Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

“ If we could find adequate motives for men to cross thence, we cannot deduce the tropical animals. We cannot erect a history from materials so slender. It may yield one element of population; but we require the origin of many. But while we seek for times and nations, we have the indubitable evidences of the general event or events in the people before us, and we are justified by philology alone, in assigning to it an epoch or epochs, which are sufficiently remote and conformable to the laws of climate, to account for all the phenomena. ”

“ We must argue chiefly from the character of the antique works of art.
But although the apparent hieroglyphics of Yucatan and Central America have not been read, nor a history of much incident, or a remote antiquity, deduced from the pictorial scrolls of Mexico, it is impossible not to assign to the era of American antiquities, a degree of arts, science, agriculture and general civilization, to which the highest existing nomadic or hunter tribes had no pretence. It is a period of obscurity, of which inquirers might perhaps say, that the darkness itself is made to speak. ”

“ But were these, indeed, wanting—were there no mounds or pyramids of sepulture or sacrifice—no remains of art—no inscriptive testimonies to speak of by-gone centuries—we have before us one of the most interesting of all monumental proofs in the lost and enigmatical race, who yet rove the boundless forests of the West and South. Whether there be evidences to separate the eras and nations of the most ancient inhabitants from those whose descendants yet remain, is one of the very points at issue. ”

“ All nations and tribes upon the face of the globe, whom we can make sponsors for the American tribes, are thus constituted the field of study, and we have opened to our investigations a theme at once noble and sublime. Philosophy has no higher species of inquiry, beneath Infinitude, than that which establishes the original affinities of man to man. ”

“ When we examine the American continent, with a view to its ancient occupancy, we perceive its surface scarified with moats and walls—its alluvial level plains and vallies bearing mounds, teocalli and pyramids. Its high interior altitudes, in the tropical regions, are covered with the ruins of temples and cities—and even in the temperate latitudes of the north, its barrows and mounds are now found to yield objects of exquisite sculpture, and many of its forests, beyond the Alleghanies, exhibit the regularity of antique garden beds and furrows,2 amid the heaviest forest trees. ”

“ In the traditions of one of the most celebrated North American tribes, namely, the Iroquois, the continent or "island," as it is termed, is called Aonio,8 and we may hence denominate the race Aonic, and the individuals Aonites. If we do not advance by this term in the origin of the people, we at least advance in the precision of discussion.
But where shall we find a basis, on which to rest their Chronology? Must we run back to the epoch of the original dispersion of man, or can we rest at a subsequent point? Has the era of christianity any definite relation to their migration? ”

“ Vestiges of art are found, which speak of elder and higher states of civilization, than any known to the nomadic or hunter states. And the great activity which marks the present state of antiquarian and philological inquiry, in the leading nations of Europe, adds deeply to our means and inducements to search out the American branch of the subject. Man, as he views these results, gathers new hopes of his ability to trace the wandering footsteps of early nations over the globe. There is a hope of obtaining the ultimate principles of languages and national affinities. ”

“ Language is itself so irrefragable a testimony of the mental affinities of nations, and so slow in the periods of its mutations, that it offers one of the most important means for studying the history of the people. Grammars and vocabularies are required of all the tribes, whose history and relations we seek to fathom, before we can successfully compare them with each other, and with foreign languages. ”

“ But I cannot close them, without a brief allusion to the leading traits and history of the Red Race, whose former advance in the arts, and whose semi-civilization in the equinoctial latitudes of the continent, we have been contemplating.
That these tribes are a people of great antiquity, far greater than has been assigned to them, is denoted by the considerations already mentioned. Their languages, their astronomy, their architecture and their very ancient religion and mythology, prove this. But a people who live without letters, must expect their history to perish with them. ”

“ A continent stretching little under 10,000 miles, from south to north, with a maximum breath of 2000 miles, between sea and sea, rivers, such as the La Plata and the Amazon—mountains like that of the Andes, whose highest peak rises 20,280 feet above the sea—Volcanoes, which cast their fires over plains of interminable extent—tropical fruits of every kind—mines of gold and silver the richest the world had ever known—these were some of the features that America brought to light, while it added one-third to the known area, and more than one-third to the commercial resources of the world. ”

“ The present age is, in many respects, better prepared to undertake the examination of the question. The time which has passed away since Columbus dropped anchor at the island of Guanahani, has rendered distant nations on the globe far better acquainted with each other. This has, indeed, been the most remarkable period for its influence on all the true elements of civilization, which the world has ever known. The advance of general knowledge, the comity of national intercourse, and the policy and friendship of nations, has certainly never before reached its present state. ”

“ Astronomy has been employed to some extent to detect the chronology of architectural ruins, and even the antique history of America has been illustrated by the record of an eclipse among the ancient Mexican picture-writings.7 Geology, in her labors to determine the character of the exhumed bones and shells of extinct classes of the animal creation of former eras, has not failed to impart the most important knowledge of the physical history of the planet we occupy. Electricity and magnetism have also enlarged their boundaries. Chemistry is in the process of fulfilling the highest expectations. ”

“ There are monuments in those benignant latitudes of perpetual summer, exempted as they are from the disintegrating effects of frosts, which corroborate such a chronology, and denote even a more ancient population, who were builders, agriculturists and worshippers of the sun. ”

“ There can be no doubt that evidences exist in buried antiquities which will tend to connect the arts and religion, mythology and astronomy of the eastern and western hemispheres—to unravel the difficulties in the way of comparative philology, and to reconstruct and connect the links in the broken chain of national affiliation. ”

“ It is never done without an appeal, which has the characteristics of prayer, to the Great Spirit. To find in America, a system of worship which existed in Mesopotamia, in the era of the patriarch Job, one thousand five hundred and fifty years before the advent of Christ, is certainly remarkable, and is suggestive both of the antiquity and origin of the tribes.
Geology is not without its testimony in this connexion. The antiquity of human occupancy in the Mississippi valley is so extreme, that it appears to mingle its evidences with some of its more recent geological phenomena. ”

“ But while men gazed at its lofty mountains, and geological magnificence, the ancient race of men, who were found here, constituted by far the most curious and thought-inspiring problem. Volcanoes and vast plains and mountains were elements in the geography of the old world, and their occurrence here, soon assimilated their discovery to other features of the kind. ”

“ There is not an animal, fish, insect or reptile in America, whose character and habitudes they do not accurately and practically know. They believe the earth to be a plain, with four corners, and the sky a hemisphere of material substance-like brass, or metal, through which the planets shine, and around which the sun and moon revolve. ”

“ Viewed in every age, the existing tribes have exhibited such a fixity and peculiarity of character, as to have rendered them at once a paradox and a bye-word. The Turk has not been more inflexible; nor the Jew shown more individuality. We have hardly begun systematically to examine this subject. If the ancient builders were nomads—mere hunters of the bear, the deer, and the bison, who were too happy in the Parthian attainments of the bow and arrow to need towns and temples—certainly no such development arose in these more northern latitudes. ”

“ It is to be traced from the tropical latitudes into the Mississippi valley, where the earth-mound it is apprehended, rudely supplied the place of its more gorgeous, southern prototype. When they had raised the pile of earth as high as their means and skill dictated, facts denote that they erected temples and altars at its apex. On these altars, tradition tells us, they burned the tobacco plant, which maintains its sacred character unimpaired to the present day. From the traditions which are yet extant in some of the tribes, they regarded the sun as the symbol of Divine Intelligence. ”

“ And after making every allowance for the literary complacency of the age, we are yet unable to point to a prior epoch of the world when man had so fully recovered his position in the scale of civilization, and in the knowledge of the various phenomena in science, letters and arts, on which his true advance depends. ”

“ But the Mexican and South American tribes built more boldly, and have left several specimens of the pyramids, which deserve to be mentioned, as well from the evidences they afford of mechanical skill, as from their magnificent proportions, and their Nilotic power of endurance. The pyramid of Cholula, in the valley of Mexico, exists in three vast steps, retreating as they ascend, the highest of which was crowned with a temple, whose base was one hundred and seventy-seven feet above the plain. ”

“ While the very amplitude of the continent, and the variety of its soil, climate and productions, would lead, inevitably, to divisions and sub-divisions of tribes and languages, there are characteristics so deeply seated in their organization and habits, physical and mental, as to mark them as a peculiar family of the Red Type of man. Adopting this idea of unity as a basis of study, there are, at least, fewer obstacles in grouping the phenomena from which our deductions are to be drawn. ”