Chapter I: Ancient America (1)

[Sidenote: The American aborigines.]

When the civilized people of Europe first became acquainted with the continents of North and South America, they found them inhabited by a race of men quite unlike any of the races with which they were familiar in the Old World. Between the various tribes of this aboriginal American race, except in the sub-arctic region, there is now seen to be a general physical likeness, such as to constitute an American type of mankind as clearly recognizable as those types which we call Mongolian and Malay, though far less pronounced than such types as the Australian or the negro. The most obvious characteristics possessed in common by the American aborigines are the copper-coloured or rather the cinnamon-coloured complexion, along with the high cheek-bones and small deep-set eyes, the straight black hair and absence or scantiness of beard. With regard to stature, length of limbs, massiveness of frame, and shape of skull, considerable divergencies may be noticed among the various American tribes, as indeed is also the case among the members of the white race in Europe, and of other races. With regard to culture the differences have been considerable, although, with two or three apparent but not real exceptions, there was nothing in pre-Columbian America that could properly be called civilization; the general condition of the people ranged all the way from savagery to barbarism of a high type.

[Sidenote: Question as to their origin.]

[Sidenote: Antiquity of man in America.]

Soon after America was proved not to be part of Asia, a puzzling question arose. Whence came these "Indians," and in what manner did they find their way to the western hemisphere. Since the beginning of the present century discoveries in geology have entirely altered our mental attitude toward this question. It was formerly argued upon the two assumptions that the geographical relations of land and water had been always pretty much the same as we now find them, and that all the racial differences among men have arisen since the date of the "Noachian Deluge," which was generally placed somewhere between two and three thousand years before the Christian era. Hence inasmuch as European tradition knows nothing of any such race as the Indians, it was supposed that at some time within the historic period they must have moved eastward from Asia into America; and thus "there was felt to be a sort of speculative necessity for discovering points of resemblance between American languages, myths, and social observances and those of the Oriental world. Now the aborigines of this Continent were made out to be Kamtchatkans, and now Chinamen, and again they were shown, with quaint erudition, to be remnants of the ten tribes of Israel. Perhaps none of these theories have been exactly disproved, but they have all been superseded and laid on the shelf."[1] The tendency of modern discovery is indeed toward agreement with the time-honoured tradition which makes the Old World, and perhaps Asia, the earliest dwelling-place of mankind. Competition has been far more active in the fauna of the eastern hemisphere than in that of the western, natural selection has accordingly resulted in the evolution of higher forms, and it is there that we find both extinct and surviving species of man's nearest collateral relatives, those tailless half-human apes, the gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and gibbon. It is altogether probable that the people whom the Spaniards found in America came by migration from the Old World. But it is by no means probable that their migration occurred within so short a period as five or six thousand years. A series of observations and discoveries kept up for the last half-century seem to show that North America has been continuously inhabited by human beings since the earliest Pleistocene times, if not earlier.

[Footnote 1: See my _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, p. 148. A
good succinct account of these various theories, monuments of
wasted ingenuity, is given in Short's _North Americans of
Antiquity_, chap. iii. The most elaborate statement of the
theory of an Israelite colonization of America is to be found
in the ponderous tomes of Lord Kingsborough, _Mexican
Antiquities_, London, 1831-48, 9 vols. elephant-folio. Such a
theory was entertained by the author of that curious piece of
literary imposture, _The Book of Mormon_. In this book we are
told that, when the tongues were confounded at Babel, the Lord
selected a certain Jared, with his family and friends, and
instructed them to build eight ships, in which, after a voyage
of 344 days, they were brought to America, where they "did
build many mighty cities," and "prosper exceedingly." But after
some centuries they perished because of their iniquities. In
the reign of Zedekiah, when calamity was impending over Judah,
two brothers, Nephi and Laman, under divine guidance led a
colony to America. There, says the veracious chronicler, their
descendants became great nations, and worked in _iron_, and had
stuffs of _silk_, besides keeping plenty of _oxen_ and _sheep_.
(_Ether_, ix. 18, 19; x. 23, 24.) Christ appeared and wrought
many wonderful works; people spake with tongues, and the dead
were raised. (3 _Nephi_, xxvi. 14, 15.) But about the close of
the fourth century of our era, a terrible war between Lamanites
and Nephites ended in the destruction of the latter. Some two
million warriors, with their wives and children, having been
slaughtered, the prophet Mormon escaped, with his son Moroni,
to the "hill Cumorah," hard by the "waters of Ripliancum," or
Lake Ontario. (_Ether_, xv. 2, 8, 11.) There they hid the
sacred tablets, which remained concealed until they were
miraculously discovered and translated by Joseph Smith in 1827.
There is, of course, no element of tradition in this story. It
is all pure fiction, and of a very clumsy sort, such as might
easily be devised by an ignorant man accustomed to the language
of the Bible; and of course it was suggested by the old notion
of the Israelitish origin of the red men. The references are to
_The Book of Mormon_, Salt Lake City: Deseret News Co., 1885.]

[Sidenote: Shell-mounds.]

The first group of these observations and discoveries relate to "middens" or shell-heaps. On the banks of the Damariscotta river in Maine are some of the most remarkable shell-heaps in the world. With an average thickness of six or seven feet, they rise in places to a height of twenty-five feet. They consist almost entirely of huge oyster-shells often ten inches in length and sometimes much longer. The shells belong to a salt-water species. In some places "there is an appearance of stratification covered by an alternation of shells and earth, as if the deposition of shells had been from time to time interrupted, and a vegetable mould had covered the surface." In these heaps have been found fragments of pottery and of the bones of such edible animals as the moose and deer. "At the very foundation of one of the highest heaps," in a situation which must for long ages have been undisturbed, Mr. Edward Morse "found the remains of an ancient fire-place, where he exhumed charcoal, bones, and pottery."[2] The significant circumstance is that "at the present time oysters are only found in very small numbers, too small to make it an object to gather them," and so far as memory and tradition can reach, such seems to have been the case. The great size of the heap, coupled with the notable change in the distribution of this mollusk since the heap was abandoned, implies a very considerable lapse of time since the vestiges of human occupation were first left here. Similar conclusions have been drawn from the banks or mounds of shells on the St. John's river in Florida,[3] on the Alabama river, at Grand Lake on the lower Mississippi, and at San Pablo in the bay of San Francisco. Thus at various points from Maine to California, and in connection with one particular kind of memorial, we find records of the presence of man at a period undoubtedly prehistoric, but not necessarily many thousands of years old.

[Footnote 2: _Second Annual Report of the Peabody Museum of
American Archæology_, etc., p. 18.]

[Footnote 3: Visited in 1866-74 by Professor Jeffries Wyman,
and described in his _Fresh-Water Shell Mounds of the St.
John's River_, Cambridge, 1875.]

[Sidenote: The Glacial Period.]

The second group of discoveries carries us back much farther, even into the earlier stages of that widespread glaciation which was the most remarkable feature of the Pleistocene period. At the periods of greatest cold "the continent of North America was deeply swathed in ice as far south as the latitude of Philadelphia, while glaciers descended into North Carolina."[4] The valleys of the Rocky Mountains also supported enormous glaciers, and a similar state of things existed at the same time in Europe. These periods of intense cold were alternated with long interglacial periods during which the climate was warmer than it is to-day. Concerning the antiquity of the Pleistocene age, which was characterized by such extraordinary vicissitudes of heat and cold, there has been, as in all questions relating to geological time, much conflict of opinion. Twenty years ago geologists often argued as if there were an unlimited fund of past time upon which to draw; but since Sir William Thomson and other physicists emphasized the point that in an antiquity very far from infinite this earth must have been a molten mass, there has been a reaction. In many instances further study has shown that less time was needed in order to effect a given change than had formerly been supposed; and so there has grown up a tendency to shorten the time assigned to geological periods. Here, as in so many other cases, the truth is doubtless to be sought within the extremes. If we adopt the magnificent argument of Dr. Croll, which seems to me still to hold its ground against all adverse criticism,[5] and regard the Glacial epoch as coincident with the last period of high eccentricity of the earth's orbit, we obtain a result that is moderate and probable. That astronomical period began about 240,000 years ago and came to an end about 80,000 years ago. During this period the eccentricity was seldom less than .04, and at one time rose to .0569. At the present time the eccentricity is .0168, and nearly 800,000 years will pass before it attains such a point as it reached during the Glacial epoch. For the last 50,000 years the departure of the earth's orbit from a circular form has been exceptionally small.

[Footnote 4: _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, p. 39.]

[Footnote 5: Croll, _Climate and Time in their Geological
Relations_, New York, 1875; _Discussions on Climate and
Cosmology_, New York, 1886; Archibald Geikie, _Text Book of
Geology_, pp. 23-29, 883-909, London, 1882; James Geikie, _The
Great Ice Age_, pp. 94-136, New York, 1874; _Prehistoric
Europe_, pp. 558-562, London, 1881; Wallace, _Island Life_, pp.
101-225, New York, 1881. Some objections to Croll's theory may
be found in Wright's _Ice Age in North America_, pp. 405-505,
585-595, New York, 1889. I have given a brief account of the
theory in my _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, pp. 57-76.]

Now the traces of the existence of men in North America during the Glacial epoch have in recent years been discovered in abundance, as for example, the palæolithic quartzite implements found in the drift near the city of St. Paul, which date from toward the close of the Glacial epoch[6]; the fragment of a human jaw found in the red clay deposited in Minnesota during an earlier part of that epoch;[7] the noble collection of palæoliths found by Dr. C. C. Abbott in the Trenton gravels in New Jersey; and the more recent discoveries of Dr. Metz and Mr. H. T. Cresson.

[Footnote 6: See Miss F. E. Babbitt, "Vestiges of Glacial Man
in Minnesota," in _Proceedings of the American Association_,
vol. xxxii., 1883.]

[Footnote 7: See N. H. Winchell, _Annual Report of the State
Geologist of Minnesota_, 1877, p. 60.]

[Sidenote: Discoveries in the Trenton gravel.]

[Sidenote: Discoveries in Ohio, Indiana, and Minnesota;]

The year 1873 marks an era in American archæology as memorable as the year 1841 in the investigation of the antiquity of man in Europe. With reference to these problems Dr. Abbott occupies a position similar to that of Boucher de Perthes in the Old World, and the Trenton valley is coming to be classic ground, like the valley of the Somme. In April, 1873, Dr. Abbott published his description of three rude implements which he had found some sixteen feet below the surface of the ground "in the gravels of a bluff overlooking the Delaware river." The implements were in place in an undisturbed deposit, and could not have found their way thither in any recent time; Dr. Abbott assigned them to the age of the Glacial drift. This was the beginning of a long series of investigations, in which Dr. Abbott's work was assisted and supplemented by Messrs. Whitney, Carr, Putnam, Shaler, Lewis, Wright, Haynes, Dawkins, and other eminent geologists and archæologists. By 1888 Dr. Abbott had obtained not less than 60 implements from various recorded depths in the gravel, while many others were found at depths not recorded or in the talus of the banks.[8] Three human skulls and other bones, along with the tusk of a mastodon, have been discovered in the same gravel. Careful studies have been made of the conditions under which the gravel-banks were deposited and their probable age; and it is generally agreed that they date from the later portion of the Glacial period, or about the time of the final recession of the ice-sheet from this region. At that time, in its climate and general aspect, New York harbour must have been much like a Greenland fiord of the present day. In 1883 Professor Wright of Oberlin, after a careful study of the Trenton deposits and their relations to the terrace and gravel deposits to the westward, predicted that similar palæolithic implements would be found in Ohio. Two years afterward, the prediction was verified by Dr. Metz, who found a true palæolith of black flint at Madisonville, in the Little Miami valley, eight feet below the surface. Since then further discoveries have been made in the same neighbourhood by Dr. Metz, and in Jackson county, Indiana, by Mr. H. T. Cresson; and the existence of man in that part of America toward the close of the Glacial period may be regarded as definitely established. The discoveries of Miss Babbitt and Professor Winchell, in Minnesota, carry the conclusion still farther, and add to the probability of the existence of a human population all the way from the Atlantic coast to the upper Mississippi valley at that remote antiquity.

[Footnote 8: Wright's _Ice Age in North America_, p. 516.]

[Sidenote: and in Delaware.]

A still more remarkable discovery was made by Mr. Cresson in July, 1887, at Claymont, in the north of Delaware. In a deep cut of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, in a stratum of Philadelphia red gravel and brick clay, Mr. Cresson obtained an unquestionable palæolith, and a few months afterward his diligent search was rewarded with another.[9] This formation dates from far back in the Glacial period. If we accept Dr. Croll's method of reckoning, we can hardly assign to it an antiquity less than 150,000 years.

[Footnote 9: The chipped implements discovered by Messrs.
Abbott, Metz, and Cresson, and by Miss Babbitt, are all on
exhibition at the Peabody Museum in Cambridge, whither it is
necessary to go if one would get a comprehensive view of the
relics of interglacial man in North America. The collection of
implements made by Dr. Abbott includes much more than the
palæoliths already referred to. It is one of the most important
collections in the world, and is worth a long journey to see.
Containing more than 20,000 implements, all found within a very
limited area in New Jersey, "as now arranged, the collection
exhibits at one and the same time the sequence of peoples and
phases of development in the valley of the Delaware, from
palæolithic man, through the intermediate period, to the recent
Indians, and the relative numerical proportion of the many
forms of their implements, each in its time.... It is doubtful
whether any similar collection exists from which a student can
gather so much information at sight as in this, where the
natural pebbles from the gravel begin the series, and the
beautifully chipped points of chert, jasper, and quartz
terminate it in one direction, and the polished celts and
grooved stone axes in the other." There are three principal
groups,--first, the interglacial palæoliths, secondly, the
argillite points and flakes, and thirdly, the arrow-heads,
knives, mortars and pestles, axes and hoes, ornamental stones,
etc., of Indians of the recent period. Dr. Abbott's _Primitive
Industry_, published in 1881, is a useful manual for studying
this collection; and an account of his discoveries in the
glacial gravels is given in _Reports of the Peabody Museum_,
vol. ii. pp. 30-48, 225-258; see also vol. iii. p. 492. A
succinct and judicious account of the whole subject is given by
H. W. Haynes, "The Prehistoric Archæology of North America," in
Winsor's _Narrative and Critical History_, vol. i. pp.
329-368.]

[Sidenote: The Calaveras skull.]

But according to Professor Josiah Whitney there is reason for supposing that man existed in California at a still more remote period. He holds that the famous skull discovered in 1866, in the gold-bearing gravels of Calaveras county, belongs to the Pliocene age.[10] If this be so, it seems to suggest an antiquity not less than twice as great as that just mentioned. The question as to the antiquity of the Calaveras skull is still hotly disputed among the foremost palæontologists, but as one reads the arguments one cannot help feeling that theoretical difficulties have put the objectors into a somewhat inhospitable attitude toward the evidence so ably presented by Professor Whitney. It has been too hastily assumed that, from the point of view of evolution, the existence of Pliocene man is improbable. Upon general considerations, however, we have strong reason for believing that human beings must have inhabited some portions of the earth throughout the whole duration of the Pliocene period, and it need not surprise us if their remains are presently discovered in more places than one.[11]

[Footnote 10: J. D. Whitney, "The Auriferous Gravels of the
Sierra Nevada", _Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy
at Harvard College_, Cambridge, 1880, vol. vi.]

[Footnote 11: In an essay published in 1882 on "Europe before
the Arrival of Man" (_Excursions of an Evolutionist_, pp.
1-40), I argued that if we are to find traces of the "missing
link," or primordial stock of primates from which man has been
derived, we must undoubtedly look for it in the Miocene (p.
36). I am pleased at finding the same opinion lately expressed
by one of the highest living authorities. The case is thus
stated by Alfred Russel Wallace: "The evidence we now possess
of the exact nature of the resemblance of man to the various
species of anthropoid apes, shows us that he has little special
affinity for any one rather than another species, while he
differs from them all in several important characters in which
they agree with each other. The conclusion to be drawn from
these facts is, that his points of affinity connect him with
the whole group, while his special peculiarities equally
separate him from the whole group, and that he must, therefore,
have diverged from the common ancestral form before the
existing types of anthropoid apes had diverged from each other.
Now this divergence almost certainly took place as early as the
Miocene period, because in the Upper Miocene deposits of
western Europe remains of two species of ape have been found
allied to the gibbons, one of them, dryopithecus, nearly as
large as a man, and believed by M. Lartet to have approached
man in its dentition more than the existing apes. We seem
hardly, therefore, to have reached in the Upper Miocene the
epoch of the common ancestor of man and the anthropoids."
(_Darwinism_, p. 455, London, 1889.) Mr. Wallace goes on to
answer the objection of Professor Boyd Dawkins, "that man did
not probably exist in Pliocene times, because almost all the
known mammalia of that epoch are distinct species from those
now living on the earth, and that the same changes of the
environment which led to the modification of other mammalian
species would also have led to a change in man." This argument,
at first sight apparently formidable, quite overlooks the fact
that in the evolution of man there came a point after which
variations in his intelligence were seized upon more and more
exclusively by natural selection, to the comparative neglect of
physical variations. After that point man changed but little in
physical characteristics, except in size and complexity of
brain. This is the theorem first propounded by Mr. Wallace in
the _Anthropological Review_, May, 1864; restated in his
_Contributions to Natural Selection_, chap. ix., in 1870; and
further extended and developed by me in connection with the
theory of man's origin first suggested in my lectures at
Harvard in 1871, and worked out in _Cosmic Philosophy_, part
ii., chapters xvi., xxi., xxii.]

[Sidenote: Pleistocene men and mammals.]

Whatever may be the final outcome of the Calaveras controversy, there can be no doubt as to the existence of man in North America far back in early Pleistocene times. The men of the River-drift, who long dwelt in western Europe during the milder intervals of the Glacial period, but seem to have become extinct toward the end of it, are well known to palæontologists through their bones and their rude tools. Contemporaneously with these Europeans of the River-drift there certainly lived some kind of men, of a similar low grade of culture, in the Mississippi valley and on both the Atlantic and Pacific slopes of North America. Along with these ancient Americans lived some terrestrial mammals that still survive, such as the elk, reindeer, prairie wolf, bison, musk-ox, and beaver; and many that have long been extinct, such as the mylodon, megatherium, megalonyx, mastodon, Siberian elephant, mammoth, at least six or seven species of ancestral horse, a huge bear similar to the cave bear of ancient Europe, a lion similar to the European cave lion, and a tiger as large as the modern tiger of Bengal.

[Sidenote: Elevation and subsidence.]

Now while the general relative positions of those stupendous abysses that hold the oceans do not appear to have undergone any considerable change since an extremely remote geological period, their shallow marginal portions have been repeatedly raised so as to add extensive territories to the edges of continents, and in some cases to convert archipelagoes into continents, and to join continents previously separated. Such elevation is followed in turn by an era of subsidence, and almost everywhere either the one process or the other is slowly going on. If you look at a model in relief of the continents and ocean-floors, such as may be seen at the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy in Cambridge, showing the results of a vast number of soundings in all parts of the world, you cannot fail to be struck with the shallowness of Bering Sea; it looks like a part of the continent rather than of the ocean, and indeed it is just that,--an area of submerged continent. So in the northern Atlantic there is a lofty ridge running from France to Greenland. The British islands, the Orkney, Shetland, and Færoe groups, and Iceland are the parts of this ridge high enough to remain out of water. The remainder of it is shallow sea. Again and again it has been raised, together with the floor of the German ocean, so as to become dry land. Both before and since the time when those stone tools were dropped into the red gravel from which Mr. Cresson took them the other day, the northwestern part of Europe has been solid continent for more than a hundred miles to the west of the French and Irish coasts, the Thames and Humber have been tributaries to the Rhine, which emptied into the Arctic ocean, and across the Atlantic ridge one might have walked to the New World dry-shod.[12] In similar wise the northwestern corner of America has repeatedly been joined to Siberia through the elevation of Bering Sea.

[Footnote 12: See, for example, the map of Europe in early
post-glacial times, in James Geikie's _Prehistoric Europe_.]

There have therefore been abundant opportunities for men to get into America from the Old World without crossing salt water. Probably this was the case with the ancient inhabitants of the Delaware and Little Miami valleys; it is not at all likely that men who used their kind of tools knew much about going on the sea in boats.

[Sidenote: Waves of migration.]

Whether the Indians are descended from this ancient population or not, is a question with which we have as yet no satisfactory method of dealing. It is not unlikely that these glacial men may have perished from off the face of the earth, having been crushed and supplanted by stronger races. There may have been several successive waves of migration, of which the Indians were the latest.[13] There is time enough for a great many things to happen in a thousand centuries. It will doubtless be long before all the evidence can be brought in and ransacked, but of one thing we may feel pretty sure; the past is more full of changes than we are apt to realize. Our first theories are usually too simple, and have to be enlarged and twisted into all manner of shapes in order to cover the actual complication of facts.[14]

[Footnote 13: "There are three human crania in the Museum,
which were found in the gravel at Trenton, one several feet
below the surface, the others near the surface. These skulls,
which are of remarkable uniformity, are of small size and of
oval shape, differing from all other skulls in the Museum. In
fact they are of a distinct type, and hence of the greatest
importance. So far as they go they indicate that palæolithic
man was exterminated, or has become lost by admixture with
others during the many thousand years which have passed since
he inhabited the Delaware valley." F. W. Putnam, "The Peabody
Museum," _Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society_,
1889, New Series, vol. vi. p. 189.]

[Footnote 14: An excellent example of this is the expansion and
modification undergone during the past twenty years by our
theories of the Aryan settlement of Europe. See Benfey's
preface to Fick's _Woerterbuch der Indogermanischen
Grundsprache_, 1868; Geiger, _Zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der
Menschheit_, 1871; Cuno, _Forschungen im Gebiete der alten
Voelkerkunde_, 1871; Schmidt, _Die Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse
der Indogermanischen Sprachen_, 1872; Poesche, _Die Arier_,
1878; Lindenschmit, _Handbuch der deutschen Alterthumskunde_,
1880; Penka, _Origines Ariacæ_, 1883, and _Die Herkunft der
Arier_, 1886; Spiegel, _Die arische Periode und ihre Zustande_,
1887; Rendal, _Cradle of the Aryans_, 1889; Schrader,
_Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte_, 1883, and second edition
translated into English, with the title _Prehistoric
Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples_, 1890. Schrader's is an
epoch-making book. An attempt to defend the older and simpler
views is made by Max Müller, _Biographies of Words and the Home
of the Aryas_, 1888; see also Van den Gheyn, _L'origine
européenne des Aryas_, 1889. The whole case is well summed up
by Isaac Taylor, _Origin of the Aryans_, 1889.]

[Sidenote: The Cave men of Europe in the Glacial Period.]

[Sidenote: The Eskimos are probably a remnant of the Cave men.]

In this connection the history of the Eskimos introduces us to some interesting problems. Mention has been made of the River-drift men who lived in Europe during the milder intervals of the Glacial period. At such times they made their way into Germany and Britain, along with leopards, hyænas, and African elephants. But as the cold intervals came on and the edge of the polar ice-sheet crept southward and mountain glaciers filled up the valleys, these men and beasts retreated into Africa; and their place was taken by a sub-arctic race of men known as the Cave men, along with the reindeer and arctic fox and musk-sheep. More than once with the secular alternations of temperature did the River-drift men thus advance and retreat and advance again, and as they advanced the Cave men retreated, both races yielding to an enemy stronger than either,--to wit, the hostile climate. At length all traces of the River-drift men vanish, but what of the Cave men? They have left no representatives among the present populations of Europe, but the musk-sheep, which always went and came with the Cave men, is to-day found only in sub-arctic America among the Eskimos, and the fossilized bones of the musk-sheep lie in a regular trail across the eastern hemisphere, from the Pyrenees through Germany and Russia and all the vast length of Siberia. The stone arrow-heads, the sewing-needles, the necklaces and amulets of cut teeth, and the daggers made from antler, used by the Eskimos, resemble so minutely the implements of the Cave men, that if recent Eskimo remains were to be put into the Pleistocene caves of France and England they would be indistinguishable in appearance from the remains of the Cave men which are now found there.[15] There is another striking point of resemblance. The Eskimos have a talent for artistic sketching of men and beasts, and scenes in which men and beasts figure, which is absolutely unrivalled among rude peoples. One need but look at the sketches by common Eskimo fishermen which illustrate Dr. Henry Rink's fascinating book on Danish Greenland, to realize that this rude Eskimo art has a character as pronounced and unmistakable in its way as the much higher art of the Japanese. Now among the European remains of the Cave men are many sketches of mammoths, cave bears, and other animals now extinct, and hunting scenes so artfully and vividly portrayed as to bring distinctly before us many details of daily life in an antiquity so vast that in comparison with it the interval between the pyramids of Egypt and the Eiffel tower shrinks into a point. Such a talent is unique among savage peoples. It exists only among the living Eskimos and the ancient Cave men; and when considered in connection with so many other points of agreement, and with the indisputable fact that the Cave men were a sub-arctic race, it affords a strong presumption in favour of the opinion of that great palæontologist, Professor Boyd Dawkins, that the Eskimos of North America are to-day the sole survivors of the race that made their homes in the Pleistocene caves of western Europe.[16]

[Footnote 15: See Dawkins, _Early Man in Britain_, pp.
233-245.]

[Footnote 16: According to Dr. Rink the Eskimos formerly
inhabited the central portions of North America, and have
retreated or been driven northward; he would make the Eskimos
of Siberia an offshoot from those of America, though he freely
admits that there are grounds for entertaining the opposite
view. Dr. Abbott is inclined to attribute an Eskimo origin to
some of the palæoliths of the Trenton gravel. On the other
hand, Mr. Clements Markham derives the American Eskimos from
those of Siberia. It seems to me that these views may be
comprehended and reconciled in a wider one. I would suggest
that during the Glacial period the ancestral Eskimos may have
gradually become adapted to arctic conditions of life; that in
the mild interglacial intervals they migrated northward along
with the musk-sheep; and that upon the return of the cold they
migrated southward again, keeping always near the edge of the
ice-sheet. Such a southward migration would naturally enough
bring them in one continent down to the Pyrenees, in the other
down to the Alleghanies; and naturally enough the modern
inquirer has his attention first directed to the indications of
their final retreat, _both_ northward in America and
northeastward from Europe through Siberia. This is like what
happened with so many plants and animals. Compare Darwin's
remarks on "Dispersal in the Glacial Period," _Origin of
Species_, chap. xii.

The best books on the Eskimos are those of Dr. Rink, _Tales and
Traditions of the Eskimo_, Edinburgh, 1875; _Danish Greenland_,
London, 1877; _The Eskimo Tribes, their Distribution and
Characteristics, especially in regard to Language_, Copenhagen,
1887. See also Franz Boas, "The Central Eskimo," _Sixth Report
of the Bureau of Ethnology_, Washington, 1888, pp. 399-669; W.
H. Dall. _Alaska and its Resources_, 1870; Markham, "Origin and
Migrations of the Greenland Esquimaux," _Journal of the Royal
Geographical Society_, 1865; Cranz, _Historie von Groenland_,
Leipsic, 1765; Petitot, _Traditions indiennes du Canada
nord-ouest_, Paris, 1886; Pilling's _Bibliography of the Eskimo
Language_, Washington, 1887; Wells and Kelly, _English-Eskimo
and Eskimo-English Vocabularies, with Ethnographical Memoranda
concerning the Arctic Eskimos in Alaska and Siberia_,
Washington, 1890; Carstensen's _Two Summers in Greenland_,
London, 1890.]

If we have always been accustomed to think of races of men only as they are placed on modern maps, it at first seems strange to think of England and France as ever having been inhabited by Eskimos. Facts equally strange may be cited in abundance from zoölogy and botany. The camel is found to-day only in Arabia and Bactria; yet in all probability the camel originated in America,[17] and is an intruder into what we are accustomed to call his native deserts, just as the people of the United States are European intruders upon the soil of America. So the giant trees of Mariposa grove are now found only in California, but there was once a time when they were as common in Europe[18] as maple-trees to-day in a New England village.

[Footnote 17: Wallace, _Geographical Distribution of Animals_,
vol. ii. p. 155.]

[Footnote 18: Asa Gray, "Sequoia and its History," in his
_Darwiniana_, pp. 205-235.]

[Sidenote: There was probably no connection or intercourse by water between ancient America and the Old World.]

Familiarity with innumerable facts of this sort, concerning the complicated migrations and distribution of plants and animals, has entirely altered our way of looking at the question as to the origin of the American Indians. As already observed, we can hardly be said to possess sufficient data for determining whether they are descended from the Pleistocene inhabitants of America, or have come in some later wave of migration from the Old World. Nor can we as yet determine whether they were earlier or later comers than the Eskimos. But since we have got rid of that feeling of speculative necessity above referred to, for bringing the red men from Asia within the historic period, it has become more and more clear that they have dwelt upon American soil for a very long time. The aboriginal American, as we know him, with his language and legends, his physical and mental peculiarities, his social observances and customs, is most emphatically a native and not an imported article. He belongs to the American continent as strictly as its opossums and armadillos, its maize and its golden-rod, or any members of its aboriginal fauna and flora belong to it. In all probability he came from the Old World at some ancient period, whether pre-glacial or post-glacial, when it was possible to come by land; and here in all probability, until the arrival of white men from Europe, he remained undisturbed by later comers, unless the Eskimos may have been such. There is not a particle of evidence to suggest any connection or intercourse between aboriginal America and Asia within any such period as the last twenty thousand years, except in so far as there may perhaps now and then have been slight surges of Eskimo tribes back and forth across Bering strait.

[Sidenote: There is one great American "red" race.]

The Indians must surely be regarded as an entirely different stock from the Eskimos. On the other hand, the most competent American ethnologists are now pretty thoroughly agreed that all the aborigines south of the Eskimo region, all the way from Hudson's Bay to Cape Horn, belong to one and the same race. It was formerly supposed that the higher culture of the Aztecs, Mayas, and Peruvians must indicate that they were of different race from the more barbarous Algonquins and Dakotas; and a speculative necessity was felt for proving that, whatever may have been the case with the other American peoples, this higher culture at any rate must have been introduced within the historic period from the Old World.[19] This feeling was caused partly by the fact that, owing to crude and loosely-framed conceptions of the real points of difference between civilization and barbarism, this Central American culture was absurdly exaggerated. As the further study of the uncivilized parts of the world has led to more accurate and precise conceptions, this kind of speculative necessity has ceased to be felt. There is an increasing disposition among scholars to agree that the warrior of Anahuac and the shepherd of the Andes were just simply Indians, and that their culture was no less indigenous than that of the Cherokees or Mohawks.

[Footnote 19: Illustrations may be found in plenty in the
learned works of Brasseur de Bourbourg:--_Histoire des nations
civilisées du Mexique et de l'Amérique centrale_, 4 vols.,
Paris, 1857-58; _Popol Vuh_, Paris, 1861; _Quatre lettres sur
le Mexique_, Paris, 1868; _Le manuscrit Troano_, Paris, 1870,
etc.]

[Sidenote: Different senses in which the word "race" is used.]

To prevent any possible misconception of my meaning, a further word of explanation may be needed at this point. The word "race" is used in such widely different senses that there is apt to be more or less vagueness about it. The difference is mainly in what logicians call extension; sometimes the word covers very little ground, sometimes a great deal. We say that the people of England, of the United States, and of New South Wales belong to one and the same race; and we say that an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Greek belong to three different races. There is a sense in which both these statements are true. But there is also a sense in which we may say that the Englishman, the Frenchman, and the Greek belong to one and the same race; and that is when we are contrasting them as white men with black men or yellow men. Now we may correctly say that a Shawnee, an Ojibwa, and a Kickapoo belong to one and the same Algonquin race; that a Mohawk and a Tuscarora belong to one and the same Iroquois race; but that an Algonquin differs from an Iroquois somewhat as an Englishman differs from a Frenchman. No doubt we may fairly say that the Mexicans encountered by Cortes differed in race from the Iroquois encountered by Champlain, as much as an Englishman differs from an Albanian or a Montenegrin. But when we are contrasting aboriginal Americans with white men or yellow men, it is right to say that Mexicans and Iroquois belong to the same great red race.

In some parts of the world two strongly contrasted races have become mingled together, or have existed side by side for centuries without intermingling. In Europe the big blonde Aryan-speaking race has mixed with the small brunette Iberian race, producing the endless varieties in stature and complexion which may be seen in any drawing-room in London or New York. In Africa south of Sahara, on the other hand, we find, interspersed among negro tribes but kept perfectly distinct, that primitive dwarfish race with yellow skin and tufted hair to which belong the Hottentots and Bushmen, the Wambatti lately discovered by Mr. Stanley, and other tribes.[20] Now in America south of Hudson's Bay the case seems to have been quite otherwise, and more as it would have been in Europe if there had been only Aryans, or in Africa if there had been only blacks.[21]

[Footnote 20: See Werner, "The African Pygmies," _Popular
Science Monthly_, September, 1890,--a thoughtful and
interesting article.]

[Footnote 21: This sort of illustration requires continual
limitation and qualification. The case in ancient America was
not _quite_ as it would have been in Europe if there had been
only Aryans there. The semi-civilized people of the Cordilleras
were relatively brachycephalous as compared with the more
barbarous Indians north and east of New Mexico. It is correct
to call this a distinction of race if we mean thereby a
distinction developed upon American soil, a differentiation
within the limits of the red race, and not an intrusion from
without. In this sense the Caribs also may be regarded as a
distinct sub-race; and, in the same sense, we may call the
Kafirs a distinct sub-race of African blacks. See, as to the
latter, Tylor, _Anthropology_, p. 39.]

[Sidenote: No necessary connection between differences in culture and differences in race.]

The belief that the people of the Cordilleras must be of radically different race from other Indians was based upon the vague notion that grades of culture have some necessary connection with likenesses and differences of race. There is no such necessary connection.[22] Between the highly civilized Japanese and their barbarous Mandshu cousins the difference in culture is much greater than the difference between Mohawks and Mexicans; and the same may be said of the people of Israel and Judah in contrast with the Arabs of the desert, or of the imperial Romans in comparison with their Teutonic kinsmen as described by Tacitus.

[Footnote 22: As Sir John Lubbock well says, "Different races
in similar stages of development often present more features of
resemblance to one another than the same race does to itself in
different stages of its history." (_Origin of Civilization_, p.
11.) If every student of history and ethnology would begin by
learning this lesson, the world would be spared a vast amount
of unprofitable theorizing.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Grades of culture.]

At this point, in order to prepare ourselves the more clearly to understand sundry facts with which we shall hereafter be obliged to deal, especially the wonderful experiences of the Spanish conquerors, it will be well to pause for a moment and do something toward defining the different grades of culture through which men have passed in attaining to the grade which can properly be called civilization. Unless we begin with clear ideas upon this head we cannot go far toward understanding the ancient America that was first visited and described for us by Spaniards. The various grades of culture need to be classified, and that most original and suggestive scholar, the late Lewis Morgan of Rochester, made a brilliant attempt in this direction, to which the reader's attention is now invited.

[Sidenote: Distinction between Savagery and Barbarism.]

[Sidenote: Origin of pottery.]

Below _Civilization_ Mr. Morgan[23] distinguishes two principal grades or stages of culture, namely _Savagery_ and _Barbarism_. There is much looseness and confusion in the popular use of these terms, and this is liable to become a fruitful source of misapprehension in the case of any statement involving either of them. When popular usage discriminates between them it discriminates in the right direction; there is a vague but not uncertain feeling that savagery is a lower stage than barbarism. But ordinarily the discrimination is not made and the two terms are carelessly employed as if interchangeable. Scientific writers long since recognized a general difference between savagery and barbarism, but Mr. Morgan was the first to suggest a really useful criterion for distinguishing between them. His criterion is the making of pottery; and his reason for selecting it is that the making of pottery is something that presupposes village life and more or less progress in the simpler arts. The earlier methods of boiling food were either putting it into holes in the ground lined with skins and then using heated stones, or else putting it into baskets coated with clay to be supported over a fire. The clay served the double purpose of preventing liquids from escaping and protecting the basket against the flame. It was probably observed that the clay was hardened by the fire, and thus in course of time it was found that the clay would answer the purpose without the basket.[24] Whoever first made this ingenious discovery led the way from savagery to barbarism. Throughout the present work we shall apply the name "savages" only to uncivilized people who do not make pottery.

[Footnote 23: See his great work on _Ancient Society_, New
York, 1877.]

[Footnote 24: See the evidence in Tylor, _Researches into the
Early History of Mankind_, pp. 269-272; cf. Lubbock,
_Prehistoric Times_, p. 573; and see Cushing's masterly "Study
of Pueblo Pottery," etc., _Reports of Bureau of Ethnology_,
iv., 473-521.]

[Sidenote: Lower status of savagery.]

But within each of these two stages Mr. Morgan distinguishes three subordinate stages, or Ethnic Periods, which may be called either lower, middle, and upper status, or older, middle, and later periods. The lower status of savagery was that wholly prehistoric stage when men lived in their original restricted habitat and subsisted on fruit and nuts. To this period must be assigned the beginning of articulate speech. All existing races of men had passed beyond it at an unknown antiquity.

[Sidenote: Middle status of savagery.]

Men began to pass beyond it when they discovered how to catch fish and how to use fire. They could then begin (following coasts and rivers) to spread over the earth. The middle status of savagery, thus introduced, ends with the invention of that compound weapon, the bow and arrow. The natives of Australia, who do not know this weapon, are still in the middle status of savagery.[25]

[Footnote 25: Lumholtz, _Among Cannibals_, London, 1889, gives
a vivid picture of aboriginal life in Australia.]

[Sidenote: Upper status of savagery.]

The invention of the bow and arrow, which marks the upper status of savagery, was not only a great advance in military art, but it also vastly increased men's supply of food by increasing their power of killing wild game. The lowest tribes in America, such as those upon the Columbia river, the Athabaskans of Hudson's Bay, the Fuegians and some other South American tribes, are in the upper status of savagery.

[Sidenote: Lower status of barbarism: it ended differently in the two hemispheres.]

The transition from this status to the lower status of barbarism was marked, as before observed, by the invention of pottery. The end of the lower status of barbarism was marked in the Old World by the domestication of animals other than the dog, which was probably domesticated at a much earlier period as an aid to the hunter. The domestication of horses and asses, oxen and sheep, goats and pigs, marks of course an immense advance. Along with it goes considerable development of agriculture, thus enabling a small territory to support many people. It takes a wide range of country to support hunters. In the New World, except in Peru, the only domesticated animal was the dog. Horses, oxen, and the other animals mentioned did not exist in America, during the historic period, until they were brought over from Europe by the Spaniards. In ancient American society there was no such thing as a pastoral stage of development,[26] and the absence of domesticable animals from the western hemisphere may well be reckoned as very important among the causes which retarded the progress of mankind in this part of the world.

[Footnote 26: The case of Peru, which forms an apparent but not
real exception to this general statement, will be considered
below in chap. ix.]

[Sidenote: Importance of Indian corn.]

On the other hand the ancient Americans had a cereal plant peculiar to the New World, which made comparatively small demands upon the intelligence and industry of the cultivator. Maize or "Indian corn" has played a most important part in the history of the New World, as regards both the red men and the white men. It could be planted without clearing or ploughing the soil. It was only necessary to girdle the trees with a stone hatchet, so as to destroy their leaves and let in the sunshine. A few scratches and digs were made in the ground with a stone digger, and the seed once dropped in took care of itself. The ears could hang for weeks after ripening, and could be picked off without meddling with the stalk; there was no need of threshing and winnowing. None of the Old World cereals can be cultivated without much more industry and intelligence. At the same time, when Indian corn is sown in tilled land it yields with little labour more than twice as much food per acre as any other kind of grain. This was of incalculable advantage to the English settlers of New England, who would have found it much harder to gain a secure foothold upon the soil if they had had to begin by preparing it for wheat and rye without the aid of the beautiful and beneficent American plant.[27] The Indians of the Atlantic coast of North America for the most part lived in stockaded villages, and cultivated their corn along with beans, pumpkins, squashes, and tobacco; but their cultivation was of the rudest sort,[28] and population was too sparse for much progress toward civilization. But Indian corn, when sown in carefully tilled and irrigated land, had much to do with the denser population, the increasing organization of labour, and the higher development in the arts, which characterized the confederacies of Mexico and Central America and all the pueblo Indians of the southwest. The potato played a somewhat similar part in Peru. Hence it seems proper to take the regular employment of tillage with irrigation as marking the end of the lower period of barbarism in the New World. To this Mr. Morgan adds the use of adobe-brick and stone in architecture, which also distinguished the Mexicans and their neighbours from the ruder tribes of North and South America. All these ruder tribes, except the few already mentioned as in the upper period of savagery, were somewhere within the lower period of barbarism. Thus the Algonquins and Iroquois, the Creeks, the Dakotas, etc., when first seen by white men, were within this period; but some had made much further progress within it than others. For example, the Algonquin tribe of Ojibwas had little more than emerged from savagery, while the Creeks and Cherokees had made considerable advance toward the middle status of barbarism.

[Footnote 27: See Shaler, "Physiography of North America," in
Winsor's _Narr. and Crit. Hist._ vol. iv. p. xiii.]

[Footnote 28: "No manure was used," says Mr. Parkman, speaking
of the Hurons, "but at intervals of from ten to twenty years,
when the soil was exhausted and firewood distant, the village
was abandoned and a new one built." _Jesuits in North America_,
p. xxx.]

[Sidenote: Middle status of barbarism.]

Let us now observe some characteristics of this extremely interesting middle period. It began, we see, in the eastern hemisphere with the domestication of other animals than the dog, and in the western hemisphere with cultivation by irrigation and the use of adobe-brick and stone for building. It also possessed another feature which distinguished it from earlier periods, in the materials of which its tools were made. In the periods of savagery hatchets and spear-heads were made of rudely chipped stones. In the lower period of barbarism the chipping became more and more skilful until it gave place to polishing. In the middle period tools were greatly multiplied, improved polishing gave sharp and accurate points and edges, and at last metals began to be used as materials preferable to stone. In America the metal used was copper, and in some spots where it was very accessible there were instances of its use by tribes not in other respects above the lower status of barbarism,--as for example, the "mound-builders." In the Old World the metal used was the alloy of copper and tin familiarly known as bronze, and in its working it called for a higher degree of intelligence than copper.

[Sidenote: Working of metals.]

Toward the close of the middle period of barbarism the working of metals became the most important element of progress, and the period may be regarded as ending with the invention of the process of smelting iron ore. According to this principle of division, the inhabitants of the lake villages of ancient Switzerland, who kept horses and oxen, pigs and sheep, raised wheat and ground it into flour, and spun and wove linen garments, but knew nothing of iron, were in the middle status of barbarism. The same was true of the ancient Britons before they learned the use of iron from their neighbours in Gaul. In the New World the representatives of the middle status of barbarism were such peoples as the Zuñis, the Aztecs, the Mayas, and the Peruvians.

[Sidenote: Upper status of barbarism.]

[Sidenote: Beginning of civilization.]