The hurricane was followed by a dead calm, during which the Admiral's ships were carried by the currents into theArrival at Cape Honduras.group of tiny islands called the Queen's Gardens, on the south side of Cuba. With the first favourable breeze he took a southwesterly course, in order to strike that Cochin-Chinese coast farther down toward the Malay peninsula. This brought him directly to the island of Guanaja and to Cape Honduras, which he thus reached without approaching the Yucatan channel.[609]
Upon the Honduras coast the Admiral found evidences of semi-civilization with which he was much elated,—such as copper knives and hatchets, pottery of skilled and artistic workmanship, and cotton garments finely woven and beautifully dyed. Here the Spaniards first tasted thechicha, or maize beer, and marvelled at the heavy clubs, armed with sharp blades of obsidian, with which the soldiers of Cortes were by and by to become unpleasantly acquainted. The people here wore cotton clothes, and, according to Ferdinand, the women covered themselves as carefully as the Moorish women of Granada.[610]On inquiring as to the sources of gold and other wealth, the Admiral was now referred to the west, evidently to Yucatan and Guatemala, or, as he supposed, to the neighbourhood of the Ganges. Evidently the way to reach these countrieswas to keep the land on the starboard and search for the passage between the Eden continent and the Malay peninsula.[611]This course at first led Columbus eastward for a greater number of leagues than he could have relished. Wind and current were dead against him, too; and when, after forty days of wretched weather,Cape Gracias a Dios.he succeeded in doubling the cape which marks on that coast the end of Honduras and the beginning of Nicaragua, and found it turning square to the south, it was doubtless joy at this auspicious change of direction, as well as the sudden relief from head-winds, that prompted him to name that bold prominence Cape Gracias a Dios, or Thanks to God.
Columbus shipwrecked.
As the ships proceeded southward in the direction of Veragua, evidences of the kind of semi-civilization which we recognize as characteristic of that part of aboriginal America grew more and more numerous. Great houses were seen, built of "stone and lime," or perhaps of rubble stone with adobe mortar. Walls were adorned with carvings and pictographs.The coast of Veragua.Mummies were found in a good state of preservation. There were signs of abundant gold; the natives wore platesof it hung by cotton cords about their necks, and were ready to exchange pieces worth a hundred ducats for tawdry European trinkets. From these people Columbus heard what we should call the first "news of the Pacific Ocean," though it had no such meaning to his mind. From what he heard he understood that he was on the east side of a peninsula, and that there was another sea on the other side, by gaining which he might in ten days reach the mouth of the Ganges.[612]By proceeding on his present course he would soon come to a "narrow place" between the two seas. There was a curious equivocation here. No doubt the Indians were honest and correct in what they tried to tell Columbus. But by the "narrow place" they meant narrow land, not narrow water;Fruitless search for the Strait of Malacca.not a strait which connected but an isthmus which divided the two seas, not the Strait of Malacca, but the Isthmus of Darien![613]Columbus, of course, understood them to mean the strait for which he was looking, and in his excitement at approaching the long-expected goal he pressed on without waiting to verify the reports of gold mines in the neighbourhood, a thing that could be done at any time.[614]By the 5th of December, however,having reached a point on the isthmus, a few leagues east of Puerto Bello, without finding the strait, he yielded to the remonstrances of the crews, and retraced his course to Veragua. If the strait could not be found, the next best tidings to carry home to Spain would be the certain information of the discovery of gold mines, and it was decided to make aFutile attempt to make a settlement.settlement here which might serve as a base for future operations. Three months of misery followed. Many of the party were massacred by the Indians, the stock of food was nearly exhausted, and the ships were pierced by worms until it was feared there would be no means left for going home. Accordingly, it was decided to abandon the enterprise and return to Hispaniola.[615]In order to allow for the strong westerly currents in the Caribbean sea, the Admiral first sailed eastward almost to the gulf of Darien, and then turned to the north. The allowance was not enough, however. The ships were again carried into the Queen's Gardens, where they were caught in a storm and nearly beaten to pieces. At length, on St. John's eve, June 23, 1503, the crazy wrecks—now full of water and unable to sail another league—were beached onthe coast of Jamaica and converted into a sort of rude fortress; and while two trusty men were sent over to San Domingo in a canoe, to obtain relief, Columbus and his party remained shipwrecked in Jamaica. They waited there a whole year before it proved possible to get any relief from Ovando. He was a slippery knave, who knew how to deal out promises without taking the first step toward fulfilment.
It was a terrible year that Columbus spent upon the wild coast of Jamaica.A year of misery.To all the horrors inseparable from such a situation there was added the horror of mutiny. The year did not end until there had been a pitched battle, in which the doughty Bartholomew was, as usual, victorious. The ringleader was captured, and of the other mutineers such as were not slain in the fight were humbled and pardoned. At length Ovando's conduct began to arouse indignation in San Domingo, and was openly condemned from the pulpit; so that, late in June, 1504, he sent over to Jamaica a couple of ships which brought away the Admiral and his starving party. Ovando greeted the brothers Columbus with his customary hypocritical courtesy, which they well understood. During the past year the island of Hispaniola had been the scene of atrocities such as have scarcely been surpassed in history. I shall give a brief account of them in a future chapter. Columbus was not cheered by what he saw and heard, and lost no time in starting for Spain. On the 7th of November, 1504, after a tempestuous voyage and narrow escape from shipwreck,he landed at San Lucar de Barrameda and made his way to Seville.Last return to Spain.Queen Isabella was then on her death-bed, and breathed her last just nineteen days later.
The death of the queen deprived Columbus of the only protector who could stand between him and Fonseca. The reimbursement for the wrongs which he had suffered at that man's hands was never made. The last eighteen months of the Admiral's life were spent in sickness and poverty. Accumulated hardship and disappointment had broken him down, and he died onDeath of Columbus.Ascension day, May 20, 1506, at Valladolid. So little heed was taken of his passing away that the local annals of that city, "which give almost every insignificant event from 1333 to 1539, day by day, do not mention it."[616]His remains were buried in the Franciscan monastery at Valladolid, whence they were removed in 1513 to the monastery of Las Cuevas, at Seville, where the body of his son Diego, second Admiral and Viceroy of the Indies, was buried in 1526. Ten years after this date, the bones of father and son were removed to Hispaniola, to the cathedral of San Domingo; whence they have since been transferred to Havana. The result of so many removals has been to raise doubts as to whether the ashes now reposing at Havana are really those of Columbus and his son; and over this question there has been much critical discussion, of a sort that we may cheerfully leave to those who like to spend their time over such trivialities.
There is a tradition that Ferdinand and Isabella, at some date unspecified, had granted to Columbus, as a legend for his coat-of-arms, the noble motto:—
Á Castilla y á LeonNuevo mundo dió Colon,
i. e."To Castile-and-Leon Columbus gave a New World;" and we are further told that, when the"Nuevo Mundo."Admiral's bones were removed to Seville, this motto was, by order of King Ferdinand, inscribed upon his tomb.[617]This tradition crumbles under the touch of historical criticism. The Admiral's coat-of-arms, as finally emblazoned under his own inspection at Seville in 1502, quarters the royal Castle-and-Lion of the kingdom of Castile with his own devices of five anchors, and a group of golden islands with a bit of Terra Firma, upon a blue sea. But there is no legend of any sort, nor is anything of the kind mentioned by Las Casas or Bernaldez or Peter Martyr. The first allusion to such a motto is by Oviedo, in 1535, who gives it a somewhat different turn:—
Por Castilla y por LeonNuevo mundo halló Colon,
i. e."For Castile-and-Leon Columbus found a New World." But the other form is no doubt the better, for Ferdinand Columbus, at some time not later than 1537, had adopted it, and it may be read to-day upon his tomb in the cathedral at Seville. The time-honoured tradition has evidently transferredto the father the legend adopted, if not originally devised, by his son.
Arms.
But why is this mere question of heraldry a matter of importance for the historian? Simply because it furnishes one of the most striking among many illustrations of the fact that at no time during the life of Columbus, nor for some years after his death, did anybody use the phrase "New World" with conscious reference tohisdiscoveries. At the time of his death their true significance had not yet begun to dawn upon the mind of any voyager or any writer. It was supposed that he had found a new route to the Indies by sailing west, and that in the course of this achievement he had discovered some new islands and a bit or bits of Terra Firma of more or less doubtful commercial value. To group these items of discovery into an organic whole, and to ascertain that they belonged to a whole quite distinct from the Old World, required the work of many other discoverers, companions and successors to Columbus. In the following chapter I shallendeavour to show how the conception of the New World was thus originated and at length became developed into the form with which we are now familiar.[Back to Contents]
Sketch of Toscanelli's map, sent to Portugal in 1474, and used by Columbus in his first voyage across the Atlantic.
Sketch of Toscanelli's map, sent to Portugal in 1474, and used by Columbus in his first voyage across the Atlantic.
Claudius Ptolemy's world, cir.A. D.150.
Claudius Ptolemy's world, cir.A. D.150.
Footnote 1:See myExcursions of an Evolutionist, p. 148. A good succinct account of these various theories, monuments of wasted ingenuity, is given in Short'sNorth 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 iniron, and had stuffs ofsilk, besides keeping plenty ofoxenandsheep. (Ether, ix. 18, 19; x. 23, 24.) Christ appeared and wrought many wonderful works; people spake with tongues, and the dead were raised. (3Nephi, 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 toThe Book of Mormon, Salt Lake City: Deseret News Co., 1885.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 2:Second Annual Report of the Peabody Museum of American Archæology, etc., p. 18.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 3:Visited in 1866-74 by Professor Jeffries Wyman, and described in hisFresh-Water Shell Mounds of the St. John's River, Cambridge, 1875.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 4:Excursions of an Evolutionist, p. 39.[Back to Main Text]
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'sIce Age in North America, pp. 405-505, 585-595, New York, 1889. I have given a brief account of the theory in myExcursions of an Evolutionist, pp. 57-76.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 6:See Miss F. E. Babbitt, "Vestiges of Glacial Man in Minnesota," inProceedings of the American Association, vol. xxxii., 1883.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 7:See N. H. Winchell,Annual Report of the State Geologist of Minnesota, 1877, p. 60.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 8:Wright'sIce Age in North America, p. 516.[Back to Main Text]
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'sPrimitive Industry, published in 1881, is a useful manual for studying this collection; and an account of his discoveries in the glacial gravels is given inReports 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'sNarrative and Critical History, vol. i. pp. 329-368.[Back to Main Text]
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.[Back to Main Text]
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 theAnthropological Review, May, 1864; restated in hisContributions 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 inCosmic Philosophy, part ii., chapters xvi., xxi., xxii.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 12:See, for example, the map of Europe in early post-glacial times, in James Geikie'sPrehistoric Europe.[Back to Main Text]
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.[Back to Main Text]
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'sWoerterbuch 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, andDie 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 titlePrehistoric 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.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 15:See Dawkins,Early Man in Britain, pp. 233-245.[Back to Main Text]
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,bothnorthward 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'sBibliography 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'sTwo Summers in Greenland, London, 1890.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 17:Wallace,Geographical Distribution of Animals, vol. ii. p. 155.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 18:Asa Gray, "Sequoia and its History," in hisDarwiniana, pp. 205-235.[Back to Main Text]
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.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 20:See Werner, "The African Pygmies,"Popular Science Monthly, September, 1890,—a thoughtful and interesting article.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 21:This sort of illustration requires continual limitation and qualification. The case in ancient America was notquiteas 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.[Back to Main Text]
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.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 23:See his great work onAncient Society, New York, 1877.[Back to Main Text]
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.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 25:Lumholtz,Among Cannibals, London, 1889, gives a vivid picture of aboriginal life in Australia.[Back to Main Text]
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.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 27:See Shaler, "Physiography of North America," in Winsor'sNarr. and Crit. Hist.vol. iv. p. xiii.[Back to Main Text]
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.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 29:In the interesting architectural remains unearthed by Dr. Schliemann at Mycenæ and Tiryns, there have been found at the former place a few iron keys and knives, at the latter one iron lance-head; but the form and workmanship of these objects mark them as not older than the beginning of the fifth centuryB. C., or the time of the Persian wars. With these exceptions the weapons and tools found in these cities, as also in Troy, were of bronze and stone. Bronze was in common use, but obsidian knives and arrow-heads of fine workmanship abound in the ruins. According to Professor Sayce, these ruins must date from 2000 to 1700B. C.The Greeks of that time would accordingly be placed in the middle status of barbarism. (See Schliemann'sMycenæ, pp. 75, 364;Tiryns, p. 171.) In the state of society described in the Homeric poems the smelting of iron was well known, but the process seems to have been costly, so that bronze weapons were still commonly used. (Tylor,Anthropology, p. 279.) The Romans of the regal period were ignorant of iron. (Lanciani,Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries, Boston, 1888, pp. 39-48.) The upper period of barbarism was shortened for Greece and Rome through the circumstance that they learned the working of iron from Egypt and the use of the alphabet from Phœnicia. Such copying, of course, affects the symmetry of such schemes as Mr. Morgan's, and allowances have to be made for it. It is curious that both Greeks and Romans seem to have preserved some tradition of the Bronze Age:—
τοῖς δ' ἦν χαλκεα μεν τευχεα, χαλκεοι δε τε οἶκοι,χαλκῷ δ' ειργαζοντο· μελας δ' οὐκ ἔσκε σιδηρος.Hesiod,Opp. Di.134.
Arma antiqua manus ungues dentesque fueruntEt lapides et item silvarum fragmina rami,Et flamma atque ignes, postquam sunt cognita primum.Posterius ferri vis est, ærisque reperta.Et prior æris erat, quam ferri cognitus usus, etc.Lucretius, v. 1283.
Perhaps, as Munro suggests, Lucretius was thinking of Hesiod; but it does not seem improbable that in both cases there may have been a genuine tradition that their ancestors used bronze tools and weapons before iron, since the change was comparatively recent, and sundry religious observances tended to perpetuate the memory of it.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 30:See hisIntellectual Development of Europe, New York, 1863, pp. 448, 464.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 31:Now and then, perhaps, but very rarely, it just touches the close of the middle period, as, e. g., in the lines from Hesiod and Lucretius above quoted.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 32:Winsor, "Bibliographical Notes on American Linguistics," in hisNarr. and Crit. Hist., vol. i. pp. 420-428, gives an admirable survey of the subject. See also Pilling's bibliographical bulletins of Iroquoian, Siouan, and Muskhogean languages, published by the Bureau of Ethnology.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 33:Excursions of an Evolutionist, pp. 147-174.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 34:For a good account of Indians in the upper status of savagery until modified by contact with civilization, see Myron Eells, "The Twana, Chemakum, and Klallam Indians of Washington Territory,"Smithsonian Report, 1887, pp. 605-681.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 35:An excellent description of them, profusely illustrated with coloured pictures, may be found in Catlin'sNorth American Indians, vol. i. pp. 66-207, 7th ed., London, 1848; the author was an accurate and trustworthy observer. Some writers have placed these tribes in the Dakota group because of the large number of Dakota words in their language; but these are probably borrowed words, like the numerous French words in English.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 36:See Francis Parkman's paper, "The Discovery of the Rocky Mountains,"Atlantic Monthly, June, 1888. I hope the appearance of this article, two years ago, indicates that we have not much longer to wait for the next of that magnificent series of volumes on the history of the French in North America.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 37:North American Indians, vol. ii., Appendix A.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 38:Smith'sGenerall Historie of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles, p. 1, London, 1626.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 39:For the history and ethnology of these interesting tribes, see three learned papers by J. B. Dunbar, inMagazine of American History, vol. iv. pp. 241-281; vol. v. pp. 321-342; vol. viii. pp. 734-756; also Grinnell'sPawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales, New York, 1889.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 40:These tribes of the Gulf region were formerly grouped, along with others not akin to them, as "Mobilians." The Cherokees were supposed to belong to the Maskoki family, but they have lately been declared an intrusive offshoot from the Iroquois stock. The remnants of another alien tribe, the once famous Natchez, were adopted into the Creek confederacy. For a full account of these tribes, see Gatschet,A Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, vol. i., Philadelphia, 1884.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 41:Howse,Grammar of the Cree Language, London, 1865, p. vii.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 42:Except in so far as the Cherokees and Tuscaroras, presently to be mentioned, were interposed.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 43:Brinton,The Lenape and their Legends, p. 30.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 44:Because they refused to take part in the strife between the Hurons and the Five Nations. Their Indian name was Attiwandarons. They were unsurpassed for ferocity. See Parkman,Jesuits in North America, p. xliv.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 45:Morgan,Ancient Society, p. 125.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 46:Whether there was ever such a person as Hiawatha is, to say the least, doubtful. As a traditional culture-hero his attributes are those of Ioskeha, Michabo, Quetzalcoatl, Viracocha, and all that class of sky-gods to which I shall again have occasion to refer. See Brinton'sMyths of the New World, p. 172. When the Indian speaks of Hiawatha whispering advice to Daganoweda, his meaning is probably the same as that of the ancient Greek when he attributed the wisdom of some mortal hero to whispered advice from Zeus or his messenger Hermes. Longfellow's famous poem is based upon Schoolcraft's book entitledThe Hiawatha Legends, which is really a misnomer, for the book consists chiefly of Ojibwa stories about Manabozho, son of the West Wind. There was really no such legend of Hiawatha as that which the poet has immortalized. See Hale,The Iroquois Book of Rites, pp. 36, 180-183.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 47:Cadwallader Colden,History of the Five Nations, New York, 1727.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 48:Morgan,League of the Iroquois, p. 12.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 49:All except the distant Tuscaroras, who in 1715 migrated from North Carolina to New York, and joining the Iroquois league made it the Six Nations. All the rest of the outlying Huron-Iroquois stock was wiped out of existence before the end of the seventeenth century, except the remnant of Hurons since known as Wyandots.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 50:See myBeginnings of New England, chap. i.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 51:F. A. Walker, "The Indian Question,"North American Review, April, 1873, p. 370.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 52:See Humboldt,Ansichten der Natur, 3d ed., Stuttgart, 1849, vol. i. p. 203.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 53:"Women and children joined in these fiendish atrocities, and when at length the victim yielded up his life, his heart, if he were brave, was ripped from his body, cut in pieces, broiled, and given to the young men, under the belief that it would increase their courage; they drank his blood, thinking it would make them more wary; and finally his body was divided limb from limb, roasted or thrown into the seething pot, and hands and feet, arms and legs, head and trunk, were all stewed into a horrid mess and eaten amidst yells, songs, and dances." Jeffries Wyman, inSeventh Report of Peabody Museum, p. 37. For details of the most appalling character, see Butterfield'sHistory of the Girtys, pp. 176-182; Stone'sLife of Joseph Brant, vol. ii. pp. 31, 32; Dodge'sPlains of the Great West, p. 418, andOur Wild Indians, pp. 525-529; Parkman'sJesuits in North America, pp. 387-391; and many other places in Parkman's writings.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 54:One often hears it said that the cruelty of the Indians was not greater than that of mediæval Europeans, as exemplified in judicial torture and in the horrors of the Inquisition. But in such a judgment there is lack of due discrimination. In the practice of torture by civil and ecclesiastical tribunals in the Middle Ages, there was a definite moral purpose which, however lamentably mistaken or perverted, gave it a very different character from torture wantonly inflicted for amusement. The atrocities formerly attendant upon the sack of towns, as e. g. Beziers, Magdeburg, etc., might more properly be regarded as an illustration of the survival of a spirit fit only for the lowest barbarism: and the Spanish conquerors of the New World themselves often exhibited cruelty such as even Indians seldom surpass. See below, vol. ii. p. 444. In spite of such cases, however, it must be held that for artistic skill in inflicting the greatest possible intensity of excruciating pain upon every nerve in the body, the Spaniard was a bungler and a novice as compared with the Indian. See Dodge'sOur Wild Indians, pp. 536-538. Colonel Dodge was in familiar contact with Indians for more than thirty years, and writes with fairness and discrimination.
In truth the question as to comparative cruelty is not so much one of race as of occupation, except in so far as race is moulded by long occupation. The "old Adam," i. e. the inheritance from our brute ancestors, is very strong in the human race. Callousness to the suffering of others than self is part of this brute-inheritance, and under the influence of certain habits and occupations this germ of callousness may be developed to almost any height of devilish cruelty. In the lower stages of culture the lack of political aggregation on a large scale is attended with incessant warfare in the shape in which it comes home to everybody's door. This state of things keeps alive the passion of revenge and stimulates cruelty to the highest degree. As long as such a state of things endures, as it did in Europe to a limited extent throughout the Middle Ages, there is sure to be a dreadful amount of cruelty. The change in the conditions of modern warfare has been a very important factor in the rapidly increasing mildness and humanity of modern times. See myBeginnings of New England, pp. 226-229. Something more will be said hereafter with reference to the special causes concerned in the cruelty and brutality of the Spaniards in America. Meanwhile it may be observed in the present connection, that the Spanish taskmasters who mutilated and burned their slaves were not representative types of their own race to anything like the same extent as the Indians who tortured Brébeuf or Crawford. If the fiendish Pedrarias was a Spaniard, so too was the saintly Las Casas. The latter type would be as impossible among barbarians as an Aristotle or a Beethoven. Indeed, though there are writers who would like to prove the contrary, it may be doubted whether that type has ever attained to perfection except under the influence of Christianity.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 55:See the evidence collected by Jeffries Wyman, inSeventh Report of Peabody Museum, pp. 27-37; cf. Wake,Evolution of Morality, vol. i. p. 243. Many illustrations are given by Mr. Parkman. In this connection it may be observed that the name "Mohawk" means "Cannibal." It is an Algonquin word, applied to this Iroquois tribe by their enemies in the Connecticut valley and about the lower Hudson. The name by which the Mohawks called themselves was "Caniengas," or "People-at-the-Flint." See Hale,The Iroquois Book of Rites, p. 173.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 56:For accounts and explanations of animism see Tylor'sPrimitive Culture, London, 1871, 2 vols.; Caspari,Urgeschichte der Menschheit, Leipsic, 1877, 2 vols.; Spencer'sPrinciples of Sociology, part i.; and myMyths and Mythmakers, chap. vii.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 57:No time should be lost in gathering and recording every scrap of this folk-lore that can be found. The American Folk-Lore Society, founded chiefly through the exertions of my friend Mr. W. W. Newell, and organized January 4, 1888, is already doing excellent work and promises to become a valuable aid, within its field, to the work of the Bureau of Ethnology. Of theJournal of American Folk-Lore, published for the society by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., nine numbers have appeared, and the reader will find them full of valuable information. One may also profitably consult Knortz'sMärchen und Sagen der nordamerikanischen Indianer, Jena, 1871; Brinton'sMyths of the New World, N. Y., 1868, and hisAmerican Hero-Myths, Phila., 1882; Leland'sAlgonquin Legends of New England, Boston, 1884; Mrs. Emerson'sIndian Myths, Boston, 1884. Some brief reflections and criticisms of much value, in relation to aboriginal American folk-lore, may be found in Curtin'sMyths and Folk-Lore of Ireland, pp. 12-27.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 58:Until lately our acquaintance with human history was derived almost exclusively from literary memorials, among which the Bible, the Homeric poems, and the Vedas, carried us back about as far as literature could take us. It was natural, therefore, to suppose that the society of the times of Abraham or Agamemnon was "primitive," and the wisest scholars reasoned upon such an assumption. With vision thus restricted to civilized man and his ideas and works, people felt free to speculate about uncivilized races (generally grouped together indiscriminately as "savages") according to anyà prioriwhim that might happen to captivate their fancy. But the discoveries of the last half-century have opened such stupendous vistas of the past that the age of Abraham seems but as yesterday. The state of society described in the book of Genesis had five entire ethnical periods, and the greater part of a sixth, behind it; and its institutions were, comparatively speaking, modern.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 59:McLennan'sStudies in Ancient History, comprising a reprint of Primitive Marriage, etc. London, 1876, p. 421.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 60:There is much that is unsound in it, however, as is often inevitably the case with books that strike boldly into a new field of inquiry.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 61:A general view of the subject may be obtained from the following works: Bachofen,Das Mutterrecht, Stuttgart, 1871, andDie Sage von Tanaquil, Heidelberg, 1870; McLennan'sStudies in Ancient History, London, 1876, andThe Patriarchal Theory, London, 1884; Morgan'sSystems of Consanguinity(Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. xvii.), Washington, 1871, andAncient Society, New York, 1877; Robertson Smith,Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, Cambridge, Eng., 1885; Lubbock,Origin of Civilization, 5th ed., London, 1889; Giraud-Teulon,La Mère chez certains peuples de l'antiquité, Paris, 1867, andLes Origines de la Famille, Geneva, 1874; Starcke (of Copenhagen),The Primitive Family, London, 1889. Some criticisms upon McLennan and Morgan may be found in Maine's later works,Early History of Institutions, London, 1875, andEarly Law and Custom, London, 1883. By far the ablest critical survey of the whole field is that in Spencer'sPrinciples of Sociology, vol. i. pp. 621-797.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 62: