Migration Map
Let us go back to the Tower of Babel, or Confusion, so called because God there confounded the language of the people, and "scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth."
Concerning Ham, Japheth and Shem, it is written: "These are the three sons of Noah; and of them was the whole earth overspread" (Gen. ix:19).
Broadly speaking, we find that Ham and his descendants received Africa, Arabia, Canaan and Persia. Japheth and his descendants received Central, Northern and Western Asia and all of Europe.
We will not follow the history of these two sons of Noah further at this time except to say that the descendants of Ham were the first, and those of Japheth the last to establish civilization.
As to Shem and his descendants, broadly speaking, their possessions began with Canaan, which was taken from the Hamites and extended east and southeast through Southern Asia, including what is now known as India, Burmah, China, Japan, and the great ancient Malay or Polynesian Empire.
As proof that they migrated eastward, we read of the sons of Joktan, a near descendant from Shem, "And their dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar,a mount of the East."
We thus find that the general direction of the Shemites was east. As proof that the adjacent islands were peopled at this early age, Josephus says, in his "Antiquities of the Jews," chap. v., "After this they were dispersed abroad on account of the difference of their languages, and went out by colonies everywhere, and each colony took possession of that land unto which God led them, so that the whole continent was filled with them, both the inland and maritime countries. There were some also who passed over the sea inships,and inhabitedthe islands;and some of those nations still retain the denominations which were given them by their first founders, but some have lost them, and some have only admitted certain changes in them, that they might be more intelligible to the inhabitants."
There can be but one meaning to this language. It is that the Hamites extended their settlements to the islands adjacent to Africa, such as Madagascar and the Cape Verde Islands. The Japhethites extended their settlements to those adjacent to Europe, such as the British Islands, and the Shemites extended their settlements to those islands they found east and southeast from Asia, which were beyond a doubt what afterward became the Malay or Polynesian Empire.
This empire was described by El-Masudi, who wrote in the tenth century. He represented it as lying between the dominions of India and China, and as an empire whose splendor and high civilization were greatly celebrated; and he says: "The population, and the number of the troops of this kingdom, can not be counted, and the islands under the sceptre of its monarch (the Mahrajh, the Lord of the Sixth Sea) are so numerous that the fastest sailing-vessel is not able to go round them in two years."
We find this empire was referred to by Ptolemy and Marco Polo, the great Venetian traveler, who visited it. They called it Ja-ba-din. It included the peninsula of Malacca, Aracan, Chittagong, the country of the Lower Ganges, the coast of Coromandel, the Island of Borneo, one of the largest in the world, Celebes, Java and Sumatra, and all others between Australia and Eastern Asia. Traces of the colonies and ancient commercial power of the Malays are found in the Indian Ocean, the Isles of Bourbon and Mauritius in the Southern Hemisphere, whose aborigines are of Malayan descent. Moreover, the descendants of the Malays, with much of their language, and traces of their ancient civilization, are found on all the larger islands between Asia and this hemisphere, as also the western part of South America.
Pickering, the learned ethnologist of the United States Exploring Expedition, commanded by Lieutenant Wilkes, during a three-years' voyage, who had an excellent opportunity for comparing the different races of the Pacific Ocean and the opposite shores of the continents separated by it, thinks that all the copper-colored aborigines of North and South America are of Mongolian descent except the Esquimaux (who seem to be of the same race with the Northern Asiatics), and the aboriginal Peruvians and Chilians, whom he supposes to be of Malayan extraction; and he has made that distribution of them upon the ethnographical chart published with the maps of the report of the expedition. His opinion is entitled to great respect, and is substantially the same as that of the celebrated missionary, Williams, who, after spending thirty years among the tropical islands of the Pacific Ocean, was massacred by the savages of one lately discovered.
He was a devoted Christian hero, a splendid scholar, and was deeply interested in natural science. He published an account of his researches and life in the Pacific in a work known as "The Missionary Enterprise," in which he proved conclusively that all the copper-colored occupants of the Sandwich, Society and Friendly Isles, and, indeed, all the other groups of that ocean, and also the Quichuas, or Incas Indians of Peru, are of Malayan origin. Their complexion and anatomical traits are the same; and their languages are all dialects of those of Malacca, as he has proved by placing a sufficient number of common words from each of their tongues in parallel columns. The Malays, and their kindred in these clusters of isles, are, as their ancestors were in past ages, as nautical in their habits as the ancient Phoenicians or the Northmen.
As Prof. Edward Fontaine well says in his great work, "How the World Was Peopled," "The settlement of the islands of the Pacific, and even of the western shores of South America, was not only an easy task to the nautical Malays of the empire of 'the islands of the sixth sea,' but, in some cases, an unavoidable consequence of their adventurous life upon the ocean. The strong and regular winds which blow across the Pacific facilitate the voyages of all who attempt its passage. The inhabitants of it use now, as they have done from time immemorial, vessels admirably adapted to its navigation. They still send 'ambassadors in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters.' {FN} Their double canoes, made of the hollowed trunks of trees strongly lashed together, and furnished with what are termed 'outriggers,' formed of light and buoyant logs of bamboo attached to their gunwales, and projected a considerable distance beyond their sides, can not be capsized. Thebamboois theArundo giganteus(the gigantic bulrush); and, when the boat is rolled by the waves from side to side, these outriggers rest upon them and prevent it from turning over. They are dexterous anglers and expert swimmers. The feat of Leander, in swimming across the Hellespont, is often outdone by the almost amphibious natives of the Polynesian isles. Embarked with their families in their double canoes, and supplied with their calabashes (large, strong gourds of water), and angling and fowling implements, they live upon the ocean's breast, which affords ample nourishment for all their simple wants. The copious showers, which fall during the prevalence of the monsoons (winds which blow six months in one direction, and the other six in the opposite), furnish them with an abundant supply of water. So free is that ocean from storms that it has acquired the name it bears, the Pacific. Far out of sight of land, they are in no great danger of any accident, except that of losing their reckoning. They are very liable to this misfortune from the want of a compass, a knowledge which their ancestors probably possessed, but which they have lost. If they miss their course, which often happens, their lives are not much imperiled, but it is then almost impossible for them to regain their native isles. They can live upon the fish, aquatic fowl, eggs, coconuts and other food afforded by the surface of the deep, and drift before the gale until it wafts them to America, or to some island west of its shores."
{FN} Isaiah xviii,2.
In this manner South America undoubtedly received her largest, earliest and most civilized population. They were of theShemiticbranch of the human family,Malay Polynesian division,and reached the shores of Chile and Peru, by way ofthe islands of the Pacific.We have shown by quotations from the Bible and Josephus that one branch of the descendants of Shem journeyed east, took to ships and settled the adjacent islands of the sea.
Now these people must have had some knowledge of ship-building and navigation. Had not their ancestors been saved in the ark? {FN} And were not the Hamites, or Phoenicians, becoming a great maritime people possibly at this very period, on the shores of the Mediterranean and Atlantic Ocean?
{FN} A ship recently constructed on the plan of the ark has proven a perfect success as a vessel for heavy freight.
So we have proven that they actually started across the Pacific Ocean not many centuries after the dispersion at Babel. Is it not the most reasonable and probable conclusion that since the western shore of the Pacific was their place of embarkation, and eastward their direction (and we have certainly proven these two points), that America would eventually be theirgoalordestination?
God had told the descendants of Noah to "Multiply and replenish the earth"; they at first refused to obey his command, whereupon He determined to make them obey, and, as we have seen, confounded their language and dispersed them. Now is it reasonable that He would have been satisfied with a partial obedience, resulting only in the peopling of a few islands of the Pacific, when the boundless continent of America lay upon its other shore? Can any reasonable man believe that those ancient mariners, propelled by the power of Omnipotence in fulfilment of His command, and with the known spirit of restlessness and discontent which has characterized the progressive men of all ages, could discover a few islands lying in the direction they were sailing, but fail to eventually find avast hemispherelying in the same course and extending through four of the zones of the earth?
We submit that in drifting before the wind, or even in a voyage of discovery, many islands lying almost in the wake of the ship might be passed at night without discovery, but it is absolutely impossible to pass a continent without seeing it and touching it at some point.
Men find islands peopled and evidence of a former civilization which the inhabitants can give no account of, and it excites little or no interest, but if a continent is discovered with civilized people, and evidence of a greater civilization in its past history, they at once get excited and begin to evolve a fine-spun theory out of the thin air, and charge it all up to the Phoenicians, lost ten tribes of Israel, the inhabitants of the sunken continent of Atlantis, or that God created another Adam and Eve, from whom the people of this continent had their origin. In the classic language of Puck, "What fools these mortals be." They can people the islands of the Pacific without another Adam and Eve, or the aid of the Phoenicians, but if it is a continent under consideration, it is impossible. Why not, in the study of ethnology and history, follow the leading of facts, rather than force the facts to prove a pet theory?
Besides the ancient evidence given, there is much modern proof that South America, at least, was first settled by the Malays from Polynesia.
Captain Cook found at Watteoo three natives of Otaheite, who had lost their ocean-path and had been blown away 550 miles from the land of their birth.
Kotzebue found on one of the Caroline isles a native of Ulea, who had been driven by the wind, after a voyage of eight months, to this spot, which is fifteen hundred miles from his native isle. He and his companions had performed this remarkable voyage in an open single canoe with outriggers. Numerous similar involuntary exploits of this maritime race are related. A singular case is mentioned in the official narrative of the Japan Expedition, conducted by Commodore Perry. On his return voyage, in the open west Pacific Ocean, he took on board a boat-load of twelve savages, who called themselves Sillibaboos. They could give no intelligible idea of the island from whence they came, and which has not been discovered. They were lost and were drifting before the wind, they knew not where, and had been wandering upon the unknown waters many days; but they were in good condition, and supporting themselves well upon the produce of the prolific ocean which swelled around them. Amid the numerous clusters of islands which gem its bosom, they would probably have soon found a new home.
One of the most remarkable voyages recorded of modern times was that of Captain Bligh and his companions. It seems that the worthy captain of the good ship-of-war Bounty was sent by the British Government in 1787, to transplant the bread-fruit and other esculents, indigenous to the tropical islands of the Pacific, to Jamaica, and other islands of the West Indies belonging to Great Britain. He remained more than a year in Otaheite, completed his cargo of seeds and plants and set sail for Jamaica. But while they were yet in sight of the island, a majority of the crew, headed by Lieutenant Christian, mutinied and seized the ship. Captain Bligh and twenty men who were faithful to him were put in an open boat only twenty-five feet long. Only five days' rations of wine, water, bread and pork were thrown into it with them. They had a compass, but no weapons, mast or sail and the gunwales rose only a few inches above the surface of the water. In this frail craft they were turned adrift to perish upon the ocean. The mutineers doubtless thought that they would be sunk by the first storm that might arise or be massacred by the first savages they might meet. These desperate mutineers were incited to commit this crime by an aversion to leave the lazy life they had led the past year with the amiable and profligate natives of Otaheite, among whom they had formed attachments, and an unwillingness to resume the hardships of sailors under the strict discipline of Captain Bligh. This officer proved himself a hero, able to meet successfully the dangers of his desperate situation, and to triumph over them by his skill and courage, and lived to be promoted to the rank of admiral, under Lord Nelson, for services at the battle of Copenhagen. With a pair of apothecary's scales he divided the scant provisions of five days to make them last forfiftyin which he hoped to reach the Philippine Islands, or Java, nearly four thousand miles distant. Favored by the monsoon, which blew steadily from the east (six months later it would have blown in the opposite course), in the direction of those islands, by stormless showers, by alternate rowing, bailing and resting the crew, by his persevering watchfulness, and their implicit obedience to his judicious orders, he accomplished in that time this almost miraculous voyage, with the loss of only one man, who was killed by the savages of an unknown island lying in his course, with whom he attempted to barter for supplies.
Remember this successful voyage of nearly four thousand miles (farther than across the Atlantic Ocean) from the Society Islands to Timour, was made in fifty days. Moreover, it was made in an open boat, inferior to those mentioned by Homer and Virgil, or to any sculptured upon the monuments of Egypt and Assyria, and with only the tenth part of the provisions necessary for such an enterprise. This voyage shows that the Malays or the Arabians could have accomplished a similar feat of nautical skill in past ages.
Again we are indebted to Prof. Edward Fontaine for this remarkable story. Should the reader care to follow the fortunes of Christian and his fellow mutineers he will find the entire account in the sixth chapter of "How the World Was Peopled."
The Malay empire began to decline about the tenth century, when their continental possessions were taken from them by the Tartar Khans, Mohammedan sultans and rajahs, who founded new dynasties in China, Farther India and Hindostan. They also lost their distant island colonies, and their civilization waned in Asia. Myriads of them, dwelling upon the islands near that continent, degenerated into the fierce and daring pirates who were so long the terror of the Eastern seas. Others, more remote, lost even the use of the compass, and sank into the condition of the Sandwich and Society Islanders; while those in Peru, separated long from their Asiatic mother-country, and thrown on their own resources, established and maintained anoriginalcivilization which amazed their Spanish conquerors.
There is evidence of ancient civilization in the ruins found on many of the larger islands of the Pacific Ocean, especially the Society, Friendly, Easter and Sandwich groups, but these ruins are essentially different from anything found in America.
It has been proven conclusively that the ancient Malayan empire was maritime and commercial; it had fleets of great ships, and there is evidence that its influence reached most of the Pacific islands. This is shown by the fact that dialects of the Malay language have been found in most of these islands as far in this direction as Easter Island. The language of the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islanders, for instance, is Malayan, and has a close relationship to that now spoken in the Malay islands.
The Malays still read and write, have some literature and retain many of the arts and usages of civilization, but they are now very far below the condition indicated by their ancient ruins, and described by El Masudi, who traveled among them a thousand years ago.
It is practically certain that their ships visited the western coast of America, and traded with the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians in the days of their greatest power and activity. This theory amounts almost to a certainty when it is remembered that the Malays made such a permanent settlement of the Easter Islands as to leave their language there. According to old traditions of both Mexico and Peru, the Pacific coast in both countries was anciently visited by a foreign people, who came in ships. The unmistakable traces of Malay influence everywhere in the islands of the Pacific can have but one meaning. The Malays formerly sailed the ocean, occupied its islands and doubtless visited America.
The Abbé de Bourbourg is responsible for the statement that "It has been known to scholars nearly a century, that the Chinese and Japanese were acquainted with the American continent in the fifth century of our era. Their ships visited it. They called it Fu-Sang, and said it was situated at the distance of twenty thousandlifrom Ta-Han. M. Leon de Rosny has ascertained that Fu-Sang is the topic of a curious notice in the 'Wa-Kan-San-tai-dzon-ye,' which is the name of the great Japanese Encyclopedia. In that work Fu-Sang is said to be situated east of Japan, beyond the ocean, at a distance of about twenty thousandli(between seven and eight thousand miles) from Ta-nan-Kouek. Readers who may desire to make comparisons between the Japanese descriptions of Fu-Sang and some country in America, will find astonishing analogies in the countries described by Castaneda, Fra-Marcos de Niza, in the province of Cibola." In Peru, in the time of Pizarro, the oldest and most enduring stone structures were said to have been built by "bearded white men," who came from thewestand were called "sons of the sea." They were probably Malays or Arabians.
This is the only evidence we have found of an imported civilization in Peru, and this is more legend and tradition than positive history.
We are firmly convinced that civilization or self-improvement began among the savages of America, probably Peru, as it did three thousand years or more ago among the savages of Egypt and Babylon. We believe that the civilization found in America originatedhereand nowhere else. It is neither an importation nor imitation of anything else on earth. As a recent explorer of the ruins of Peru, Central America and Mexico well says, "The American monuments are different from those of any other known people, of a new order, and entirely and absolutely anomalous; they stand alone."
It is quite probable that, having been established in Peru, civilization gradually drifted north to Central America and Mexico. Certain it is the Spaniards first heard of the wealth of the Incas from the people inhabiting the isthmus and the region north of it.
We purpose, however, only to showhowthe aborigines and civilization got to America, not how they spread over the land, and our conclusions are that the first inhabitants came through the Pacific Islands from southeastern Asia and landed in South America at least three thousand years ago, and there established an original civilization, perhaps only a few centuries later than Egypt or Babylonia. Many other peoples, including the Phoenicians, must have visited the eastern shore of America since, but they found a high degree of civilizationalready established.All these seafaring people could possibly do was to augment, or suggest improvements to the civilization they found here, or else do as the foolish and wicked Spaniards, destroy it.
Japanese Man
So much for the primeval settlement and civilization of South and Central America, but what about the aborigines of the Northern Continent?
Again we will go back to the dispersion of mankind at Babel. We have seen that of the three sons of Noah, the descendants of Japheth peopled the greater portion of Asia, including the northern and northeastern sections. And the Japhethites were the last to establish a civilization, though they are to-day the most civilized people on earth. From this branch of the family of Noah came the Mongolians, Tartars and Scythians, those rude barbarians who spread over the steppes of northern Asia. These nomadic people were constantly waging war with each other, and weak tribes often fled before the devastating approach of a stronger to escape destruction. In this manner the vast continent of Asia was gradually traversed until pursued and pursuers reached the extreme limits of the peninsula of Kamtchatka.
Occasionally a multitude of their tribes, dwelling as cultivators of the earth, or migrating in hordes over the grassy steppes of Asia, have been united under the sway of such conquerors as Tamerlane and Genghis Khan. At one time 1,400,000 horsemen marched under the banner of the latter, who boasted that the grass would never grow again in the tracks made by the withering march of his squadrons.
Gibbon, in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," informs us that the hosts of warlike nomads from western Asia, who overran the Roman Empire, were generally Tartar tribes with different names, flying from the invasions of great conquerors who were devastating the central regions of that vast continent, and whose revolutions were only made known to Europe by the swarms of barbarians poured upon her borders, who were escaping from their enemies.
Their weaker enemies had to save themselves by a prompt and abject submission, or by a precipitate flight to regions far beyond their reach. To escape such dangers many of them at different times doubtless crossed the Aleutian Archipelago and Behring's Strait, as the modern Asiatics in Kamtchatka yet do, to North America.
Having reached their destination on the further shore, they would naturally tend toward the South and Southeast, attracted by a climate continually improving in mildness, and a country more fertile and abounding in wild fruit and game, the farther south they proceeded. They seem to have followed one another in different centuries; and those who first found their way to the valleys of the Ohio and lower Mississippi, and to Mexico, came in contact with other races from southeastern Asia, who had preceded them long enough to establish a civilization.
In this manner was the continent of North America peopled, because the Esquimaux or "eaters of raw flesh," for this is the meaning of the word, came also from the extreme northern portion of Asia, having been expelled by their more warlike neighbors, who seemed to have literally wanted them to "get off the earth," for they were dwelling then, as they do now, on the extreme northern edge of it.
Either through choice, or from fear of the red Indians, the Esquimaux spread out along the coast of the Arctic Ocean until their habitat extended from the shores of eastern Greenland to Asia, a length of more than three thousand miles though only a few leagues in breadth. The Esquimaux are a curious and interesting people. They are, moreover, very ingenious and courageous, or they could not subsist in that inhospitable and treeless region of "icy mountains." {FN} They have a swarthy appearance because of their habit of greasing, and never washing their faces; but when once this filth is scrubbed off it is found that they are white, rather than copper-colored, and entirely unlike the North American Indians, being also very short and stout, but fully equal to them in strength and superior in some respects, for while the North American Indians had no domestic animals or beasts of burden when discovered, the Esquimaux had domesticated the reindeer and arctic dog, and yoked them to his sled.
{FN} The author once heard Miss Olof Krarer, "The Little Esquimaux Lady," living then at Ottawa, Illinois, whose age at the time was thirty-eight years; height, 40 inches; weight, 120 pounds. She had been well educated, and her lecture about the manners and customs of her people was intensely interesting. She was born in Greenland, but crossed with her family to Iceland in sledges.
We will now give other evidence in support of our theory. It should be of some significance that the traditions of many of the North American savages point to the Northwest as the direction whence their ancestors migrated originally.
Cuvier, the great naturalist, and the greatest of all comparative anatomists, classifies the whole human race into only three varieties, the white, black and yellow. This is certainly the most simple and correct. He includes the whole of the aboriginal races of the American Continent in the same class to which he assigns the Chinese, Japanese, Mongols and Malays. He could find nothing to distinguish our American aborigines from these Asiatics, except a greater average projection of the nose, and somewhat larger eyes. He is evidently correct in placing them all in one class—the yellow race.He asserts that if a congregation of twelve representatives from Malacca, China, Japan, Mongolia and the unmixed natives of the Sandwich Islands, the pure-blooded Chilian, Peruvian and Brazilian Indians, and others selected from the unmixed Chickasaws, Comanches, or any other North American tribes, were all assembled, and dressed in the same costume, or exhibited undressed and unshaven, that the most skilful painter or the most practised anatomist, judging from their appearance only, could not separate them into their different nationalities. He would decide that they were all the same people, and men of one type.
Another evidence of the Tartar origin of the North American Indian is the universal practice of scalping their enemies, which bloody custom was observed by their ancestors, the Scythians, whose ancient dominion embraced all Russia in Asia, and even extended into Europe. Their complexion, straight black hair, scant beards, black eyes and general appearance, identify them with the Asiatic yellow race of Cuvier.
The great majority of the aboriginal tribes of North America prove their descent from the Scythians of northeastern Mongolia, by their anatomical marks, as we have seen, their manners, customs and superstitions, as strongly as their relations, the modern Japanese, Chinese and Tartars. They show substantially the same color, and high cheek-bones. They exhibit the same fondness for narcotics and stimulants, substituting indigenous plants, like the tobacco, and coca, for the betel-nut, hemp and poppy. Their wandering habits, the use of the bow, the wearing of the scalp-lock, represented by the long, plaited cue of the Chinese, and cultivated by all the warriors of the most savage and warlike of the North American tribes, and observed by no nation of antiquity except the Scythians; the common belief among them all, that all material things, whether men, animals, or weapons, have souls or spiritual counterparts, in the invisible and eternal world; the worship of the spirits of their ancestors, and many other strongly marked peculiarities, identify all the branches of this yellow race as blood relations and the descendants of the Scythians.
The great German scholar, Oscar Peschel, in his work called "The Races of Man," says: "It is not impossible that the first migrations took place at a time when what is now the channel of Behring's Strait was occupied by an isthmus. The climate of those northern shores must then have been much milder than at the present day, for no currents from the Frozen Ocean could have penetrated into the Pacific. That the severance of Asia from America was, geologically speaking, very recent, is shown by the fact that not only the strait, but the sea which bears the name of Behring isextraordinarily shallow,so much so indeed that whalers lie at anchor in the middle of it."
Sir Daniel Wilson, LL.D., F.R.S.E., president of the University of Toronto, says, in "The Lost Atlantis," "The present soundings of Behring's Strait, and the bed of the sea extending southward to the Aleutian Islands, entirely accord with the assumption of a former continuity of land between Asia and America." But it is always dangerous to rely on geological events, which themselves require more accurate proof. We therefore prefer to assume that at the time at which the Asiatics passed over into America, Behring's Strait already possessed its present character. In this connection it is worth remembering that the first question asked by Gauss, the great German mathematician, of Adalbert von Chamisso, the circumnavigator, at Berlin, in 1828, was whether the coast of America was visible from any point in Asia; in such a way that the two continents might be connected by a triangle? Chamisso was able to answer this query in the affirmative, so that no accidental discovery need be supposed, for the Asiatics of Behring's Strait, when they crossed over to America, saw their goal before their eyes.
Lest it should be thought strange that people who were still without adequate means of protection could have continued to exist in a climate so severe, we will quote from George Steller, who states that children of the North are more comfortable in severe weather than in a milder temperature. "When, in winter mornings," he wrote, "I was freezing under my feather-bed and fur coverlets, I saw the Itelmes, and even their little children, lying in theirkuklankanaked and bare halfway down the chest, without coverlets or feather-beds, and yet were warmer to the touch than I was." In another place he adds that the Kamtskadals always place a large vessel filled with water, which they cool with pieces of ice, by their side at night, and drain this to the last drop before the break of day.
This shows that the rigid climate would not impede a migration from Asia to America. In fact, as Peschel assures us, "Trade has always been carried on between the Behring's Strait nations of Asia and America. The Tshuktshi pass over to Diomede's Island, and the Malemutes cross from the extreme northwesterly point of America to exchange reindeer hides for furs. The trade is so brisk that the clothing of the natives several hundred miles up the Yukon River consists of Asiatic skins obtained from the Tshuktshi."
George Steller states that, "the inhabitants of Choumagin Islands, on the coast of Alaska, are as like the Itelmes of Kamtchatka as one egg is to another."
When the exploring expedition sent out by the Empress of Russia (Catherine) made their report it was stated that the narrow sea which divides Kamtchatka from Alaska is full of islands, and that the distance from a promontory at the eastern extremity of Asia, and the coast of America, is not more than two degrees and a half of a great circle. The report further stated that there is the greatest reason to suppose that Asia and America once joined at this place, as the coasts of both continents appear to have been broken into capes and bays, which answer each other. Moreover, the inhabitants of both sides resemble each other in their persons, habits, customs, food and language. It is also added that the boats of the natives on the American side pointed across to the opposite shore as the inhabitants of each coast are very similar. And when they found that the source whence their ancestors came, they considered that it amounted to little less than a demonstration that North America was peopled from this part of Asia.
After we had reached our conclusions, we were gratified to find that Ridpath, the greatest historian of recent years, takes substantially the same position. In his great work on "The Races of Mankind," he says:
"There is hardly any longer doubt as to the ethnic relationship of these races and their connection with the peoples of Asia and Polynesia. The testimony of many sciences—linguistics, archeology, traditions, and especially ethnology proper—points uniformly to the Asiatic and Pacific derivation of the ancestors of those widely distributed races extending northward and southward from the Arctic archipelago to the Strait of Magellan, and westward and eastward from the Alaskan peninsula to Pernambuco.
"By common consent the ethnic history of our American continents should begin from theWest.It is evident that the American Mongoloids—for so we may designate the aboriginal nations of the New World—are connected by race affinity and descent with the Asiatic and Polynesian Mongoloids.
"The routes by which they came were two or, at the most, four: The one by way of Polynesia; the other, Siberia. The first, or Polynesian line, seems to have divided, sending one branch through lower Polynesia against the central western coast of South America, while the upper or western branch was directed by way of the Sandwich Islands to Mexico and Central America. The second, or Siberian route (many centuries later), one branch appears to have gone by way of Behring's Strait, and the other through the Aleutian Islands." In this manner, we believe South America was peopled in remote antiquity by the Malays of Polynesia, and North America by rude barbarians from northeastern Asia. We do not assume that all the aborigines of the two continents came in this way. But for the many unanswerable reasons given, we do believe that the earliest, most numerous and probably most disposed to civilization, came in this manner to South and Central America, where they established an original civilization; and that the most numerous, but also the latest and most barbarous aborigines of North America came from northeastern Asia.
Having become established in America, they gradually spread from west to east until they reached the Atlantic coast. Here in time they came in contact with a few representatives of other races from Europe, Western Asia and Africa, who, at various times and at different points, reached the eastern shore. But the few were absorbed by the larger population, with little visible result save to augment their numbers, give variety to the physiognomy of certain tribes, and perhaps modify the civilization where it existed.
We know of at least two modern instances of voyages having been made from Europe to America, and there were doubtless others of prehistoric times. We refer now to the discovery of America by Herjulfson in A. D. 986, who was driven in sight of Newfoundland or Labrador while sailing from Iceland to Greenland. Fourteen years later, the actual discovery of America was made by Lief Erickson, who sailed from Greenland and reached Labrador in the spring of the year 1001. After landing and making explorations, he and his companions continued along the coast southward until they reached Massachusetts, Rhode Island and possibly New York harbor. Other Norsemen afterward reached America, but they made no permanent settlements, planted no colonies, and kept their knowledge of the new continent a state secret.
The other instance of a pre-Columbian voyage to America is that of the Welsh prince, Modoc or Madog, which is told in the old Welsh books as follows:
About the year 1168 or 1169 A. D., Owen Gwyneeld, ruling prince of North Wales, died, and among his sons there was a contest for the succession, which produced a civil war. His son Madog, who had "command of the fleet," took no part in this strife. Greatly disturbed by the public trouble, and unable to reconcile his two brothers, he resolved to leave Wales and go across the ocean to the new land at the west, of which he had probably heard through the Irish or Norse navigators. Accordingly, in the year 1170 A. D., he left with a few ships, going south of Ireland, and sailing westward. The object of this voyage was to explore the western land and select a place for settlement. He found a pleasant and fertile region, where his settlement was established. Leaving one hundred and twenty persons, he returned to Wales, prepared ten ships, induced a large company, some of whom were Irish, to join him, and sailed again to America. Nothing more was ever heard in Wales of Prince Madog or his settlement.
It is supposed that Madog settled somewhere in the Carolinas, and that his colony, unsupported by new arrivals from Europe, and cut off from communication with that side of the ocean, became weak, and, after being much reduced, was destroyed or absorbed by some powerful Indian tribe. In our colonial times, and after, there was no lack of reports that relics of Madog's Welshmen, and even their language, had been discovered among the Indians; but generally they were entitled to no credit. The report of Rev. Morgan Jones, made in 1686, and published in theGentleman's Magazinefor the year 1740, is quoted by Baldwin in his "Ancient America," as follows:
"These presents certify all persons whatever, that in the year 1660, being an inhabitant of Virginia, and chaplain to Major-General Bennet, of Mansoman County, the said Major-General Bennet and Sir William Berkley sent two ships to Port Royal, now called South Carolina, which is sixty leagues southward of Cape Fear, and I was sent therewith to be their minister. Upon the 8th of April we set out from Virginia and arrived at the harbor's mouth of Port Royal the 19th of the same month, where we waited for the rest of the fleet that was to sail from Barbadoes with one Mr. West, who was to be deputy governor of said place. As soon as the fleet came in, the smallest vessels that were with us sailed up the river to a place called Oyster Point; there I continued about eight months. At last, being almost starved for want of provisions, I and five others traveled through the wilderness till we came to the Tuscarora country.
"There the Tuscarora Indians took us prisoners, because we told them we were bound to Roanock. That night they carried us to their town and shut us up close, to our no small dread. The next day they entered into a consultation about us, and, after it was over, their interpreter told us that we must prepare ourselves to die next morning, whereupon, being very much dejected, I spoke to this effect in the Welsh tongue: 'Have I escaped so many dangers, and must I now be knocked on the head like a dog!' Then presently came an Indian to me, which afterward appeared to be a war captain belonging to the sachem of the Doegs (whose original, I find, must needs be from the Old Britons), and took me up by the middle, and told me in the British (Welsh) tongue I should not die, and thereupon went to the Emperor of Tuscarora, and agreed for my ransom and the men that were with me.
"They (the Doegs) then welcomed us to their town, and entertained us very civilly and cordially four months, during which time I had the opportunity of conversing with them familiarly in the British (Welsh) language, and did preach to them in the same language three times a week, and they would confer with me about anything that was difficult therein, and at our departure they abundantly supplied us with whatever was necessary to our support and well doing. They are settled upon Pontigo River, not far from Cape Atros. This is a brief recital of my travels among the Doeg Indians.
"Morgan Jones, The son of John Jones, of Basateg, near Newport, in the County of Monmouth. I am ready to conduct any Welshmen or others to the country. New York. March 10th, 1686."
Baldwin says, "other accounts of his 'travels' among the 'Doegs' of the Tuscarora nation were published much earlier, but no other has been preserved. His veracity was never questioned. What shall be said of his statement? Were the remains of Prince Madog's company represented in these 'Doeg' Tuscaroras? He is very explicit in regard to the matter of language, and it is not easy to see how he could be mistaken. They understood his Welsh, not without needing explanation of some things, 'difficult therein.' He was able to converse with them and preach to them in Welsh; and yet, if he got an explanation of the existence of the Welsh language among these 'Doegs,' or sought to know anything in regard to their traditional history, he omits entirely to say so. Without meaning to doubt his veracity, one can only regret that he did not give a more intelligent and complete account of these 'travels.'"
Ukiah Man
It may be remembered that in the early colonial times, the Tuscaroras were sometimes called "White Indians." Fontaine adds the following facts, which may be regarded as an imperfect continuation of the history of this Welsh colony, whose lost annals can never be completely restored:
"The tribe of Mandan Indians was discovered by Lewis and Clarke on the Upper Missouri, during their expedition to discover the sources of the Missouri and Columbia rivers, sent to perform that perilous duty under the presidency of Mr. Jefferson, and which embraced the years 1805-1807. They spent the winter of 1805-6 among these Indians, but did not learn their traditions. To the astonishment of Lewis and Clarke many of these savages had blue eyes, and their hair was generally silky and very abundant, and, except red and auburn, of all the colors which distinguish the tresses of the various inhabitants of England and Wales. The ethnological problem presented by their peculiarities was, I think, solved satisfactorily by George Catlin, the painter, who visited them and spent some months with them in 1832. He understood Welsh, and found in their languagefifty pure Welshwords, one hundred and thirty nearly so, and many others of Welsh derivation. They used a circle of stones in the construction of the hearths of their huts; they preserved the art of makingthe Welsh blue beads;and they navigated the Missouri River in a canoe, like the Welshcoracle,made of willow limbs and rawhide of a peculiar construction, and used nowhere in the world except in Wales. It wasa tub pulled,instead of beingpropelled,by a paddle. Their tradition was, that their ancestors came across the 'great water' from the East; while other tribes of the United States point to the Northwest as the direction from which they migrated. Catlin verified the correctness of their tradition as having come from the East, down the Ohio, and up the Missouri, by tracing the ruins of their huts, easily recognized by the Welsh hearthstones, up the Ohio River, as far as he examined it. This interesting tribe, he tells us, was nearly exterminated by the smallpox in 1837; and their destruction, as a separate clan, was completed soon afterward, when they were vanquished by their inveterate enemies, the Rickarees, and their remnant became incorporated with that tribe.
"The Tuscaroras inhabited the banks of the Yadkin, and other rivers of the northwestern parts of North Carolina, whose waters interlock with those of Green River, and other tributaries of New River, the principal branch of the Great Kanawha, which empties into the Ohio. The great forests of these regions abounded in game, and many of their valleys, and the mountain-plateaus separating them, still afford excellent hunting-grounds. The migration of these Welsh Indians up the Yadkin, and down the Ararat, Green, New and Kanawha rivers to the Ohio, was easily accomplished; and this, I think, was their route to the Missouri. Connecting these facts and examining them properly led to the conclusion of Catlin, thatthe Mandans are the descendants of Madog and his followers,mixed with various Indian tribes."
During the reign of Charles II., a book known as "The Turkish Spy," was written by an Italian, John Paul Marana, who was at one time in the service of the Sultan of Turkey. This book was published in London, in 1734, and gives an interesting account of the condition of affairs of the kingdoms of western Europe. Speaking of the British possessions in North America, he says: "There is a region of that continent inhabited by a people whom they call Tuscoards and Doegs. Their language is the same spoken by the British or Welsh; and these Tuscoards and Doegs are thought to be descended from them."
But it might be asked how is it these Indians are called Tuscaroras or Tuscoards, and Doegs in North Carolina, and Mandans on the upper Missouri? Catlin has given an ingenious and plausible explanation of this change of name. He says Mandan is the name of theWoodroof,or Welsh madder, used for dying red, and he thinks the Welsh gave the name Mandan to these Indians on account of the beautiful red they used in dying the porcupine-quills. It is claimed by some writers that the Cherokees, who were neighbors to the Tuscaroras, and the most intelligent and predisposed to civilization of all the North American tribes, had also a fusion of Welsh blood, but the evidence is not so complete as that of the Tuscaroras and Mandans.
With reference to the mounds and mound builders there have been many learned but unreasonable theories advanced which have resulted only in "confusion worst confounded." We have reached a conclusion, and have since been gratified to find that two among the clearest and most reasonable writers on this subject, practically indorse our position in almost every detail. We refer now to J. H. Beadle, in his great work, "The Undeveloped West"; and J. D. Baldwin, in "Ancient America." The general term "Mound Builders" is applied to a people who have left evidence of extensive works in various parts of the United States, especially in the vicinity of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and their tributaries. These are of three kinds: mounds, square and circular enclosures, and raised embankments of various forms. Unlike all the mounds in Mexico, Central and South America, those in our country have no trace of buildings on them. Why? We will let J. W. Beadle answer this question. Said he, "Until I visited Arizona I had no answer. There the solution was easy. In those regions stone was abundant and timber was scarce here the reverse was the case. Our predecessors built of wood, the others of stone; the works of the latter remain to this day, while wooden buildings would leave no trace after one or two centuries, if indeed they were not burned by the savages as soon as abandoned."
From what is seen in the Southern and Western States antiquarians have reached the following conclusions: 1. The so-called Mound Builders were no wandering and feeble tribes, but constituted a large population under one central government; this is shown by the extent of the works, as well as their completeness and scientific exactness. 2. A large area around their settlements was cleared of timber and cultivated, showing that they were an agricultural people. 3. As nature does not give a forest growth to abandoned fields, without a preparatory growth of shrubs and softer timber, and as forest trees have been found on their mounds showing at least six hundred years of growth, it follows that they left our country nearly a thousand years ago. 4. From the increase of fortifications north-ward, and the broad flat mounds, suitable only for buildings southward, it is proven that at the South they were at peace; but as they advanced northward they came more and more into contact with the wild tribes, before whom they finally retired toward the south.
The excavations of the mounds show clearly that their builders had commercial intercourse with Mexico and Central America, and it seems probable that they had otherwise a very close relation to the people of those countries.
Antiquarians have therefore searched diligently in the few remaining books and traditions of the Mexicans, and Central Americans, for mention of the origin and history of the Mound Builders. Nor have they searched in vain. "It is believed," says Baldwin, "that distinct reference to their country has been found in the books still in existence, and there appears to be reason for this belief."
Brasseur de Bourbourg, one of the few investigators who have explored them, says: "Previous to the history of the Toltec domination in Mexico, we notice in the annals of the country two facts of great importance, but equally obscure in their details: First, the tradition concerning the landing of a foreign race, conducted by an illustrious personage, who came from an Eastern country; and, second, the existence of an ancient empire known as Huehue-Tlapalan, from which the Toltecs or Nahuas came to Mexico, in consequence of aRevolutionorInvasion,and from which they had a long and toilsome migration to the Aztec plateau."
He believes that Huehue-Tlapalan was the country of the Mound Builders in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. According to the native books he has examined, it was somewhere at a distance in the northeast; and it is constantly said that some of the Toltecs came by land and some by sea. Sahagun learned from the old books and traditions that the Toltecs came from that distant northeastern country; and he mentions a company that came by sea, settled near the Tampico River, and built a town called Panuco. Brasseur de Bourbourg finds that an account of this or another company was preserved at Xilanco, an ancient city situated on the point of an island between Lake Terminos and the sea, and famous for its commerce, wealth and intelligence. The company described in this account came from the northeast in the same way, it is said, to Tampico River, and landed at Panuco. It consisted of twenty chiefs and a numerous company of people. Torquemada found a record which describes them as people of fine appearance. They went forward into the country and were well received. He says they were industrious, orderly and intelligent, and that they worked metals and were skilful artists and lapidaries. All the accounts say the Toltecs came at different times, by land and sea, mostly in small companies, and always from the northeast. This can be explained only by supposing they came by sea from the mouth of the Mississippi River, and by land through Texas. But the country from which they came was invariably Huehue-Tlapalan.
Cabrera says Huehue-Tlapalan was the ancient country of the Toltecs. Its simple name was Tlapalan, but they called it Huehue, old, to distinguish it from three other Tlapalans which they founded in the districts of their new kingdom. Torquemada says the same. We are compelled to accept a fact so distinctly stated and so constantly reported in the old books, especially as the following statement is also made in connection with it, to account for the Toltec migration, that Huehue-Tlapalan was successfully invaded by Chichinecs, meaningBarbarous Aboriginal Tribes,who were united under one great leader. Here is the statement (a little condensed) touching this point:
"There was a terrible struggle, but, after about thirteen years, the Toltecs, no longer able to resist successfully, were obliged to abandon their country to escape complete subjugation. Two chiefs guided the march of the emigrating nation. At length they reached a region near the sea named 'Tlapalan-Conco,' where they remained several years. But they finally undertook another migration, and reached Mexico, where they built a town called 'Tollanzinco,' and later the city of Tullan, which became the seat of their government."
Brasseur de Bourbourg says: "In the histories written in the Nahuatl language, the oldest certain date is nine hundred and fifty-five years before Christ." If this date is authentic it would follow that the Nahuas, or Toltecs, left Huehue-Tlapalan more than a thousand years previous to the Christian era, for they dwelt a long time in the country of Xibalba as peaceable settlers before they organized the civil war which raised them to power. The Toltecs were in turn overthrown by the Aztecs, who held sway at the time of the Spanish conquest.
The Toltecs came originally from Mexico or Central America, and when they were expelled from the Ohio and Mississippi valleys by hordes of wild Indians from the north, they simply returned to their "Father Land"; but they had been absent so long they appeared as a different people. Baldwin well says "The fact that the settlements and works of the Mound Builders extended through Texas and across the Rio Grande indicates very plainly their connection with the people of Mexico, and goes far toward explaining their origin. In fact, the connection of settlements by way of Texas appears to have been unbroken from Ohio to Mexico. These people could not have come from any other part of North America, for nowhere else north of the isthmus was there any other people capable of producing such works as they left in the places where they dwelt. We have other evidence of intercourse between the two peoples; for theobsidiandug from the mounds, and perhaps theporphyryalso, can be explained only by supposing commercial relations between them."
The Aztecs, whom the Spaniards found, were the last of at least three civilized races, and much inferior to the Toltecs immediately preceding them. Their history indicates that they were merely one of the original races, who overthrew and mingled with the Toltecs, adopting part of their religion and civilization. The Peruvian Incas, found by Pizarro, seem to have been the second of the series of races or dynasties. But civilization is of slow growth; it must have required at least a thousand years for the first of the three dynasties to have developed art and learning enough to erect the buildings we find. De Bourbourg and other antiquarians have given to that race before the Incas, the authors of the original civilization, the name of Colhuas.
This much is, to say the least, reasonable conjecture. It is probably a thousand years since the Mound Builders left our country; a previous thousand years of settlement and occupation; and a thousand years for the precedent civilization to develop. Or, beginning in Mexico, we have a thousand years of Spaniard and Aztec; a previous thousand years for Toltec immigration and settlement, and a thousand years before that for the Colhuas to develop, flourish and decline. This carries us back near to the time when the same course of events was inaugurated in the Eastern Hemisphere. Weknowthat it has required so long to produce the civilization of Europe and Asia; all reasoning by analogy goes to show that at least as long a time has been required to produce equally as great civilization in America.
Indeed it is not a stretch of the imagination to conclude that within a few centuries of the same period when the Northern Barbarians were sweeping down on Southern Europe and smiting its civilization with the besom of destruction, that history was repeating itself on this continent in the expulsion of our civilized Mound Builders, and the destruction of everything perishable byourNorthern Barbarians, the wild Indian tribes, the American Tartars, who also came from northern Asia, and who were, broadly speaking, the same race.
These are my views on this much mooted question. I do not pretend to have settled the matter, and still look for more light. But, "what I have written, I have written," after much investigation and careful thought. I send this book forth on its mission, and through its printed pages have endeavored to "speak as to wise men;" and tothat classwill only add, "judge ye what I say."
Just as we were about to publish this work, our attention was called to an illustrated article in theCosmopolitangiving an account of the expedition sent out by Morris K. Jesup, president of the American Museum of Natural History, of New York.
Mr. Jesup has spent a large sum of money, and eight years' time, in a minute study of the aboriginal tribes of northwest America and Siberia, the results of which will soon be published in twelve volumes.
The principal object of this expedition was to find an answer to the question, How was this continent peopled? It was believed by Mr. Jesup and his advisers that by studying tribal customs, characteristics, traditions and languages of the oldest remaining tribes of northeastern Asia and northwestern America, the mooted question could be settled.
This was accordingly done, but, strange to say, their conclusions are, that instead of America being peopled by tribes from northeastern Asia, "it seems most probable that the emigration has been from the interior of America westward to the Pacific coast, and thence on to Asia."
There is not a hint in the article under consideration of anything like proof (whatever there may be in the twelve volumes), and even if it were established, which is not claimed, it would still fail of an answer to the question as to how America was peopled.
The world cares but little for a fine-spun theory as to how Asia was peopled, and if this is the principal result of the millions of money, eight years of time and twelve quarto volumes, then it would almost seem that "the mountain has labored and brought forth a mouse."
But we believe the twelve volumes will throw very much more light on the subject, and concede that it would be an injustice to judge of the results of the expedition by a brief magazine article, and await the complete report with intense interest.
The illustrations of this article, four of which we are able to reproduce by courtesy of theCosmopolitan,are very fine and very suggestive.
The reader will remember that our position is that the tribes of eastern Asia and western America, more especially those of Siberia and Alaska, were originally one race and sprang from the same source.
Moreover, we agree with Cuvier that the Chinese, Japanese, Mongols and American Indians all belong to the same yellow race. These four pictures, representing a Japanese man and maiden in the dress of Ukiah (Alaska) Indians; and a Ukiah man and maiden in the Japanese costume, prove our position beyond cavil.
A study of the pictures will convince the most skeptical, that, dressed the same, they would look like brothers and sisters of one family. They show further what an important part dress and visual impression play in the formation of popular ideas of racial characteristics.
An Indian costume effectually changes a Japanese into a very life-like American aborigine. In the same way Japanese dress works the most puzzling transformation in the Indians.
We were looking for pictures to illustrate this last chapter in general, and the unity of the yellow and red race in particular, when we received the article and four pictures. They have interested the author, and he trusts they will the reader, as they are rare and out of the usual order.
Our task is done. It is for the reader to say whether or not it is well done.