whose unveiled face "no man can see and live." It is therefore no matter of surprise that sun-worship was among the earliest and most widely disseminated forms of human adoration. It may be said to have been universal. Among nations the most remote from each other, from the torrid to the frigid zones, under one modification or another, this worship has existed. As Phre, or Serapis, among the Egyptians; as Bel, Baal, Belus, or Moloch, among the Chaldeans; Mithras of the Persians; Apollo of the Greeks; Suyra of the Hindus; Odin of the Scandinavians; Baiwe of the Laplanders; or, as the chief object of adoration in Mexico and Peru, the sun has had its myriads of worshippers from the earliest dawn of traditionary history. Its worship spread over America as it did over Europe and Africa, and man's accredited birth place, in Asia. It was attended by simple, as also by complicated ceremonies. The Indian hunter of North America acknowledged his homage in silence, with uplifted arms and outspread palms, or by a breath from his half sacred pipe. And the Peruvian Inca, "the Son of the Sun," in his double office of priest and king, paid his adoration, with gorgeous rites, in temples encrusted with gold, and blazing with the reflected glory of the solar god.

Regarding then the uniformity which we have already pointed out in man's constitution, attended by a like uniformity of natural circumstances, as resulting almost of necessity in corresponding uniformity in his beliefs and conceptions, and their modes of manifestation, we shall be prepared to find in America the traces of a primitive religion, essentially the same with that which underwent so many modifications in the Old World, illustrated by analogous symbols, and attended by similar rites. We shall further be prepared to remark these resemblances as the natural results of fixed causes, without sinking the Atlantides in an overwhelming cataclysm, or leading vagrant tribes through deserts vast and regions of eternal snow; or invoking the shadowy Thorfinn, or the apocryphal Madoc, with his ten ships," to account for the form of a sacrifice, or the method of an incantation!

NOTES TO CHAPTER I.

(A.)

Ir has been remarked that Asia is the country of fables, Africa of monsters, and America of systems, with those who prefer hypothesis to truth; and it is these alone who still continue audaciously to speculate upon the origin and connections of the American race, as if no grand leading points had been established, and as though here was afforded a legitimate field for unrestrained conjecture. It is not my purpose to go into a detailed exposition of what ethnologists have accomplished in their investigations of the various questions connected with this race; but I cannot omit a brief reference to some of the more prominent results of their labors. In the departments of physiology and philology, the inquiries of our countrymen have been conducted on a large scale, in a very complete and thorough manner, and with eminent

success.

So far as the cranial, if not the general physical, characteristics of the American aborigines are concerned, we may regard the conclusions advanced by Dr. S. G. Morton, in that really splendid monument of scientific research, " Crania Americana," as substantially demonstrated, and as constituting so many fixed points in prosecuting future researches. His general conclusions, upon which all the others, in some manner, depend, is the essential peculiarity of the American race; and that the American nations, excepting perhaps those on the extremities of the continent, (and concerning which no sufficient data have as yet been collected to justify an opinion,) are characterized by a conformation of skull radically distinct from that of any of the other great divisions of the human family.

To use Dr. Morton's own language, his observations and researches tend to sustain the following propositions :

"1st. That the American race differs essentially from all others, not excepting the Mongolian; nor do the feeble analogies of language, and the more obvious ones of civil and religious institutions and the arts,

denote anything beyond casual or colonial communication with the Asiatic nations; and even these analogies may perhaps be accounted for, as Humboldt has suggested, in the mere coincidence arising from similar wants and impulses in nations inhabiting similar latitudes.

"2d. That the American nations, excepting the polar tribes, are of one race and one species, but of two great families, which resemble each other in physical but differ in intellectual character.

"3d. That the cranial remains discovered in the mounds from Peru to Wisconsin, belong to the same race, and probably to the Toltecan family." (Crania Americana, p. 260.)

At first glance, these propositions may appear somewhat startling, and the inquirer may incredulously point to the disparities existing between the different nations of the continent, as affording a sufficient refutation of them. But if we can point to no other race on the globe which has exhibited so many modifications, it is because there is no other which, in its infancy, and before it was able to overcome or control natural influences, was so widely disseminated, and subjected to so many vicissitudes. History, nevertheless, has some singular examples of the changes which may be occasioned by circumstances, not only among nations of the same race, but of the same family. Dr. Morton points us to that branch of the great Arabian stock, the Saracens, "who established their seat in Spain, whose history is replete with romance and refinement, whose colleges were the centres of genius and learning for several centuries, and whose arts and sciences have been blended with those of every succeeding age. Yet the Saracens belonged to the same family with the Bedouins of the desert; those intractable barbarians, who scorn all restraints which are not imposed by their own chief, and whose immemorial laws forbid them to sow corn, to plant fruit-trees, or build houses, in order that nothing may conflict with those roving and predatory habits which have continued unaltered through a period of three thousand years."—(Distinctive Characteristics of the American Race, p. 15.)

"It is an adage among travellers," continues Dr. Morton, "that he who has seen one tribe of Indians has seen all; so much do the individuals of this race resemble each other, notwithstanding their immense geographical distribution, and those differences of climate which embrace the extremes of heat and cold. The half-clad Fuegan, shrinking from his dreary winter, has the same characteristic lineaments, though in an exaggerated degree, as the Indians of the tropical plains; and these again resemble the tribes which inhabit the region west of the Rocky Mountains, those of the great valley of the Mississippi, and those again which skirt the Esquimaux on the north. All possess alike the long,

lank, black hair, the brown or cinnamon-colored skin, the heavy brow, the dull and sleepy eye, the full and compressed lips, and the salient and dilated nose. These traits, moreover, are equally common to the savage and civilized nations, whether they inhabit the margins of rivers and feed on fish, or rove the forest and subsist on the spoils of the chase. "It cannot be questioned that physical diversities do occur, equally singular and inexplicable, as seen in the different shades of color, varying from a fair tint to a complexion almost black; and this, too, under circumstances where climate can have little or no influence. So also in reference to stature, the differences are remarkable in entire tribes, which, moreover, are geographically proximate to each other. These facts are, however, mere exceptions to a general rule, and do not alter the peculiar physiognomy of the Indian, which is as undeviatingly characteristic as that of the negro; for whether we see him in the athletic Charib or the stunted Chayma, in the dark Californian or the fair Nicaraguan, he is an Indian still, and cannot be mistaken for a being of any other race.

"The same conformity of organization is not less obvious in the osteological structure of these people, as seen in the squared or rounded head, the flattened or vertical occiput, the high cheek-bones, the ponderous maxillæ, the large, quadrangular orbits, and the low, receding forehead."

* * *

These results, put forward upon the basis of a large array of carefully collected and well-digested facts, are well sustained by the opinions of other investigators, whose means of observation were very extended, and whose judgments will not lightly be called in question. Says Humboldt: "The Indians of New Spain bear a general resemblance to those who inhabit Canada, Florida, Peru, and Brazil. They have the same swarthy and copper color, straight and smooth hair, small beard, prominent cheek-bones, thick lips, expression of gentleness in the mouth, strongly contrasted with a gloomy and severe look. Over a million and a half of square miles, from Terra del Fuego to the River St. Lawrence and Behring's Straits, we are struck, at first glance, with the general resemblance in the features of the inhabitants. We think that we perceive them all to be descended from the same stock, notwithstanding the prodigious diversity of language which separates them from one another. In the faithful portrait which an excellent observer, M. Volney, has drawn of the Canada Indians, we undoubtedly recognize the tribes scattered in the savannahs of the Rio Apure and the Carony. The same style of features exists in both Americas."

* *

Dr. Prichard, after a carefulre view of the same field, presents the following concurrent inferences :

"1. That all the different races, aboriginal in the American continent,

or constituting its earliest known population, belong, as far as their history and languages have been investigated, to one family of nations.

"2. That these races display considerable diversities in their physical constitution, though derived from one stock, and still betraying indications of mutual resemblance."

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In solitary, and we had almost said utterly unsupported opposition to this general testimony in favor of the physical uniformity of the American race, stands the assertion of M. d'Orbigny, that a Peruvian is not less different from a Patagonian, and a Patagonian from a Guarani, than is a Greek from an Ethiopian or a Mongolian."

It is, however, proper to observe that M. d'Orbigny does not probably mean to be understood that there are radical differences among the South American nations, as marked as a literal understanding of this paragraph would imply. For there is no writer who attributes more striking results to the influence of natural causes. He states that the color of the South American nations bears a very decided relation to the dampness or dryness of the atmosphere. People who dwell forever under the shade of dense and lofty forests, clothing the dark valleys which lie under the steep declivities of the eastern branches of the Cordilleras, and the vast, luxuriant plains of the Orinoco and Marañon, are comparatively white; while the Quichua, exposed to the solar heat in dry, open spaces of the mountains, are of a much deeper shade. This is confirmed by Schomburgh and other accurate observers.

Regarding the conclusions of the above authorities, in respect to the physical traits and craniological characteristics of the aboriginal Americans, as amply sustained by the great number and variety of facts which they have presented, and which have never been disputed, we turn next to the department of Philology.

Here we find the results of the investigations of a number of learned men, among whom the late Albert Gallatin stands pre-eminent. The researches of this gentleman were mostly confined to the languages of the North American nations, but he nevertheless got together and carefully digested a mass of materials upon this somewhat abstruse subject, as much exceeding in extent and value the results of the labors of his predecessors in the same field, as the data collected by Dr. Morton exceed those of other investigators in his peculiar department. But as we are dealing only with results, it is foreign to our purpose to do much more than present Mr. Gallatin's conclusions. These are substantially the same with those arrived at by Dr. Morton, although attained by a different path of investigation. He found the languages of North America, notwithstanding their apparent diversity, to be in their elements sui generis, and radically the same: that is to say, characterized through