {| Valley. | Pontimelo
{| {| | and Rio
{| {| | Negro, S.A.
{| {|Climate cold. |
{| {|Lacustrine deposits. |Argillite
{| {| | implements.
{| | |
{| {|Seaboard deposits. |Earliest
{| {| | kitchen-middens.
{|1. Champlain {|Land below present |Limonite bones
{| {| level. | in Florida.
{| or {|Climate mild. |Lagoa Santa bones
{| {| | in Brazil.
{| Fluvial. {|Elephant, mastodon |
{| {| ohioticus, |
{| {| megatherium, |
Recent. {| {| giant bison, |
{| {| horse (all now |
{| {| extinct). |
{| | |
{| {| River deposits. |Quartz and jasper
{|2. Present {| | implements.
{| {|Formation of forest |Pottery. Later
{| or {| loam. | shell heaps.
{| {| |Ohio mounds.
{| Alluvial. {| |Relics of
{| {| | existing or
{| {| | known tribes.
-------------+-------------------+---------------------+-----------------
Many difficulties present themselves in bringing these periods into
correspondence with the seasons of the Quaternary in Europe; but after a
careful study of both continents, Mr. W. J. McGee suggests the following
synchronisms:[31]
_North America._ _Western Europe._
Inter-glacial period Époque chelléenne.
Early second glacial period Époque mousterienne.
Middle (mild) second glacial period Époque solutréenne.
Close of second glacial period and post-glacial Époque magdalénienne.
Champlain period Kitchen-middens and
epoque Robenhausienne.
Of course it would not be correct to suppose that the earliest
inhabitants of the continent presented the physical traits which mark the
race to-day. Racial peculiarities are slowly developed in certain “areas
of characterization,” but once fixed are indelible. Can we discover the
whereabouts of the area which impressed upon primitive American man--an
immigrant, as we have learned, from another hemisphere--those corporeal
changes which set him over against his fellows as an independent race?
I believe that it was in the north temperate zone. It is there we find
the oldest signs of man’s residence on the continent; it is and was
geographically the nearest to the land-areas of the Old World; and so
far as we can trace the lines of the most ancient migrations, they
diverged from that region. But there are reasons stronger than these.
The American Indians cannot bear the heat of the tropics even as well
as the European, not to speak of the African race. They perspire little,
their skin becomes hot, and they are easily prostrated by exertion in
an elevated temperature. They are peculiarly subject to diseases of hot
climates, as hepatic disorders, showing none of the immunity of the
African.[32] Furthermore, the finest physical specimens of the race
are found in the colder regions of the temperate zones, the Pampas and
Patagonian Indians in the south, the Iroquois and Algonkins in the north;
whereas, in the tropics they are generally undersized, short-lived, of
inferior muscular force and with slight tolerance of disease.[33]
These facts, taken in connection with the geologic events I have already
described, would lead us to place the “area of characterization” of the
native American east of the Rocky Mountains, and between the receding
wall of the continental ice sheet and the Gulf of Mexico. There it was
that the primitive glacial man underwent those changes which resulted in
the formation of an independent race.
We have evidence that this change took place at a very remote epoch. The
Swiss anatomist, Dr. J. Kollmann, has published a critical investigation
of the most ancient skulls discovered in America, as the one I have
already referred to from Calaveras county, California, one from Rock
Bluff, Illinois, one from Pontimelo, Buenos Ayres, and others from the
caverns of Lagoa Santa, Brazil, and from the loess of the Pampas. All
these are credited with an antiquity going back nearly to the close of
the last glacial period, and are the oldest yet found on the continent.
They prove to be strictly analogous to those of the Indians of the
present day. They reveal the same discrepancy in form which we now
encounter in the crania of all American tribes. The Calaveras skull
and that from Pontimelo are brachycephalic; those from Lagoa Santa
dolichocephalic; but both possess the wide malar arches, the low orbital
indices, the medium nasal apertures and the general broad faces of the
present population. Dr. Kollmann, therefore, reaches the conclusion that
“the variety of man in America at the close of the glacial period had the
same facial form as the Indian of to-day, and the racial traits which
distinguish him now, did also at that time.”
The marked diversity in cranial forms here indicated is recognizable
in all parts of the continent. It has frustrated every attempt to
classify the existing tribes, or to trace former lines of migration, by
grouping together similar head-measurements. This was fully acknowledged
by the late Dr. James Aitken Meigs, of Philadelphia, who, taking the
same collection of skulls, showed how erroneous were the previous
statements of Dr. Morton in his _Crania Americana_. The recent studies
of Virchow on American crania have attained the same conclusion.[34] We
must dismiss as wholly untenable the contrary arguments of the French
and other craniologists, and still more peremptorily those attempted
identifications of American skulls with “Mongolian” or “Mongoloid” types.
Such comparisons are based on local peculiarities which have no racial
value.
Yet it must not be supposed from this that carefully conducted cranial
comparisons between tribes and families are valueless; on the contrary,
the shape and size of the skull, the proportion of the face, and many
other measurements, are in the average highly distinctive family traits,
and I shall frequently call attention to them.
The lowest cephalic index which I have seen reported from an American
skull is 56, which is that of a perforated skull from Devil river,
Michigan, now in the medical museum at Ann Arbor university;[35] the
highest is 97, from a Peruvian skull, though probably this was the result
of an artificial deformity.
It is not necessary to conclude from these or other diversities in skull
forms that the American race is a conglomerate of other and varied
stocks. As I have pointed out elsewhere, the shape of the skull is not
a fixed element in human anatomy, and children of the same mother may
differ in this respect.[36]
A special feature in American skulls is the presence of the epactal bone,
or _os Incæ_, in the occiput. It is found in a complete or incomplete
condition in 3.86 per cent. of the skulls throughout the continent,
and in particular localities much more frequently; among the ancient
Peruvians for example in 6.08 per cent., and among the former inhabitants
of the Gila valley in 6.81 per cent. This is far more frequently than in
other races, the highest being the negro, which offers 2.65 per cent.,
while the Europeans yield but 1.19.[37] The presence of the bone is due
to a persistence of the transverse occipital suture, which is usually
closed in fetal life. Hence it is a sign of arrested development, and
indicative of an inferior race.
The majority of the Americans have a tendency to meso- or brachycephaly,
but in certain families, as the Eskimos in the extreme north and the
Tapuyas in Brazil, the skulls are usually decidedly long. In other
instances there is a remarkable difference in members of the same tribe
and even of the same household. Thus among the Yumas there are some with
as low an index as 68, while the majority are above 80, and among the
dolichocephalic Eskimos we occasionally find an almost globular skull.
So far as can be learned, these variations appear in persons of pure
blood. Often the crania differ in no wise from those of the European.
Dr. Hensell, for instance, says that the skulls of pure-blood Coroados
of Brazil, which he examined, corresponded in all points to those of the
average German.[38]
The average cubical capacity of the American skull falls below that of
the white, and rises above that of the black race. Taking both sexes, the
Parisians of to-day have a cranial capacity of 1448 cubic centimetres;
the Negroes 1344 c. c.; the American Indians 1376.[39] But single
examples of Indian skulls have yielded the extraordinary capacity of
1747, 1825, and even 1920 cub. cent. which are not exceeded in any other
race.[40]
The hue of the skin is generally said to be reddish, or coppery, or
cinnamon color, or burnt coffee color. It is brown of various shades,
with an undertone of red. Individuals or tribes vary from the prevailing
hue, but not with reference to climate. The Kolosch of the northwest
coast are very light colored; but not more so than the Yurucares of the
Bolivian Andes. The darkest are far from black, and the lightest by no
means white.
The hair is rarely wholly black, as when examined by reflected light
it will also show a faint undercolor of red. This reddish tinge is
very perceptible in some tribes, and especially in children. Generally
straight and coarse, instances are not wanting where it is fine and
silky, and even slightly wavy or curly. Although often compared to that
of the Chinese, the resemblances are superficial, as when critically
examined, “the hair of the American Indian differs in nearly every
particular from that of the Mongolians of eastern Asia.”[41] The growth
is thick and strong on the head, scanty on the body and on the face; but
beards of respectable length are not wholly unknown.[42]
The stature and muscular force vary. The Patagonians have long been
celebrated as giants, although in fact there are not many of them over
six feet tall. The average throughout the continent would probably be
less than that of the European. But there are no instances of dwarfish
size to compare with the Lapps, the Bushmen, or the Andaman Islanders.
The hands and feet are uniformly smaller than those of Europeans of the
same height. The arms are longer in proportion to the other members than
in the European, but not so much as in the African race. This is held to
be one of the anatomical evidences of inferiority.
On the whole, the race is singularly uniform in its physical traits, and
individuals taken from any part of the continent could easily be mistaken
for inhabitants of numerous other parts.
This uniformity finds one of its explanations in the geographical
features of the continent, which are such as to favor migrations in
longitude, and thus prevent the diversity which special conditions in
latitude tend to produce. The trend of the mountain chains and the flow
of the great rivers in both South and North America generally follow
the course of the great circles, and the migrations of native nations
were directed by these geographic features. Nor has the face of the land
undergone any serious alteration since man first occupied it. Doubtless
in his early days the Laramie sea still covered the extensive depression
in that part of our country, and it is possible that a subsidence of
several hundred feet altered the present Isthmus of Panama into a chain
of islands; but in other respects the continent between the fortieth
parallels north and south has remained substantially the same since the
close of the Tertiary Epoch.
Beyond all other criteria of a race must rank its mental endowments.
These are what decide irrevocably its place in history and its destiny
in time. Some who have personally studied the American race are inclined
to assign its psychical potentialities a high rank. For instance,
Mr. Horatio Hale hesitates not to say: “Impartial investigation and
comparison will probably show that while some of the aboriginal
communities of the American continent are low in the scale of intellect,
others are equal in natural capacity, and possibly superior, to the
highest of the Indo-European race.”[43] This may be regarded as an
extremely favorable estimate. Few will assent to it, and probably not
many would even go so far as Dr. Amedée Moure in his appreciation of
the South American Indians, which he expresses in these words: “With
reference to his mental powers, the Indian of South America should be
classed immediately after the white race, decidedly ahead of the yellow
race, and especially beyond the African.”[44]
Such general opinions are interesting because both of them are the
results of personal observations of many tribes. But the final decision
as to the abilities of a race or of an individual must be based on actual
accomplished results, not on supposed endowments. Thus appraised, the
American race certainly stands higher than the Australian, the Polynesian
or the African, but does not equal the Asian.
A review of the evidence bears out this opinion. Take the central social
fact of government. In ancient America there are examples of firm and
stable states, extending their sway widely and directed by definite
policy. The league of the Iroquois was a thoroughly statesman-like
creation, and the realm of Peru had a long and successful existence.
That this mental quality is real is shown by the recent history of some
of the Spanish-American republics. Two of them, Guatemala and Mexico,
count among their ablest presidents in the present generation pure-blood
American Indians.[45] Or we may take up the arts. In architecture
nothing ever accomplished by the Africans or Polynesians approaches the
pre-Columbian edifices of the American continent. In the development of
artistic forms, whether in stone, clay or wood, the American stands next
to the white race. I know no product of Japanese, Chinese or Dravidian
sculpture, for example, which exhibits the human face in greater dignity
than the head in basalt figured by Humboldt as an Aztec priestess.[46]
The invention of a phonetic system for recording ideas was reached in
Mexico, and is striking testimony to the ability of the natives. In
religious philosophy there is ample evidence that the notion of a single
incorporeal Ruler of the universe had become familiar both to Tezcucans
and Kechuas previous to the conquest.
While these facts bear testimony to a good natural capacity, it is also
true that the receptivity of the race for a foreign civilization is not
great. Even individual instances of highly educated Indians are rare; and
I do not recall any who have achieved distinction in art or science, or
large wealth in the business world.
The culture of the native Americans strongly attests the ethnic unity of
the race. This applies equally to the ruins and relics of its vanished
nations, as to the institutions of existing tribes. Nowhere do we find
any trace of foreign influence or instruction, nowhere any arts or social
systems to explain which we must evoke the aid of teachers from the
eastern hemisphere. The culture of the American race, in whatever degree
they possessed it, was an indigenous growth, wholly self-developed, owing
none of its germs to any other race, ear-marked with the psychology of
the stock.
Furthermore, this culture was not, as is usually supposed, monopolized
by a few nations of the race. The distinction that has been set up by
so many ethnographers between “wild tribes” and “civilized tribes,”
_Jägervölker_ and _Culturvölker_, is an artificial one, and conveys a
false idea of the facts. There was no such sharp line. Different bands
of the same linguistic stock were found, some on the highest, others on
the lowest stages of development, as is strikingly exemplified in the
Uto-Aztecan family. Wherever there was a center of civilization, that
is, wherever the surroundings favored the development of culture, tribes
of different stocks enjoyed it to nearly an equal degree, as in central
Mexico and Peru. By them it was distributed, and thus shaded off in all
directions.
When closely analyzed, the difference between the highest and the average
culture of the race is much less than has been usually taught. The Aztecs
of Mexico and the Algonkins of the eastern United States were not far
apart, if we overlook the objective art of architecture and one or two
inventions. To contrast the one as a wild or savage with the other as
a civilized people, is to assume a false point of view and to overlook
their substantial psychical equality.
For these reasons American culture, wherever examined, presents a family
likeness which the more careful observers of late years have taken
pains to put in a strong light. This was accomplished for governmental
institutions and domestic architecture by Lewis H. Morgan, for property
rights and the laws of war by A. F. Bandelier, for the social condition
of Mexico and Peru by Dr. Gustav Brühl, and I may add for the myths and
other expressions of the religious sentiment by myself.[47]
In certain directions doubtless the tendency has been to push this
uniformity too far, especially with reference to governmental
institutions. Mr. Morgan’s assertions upon this subject were too
sweeping. Nevertheless he was the first to point out clearly that ancient
American society was founded, not upon the family, but upon the gens,
totem or clan, as the social unit.[48] The gens is “an organized body
of consanguineal kindred” (Powell), either such in reality, or, when
strangers have been adopted, so considered by the tribal conscience.
Its members dwell together in one house or quarter, and are obliged to
assist each other. An indeterminate number of these gentes, make up
the tribe, and smaller groups of several of them may form “phratries,”
or brotherhoods, usually for some religious purpose. Each gens is to a
large extent autonomic, electing its own chieftain, and deciding on all
questions of property and especially of blood-revenge, within its own
limits. The tribe is governed by a council, the members of which belong
to and represent the various gentes. The tribal chief is elected by this
council, and can be deposed at its will. His power is strictly limited by
the vote of the council, and is confined to affairs of peace. For war,
a “war chief” is elected also by the council, who takes sole command.
Marriage within the gens is strictly prohibited, and descent is traced
and property descends in the female line only.
This is the ideal theory of the American tribal organization, and we may
recognize its outlines almost anywhere on the continent; but scarcely
anywhere shall we find it perfectly carried out. The gentile system is
by no means universal, as I shall have occasion to point out; where it
exists, it is often traced in the male line; both property and dignities
may be inherited directly from the father; consanguine marriage, even
that of brother and sister or father and daughter, though rare, is far
from unexampled.[49] In fact, no one element of the system was uniformly
respected, and it is an error of theorists to try to make it appear so.
It varied widely in the same stock and in all its expressions.[50] This
is markedly true, for instance, in domestic architecture. The Lenâpé, who
were next neighbors to the Five Nations, had nothing resembling their
“long house,” on which Morgan founded his scheme of communal tenements;
and the efforts which some later writers have made to identify the large
architectural works of Mexico and Yucatan with the communal pueblos of
the Gila valley will not bear the test of criticism.
The foundation of the gentile, as of any other family life, is, as I
have shown elsewhere,[51] the mutual affection between kindred. In
the primitive period this is especially between the children of the
same mother, not so much because of the doubt of paternity as because
physiologically and obviously it is the mother in whom is formed and
from whom alone proceeds the living being. Why this affection does
not lead to the marriage of uterine brothers and sisters--why, on the
contrary, there is almost everywhere a horror of such unions--it is not
easy to explain. Darwin suggests that the chief stimulus to the sexual
feelings is novelty, and that the familiarity of the same household
breeds indifference; and we may accept this in default of a completer
explanation. Certainly, as Moritz Wagner has forcibly shown,[52] this
repugnance to incest is widespread in the species, and has exerted a
powerful influence on its physical history.
In America marriage was usually by purchase, and was polygamous. In a
number of tribes the purchase of the eldest daughter gave the man a
right to buy all the younger daughters, as they reached nubile age.
The selection of a wife was often regarded as the concern of the gens
rather than of the individual. Among the Hurons, for instance, the old
women of the gens selected the wives for the young men, “and united them
with painful uniformity to women several years their senior.”[53] Some
control in this direction was very usual, and was necessary to prevent
consanguine unions.
The position of women in the social scheme of the American tribes has
often been portrayed in darker colors than the truth admits. As in one
sense a chattel, she had few rights against her husband; but some she
had, and as they were those of her gens, these he was forced to respect.
Where maternal descent prevailed, it was she who owned the property of
the pair, and could control it as she listed. It passed at her death to
her blood relatives and not to his. Her children looked upon her as their
parent, but esteemed their father as no relation whatever. An unusually
kind and intelligent Kolosch Indian was chided by a missionary for
allowing his father to suffer for food. “Let him go to his own people,”
replied the Kolosch, “they should look after him.” He did not regard a
man as in any way related or bound to his paternal parent.
The women thus made good for themselves the power of property, and this
could not but compel respect. Their lives were rated at equal or greater
value than a man’s;[54] instances are frequent where their voice was
important in the council of the tribe; nor was it very rare to see them
attaining the dignity of head chief. That their life was toilsome is
true; but its dangers were less, and its fatigues scarce greater, than
that of their husbands. Nor was it more onerous than that of the peasant
women of Europe to-day.
Such domestic arrangements seem strange to us, but they did not exclude
either conjugal or parental affection. On the contrary, the presence of
such sentiments has impressed travelers among even the rudest tribes, as
the Eskimos, the Yumas and the hordes of the Chaco;[55] and Miss Alice
Fletcher tells me she has constantly noted such traits in her studies of
life in the wigwam. The husband and father will often undergo severe
privations for his wife and children.
The error to which I have referred of classifying the natives into wild
and civilized tribes has led to regarding the one as agricultural, and
the other as depending exclusively on hunting and fishing. Such was
not the case. The Americans were inclined to agriculture in nearly all
regions where it was profitable. Maize was cultivated both north and
south to the geographical extent of its productive culture; beans,
squashes, pumpkins, and potatoes were assiduously planted in suitable
latitudes; the banana was rapidly accepted after its introduction, even
by tribes who had never seen a white man; cotton for clothing and tobacco
as a luxury were staple crops among very diverse stocks. The Iroquois,
Algonkins and Muskokis of the Atlantic coast tilled large fields, and
depended upon their harvests for the winter supplies. The difference
between them and the sedentary Mexicans or Mayas in this respect was not
so wide as has been represented.
It was a serious misfortune for the Americans that the fauna of the
continent did not offer any animal which could be domesticated for a
beast of draft or burden. There is no doubt but that the horse existed
on the continent contemporaneously with post-glacial man; and some
palæontologists are of opinion that the European and Asian horses were
descendants of the American species;[56] but for some mysterious reason
the genus became extinct in the New World many generations before its
discovery. The dog, domesticated from various species of the wolf, was
a poor substitute. He aided somewhat in hunting, and in the north as
an animal of draft; but was of little general utility. The lama in the
Cordilleras in South America was prized principally for his hair, and
was also utilized for burdens, but not for draft.[57] Nor were there any
animals which could be domesticated for food or milk. The buffalo is
hopelessly wild, and the peccary, or American hog, is irreclaimable in
its love of freedom.
We may say that America everywhere at the time of the discovery was in
the polished stone age. It had progressed beyond the rough stone stage,
but had not reached that of metals. True that copper, bronze and the
precious ores were widely employed for a variety of purposes; but flaked
and polished stone remained in all parts the principal material selected
to produce a cutting edge. Probably three-fourths of the tribes were
acquainted with the art of tempering and moulding clay into utensils
or figures; but the potter’s wheel and the process of glazing had not
been invented. Towns and buildings were laid out with a correct eye, and
stone structures of symmetry were erected; but the square, the compass,
the plumb line, and the scales and weight had not been devised.[58]
Commodious boats of hollowed logs or of bark, or of skins stretched on
frames, were in use on most of the waters; but the inventive faculties of
their makers had not reached to either oars or sails to propel them,[59]
the paddle alone being relied upon, and the rudder to guide them was
unknown. The love of music is strong in the race, and wind instruments
and those sounded by percussion had been devised in considerable variety;
but the highest type, the string instruments, were beyond their capacity
of invention.
The religious sentiment was awake in all the tribes of the continent,
and even the lowest had myths and propitiatory rites by which to explain
to themselves and cajole to their own interests the unknown powers which
order the destiny of human life. There is a singular similarity in these
myths. The leading cycle of them usually describes the exploits of a
divine man, the national hero-god, who was the first instructor, often
the ancestor of the tribe, and the creator of the visible universe. His
later history is related with singular parallelism by tribes in Canada
and Mexico, in Yucatan and Uruguay. After teaching his people the arts of
life and the sacred rites, the forms of their social organizations and
the medicinal powers of plants, he left in some mysterious way, not by
the event of death, but for a journey, or by rising to the sky; leaving
with them, however, his promise to return at some future day, when they
should need him, and he should again become their guide and protector.
The interpretation of this fundamental American myth, which I have shown
to be the typical religious legend of the race,[60] offers an interesting
problem. Comparing it with others of similar form in Egyptian and Aryac
antiquity, I have explained it as based on the natural phenomenon of the
returning and departing day, as, if not a solar, at least a light myth,
developed through personification and etymologic processes. Often the
hero-god is identified with some animal, as the raven, the rabbit, the
wolf or coyote, the jaguar, the toucan, etc. Possibly in these we may
recognize the “totemic animal” after which the gens was named; but in
most cases the identification cannot be made.
The hero-god is usually connected with tales of a creation and a flood,
or other destruction of the world. These cosmogonical and cataclysmal
myths belong together, and arise from the same impulse to explain cosmic
phenomena by the analogy with ordinary changes of the seasons and the
day. In constant connection with them, and also with the rites of
religion and medicine, with the social institutions and the calendar,
with the plans of edifices and the arrangement of gens and phratries,
in fact, with all the apparatus of life, was a respect for the _sacred
number_. It is strange how constantly this presents itself throughout
American life, and is, in fact, the key to many of its forms. The sacred
number is Four, and its origin is from the four cardinal points. These
were the guides to the native in his wanderings, and, as identified with
the winds, were the deities who brought about the change of the seasons
and the phenomena of the weather. They were represented by the symbols
of the cross, whose four arms we see portrayed on the altar tablet of
Palenque, on the robes of the Mexican priests, in the hieroglyphs of the
Algonkins, and in countless other connections.
A rich symbolism rapidly developed in all the sedentary tribes, and very
much along the same lines. The bird, the serpent, the sacred stone, the
tree of life, water as a purifier, the perpetual fire, all these are
members of a religious symbolism, clear signs of which recur in all
segments of the continent. The chants and dances, the ritual of the
medicine men, the functions of esoteric orders and secret societies,
present a resemblance greater than that which can be explained by a
mere similarity in the stage of culture. I explain it by the ethnic and
psychical unity of the race, and its perpetual freedom from any foreign
influence.
The mortuary rites indicated a belief in the continued existence of
the individual after apparent death. These were by incineration, by
inhumation, by exposure, or by mummification. Articles were placed with
the deceased for use in his future state, and the ceremonies of mourning
were frequently severe and protracted. A sacredness was generally
attached to the bones and therefore these were carefully preserved. In
accordance with a superstition widely felt in the Old World, they were
supposed to harbor some share of the departed spirit. The conception of
the after life is wholly material. The Zapotec, for instance, believes
that he will return to his familiar haunts after a few hundred years,
and buries all the money he makes that he may then live at his ease. Von
Gagern estimates the amount of silver thus secreted and lost within the
last century at a hundred million dollars.[61]
The ceremonies of religion, which included that of the treatment of
disease, inasmuch as a demonic cause was always assigned to illness, were
in the hands of a particular class, known to the whites as “medicine
men,” or shamans, or sorcerers. Sometimes the right of belonging to
this order was hereditary in a gens, but generally peculiar aptitude
for the business was the only requirement. Many of them were skilled in
legerdemain, and even to-day some of their tricks puzzle the acutest
white observers. As doctors, augurs, rain-makers, spell-binders, leaders
of secret societies, and depositaries of the tribal traditions and
wisdom, their influence was generally powerful. Of course it was adverse
to the Europeans, especially the missionaries, and also of course it was
generally directed to their own interest or that of their class; but
this is equally true of priestly power wherever it gains the ascendency,
and the injurious effect of the Indian shamans on their nations was not
greater than has been in many instances that of the Christian priesthood
on European communities.
The psychic identity of the Americans is well illustrated in their
languages. There are indeed indefinite discrepancies in their
lexicography and in their surface morphology; but in their logical
substructure, in what Wilhelm von Humboldt called the “inner form,”
they are strikingly alike. The points in which this is especially
apparent are in the development of pronominal forms, in the abundance
of generic particles, in the overweening preference for concepts of
action (verbs), rather than concepts of existence (nouns), and in the
consequent subordination of the latter to the former in the proposition.
This last mentioned trait is the source of that characteristic which is
called _incorporation_. The American languages as a rule are essentially
incorporative languages, that is, they formally include both subject
and object in the transitive concept, and its oral expression. It has
been denied by some able linguists that this is a characteristic trait
of American languages; but I have yet to find one, of which we possess
ample means of analysis, in which it does not appear in one or another of
its forms, thus revealing the same linguistic impulse. Those who reject
it as a feature have been led astray either by insufficient means of
information about certain languages, or by not clearly comprehending the
characteristics of the incorporative process itself.[62]
As intimated, however, in spite of this underlying sameness, there
is wide diversity in the tongues themselves. Where we cannot find
sufficient coincidences of words and grammar in two languages to admit
of supposing that under the laws of linguistic science they are related,
they are classed as independent stocks or families. Of such there
are about eighty in North and as many in South America. These stocks
offer us, without doubt, our best basis for the ethnic classification
of the American tribes; the only basis, indeed, which is of any value.
The efforts which have been heretofore made to erect a geographic
classification, with reference to certain areas, political or physical;
or a craniological one, with reference to skull forms; or a cultural one,
with reference to stages of savagery and civilization, have all proved
worthless. The linguistic is the only basis on which the subdivision
of the race should proceed. Similarity of idioms proves to some extent
similarity of descent and similarity of psychic endowments. Of course,
there has been large imposition of one language on another in the world’s
history; but never without a corresponding infiltration of blood; so
that the changes in language remain as evidence of national and race
comminglings. I select, therefore, the linguistic classification of the
American race as the only one of any scientific value, and, therefore,
that which alone merits consideration.
The precise number of linguistic stocks in use in America at the
discovery has not been made out. In that portion of the continent north
of Mexico the researches of the Bureau of Ethnology of the United States
have defined fifty-nine stocks, no less than forty of which were confined
to the narrow strip of land between the Rocky mountains and the Pacific
ocean.
For convenience of study I shall classify all the stocks into five
groups, as follows:--