Daniel G. Brinton

“ Wherever there was a center of civilization, that is, wherever the surroundings favored the development of culture, tribes of different stocks enjoyed it to nearly an equal degree, as in central Mexico and Peru. By them it was distributed, and thus shaded off in all directions.
When closely analyzed, the difference between the highest and the average culture of the race is much less than has been usually taught. The Aztecs of Mexico and the Algonkins of the eastern United States were not far apart, if we overlook the objective art of architecture and one or two inventions. ”

“ Their color is as light and as really white as many southern Europeans, the face is oval, the nose straight, fine, and often aquiline, the lips thin, the cheek-bones not prominent, the eyes small, dark and horizontal, the expression free and noble. They are of pure blood, and the most important tribe of them derived their name, Yurucares, white men, from their Kechua neighbors before the conquest. They are usually uncommonly tall (1.75) , bold warriors, lovers of freedom and given to a hunting life. The women are often even taller and handsomer than the men. ”

“ The general condition of the arts in ancient Mexico is familiar to all who have turned their attention to American history. It has indeed received more than its due share of attention from the number and prominence [131] of the Nahuas at the conquest. They were little if at all superior to many of their neighbors in cultural progress. Even in architecture, where they excelled, the Zapotecs, Totonacos and Tarascos were but little behind them. Numerous artificial pyramids and structures of hewn stone remain in the territories of all these to prove their skill as builders. ”

“ The geographical relations of the members of the Maya stock are in marked contrast to those of the Uto-Aztecan—its only rival in civilization. Except the colony of the Huastecas on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico in the valley of the Rio Panuco, all its dialects were in contiguity. The true Maya, which is believed to be the purest form of the language, extended over the whole of the peninsula of Yucatan, around Lake Peten, and far up the affluents of the Usumacinta, the dialect of the Lacandons being closely akin to it. ”

“ The culture of the native Americans strongly attests the ethnic unity of the race. This applies equally to the ruins and relics of its vanished nations, as to the institutions of existing tribes. Nowhere do [44] we find any trace of foreign influence or instruction, nowhere any arts or social systems to explain which we must evoke the aid of teachers from the eastern hemisphere. The culture of the American race, in whatever degree they possessed it, was an indigenous growth, wholly self-developed, owing none of its germs to any other race, ear-marked with the psychology of the stock. ”

“ The Cashibos are the most savage tribe on the Ucayali or its affluents, and are said to have the ugly custom of eating their relations when they die, and if this event is long delayed, the old men are killed. But such is the power of ideas, that one of the obstacles to their conversion is that they so much prefer their bodies to become food for their relatives than a feast for worms! ”

“ From East Cape in Siberia one can see the American shore, and when first explored the tribes on each side were in frequent communication. No doubt this had been going on for a long time, and thus they had influenced each other in blood and culture. But so long as we have any knowledge of the movings at this point, they have been from America into Asia, the Eskimos pushing their settlements along the Asian coast. ”

“ The Pacific tribes are more quiet, submissive and docile; they have less courage, and less of that untamable independence which is so constant a feature in the history of the Algonkins and Iroquois.
Beginning at the sixtieth degree of north latitude and extending to the fifty-fifth, are the Tlinkit or Kolosch. They dwell on the coast of Alaska and the adjacent islands. Physically they are a strong and often tall people, light in color, with black or slightly reddish hair, eyes horizontal, nose aquiline. The Russians spoke of them as the most intelligent tribe they encountered on the coast. ”

“ The Omaguas and Cocamas, the most western of the Tupis, dwelling within the limits of Ecuador, had evidently profited by their contiguity to the civilization of Peru, as they are described by early travelers as familiar with gold, silver and copper, living in permanent villages connected by good roads, and cultivating large fields of cotton, maize and various food-plants. The art-forms which they produced and the prevalence of sun-worship, with rites similar to those of Peru, indicate the source of their more advanced culture. ”

“ It is a significant fact that these people do not all belong to the same stock. On the contrary, the “Pueblo Indians” are members of a number of wholly disconnected stems. This proves that the Pueblo civilization is not due to any one unusually gifted lineage, but was a local product, developed in independent tribes by the natural facilities offered by the locality. It is a spontaneous production of the soil, climate, and conditions, which were unusually favorable to agricultural and sedentary occupations, and prompted various tribes to adopt them. ”

“ The American Indians cannot bear the heat of the tropics even as well [35] as the European, not to speak of the African race. They perspire little, their skin becomes hot, and they are easily prostrated by exertion in an elevated temperature. They are peculiarly subject to diseases of hot climates, as hepatic disorders, showing none of the immunity of the African. [32] Furthermore, the finest physical specimens of the race are found in the colder regions of the temperate zones, the Pampas and Patagonian Indians in the south, the Iroquois and Algonkins in the north ”

“ The Tapuya stock is at once the most ancient and the most extensive now living on the soil of Brazil. Its various tribes are found from s. lat. 5° to s. lat. 20°, and from the Atlantic to the Schingu river. The name Tapuya was applied to them by the Tupis, and means “enemies” or “strangers”—two ideas which are always synonymous in primitive life. They are also called Crens or Guerens, the Old Ones or Ancient People. This seems to have reference to their possession of the coast before the arrival of the Tupi hordes from the south. ”

“ There are some reasons for believing that previous to the arrival of the Quiches and Cakchiquels on the plains of Guatemala that region was occupied by this nation, and that they gave way before the superior fighting powers of the more cultured stock.
The Xicaques live in the state of Honduras to the number of about six thousand. Their seats are on the waters of the Rio Sulaque and Rio Chaloma. They acknowledge one ruler, who is elective and holds the office for life. Their language contains a few Nahuatl words, but in the body of its vocabulary reveals no relationship to any other stock. ”

“ Immediately to the south of the Atacameños, bordering upon the sterile sands of the desert of Atacama, between south latitude 22° and 24°, are the Changos. In their country it never rains, and for food they depend entirely on the yield of the sea, fish, crustacea and edible algae. Like the Bushmen of the Kalihari desert, and doubtless for the same reason of insufficient nutrition, they are undersized, as a tribe perhaps of the shortest stature of any on the continent. The average of the males is four feet nine inches, and very few reach five feet. ”

“ Those Eskimos who live in Asia call themselves Yuit, a dialect form of Innuit. They dwell around East Cape and the shore south of it, in immediate contact with the Namollos or Sedentary Chukchis, a Sibiric people, totally different in language, appearance and culture. The Yuits have not at all assimilated to the reindeer-keeping, pastoral habits of the Chukchis, and by their own well-preserved traditions, moved across the straits from the American side, with which they continue commercial intercourse. ”

“ The love of music is strong in the race, and wind instruments and those sounded by percussion had been devised in considerable variety; but the highest type, the string instruments, were beyond their capacity of invention.
The religious sentiment was awake in all the tribes of the continent, and even the lowest had myths and propitiatory rites by which to explain to themselves and cajole to their own interests the unknown powers which order the destiny of human life. There is a singular similarity in these myths. ”

“ The word Carib is frequently applied by the Spanish population to any wild tribe, merely in the sense of savage or wild. Thus on the upper Usumacinta the Lacandons, a people of pure Maya stock, are so called by the whites; on the Musquito coast the uncivilized Ulvas of the mountains are referred to as Caribs. There are a large number of pure and mixed Caribs, probably five or six thousand, in British Honduras near Trujillo, but they do not belong to the original population. ”

“ They call themselves Innuit, “people,” a term the equivalent of which is the usual expression applied by American natives to their own particular stock.
The Innuit are at present essentially a maritime and arctic nation, occupying the coast and adjacent islands from the Straits of Belle Isle on the Atlantic to Icy Bay, at the foot of Mount St. Elias on the Pacific, and extending their wanderings and settlements as far up Smith’s Sound as N. Lat. 80°, where they are by far the northernmost inhabitants of the earth. ”

“ For these reasons American culture, wherever examined, presents a family likeness which the more careful observers of late years have taken pains to put in a strong light. This was accomplished for governmental institutions and domestic architecture by Lewis H. Morgan, for property rights and the laws of war by A. F. Bandelier, for the social condition of Mexico and Peru by Dr. Gustav Brühl, and I may add for the myths and other expressions of the religious sentiment by myself. ”

“ The Araucanians did not at any time rise in culture above the level of the Iroquois and Algonquins in the northern continent. It is true that in the tombs in their country we discover fine specimens of pottery, some good work in bronze, gold, copper and silver, and beautiful specimens of polished stone implements. [537] But if one examines closely the art-forms of these relics, he can not fail to recognize in them the potent inspiration of the Inca civilization ”

“ The skulls of the Five Nations, as well as those of the Tuscaroras and Cherokees, are distinctly [82] dolichocephalic, and much alike in other respects, while those of the Hurons are brachycephalic. [95] Physically the stock is most superior, unsurpassed by any other on the continent, and I may even say by any other people in the world; for it stands on record that the five companies (500 men) recruited from the Iroquois of New York and Canada during our civil war stood first on the list among all the recruits of our army for height, vigor and corporeal symmetry. ”

“ The Arawak stock, which Gilii calls the Maipure, had numerous branches in this region. They occupied much of the Orinoco in its middle and upper course, as well as the valleys of its affluents. Gumilla speaks of one of its members, the Caveres, as savage and inhuman warriors, but as the only nation which had been able to repulse the attacks of the down-river Caribs, who were accustomed to ascend the stream in fleets of eighty to a hundred canoes, destroying every village on its banks. ”

“ The Aleutian branch occupies the long chain of islands which stretch westward from the southwestern corner of Alaska. The climate is mild, the sea abounds in fish, and innumerable birds nest in the rocks. We may therefore believe the navigators of the last century, who placed the population of the islands at 25,000 or 30,000 souls, although at present they have sunk to about 2,000. They have the same cheerful temperament as the Eskimos, and their grade [66] of culture was, when first discovered, about the same. ”

“ The long winter nights are enlivened by music and songs, of which they are passionately fond, and by the recital of imaginative tales, the stock of which is inexhaustible. A skillful bard enjoys a wide reputation, and some of their poems contain fine and delicate sentiments. [69] Others are from ancient date, and are passed down from generation to generation with scrupulous [63] fidelity, every tone, every gesture, being imitated. The meter and rendition of their songs seem to the European monotonous, but the Eskimo has his own notion of the music of verse, and it is a very advanced one ”

“ They have no government, they can count only to three, ordinary family affection is not observable, and even mothers manifest a lack of love for their offspring. Their shelters are wretched, and they go almost naked in a climate which is both cold and damp.
On the other hand, they display singular ingenuity in their utensils for hunting and fishing; they use the sling, the club, the bow, the bola and the lance; the women weave reed baskets so firmly that they will hold water, and their bark canoes are light and seaworthy. ”

“ The Paezes live on both slopes of the central Cordillera, across the valley of the Magdalena from Bogota, some two thousand in number, in twenty-one villages. They prefer the high altitudes, and are a [192] hardy set of hunters and mountaineers. In spite of the cold they go nearly naked, but what is rare among native Americans, they wear a hat of reeds or bark, resembling in this some Peruvian tribes. Nor are they devoid of skill in hammering gold into ornaments, and weaving fibres of the maguey into mats and cloths. ”

“ In culture the Tapuyas are reported to stand on the lowest scale. When free in their native woods they go absolutely naked; they have no other houses than temporary shelters of leaves and branches; they manufacture no pottery, build no canoes, and do not know how to swim. When first in contact with the whites they had no dogs, knew nothing of the use of tobacco or salt, and were common cannibals. They have no tribal organizations and no definite religious rites. ”

“ The popolocas have also been erected into an ethnic entity by some ethnographers, with as little justice as the Chontallis. They are stated to have lived in the provinces of Puebla, Oaxaca, Vera Cruz, Mechoacan, and Guatemala. Sometimes the same tribe has been called both Chontales and Popoloras, which would be quite correct in the Nahuatl tongue, since in it these words are common nouns and nearly synonymous in signification; but employed in an ethnographic sense, they have led to great confusion, and the blending into one of distinct nationalities. ”

“ We are obliged, therefore, to look for the original home of the American glacial man elsewhere than in America. Some interesting geological facts throw an unexpected light upon our investigations. I have already remarked that in the various recent oscillations of the earth’s crust, there occurred about the middle and later Glacial Epoch an uplift of the northern part of the continent and also of the northern Atlantic basin. ”

“ The early culture of these tribes is faithfully depicted in the records of the campaign of Hernando De Soto, who journeyed through their country in 1540. He found them cultivating extensive fields of maize, beans, squashes and tobacco; dwelling in permanent towns with well-constructed wooden edifices, many of which were situated on high mounds of artificial construction, and using for weapons and utensils stone implements of great beauty of workmanship. ”

“ The natives of the remaining Pueblos belong to three independent stocks, known as the Kera, the Tehua, and the Zuñi families. No relationship has been discovered between either of these and any tribe outside the territory I have referred to.
The culture of the Pueblos, both ancient and modern, bears every mark of local and independent growth. A knowledge of metals, other than to a [117] limited extent for ornament, is nowhere evident. Tillage of the fields in a rude manner was the main source of the food supply. Pottery of fine temper and in symmetrical forms was manufactured by the women. ”