I. The peopling of Polynesia and America is a problem which presents, if I may use the expression, inverse conditions. There is, in reality, no geographical difficulty in the latter. The proximity of the two continents at Behring Straits, the existence in this channel of the Saint Laurence islands, the largest of which is situated exactly half-way between the two opposite continents, the connection formed between Kamschatka and the peninsula of Alaska by the Aleutian Islands; the maritime habits of all these peoples; the presence of the Tchukchees on the two opposite shores; the voyages which they undertake from one continent to the other on simple matters of commerce, leave no doubt as to the facility with which the Asiatic races could pass into North America through the Polar Regions.
More to the south, the current of Tessan, thekouro-sivo, orblack streamof the Japanese, opens a great route for navigators. This current has frequently cast floating bodies and abandoned junks upon the shores of California. Instances of this fact have been observed in our own time. It is impossible that they should not also have happened before the period of European discoveries. Asiatic maritime nations must at all times have been carried to America from all those places which are washed by the Black Stream.
The Equatorial current of the Atlantic opens a similar route leading from Africa to America, and there are some evidences, rare it is true, showing that wrecks have been carried in this direction. It is possible, therefore, that the same may also have happened to man.
II. We shall not, therefore, be surprised at finding in the New World representatives of races which seem to belong originally to the Old World; we shall easily understand the multiplicity of American races, which is perhaps still contested by some of Morton’s followers, but firmly established in the opinion of every unprejudiced person by the testimony of Humboldt and d’Orbigny’s classical work onL’Homme Américain.
Black populations have been found in America in very small numbers only, and as isolated tribes in the midst of very different nations. Such are the Charruas of Brazil, the black Carabees of Saint-Vincent in the Gulf of Mexico, the Jamassi of Florida, the dark-complexioned Californians, who are, perhaps, the dark men mentioned in Quiché traditions, and by some old Spanish adventurers.
Such, again, is the tribe of which Balbao saw some representatives in his passage of the Isthmus of Darien in 1513. Yet it would seem, from the expressions made use of by Gomara, that these were true Negroes. This type was well known to the Spaniards, and if they had encountered black men with glossy hair, like the Charruas, they would undoubtedly have been much impressed by it, and would have mentioned the fact.
The white type is more widely represented in America than the black. Along the whole of the north-west coast, Meares, Marchand, La Pérouse, Dixon and Maurelle have observed populations, which, judging from some of their descriptions, would seem to be of pure white race. Upon the Upper Missouri, the Kiawas, Kaskaïas and the Lee Panis possess, we are assured, the attributes of the purest white races, including their fair hair. The Mandans have, from our present point of view, always attracted attention. Captain Graa, again, found in Greenland men speaking Esquimau, but tall, thin, and fair. In South America, Ferdinand Columbus, in his relation of his father’s voyages, compares the inhabitants of Guanaani to the Canary Islanders, and describes the inhabitants of San Domingo as still more beautiful and fair. In Peru, the Charazanis, studied byM. Angrand, also resemble the Canary Islanders, and differ from all the surrounding tribes. L’Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg imagined himself surrounded by Arabs when all his Indians of Rabinal were around him, for they had, he says, their complexion, features, and beard. Finally, Gomara and Pierre Martyr offer a similar testimony, and the latter speaks of the Indians of the Parian Gulf as having fair hair (capillis flavis).
It is useless to insist upon the anthropological relations between America and Asia. Most travellers have insisted upon this point. I have heard M. de Castelnau say, “When I was surrounded by my Siamese servants, I imagined myself in America;” and M. Vavasseur, assisting at the visit of the Siamese ambassadors, remarked, “But those are my Botocudos.” I should, however, observe that the skull in the Collection in the Paris Museum indicates less resemblance than the external characters.
America has, moreover, its distinct races with which the foreign elements have more or less blended. She has also had herquaternary man. This is a fact which must not be overlooked, and by which the problem is singularly complicated. We shall presently see that geological revolutions do not involve the disappearance of existing human races. There can be no doubt that in America there are descendants of men who were contemporary with the mastodon, just as, in Europe, we find the descendants of those who were contemporaries of the mammoth. Unfortunately our knowledge of the physical characters of the American fossil man is as yet very slight.
III. It does not, however, seem to me the less probable that the most pronounced ethnological elements, such as White, Yellow, and Black, which we encounter at the present time, have overspread this continent by means of migration. This fact is proved by history in a certain number of cases; and some very simple considerations seem to me to render others no less probable.
For example, we only find black men in America in thoseplaces which are washed by either the Kouro-Sivo, or the Equatorial Current of the Atlantic or its divisions. A glance at the maps of Captain Kerhallet will at once show us the rarity and the distribution of these tribes. It is evident that the more or less pure black elements have been brought from the Asiatic Archipelagos and from Africa through some accident at sea; they have there mixed with the local races, and have formed those small isolated groups which are distinguished by their colour from the surrounding tribes.
The presence of Semitic types in America, certain traditions of Guiana, and the use in this country of a weapon entirely characteristic of the ancient Canary Islanders, can be easily explained in the same manner, and the explanation rests upon positive facts. Twice during the last century, in 1731 and 1764, small ships passing from one point of the Canary Islands to another have been driven by storms into the region of the trade winds and equatorial current, and have drifted as far as America. What has happened in our time must often have happened before. We cannot then be surprised at finding upon the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, tribes which are more or less related to the African Whites by their physical characters.
IV. The geographical position of the continents at once explains why the yellow type has so many representatives in America. Supposing, which seems to be contradicted by some evidences, that the coast-lines have not altered since the latest geological era, the facilities presented by the passage are quite sufficient, and the Asiatic races have profited by them to a considerable extent. America was known to them long before Europeans possessed anything beyond legends on this subject, the meaning of which is still hotly disputed.
It is to De Guignes that we owe the discovery of this fact, the importance of which is evident. He revealed to Europe what he had learnt in Chinese books. These books speak of a country called Fou-Sang, situated at a distance, to the east of China far beyond the limits of Asia. De Guignesdid not hesitate to identify it with America. To the proofs drawn from the Chinese books, he added some isolated and hitherto forgotten facts which were borrowed from Europeans, from George Horne, Gomara, etc.
The work of the French Orientalist was received with a very singular, yet accountable repugnance. Apart from the mistrust excited by every unexpected discovery, many people were annoyed to find that Europeans had been preceded by Asiatics in the New World; it seemed to them to be dethroning Christopher Columbus. A Prussian, who had become a naturalized Frenchman, gave the support of his great learning to all who required no more than the contradiction of the fact, and it was almost unanimously agreed that De Guignes had deceived himself. More justice is now done to him, and anyone who will study the question in an unprejudiced spirit, cannot but acknowledge that he is right.
Klaproth held that Fou-Sang was nothing else than Japan. He forgot that the country of which the Chinese writers spoke contained copper, gold and silver, but no iron. This characteristic, which is inapplicable to Japan, agrees, on the contrary, in every respect with America. To support his assertion, he maintained that the Chinese could neither recognize their direction nor measure distances in their voyages with precision. He forgot that they were acquainted with the compass 2000 years before our era, and that they possessed maps far superior to the vague conjectures of the Middle Ages.
As to the supposed error in distance of which Klaproth speaks, there was no such thing. Paravey informs us that Fou-Sang was placed at a distance of 20,000Lifrom China. Now a Li, according to M. Pothier, is equal to 444·5 metres (486 yards). In following the course of the Kouro-Sivo, these numbers would exactly bring us to California, where the abandoned junks were stranded; they prove what was indicated by the theory, that this current had been the route for voyages to and from America.
Paravey has published a facsimile of a Chinese drawing representing a lama. This at once answers one of the objections of Klaproth, and carries us considerably to the south of California. Amongst the productions of Fou-Sang the Chinese authors mention thehorse, which, as we know, did not exist in America. It is clear that they called by this name the animal which in Peru was used as a beast of burden. This habit of calling by a common name species which are known and new species which resemble them in certain respects, certainly existed elsewhere than in China. This habit led the Conquestadores to call the puma alion, and the bison acow.
But did the Chinese then extend their voyages as far as Peru? This can hardly be doubted after the preceding testimony, and after that which is contained in theGeografia del Peruby Paz Soldan. The following is the translation of a passage for which I am indebted to M. Pinart: “The inhabitants of the village of Eten in the province of Lambayéque, and the department of Libertad, seem to belong to a different race from those of the surrounding countries. They live, and intermarry, only amongst themselves, and speak a language which is perfectly understood by the Chinese, who have been brought to Peru during the last few years.”
The Chinese books studied by De Guignes and Paravey speak of religious missions, which, towards the close of the fifth century, left the country ofKi-Pinto carry to Fou-Sang the doctrines of Buddha. The researches of M. G. d’Eichthal have fully confirmed these accounts. The strongest resemblances have been pointed out between the monuments and the Buddhist figures of Asia and the same products of American art. The comparison of legends has led the author to the same result.
Finally, according to an encyclopædia, from which M. de Risny has translated a passage, the Japanese were acquainted with Fou-Sang, which they called Fou-So, and with the missions which had left the land Ki-Pin for that country.Although its real position must still be doubtful, they show that Fou-So and Japan are two different countries.
To this formal testimony derived from the Chinese, we must add that of Europeans. The first is Gomara, who witnessed the conquest of Mexico, and was a contemporary of the expedition which followed. He tells us that companions of Francesco-Vasquez de Coronado, in sailing up the Western Sea as far as 40° N. lat., met with ships laden with merchandise, which, as they were led to understand by the sailors, had been at sea for more than a month. The Spaniards concluded that they had come fromCathayorSina.
The primary object of the ships in question was evidently that of commerce. Such pacific relations did not, however, always exist between the native Americans and the strangers from the west. This is proved by the testimony of an Indian traveller, preserved by Le Page du Prat. Moncacht-Apé (the pain-killer) was certainly a remarkable man. Impelled by the desire which drove Cosma from Körös to Thibet, the wish to discover the original home of his tribe, he went at first in a north-easterly direction as far as the mouth of the St. Lawrence, returned to Louisiana and started again for the north-west. Having ascended the Missouri to its source, he crossed the Rocky Mountains and reached the Pacific Ocean by descending a river, which he called thebeautiful river, and which can be no other than the Oregon.
There he heard of white, bearded men, provided with arms hurling thunder, who came every year in a great boat to look for wood which they used for dyeing, and carried off the natives to reduce them to a state of slavery. Moncacht-Apé, who was acquainted with the nature of firearms, advised his friends to prepare an ambuscade. The plans which he suggested were a complete success. Several of the aggressors were slain. The Americans at once saw that they were not Europeans. Their clothes were quite different, and their arms more clumsy, while their powder was coarser, and did not carry so far. Everything tended to show they wereJapanese, accustomed to make descents upon this coast of America exactly similar to those undertaken by some crews in search of sandal-wood in Melanesia, who seize the blacks whenever they have an opportunity, and give them up to cotton planters under the name of coolies.
The narrative of Moncacht-Apé was given in the year 1725, three or four years before the discovery of the Behring Straits, and more than thirty years before European voyages had acquainted us with the north-west of America. The exact details which he gives as to the general direction of the coast, and of its bend at the peninsula of Alaska, are a sure proof of the correctness and truth of this narrative. Thus, however much it may wound European pride, we must acknowledge that Chinese and Japanese Asiatics knew and, in different ways, explored America long before Europeans.
V. Nevertheless, these civilized nations, whose ships visited America, do not seem to have founded large settlements, which could become the starting point of a new colony. Had it been so, they would have left more traces of their passage in the language. Now, with the exception of the small Chinese colony of which I have spoken above, there is scarcely one fact of this nature which can be considered as established. Some Californian colonies are mentioned as speaking a Japanese dialect. M. Guillemin Taraire has reproduced this information in reference to a tribe of Santa Barbara; he adds that the language of some others includes Japanese and Chinese words. Unfortunately the researches of M. Pinart, far from confirming these results, only tend to contradict them; we can, therefore, only speak with great reserve upon this point.
It seems to me to have been principally in the north that the great migrations took place, and that they were undertaken by savage nations. The traditions borrowed by l’Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg from the sacred books of the Quichés, and those of the Delawares which have been preserved by Heckewelder, appear to me to offer much information onthis point. By comparing the missionary’s narrative with some facts of Mexican history anterior to the conquest, I have been enabled to determine approximately the date of the arrival of the Red-Skins in the basin of the Missouri. It seems to me that we cannot refer it to an earlier date than the ninth, or at most the eighth, century.
These traditions bring to light another and no less important fact: namely,that the Algonquinsand Iroquois, after having crossed the valley of the Mississippi, from which they drove the people, whose singular monuments are now the object of study, had no more fighting to do, and found the country uninhabited as far as the coast, and far away to the south. The traditions of some tribes of South America point, though not so plainly, to the same conclusion. Thus, probably in the two halves of the New World, and certainly in the northern portion, those uninhabited lands existed which we have already noticed in Polynesia, and the pretendedAmerican autochthonof Agassiz, Morton, Nott, and Gliddon was, on the contrary, one of the latest arrivals upon this continent.
These facts of thin populations, and of their low social condition, which was everywhere the case except in those centres where legislators had appeared who were perhaps entirely foreign to the soil, involuntarily lead us to the conclusion that the general peopling of America by the existing races, though it may be traced to an earlier period than that of Polynesia, is, nevertheless, much more recent than that of the Old World.
VI. It is not from Asia alone that America has received its population. They came from Europe also long before the era of great discoveries; I am not now alluding either to the story of Atlantis, of which many interpretations are still possible, or to Phœnician and Carthaginian traditions, nor again, to the pretentions of the Basques and Dieppois, although they appear to be supported by facts, which are, to say the least, curious; nor to Irish and Welsh traditions, though Humboldt considers them well worthy of attention.I shall only speak of the voyages accomplished by the Scandinavians as related by Rafn from Irish sagas, and which have been lately republished in detail by M. Gravier.
We are not now dealing with isolated facts belonging to the darkness of those ages which they only occasionally illuminate. It is a detailed history embracing several generations, and sometimes giving circumstantial details which explain, and are confirmed by certain modern discoveries.
In 877, according to M. Gravier, perhaps as early as 770, according to M. Lacroix, Gunnbjorn discovered Greenland. In 886 Erick the Red doubled Cape Farewell, and built at the head of a fjord his house Brattahilda, the lately discovered ruins of which have been compared to those of a town. In 986 Bjarn Meriulfson, when on his way to Greenland, was carried by a storm as far as the shores of New England. In 1000, Leif, the son of Erick the Red, started for the country discovered by Bjarn. Accompanied by 35 men, he ran down as far as Rhode Island, where he found the vine, and gave the name ofVinlandto the country of which he took possession; he builtLeifsbudir, passed the winter there, and noticed that the shortest day began at half-past seven and ended at half-past four. This observation, which agrees with all the other details, places Leifsbudir near the present town of Providence, 41° 24′ 10″ N. lat.
Thorwald succeeded his brother Leif. Followed by 30 warriors, he reached Vinland and passed the winter at Leifsbudir. In the spring of 1003 he ran down as far as Long Island, explored the neighbourhood, and returned in the autumn to his starting point. The following summer he turned his steps northwards. Near Cape Alderton, his companions surprised three boats made of osier, and covered with leather, and slew eight of the men by whom they were manned. The ninth escaped; he soon returned, however, accompanied by a great number of his fellow-countrymen, who showered upon the Scandinavians a cloud of arrows and then fled. But Thorwald, mortally wounded, was interred in this land which he had expressed a desire to inhabit. Itmay possibly have been his tomb which was discovered at the end of the last century in Rainsford Island, near to Hull and Cape Alderton; a tomb of solid masonry, containing a skeleton, and a sword with anironhilt, indicating a period anterior to the fifteenth century.
In 1007 Thorfinn, accompanied by his wife Gudrida, started with three ships carrying 160 men, some women, and cattle. This time the object was to found a colony. They settled not far from Leifsbudir at Mount Hope Bay. The strangers were soon visited by some of the natives, who are easily identified with the Esquimaux from the description given in the Saga. The relations maintained with theseSkrellingswere at first pacific. But the following year an act of brutality on the part of a Scandinavian led to war, and Thorfinn, although victorious, did not feel his position to be secure, and resolved to return to his country with his companions, his wife, and his son Snorre, the first Scandinavian born in Vinland.
Before quitting his settlement, the chief was anxious to leave some trace of his presence. Such, at least, is the opinion adopted by Scandinavian savants, and by M. Gravier, on the subject of the famousDighton Writing Rock. This block of gneiss, situated upon the right bank of Tauton River, and alternately covered and left bare by the tide, bears a certain number of characters engraved upon it to the depth of eight millimetres (one-third inch). Thisinscription, which has given rise to many discussions, has, probably, a double origin. Schoolcraft tells us that an old Indian, who was familiar with American pictography, recognized the hand of his countryman in a certain number of signs which he was able to explain, though at the same time he confessed that others were quite new to him. On the other hand, Magnusen and his followers have also only been able to interpret some of these same signs. They were, in their opinion, a mixture of runic and cryptographic signs, and of figures referring to the adventures of Thorfinn. They thought they could recognize Gudrida with her son Snorre,and the phonetic portion might, it seemed, be translated in the following manner:—131 MEN OF THE NORTH HAVE OCCUPIED THIS COUNTRY—WITH THORFINN. I should add, however, that Mr. Wittlesey does not admit the existence of a single alphabetical inscription in the United States. Yet we must not suppose that the opinion of the American antiquarian at all affects the authenticity of the Sagas which relate the history of Thorfinn.
I cannot here repeat all the adventures of Thorvard and Freydisa, of Ari Marson, Bjorn Asbrandson, Gudleif and Hervador ..., but I must remark, in reference to the latter, that, through the indications contained in the Skalholt Saga, the American savants have been able to find upon the shores of the Potomac the tomb of a woman who fell by the arrows of the Skrellings in 1051.
VII. The colonies founded in Greenland by Erick and his successors multiplied rapidly; both the east and west coasts were peopled. These two centres bore the names ofOsterbygdandVesterbygd. From the documents consulted by M. F. Lacroix, it appears that the former possessed a cathedral, eleven churches, three or four monasteries, two towns called Garda and Alba, and 190Gaardsor Norwegian villages; in the second, there were four churches and 90 or 110 gaards. These figures clearly indicate a considerable population. This is still more strongly proved by the fact, that as early as 1121, an Irishman, Erick-Upsi, was created Bishop of Greenland, and had eighteen successors. Vinland was in the jurisdiction of this diocese. The tithes of this country figured among the revenues of the Church in the fourteenth century, and were paid in kind.
This prosperity, and the regular relations between Europe, Greenland, and Vinland seem to have lasted till towards the middle of the fourteenth century. About this time the Skrellings attacked Vesterbygd; the succour sent by the other settlements arrived too late, and the western colony was destroyed. Osterbygd had a much longer existence. In 1418 it still paid to the Holy See as tithes and Peter’sPence 3600 pounds of walrus’ tusks. At a period anterior to this epoch, however, Queen Margaret, sovereign of the Scandinavian dominions, impelled by motives which have been differently interpreted, had interdicted all commerce with the Greenland colonies. Shortly afterwards fleets of pirates, springing from some unknown quarter, came down upon and pillaged them; the temperature of both land and sea gradually fell; voyages became more and more difficult, and, at last, ceased altogether. Thus, when in 1721, the Norwegian Pastor, Hans Eggede, led to those frozen lands the first modern colony, he found nothing but ruins, and not a single descendant of Erick and Thorfinn. What had become of them?
A letter addressed to Pope Nicholas V., quoted by M. Lacroix, throws some light upon their fate. It is dated 1448, and informs us that, thirty years previously, some strangerscoming from the American coastshad pillaged the colony, and massacred or carried into slavery the greater number of the inhabitants of both sexes. A great number had, however, returned to their homes, and asked for help.
It is hardly possible to avoid referring to the latter, the white population, tall, and with fair hair, which Captain Graa met with on the east coast of Greenland, during his expedition in search of Osterbygd. Notwithstanding their adoption of the Esquimaux language, they certainly did not belong to their race.
But were all the descendants of the bold navigators who had discovered America content to live, like the Skrellings, by the side of ruins which recalled the relative grandeur of their fathers? This hypothesis appears to me inadmissible. It seems evident to me, that the greater number of the survivors must have emigrated and sought refuge in Vinland, of the existence of which they were aware. Perhaps they were repulsed by the mixed population of Scandinavians and Esquimaux, who seem very early to have come into existence, and who were, perhaps, the invaders mentioned in the letter quoted by M. Lacroix; perhaps, again, theymay have encountered warlike and inhospitable tribes, like those mentioned in the Saga of Gudleif. But the Norwegians would then only have pushed on further, till they met with some hospitable shore where they could settle.
VIII. However this may be, the history of Scandinavian voyages is sufficient to explain the appearance of the white type, even of the fair type, in the midst of American populations. I do not hesitate to refer to this Aryan stock, the white Esquimaux of Charlevoix, the fair-haired men of Pierre Martyr, the fair men spoken of in some Mexican traditions, the White Savage Chief whom the Spaniards met with in their Cibola expedition ... etc.
Besides, the discovery and the repeated invasions of the American coasts by the Scandinavians show the estimation in which we ought to hold the pretended impossibility of the peopling of America. Here, we have no longer the doublepiroguesof the Polynesians, carrying 150 warriors; it was inboatsmanned by thirty or forty men that Leif and Thorwald faced the Greenland seas, reached, and returned from Vinland. In the presence of such facts, can we regard our improved method of navigation asindispensableto long sea voyages?
Modern civilization has placed in our hands an immense power of action unknown to our ancestors. It enables us to accomplish works which they would have thought could only be expected from supernatural powers. Science has placed in our hands the magic ring, and we have become so used to employing it for the satisfaction of our smallest wants, that it seems to us impossible to do without it. We too often forget the resources which man possesses in himself, and which form part of his original nature. Thus, we regard less advanced,less learnedraces as incapable of accomplishing that which we should not dare to undertake without the aid which we have been able to create for ourselves.
We have just seen how fully the history of the Polynesians and Scandinavians contradicts these false ideas, and how they justify the words of Lyell:—“Supposing the human genuswere to disappear entirely, with the exception of a single family, placed either upon the Ocean of the New Continent, in Australia, or upon some coral island of the Pacific Ocean, we may be sure that its descendants would, in the course of ages, succeed in invading the whole earth, although they might not have attained a higher degree of civilization than the Esquimaux or the South Sea Islanders.”