lot CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT W^ITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 189I BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE CORNELL UNrVERSITY LIBRARY 3 1924 088 421 288 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924088421288 STo&n JFteltc'B ©EntmitB. MYTHS AND MYTHMAKERS: Old Tales and Superstitions interpreted by Comparative Mythology. ThirteetUh Edition- i2mo, $2.00. OUTLINES OF COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. Based on the Doc- trine of Evolution, with Criticisms on the Positive Philosophy. Tenth Edition. 2 vols., 8vo, $6.00. THE UNSEEN WORLD, and other Essays. Ninth Edition. i2ino, $2.00. EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST. EUventh Edition. i2mo, J2.00. DARWINISM, and other Essays. Fifth Edition. i2ino, ?2.oo. THE DESTINY OF MAN, viewed in the Light of His Origin. Fifteetith Edition. i6mo, ^i.oo. THE IDEA OF GOD, as aSected by Modern Knowledge. A Sequel to " The Destiny of Man. " Ninth T/ioiisand. t6mo. Si. 00. THE CRITICAL PERIOD OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 1783-1789. Sixth Edition. Crown Svo, J2. 00. THE BEGINNINGS OF NEW ENGLAND, or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty. Crown 8vo, $2.00. THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. In Riverside Library for Young People. i6mo, 75 cents. THE DISCOVERY AND SPANISH CONQUEST OF AMER- ICA. With Maps. 2 vols, crown 8vo, ^4.00. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 2 vols, crown Svo, J4.00. CIVIL GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES, consid- ered WITH SOME Reference to its Origins. Crown Svo, Jt.oo, tiet. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY, Boston and New York. AMERICAN POLITICAL IDEAS, viewed from the Stand-point of Universal History. Third Edition. i2mo, $1.00. Har- per & Brothers, New York. -^r/i 1 v/)-" ferred to. It is one of the most important collections in the world, and is worth a long journey to see. Containing more th^u 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 palaeolithic 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 collec- tion exists from which a student can gather so much information at sight as in this, where the natural pebbles from the gravel be- gin 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 palajoliths, 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's Primitive Industry, published in 1881, is a useful manual for studying this collection ; and an ac- count of his discoveries in the glacial gravels is given in Reports of the Peabodj/ Museum, vol. ii. pp. 30-48, 225-2.58; see also vol. iii. p. 492. A succinct and judicious account of the whole subject is given by H. W. Haynes, "The Prehistoric Archa;ology of North America," in Winsor's Narrative and Critical History, vol. i. pp. 329-368. ANCIENT AMERICA. 11 But according to Professor Josiah Whitney there is reason for supposing that man existed in California at a still more remote period, ^he Caiaveras He holds that the famous skull dis- *""• covered in 1866, in the gold-bearing gravels of Calaveras county, belongs to the Pliocene age.^ If this be so, it seems to suggest an antiquity not less tlian twice as great as that just mentioned. The question as to the antiquity of the Calaveras skull is still hotly disputed among the foremost palaeontologists, but as one reads the arguments one cannot help feeling that theoretical difficulties have put the objectors ixito a somewhat inhospit- able attitude toward the evidence so ably pre- sented by Professor Whitney. It has been too hastily assumed that, from the point of view of evolution, the existence of Pliocene man is im- probable. Upon general considerations, however, we have strong reason for believing that human beings must have inhabited some portions of the earth throughout the whole duration of the Plio- cene period, and it need -not surprise us if their remains are presently discovered in more places than one.^ ' J. D. Whitney, "The Auriferous Gravels of the Sierra Ne- vada," Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Har- vard College, Cambridge, 1880, vol. vi. ^ 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. .30). I am pleased at finding the same opinion lately expressed by one of the highest livinET authorities. The case is thus stated by Alfred Russel Wal- lace : " The evidence we now possess of the exact nature of the 12 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. Whatever may be the filial outcome of the Ca- laveras controversy, there can he no douht as to the existence of man in North America far back in early Pleistocene times. The men of the Eiver- clrift, who long dwelt in western Europe during 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 impor- tant characters in which they ag-ree with each other. The con- clusion 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 lai'ge 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 objec- tion 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 the Anthropological Review. May, 1864; re- stated in his Contributions 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 in Cosmic Philosophi/, part ii., chapters xvi., xxi., xxii. ANCIENT AMERICA. 13 the milder intervals of the Glacial period, but seem to have become extinct toward the end of it, are well known to palaeontologists through their bones and their rude tools. Contemporaneously with these Eiiropeans of the Eiver-dvift there cer- tainly lived some kind of men, of a similar low grade of culture, in the Mississippi valley and on both the Atlantic and Pacific slopes of North America. Along with these an- meuaudmam- cient Americans lived some terrestrial mammals that still survive, such as the elk, rein- deer, prairie wolf, bison, musk-ox, and beaver; and many that have long been extinct, such as the mylodon, megatherium, megalonyx, mastodon, Si- berian elephant, mammoth, at least six or seven species of ancestral horse, a huge bear similar to the cave bear of ancient Europe, a lion similar to the European cave lion, and a tiger as large as the modern tiger of Bengal. Now while the general relative positions of those stupendous abysses that hold the oceans do not appear to have undergone any considerable change since an extremely remote geological period, their shallow marginal portions have been repeatedly raised so as to add extensive territories to the edges of continents, and in some cases' to convert archi- pelagoes into continents, and to join continents previously separated. Such elevation is followed in turn by an era of subsidence, and almost every. where either the one process or the other is slowly going on. If you look at a model in relief of the continents and ocean-floors, such as may be seen at the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, 14 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. showing the results of a vast number of soundings Elevation and i" ^11 parts of the wopld, jou cannot fail subsidence. ^q ]jjg struck with the shallowness of Bering Sea ; it looks like a part of the continent rather than of the ocean, and indeed it is just that, ■ — an area of submerged continent. So in the northern Atlantic there is a lofty ridge running from France to Greenland. The British islands, the Orkney, Shetland, and Fseroe groups, and Ice- land are the parts of this ridge high enough to re- main out of water. The remainder of it is shallow sea. Again and again it has been raised, together with the floor of the German ocean, so as to be- come dry land. Both before and since the time when those stone tools were dropped into the red gravel from which Mr. Cresson took them the other day, the northwestern part of Europe has been solid continent for more than a hundred miles to the west of the French and Irish coasts, the Thames and Humber have been tributaries to the Rhine, which emptied into the Arctic ocean, and across the Atlantic ridge one might have walked to the New World dryshod.^ In similar wise the north- western corner of America has repeatedly been joined to Siberia through the elevation of Bering Sea. There have therefore been abundant opportunities for men to get into America from the Old World without crossing salt water. Probably this was the case with the ancient inhabitants of the Delar ware and Little Miami valleys; it is not at all 1 See, for example, the map of Europe in early post-glacial times, in James Geikie's Prehistoric Europe. ANCIENT AMERICA. 15 likely that men who used their kind of tools knew much about going on the sea in boats. \ Whether the Indians are descended from this ancient population or not, is a question with which we have as yet no satisfactory method of dealing. It is not unlikely that these glacial men may have perished from off the face of the earth, having been crushed and supplanted by stronger races. There may have been several successive waves ^^^g ^j „;. of migration, of which the Indians were s'""""- the latest.^ There is time enough for a great many things to happen in a thousand centuries. It will doubtless be long before all the evidence can be brought in and ransacked, but of one thing we may feel pretty sure ; the past is more full of changes than we are apt to realize. Our first theories are usually too simple, and have to be en- larged and twisted into all manner of shapes in order to cover the actual complication of facts.^ ^ " 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 remark- able uniformity, are of small size and of oval shape, differing from all other skulls in the Museum. In fa-245. 18 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. when considered in connection with so many other points of agreement, and with the indisputable fact that the Cave men were a sub-arctic race, it affords a strong presumption in favour of the opinion of that great paleontologist, Professor Boyd Daw- kins, that the Eskimos of North America are to- day the sole survivors of the race that made their homes in the Pleistocene caves of western Europe.^ ^ According to Dr. Eink tlie 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 palseo- liths 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 be- come adapted to arctic conditions of life ; that in the mild inter- glacial intervals they migrated northward along with the musk- sheep ; and that upon the return of the cold they migrated south- ward 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, both northward 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. Eink, Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, Edinburgh, 1875 ; Danish Greenland, London, 1877 ; The Eshmo Tribes, their Distribution and Charac- teristics, especialli/ 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 Migra- tions of the Greenland Esquimaux," Journal of the Royal Geo- graphical Society, 186.5 ; Cranz, Historic von Groenland, Leipsic, ANCIENT AMERICA. 19 If we have always been accustomed to think of races of men only as they are placed on modern maps, it at first seems strange to think of England and France as ever having been inhabited by Es- kimos. Facts equally strange may be cited in abundance from zoijlogy and botany. The camel is found to-day only in Arabia and Bactria ; yet in all probability the camel originated in Amer- ica,-'^ and is an intruder into what we are accus- tomed to call his native deserts, just as the people of the United States are European intruders upon the soil of America. So the giant trees of Mari- posa grove are now foimd only in California, but there was once a time when they were as common in Europe ^ as maple-trees to-day in a New Eng- land village. Familiarity with innmnerable facts of this sort, concerning the complicated migrations and distri- bution of plants and animals, has entirely altered our way of looking at the question as to the origin of the American Indians. As already observed, we can hardly be said to possess sufficient data for determining whether they are descended from the Pleistocene inhabitants of America, or have come in some later wave of migration from the Old World. Nor can we as yet determine whether 1765 ; Petitot, Traditions indlennes du Canada nord-ouest, Paris, 1886 ; Filling's Bibliography of the Eskimo Language, Wasliing-ton, 1887 ; Wells and Kelly, English-Eskimo and Eskimo-English Vo- cabularies, with Ethnographical Memoranda concfrning the Arctic Eskimos in Alaska and Siberia, Wasliington, 1890 ; Carstensen's Two Summers in Greenland, London, 1890. 1 Wallace, Geographical Distribution of Animals, vol. ii. p. 155. ^ Asa Gray, " Sequoia and its History," in his Darwiniana, pp. 205-235. 20 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. they were earlier or later comers than the Eskimos. But since we have got rid of that feeling of specu- lative necessity above referred to, for bringing the red men from Asia within the historic period, it has become more and more clear that they have dwelt u]Don American soil for a very long time. The aboriginal American, as we know him, with his language and legends, his physical and mental peculiarities, his social observances and customs, is most emphatically a native and not an imported article. He belongs to the American continent as strictly as its opossums and armadillos, its maize and its golden-rod, or any members of its aborigi- There was "^^ fauua and flora belong to it. In all ^mmec'tiror probability he came from the Old World waterbotween ^t somc aucicnt pcriod, whether pre- "ca L'nd «,r'" glacial or post-glacial, when it was pos- oid World. sibletocome by land; and here in all probability, until the arrival of white men from Europe, he remained undisturbed by later comers, imless the Eskimos may have been such. There is not a particle of evidence to suggest any connection or intercourse between aboriginal America and Asia within any such period as the last twenty thousand years, except in so far as there may per- haps now and then have been slight surges of Eskimo tribes back and forth across Bering strait. The Indians must surely be re_garded as an en- tirely different stock from the Eskimos. On the other hand, the most competent American ethnol- ogists are now pretty thorouglily agreed that all the aborigines south of the Eskimo region, all the way from Hudson's Bay to Cape Horn, belong ANCIENT AMERICA. 21 to one and the same race. It was formerly sup- posed that the higher culture of the Aztecs, Mayas, and Peruvians must indicate that they were of different race from the more barbarous Algonquins and Dakotas ; and a specidative necessity was felt for proving that, whatever may have been the case with the other American peoples, this ^here is one higher culture at any rate must have Sn"' fed"'' been introduced within the historic ''''°°' period from the Old World.^ This feeling was caused partly by the fact that, owing to crude and loosely-framed conceptions of the real points of difference between civilization and barbarism, this Central American culture was absurdly exag- gerated. As the further study of the uncivilized parts of the world has led to more accurate and precise conceptions, this kind of speculative neces- sity has ceased to be felt. There is an increasing disposition among scholars to agree that the war- rior of Anahuae and the shejjherd of the Andes were just simply Indians, and that their culture was no less indigenous than that of the Cherokees or Mohawks. To prevent any possible misconception of my meaning, a further word of explanation may be needed at this point. The word " race " j^jg^^^,^,. is used in such widely different senses senses in whici. •^ tlie word that there is apt to be more or less " "■='™ " " A ^ , used. vagueness about it. The difference is 1 Illustrations may he found in plenty in the learned works of Brasseur de Bourbourg : — Bistoire des nation!: civilisfes du Mixique et de CAmlrique centrals, 4 vols., Paris, 18.J7-5S ; Popol Vuh, Paris, 1861 ; Quatre lettres sur le Mixique, Paris, 1868 ; Le manu- scrit Troano, Paris, 1870, etc. 22 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. mainly in what logicians call extension ; some- times the word covers very little ground, some- times a great deal. We say that the people of Eng- land, of the United States, and of New South Wales belong to one and the same race ; and we say that an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Greek belong to three different races. There is a sense in which both these statements are true. But there is also a sense in which we may say that the Englishman, the Frenchman, and the Greek belong to one and the same race ; and that is , when we are contrasting them as white men with black men or yellow men. Now we may correctly say that a Shawnee, an Ojibwa, and a Kickapoo belong to one and the same Algonquin race ; that a Mohawk and a Tuscarora belong to one and the same Iroquois race ; but that an Al- gonquin differs from an Iroquois somewhat as an Englishman differs from a Frenclmian. No doubt we may fairly say that the Mexicans encoiuitered by Cortes differed in race from the Iroquois en- countered by Champlain, as much as an English- man differs from an Albanian or a Monteneorin. But when we are contrasting aboriginal Ameri- cans with white men or yellow men, it is right to say that Mexicans and Iroquois belong to the same great red race. In some parts of the world two strongly con- trasted races have become mingled together, or have existed side by side for centuries without in- termingling. In Europe the big blonde Aryan- speaking race has mixed with the small brunette Iberian race, producing the endless varieties in ANCIENT AMERICA. 23 stature and complexion which may be seen in any drawing-room in London or New York. In Africa south of Sahara, on the other hand, we find, inter- spersed among negro tribes but kept perfectly dis- tinct, that primitive dwarfish race with yellow skin and tufted hair to which belong the Hottentots and Bushmen, the Wambatti lately discovered by Mr. Stanley, and other tribes.^ Now in America south of Hudson's Bay the case seems to have been quite otherwise, and more as it would have been in Eu* rope if there had been only Aryans, or in Africa if there had been only blacks.^ The belief that the people of the Cordilleras must be of radically different race from other Indians was based upon the vague notion that grades of culture have some necessary connection with likenesses and differences of race. . .No necessary inere is no such necessary connection.** connection be- T» 1 1 • 1 1 • •! ■ 1 T tween differ- Between the lughlv civilized J apanese ences in Ti J- , . culture and and their -barbarous Mandshu cousins differences in race. the difference in culture is much greater 'See Werner, "The African Pygmies," Popular Science MomMy, September, 1890, — a thoughtful and interesting, article. ^ This sort of illustration requires continual limitation and qualification. The case in ancient America was not quite as it ■would haTe been in Europe if there had been only Aryans there. The semi-civilized people of the Cordilleras were relatively bra- chycephalous 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 Ameri- can soil, a differentiation within the limits of the red race, and not an intru.sion 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. 89. ^ As Sir John Lubbock well says, " Different races in similar 24 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. than the difference between Mohawks and Mex- icans ; and the same may be said of the people of Israel and Judah in contrast with the Arabs of the desert, or of the imperial Komans in com- parison with their Teutonic kinsmen as described by Tacitus. At this point, in order to prepare ourselves the more clearly to understand sundry facts with which we shall hereafter be obliged to deal, espe- cially the wonderful experiences of the Spanish con- querors, it will be well to pause for a moment and do something toward defining the different grades Grades of cui- ^f culture tlirougli which men have *""■ passed in attaining to the grade which can properly be called civilization. Unless we begin with clear ideas upon this head we cannot go far toward miderstanding the ancient America that was first visited and described for us by Spaniards. The various grades of cirlture need to be classified, and that most original and sugges- tive scholar, the late Lewis Morgan of Eochester, made a brilliant attempt in this direction, to which the reader's attention is now invited. Below Civilization Mr. Morgan ^ distinguishes two principal grades or stages of cvilture, namely Savagery and Barbarism. There is much loose- ness and confusion in the popular use of these stag-es of development often present more featnres of resemblance to one another tlian 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. ' See his great work on Ancient Societi/, New York, 1877. ANCIENT AMERICA. 25 terms, and this is liable to become a fruitful source of misapprehension in the case of any statement involving either of them. When popu- lar usage discriminates between them uigtinctionbe- it discriminates in the right direction ; a^er'an^d' there is a vague but not uncertain feel- i'"''""''™- ing that savagery is a lower stage than barbarism. But ordinarily the discrimination is not made and the two terms are carelessly employed as if inter- changeable. Scientific writers long since recog- nized a general difference between savagery and barbarism, biit Mr. Morgan was the first to sug- gest a really useful criterion for distinguishing between them. His criterion is the making of pottery ; and Jiis reason for selecting it is that the making of pottery is something that presupposes village life and more or less progress in the simpler arts. The earlier methods of boiling food were either putting it into holes in the ground lined with skins and then using heated stones, or else putting it into baskets coated with clay origin of pot- to be supported over a fire. The clay '''"'^' served the double purpose of preventing liquids from escaping and protecting the basket against the flame. It was probably observed that the clay was hardened by the fire, and thus in course of time it was found that the clay would answer the purpose without the basket.^ Whoever first made this ingenious discovery led the way from sav- agery to barbarism. Throughout the jjresent work ' See the evidence in Tylor, Researches into the Early Hictory of Mankind, pp. 269-272; of. Lnbbock, Prehistoric Times, p. 573 ; and see Cushing's masterly " Study of Pueblo Pottery,'' etc, Reports of Bureau, of Ethnology, iv., 473-521. 26 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. we shall apply the name "savages" only to un- civilized people who do not make pottery. But within each of these two stages Mr. Mor- gan distinguishes three subordinate stages, or Ethnic Periods, which may be called either lower, middle, and upper status, or older, middle, and later periods. The lower status of savagery was Lower status t^at whoUy prehistoric stage when men of savagery. YiyQ^ in their Original restricted habitat and subsisted on fruit and nuts. To this period must be assigned the beginning of articidate speech. All existing races of men had passed be- yond it at an unknown antiquity. Men began to pass beyond it -when they dis- covered how to catch fish and how to use fire. They could then begin (following coasts and Middle et.tus rivers) to spread over the earth. ^ The of savagery, jjiiddlc status of savagcry, thus intro- duced, ends with the invention of that compound weapon, the bow and arrow. The natives of Aus- tralia, who do not know this weapon, are stiU in the middle status of savagery.^ The invention of the bow and arrow, which marks the upper status of savageiy, was not only a great advance in military art, but it also vastly Upper status iucrcascd men's supply of food by in- of savagery. ppeasing their power of killing wild game. The lowest tribes in America, such as those upou the Columbia river, the Athabaskans of Hudson's Bay, the Fuegians and some other South American tribes, are in the upper status of savagery. ^ Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, London, 1880, gives a vivid pic- ture of aboriginal life in Australia. ANCIENT AMERICA. 27 The transition from this status to the lower status of barbarism was marked, as before observed, by the invention of pottery. The end of the lower status of barbarism was marked in the Old World by the domestication of animals other than the dog, which was probably domesti- cated at a much earlier period as an aid to the hunter. The domestication of horses and asses, oxen and sheep, goats and pigs, marks Lower status of course an immense advance. Along °te''naed'd™' with it goes considerable development two"*emi" '""^ of agricvdture, thus enabling a small '"?''<='''==• territory to support many people. It takes a wide range of country to support hunters. In the New World, except in Peru, the only do- mesticated animal was the dog. Horses, oxen, and the other animals mentioned did not exist in America, during the historic period, until they were brought over from Europe by the Spaniards. In ancient American society there was no such thing as a pastoral stage of development,^ and the absence of domesticable animals from the western hemisphere may well be reckoned as very impor- tant among the causes which retarded the pro- gress of mankind in this part of the world. On the other hand the ancient Americans had a cereal plant peculiar to the New World, which made comparatively small demands upon the in- telligence and industry of the cidtivator. Maize or " Indian corn " has played a most important 1 The case of Peru, which forms an apparent but not real ex- ception to this g-eneral statement, -will be considered below in chap. ix. 28 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. part in the history of the New World, as regards both the red men and the white men. It could be planted without clearing or ploughing the soil. It was only .necessary to girdle the trees with a stone hatchet, so as to destroy their leaves and let in the sunshine. A few scratches and digs were made in the ground with a stone digger, and the seed once dropped in took care of itself. The ears Importance ot could hang for wccks after ripening, Indian corn, ^^^j^ could be picked off without med- dling with the stalk ; there was no need of thresh- ing and winnowing. None of the Old World ce- reals can be cultivated without much more industry and intelligence. At the same time, when Indian corn is sown in tilled land it yields with little la- bour more than twice as much food per acre as any other kind of grain. This was of incalculable ad- vantage to the English settlers of New England, who would have found it much harder to gain a secure foothold upon the soil if they had had to begin by preparing it for wheat and rye without the aid of the beautiful and beneficent American plant.i The Indians of the Atlantic coast of North America for the most part lived in stock- aded villages, and cultivated their corn along with beans, pumpkins, squashes, and tobacco ; but their cultivation was of the rudest sort,^ and population was too sparse for much progress toward civiliza- ^ See Shaler, " Physiography of North America," in Winsor's Nan: and Crit. Hist. vol. iv. p. xiii. 2 " 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 aban- doned and a new one built." Je.iuits in North America, p. xxx. ANCIENT AMERICA. 29 tion. But Indian corn, when sown in carefully tilled and irrigated land, had much to do with the denser population, the increasing organization of labour, and the higher development in the arts, which characterized the confederacies of Mexico and Central America and all the pueblo Indians of the southwest. The potato played a somewhat similar part in Peru. Hence it seems proper to take the regular employment of tillage with irri- gation as marking the end of the lower period of barbarism in the New World. To this Mr. Mor- gan adds the use of adobe-brick and stone in ar- chitecture, which also distinguished the Mexicans and their neighbours from the ruder tribes of North and South America. All these ruder tribes, except the few already mentioned as in the upper period of savagery, were somewhere within the lower period of barbarism. Thus the Algonquins and Iroquois, the Creeks, the Dakotas, etc., when first seen by white men, were within this j)eriod ; but some had made much further progress within it than others. For example, the Algonquin tribe of Ojibwas had little more than emerged from sav- agery, while the Creeks and Cherokees had made considerable advance toward the middle status of barbarism. Let us now observe some characteristics of this extremely interesting middle period. It began, we see, in the eastern hemisphere with ^^^^^^ ^j^t,,, the domestication of other animals than ""arbarisn,. the dog, and in the western hemisphere with cidti- vation by irrigation and the use of adobe-brick and stone for building. It also possessed another 30 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. feature which distinguished it from earlier pe- riods, in the materials of which its tools were made. In the j^eriods of savagery hatchets and spear-heads were made of rudely chipped stones. In the lower period of barbarism the chipping be- came more and more skilful until it gave place to polishing. In the middle period tools were greatly multiplied, improved polishing gave sharp and accurate points and edges, and at last metals be- gan to be used as materials preferable to stone. In America the metal used was copper, and in some spots where it was very accessible there were instances of its use by tribes not in other respects above the lower status of barbarism, — as for ex- ample, the " mound-builders." In the Old World the metal used was the alloy of copper and tin familiarly known as bronze, and in its working it called for a higher degree of intelligence than copper. Toward the close of the middle period of bar- barism the working of metals became the most im- portant element of progress, and the period may be Working ot regarded as ending with the invention metals. ^j ^j^g proccss of Smelting iron ore. According to this principle of division, the in- habitants of the lake villages of ancient Switzer- land, who kept horses and oxen, pigs and sheep, raised wheat and ground it into flour, and spun and wove linen garments, but knew nothing of iron, were in the middle status of barbarism. The same was true of the ancient Britons before they learned the use of iron from their neighbours in Gaul. In the New World the representatives of ANCIENT AMERICA. 31 the middle status of barbarism were such peoples as the Zunis, the Aztecs, the Mayas, and the Peru- vians. The upper status of barbarism, in so far as it implies a knowledge of smelting iron, was never reached in aboriginal America. In the Old World it is the stage which had been reached ^ ^^^^.^^ by the Greeks of the Homeric poems ^ °' barbarism. and the Germans in the time of Caesar. The end 1 In the interesting- architectural remains unearthed by Dr. Sohliemann at Mycense 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 century B. 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 1700 E. c. The Greeks of that time would accordingly be placed in the middle status of barbarism. (See Schlieraann's Mycenae, 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 Home in the Light of Becent Discoveries, Bos- ton, 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 fromi Egypt and the use of the alphabet from Pheenicia. Such copying, of course, affects the symmetry of such schemes as Mr. Morgan's, and allowances have to he made for it. It lis curious that both Greeks and Romans seem to have preserved some tradition of the Bronze Age : — Tots 3' fjV ^dKKea [jikv revxta, j(a\K£Ot Se re OiKOl, ^oAkw 6* ilpyd^ofTO ■ jii€Aas 6' ov(c iaKe (rt'ivjpos. Hesiod. 0pp. Di. 134. Arma antiqua manus ungues dentesque fuerunt Et lapidea et item silrarura fragmina rami, 32 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. of this loeriod and the beginning of true civiliza- tion is marked by the invention of a phonetic aljDhabet and the production of written records. This brings within the pale of civilization such people as the ancient Phoenicians, the Hebrews BiiKinningof after the exodus, the ruling classes at civilization. Nineveh and Babylon, the Aryans of Persia and India, and the Japanese. But clearly it will not do to insist too narrowly upon the pho- netic character of the alphabet. Where people acquainted with iron have enshrined in hierogij'jjh- ics so much matter of historic record and literary interest as the Chinese and the ancient Egyptians, they too must be classed as civilized ; and this Mr. Morgan by implication admits. This brilliant classification of the stages of early culture will be found very helpful if we only keep in mind the fact that in all wide generalizations of this sort the case is liable to be somewhat un- duly simplified. The story of human progress is really not quite so easy to decipher as such de- scriptions would make it appear, and when we have laid down rides of this sort we need not be surprised if we now and then come upon facts that wiU not exactly fit into them. In such an Et flamma atqiie igiies, postquam sunt coguita primum. Posterius ferri vis est, rerisque reperta. Et prior ffiris erat, quam ferri cognitus usus, etc. Lucretius, v. 1283. Perhaps, as Muiiro sugg-ests, Lucretius was thinking- of Hesiod ; but it does not seem improhable 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. ANCIENT AMERICA. 33 event it is best not to try to squeeze or distort the unruly facts, but to look and see if our rules will not bear some little qualification. The facidty for generalizing is a good servant but a bad mas- ter. If we observe this caution we shall fuid Mr. Morgan's work to be of great value. It will be observed that, with one exception, his restrictions leave the area of civilization as wide as that which we are accustomed to assign to it in our ordinary speaking and thinking. That exception is the case of Mexico, Central America, and Peru. We have so long been accustomed to gorgeous accounts of the civilization of these countries at the time of their discovery by the Spaniards that it may at first shock our preconceived notions to see them set down as in the " middle status of barbarism," one stage higher than Mohawks, and one stage lower than the warriors of the Iliad. This does indeed mark a change since Dr. Draper expressed the opinion that the Mexicans and Pe- ..civiirza- ruvians were morally and intellectually M°e"lcoand superior to the Europeans of the six- ^*'^''' teenth century.^ The reaction from the state of opinion in which such an extravagant remark was even possible has been attended with some contro- versy ; but ori the whole Mr. Morgan's main position has been steadily and rapidly gaining groimd, and it is becoming more and more clear that if we are to use language correctly when we speak of the civ- ilizations of Mexico and Peru we really mean civil- izations of an extremely archaic type, considerably 1 See his Intellectual Development of Europe, New York, 1863, pp. 448, 464. 34 THE DISCOVERY OF AMEBIC A. more archaic than that of Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs. A " civilization " like that of the Aztecs, without domestic animals or iron tools, with trade still in the primitive stage of barter, with human sacrifices, and with cannibalism, has certainly some of the most vivid features of bar- barism. Along with these primitive features, how- ever, there seem to have been — after making aU due allowances — some features of luxury and splendour such as we are wont to associate with civilization. The Aztecs, moreover, though doubt- less a full ethnical period behind the ancient Egyptians in general advancement, had worked out a system of hieroglyphic writing, and had be- gun to put it to some literary use. It woidd seem that a people may in certain special points reach a level of attainment higher than the level which they occupy in other points. The Cave men of the Glacial period were igiiorant of pottery, and thus had not risen above the upper status of sav- agery ; but their artistic talent, upon which we have remarked, was not such as we are wont to associate with savagery. Other instances will oc- cur to us in the proper place. The difficiuty which people usually find in real- izing the true position of the ancient Mexican culture arises partly from the misconceptions which have imtil recently distorted the facts, and partly from the loose employment of terms above noticed. Loose use of It is quite coiTect to speak of the Aus- " savagery" tralian blackfellows as "savages," but and "civiUza- , . . , ^ tion." nothing is more common than to hear the same epithet employed to characterize Shav,'- ANCIENT AMERICA. 35 nees and Mohawks ; and to call those Indians " savages " is quite misleading. So on the other hand the term " civilization" is often so loosely used as to cover a large territory belonging to " barbar- ism." One does not look for scientific precision in newspapers, but they are apt to reflect popular habits of thought quite faithfully, and for that reason it is proper here to quote from one. In a newspaper account of Mr. Cushing's recent discov- eries of buried towns, works of irrigation, etc., in Arizona, we are first told that these are the remains of a "splendid prehistoric civilization," and the next moment we are told, in entire vmconsciousness of the contradiction, that the people who con- structed these works had only stone tools. Now to call a people " civilized " who have only stone tools is utterly misleading. Nothing but confusion of ideas and darkening of counsel can come from such a misuse of words. Such a people may be in a high degree interesting and entitled to credit for what they have achieved, but the grade of culture which they have reached is not " civilization." With " savagery " thus encroaching upon its area of meaning on the one side, and " civilization " encroaching on the other, the word " barbarism," as popularly apprehended, is left in a vague and unsatisfactory plight. If we speak of Montezuma's people as barbarians one stage further advanced than Mohawks, we are liable to be charged with calling them " savages." Yet the term, yaiueand " barbarism "« is a very useful one; in- ihJ'teJm °° ° dispensable, indeed, in the history of "' "™™' human progress. There is no other word which 36 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. can serve in its stead as a designation of the enor- mous interval whicli begins with the invention of pottery and ends with the invention of the alphabet. The popular usage of the word is likely to be- come more definite as it comes to be more generally realized how prodigious that interval has been. When we think what a considerable portion of man's past existence has been comprised within it, and what a marvellous transformation in human knowledge and human faculty has been gradually wroiight between its beginning and its end, the period of barbarism becomes invested with most thrilling interest, and its name ceases to appear otherwise than respectable. It is Mr. Morgan's chief title to fame that he has so thoroughly ex- plored this period and described its features with such masterly skill. It is worth while to observe that Mr. Morgan's view of the successive stages of culture is one which could not well have been marked out in all its parts • except by a student of American archasology. Aboriginal America is the richest field in the world for the study of barbarism. Its peojDle pre- sent every gradation in social life during three ethnical periods — the ujjper period of savagery and the lower and middle periods of barbarism — so that the process of development may be most systematically and instructively stud- Tlie status of . j t-t .. ' -, - . barbarism is leci. U ntil wc havc Dccome familiar With most com- • j. A * pieteiyexem- ancieiit Ajncricau society, and so lono- plifled in . . ■' " ancient Amer- as our view IS coiifincd t6 the pliascs of progress in the Old World, the de- mareation between civilized and uncivilized life ANCIENT AMERICA. 37 seems too abrupt and sudden ; we do not get a cor- rect measure of it. The oldest European tradition reaches back only through the ujjper period of bar- barism.i The middle and lower periods have lapsed into utter oblivion, and it is only modern archaeo- logical research that is beginning to recover the traces of them. But among the red men of Amer- ica the social life of ages more remote than that of the lake villages of Switzerland is in many particulars preserved for us to-day, and when we study it we begin to realize as never before the con- tinuity of himian development, its enormous dura- tion, and the almost infinite accumulation of slow efforts by which progress has been achieved. An- cient America is further instructive in presenting the middle status of barbarism in a different form from that which it assumed in the eastern hemi- sphere. Its most conspicuous outward manifesta- tions, instead of tents and herds, were strange and imposing edifices of stone, so that it was quite natural that observers interpreting it from a basis of European experience should mistake it for civ- ilization. Certain asjjects of that middle period may be studied to-day in New Mexico and Arizona, as phases of the older periods may still be found among the wilder tribes, even after all the contact they have had with white men. These survivals of •J bygonfl epochs survivals from antiquity will not per- "' culture. manently outlive that contact, and it is important that no time shoidd be lost in gathering and put- 1 Now and then, perhaps, but very rarely, it just touches the close of the middle period, as, e. g., in the lines from Ilesiod and Lucretius above quoted. 38 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. ting on record all that can be learnect of the speech and arts, the customs and beliefs, everything that goes to constitute the philology and anthropology of the red men. For the intelligent and vigorous work of this sort now conducted by the Bureau of Etluiology of the Smithsonian Institution, under the direction of Major Powell, no praise can be too strong and no encouragement too hearty. A brief enumeration of the principal groujDS of Indians will be helpful in enabling us to com^jre- hend the social condition of ancient America. The groups are in great part defined by differences of language, which are perhaps a better criterion of racial affinity in the New World than in the Old, because there seems to have been little or nothing of that peculiar kind of conquest with incorporation resulting in complete change of speech which we sometimes find in the Old World ; as, for example, when we see the Celto-Iberian population of Sjoain and the Belgic, Celtic, and Aqiiitanian popidations of Gaul forgetting their native tongues, and adopt- ing that of a confederacy of tribes in Latium. Except in the case of Peru there is no indication that anything of tliis sort went on, or that there Tribal srciety was anything even superficially analo- and miiltipli- j. ll • ,, • ■ . city of Ian- gous to empire, in ancient America. original Amer- What strikcs oiie iiiost forcibly at first is the vast number of American lan- guages. Adelung, in liis " Mithridates," put the number at 1,264, and Ludewig, in his " Literature of the American Languages," put it roundly at 1,100. Squier, on the other hand, was content ANCIENT AMERICA. 39 with 400.1 The discrepancy arises from the fact that where one scholar sees two or three distinct languages another sees two or tliree dialects of one language and counts them as one; it is like the difficulty which naturalists find in agreeing as to what are species and what are only varieties. The great number of languages and dialects spoken by a sparse popidation is one mark of the universal prevalence of a rude and primitive form of tribal society.^ The lowest tribes in North America were those that are still to be found in California, in the val- ley of the Columbia river, and on the shores of Puget Sound. The Athabaskans of Hudson's Bay were on about the same level of savagery. They made no pottery, knew nothing of horticul- ture, depended for subsistence entirely IT r. 1 1 1 Tribes in the upon bread-roots, nsh, and game, and upper status thus had no village life. They were mere prowlers in the upper status of savagery.^ The Apaches of Arizona, preeminent even among red men for atrocious cruelty, are an offshoot from the Athabaskan stock. Very little better are the Shoshones and Bannocks that still wander ^ Winsor, " Bibliographical Notes on American Linguistics," in his Narr. and Crit. Hist., vol. i. pp. 420-428, gives an admirable survey of the subject. See also Filling's bibliographical bulletins of Iroquoian, Siouan, and Muskhogean languages, published by the Bureau of Ethnology. ^ Excursions of an Evolutionist, pp. 147-174. ' 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 Klallani Indians of Washington Terri- tory," Smithsonian Report, 1887, pp. 695-681. 40 TEE DISCOVERY OF AMEBIC A. among the lonely bare mountains and over the weird sage-brush jilains of Idaho. The region west of the Rocky Mountains and north of New Mexico is thus the region of savagery. Between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic coast the aborigines, at the time of the Discovery, might have been divided into six or seven groups, of which three were situated mainly to the east of the Mississippi river, the others mainly to the west of it. All were in the lower period of bar- barism. Of the western groups, by far family of the most nuiiierous were the Dakotas, comprising the Sioux, Poncas, Omahas, lowas, Kaws, Otoes, And Missouris. From the headwaters of the Mississippi their territory ex- tended westward on both sides of the Missouri for a thousand miles. One of their tribes, tlie Win- nebagos, had crossed the Mississippi and pressed into the region between that river and Lake Michigan. A second group, very small in numbers but ex- tremely interesting to the student of ethnology, comprises the Minnitarees and Mandans on the upper Missouri.^ The remnants of these tribes now live together in the same village, and in per- sonal appearance, as well as in intelligence, they are described as superior to any other red men ^ An excellent description of tliem, profusely illustrated with colonred pictures, may be found in Catlin's North American In- dians, Tol. i. pp. 00-207, 7tli ed., London, 1S4S ; the author was an accurate and trustworthy observer. Some writei'S have placed these tribes in the Dakota group because of the laig-e number of Dakota words in their lang-uag-e ; but these are probably borrowed ■words, like the nuraerou3 French words in English. ANCIENT AMERICA. 41 north of New Mexico. From their first discov- ery, by the brothers La Verendrve . ^ _ , _ . , . ^ , . ■'The Minni- in 1742, down to Mr. Catliu s visit ''"'ees and nearly a century later, there was no change in their condition,i but shortly afterward, in 1838, the greater part of them were swept away by smaU-pox. The excellence of their horti- culture, the framework of their houses, and their peculiar religious ceremonies early attracted at- tention. Upon Mr. Catlin they made such an impression that he fancied there must be an infu- sion of white blood in them ; and after the fashion of those days he sought to account for it by a ref- erence to the legend of Madoc, a Welsh prince who was dimly imagined to have sailed to America about 1170. He thought that Madoc's jDarty might have sailed to the Mississippi and founded a col- ony which ascended that river and the Ohio, built the famous mounds of the Ohio valley, and finally migrated to the upper Missouri.^ To this specu- lation was appended the inevitable list of words which hapjjen to sound somewhat alike in Man- dan and in Welsh. In the realm of free fancy everything is easy. That there was a Madoc who went somewhere in 1170 is quite possible, but as shrewd old John Smith said about it, "where this place was no history can show." ^ But one ' See Francis Parkman's paper, "The Discovery of the Rocky Mountains," Atlantic MontUn, June, la88. I hope the appear- ance of this article, two years ago, indicates that we hai'e not much longer to wait for the next of that magnificent series of volumes on the history of the French in North America. ^ North American Indians, vol. ii.. Appendix A. ' Smith's Generall Historic of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles, p. 1, London, 1(526. 42 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. part of Mr. Catlin's specidation may have hit somewhat nearer the truth. It is possible that the Mimiitarees or the Manclans, or both, may be a remnant of some of those Mound-builders in the Mississippi valley concerning whom something will presently be said. The third group in this western region consists of the Pawnees and Ariekarees,^ of the Pawnees, etc. _-^, ^ , ..-^ ^ • , . , „ Platte valley m JNebraska, with a lew kindred tribes farther to the south. Of the three groups eastward of the Mississippi we may first mention the Maskoki, or Muskliogees, Maskoki tarn- Consisting of the Choctaws, Chickasaws, "''■ Seminoles, and others, with the Creek confederacy.^ These tribes were intelligent and powerful, with a cidture well advanced toward the end of the lower period of barbarism. The Algonquin family, bordering at its south- ern limits upon the Maskoki, had a vast range northeasterly along the Atlantic coast imtil it reached the confines of Labrador, and north- westerly through the region of the Great Lakes and as far as the Churchill river ^ to the west of 1 For the history and ethnology of these interesting- tribes, see three learned papers by J. B. Dunbar, in Magazine, of American History, vol. iv. pp. 241-281 ; vol. v. pp. ;;21-342 ; vol. viii. pp. 7.34-7.')0 ; also Grinnell's Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales, New York, 1889. 2 These tribes of the Gulf region were formerly grouped, along with others not aldn to them, as " Mobilians." The Cherokees were supposed to belong to the JIaskoki family, but they have lately been declared an intrusive offshoot from the Iroqnois stock. The remnants of another alien tribe, the once famous Natchez, were adopted into the Creek confederacy. For a full acconnt of these tribes, see Gatsohet, A Migration Legend of the Creek In- dians, vol. i., Philadelphia, 1884. 2 Howse, Grammar of the Cree Language, London. 1865. p. to. ANCIENT AMERICA. 43 Hudson's Bay. In other words, the Algonqviins were bounded on the south 'by the Maskoki,i on the west by the Dakotas, on the north- west by the Athabaskans, on the north- femiiy of east by Eskimos, and on the east by the ocean. Between Lake Superior and tlie Red River of the North the Crees had their huntino- grounds, and closely related to them were the Pottawatomies, Ojibwas, and Ottawas. One off- shoot, including the Blackfeet, Cheyennes, and Arrapahos, roamed as far west as the Rocky Mountains. The great triangle between the up- per Mississippi and the Ohio was occupied by the Menomonees and KickajDoos, the Sacs and Foxes, the Miamis and Illinois, and the Shawnees. Along the coast region the principal Algonquin tribes were the Powhatans of Virginia, the Lenape or Delawares, the Munsees or Minisinks of the moun- tains about the Susquehanna, the Mohegans on the Hudson, the Adirondacks between that river and the St. Lawrence, the Narragansetts and their congeners in New England, and finally the Mic- macs and Wabenaki far down East, as the last name implies. There is a tradition, supported to some extent by linguistic evidence,^ that the Mo- hegans, with their cousins the Peqxiots, were more closely related to the Shawnees than to the Dela^ ware or coast group. While all the Algonquin tribes were in the lower period of barbarism, there was a noticeable gradation among them, the Crees ^ Except in so far as the Cherokees and Tuscaroras, presently to be mentioned, were interposed. 2 Brinton, The Lenape and their Legends^ p. 30. 44 THE DISCOVERY OF AMEBIC A. and Ojibwas of the far North standing lowest In culture, and the Sliawnees, at their southernmost limits, standing highest. We have observed the Dakota tribes pressing eastward against their neighbours and sending out an offshoot, the Winnebagos, across the Missis- sippi river. It has been supj^osed that the Huron- Iroquois group of tribes was a more re- Huron-Iro- n,. r- i t-> i mi • quois lamuy of mote oftshoot from the Dakotas. Ihis tribes. . , , . is very doubtful ; but m the thirteenth or fourteenth century the general trend oi the Hu- ron-Iroquois movement seems to have been east- ward, either in successive swarms, or in a single swarm, which became divided and scattered by segmentation, as was common with all Indian tribes. They seem early to have proved their superiority over the Algonquins in bravery and intelligence. Their line of invasion seems to have run eastward to Niagara, and thereabouts to have bifurcated, one line following the valley of the St. Lawrence, and the other that of the Susquehanna. The Hurons established themselves in the jjenin- sula between the lake that bears their name and Lake Ontario. South of them and along the northern shore of Lake Erie were settled their kindred, afterward called the " Neutral Nation." ^ On the southern shore the Eries planted themselves, while the Susquehannocks pushed on in a direc- tion sufficiently described by their name. Farthest 1 Because they refused to take part in the strife between the Hurons and the Five Nations. Their Indian name was Attiwan- darons. They were unsurpassed for ferocity. See Parkman, Jesuits in North America, p. xliv. ANCIENT AMERICA. 45 of all penetrated the Tuscaroras, even into the pme forests of North Carolina, where they main- tained themselves in isolation from their kindred until 1715. These invasions residted in some dis- placement of Algonquin tribes, and began to sap the strength of the confederacy or alliance in which the Delawares had held a foremost place. But by far the most famous and important of the Huron-Iroquois were those that followed the northern shore of Lake Ontario into the valley of the St. Lawrence. In that direction their progress was checked by the Algonquin tribe of Adiron- dacks, but they succeeded in retaining a foothold in the country for a long time ; for in 1535 Jacques Cartier found on the site which he named Mont- real an Iroquois village which had vanished before Champlain's arrival seventy years later. Those Iroquois who were thrust back in the struggle for the St. Lawrence valley, early in the fifteenth century, made their way across Lake Ontario and established themselves at the mouth of the Oswego river. They were then in three small tribes, — the Mohawks, Onondagas, and Senecas, — but as they grew in munbers and sjiread eastward to the Hud- son and westward to the Genesee, the intermediate tribes of Oneidas and Cayugas were formed by seg- mentation.^ About 1450 the five tribes — after- wards known as the Five Nations — The rive were joined in a confederacy in pursu- ^''"°°"- ance of the wise counsel which Hayowentha, or Hiawatha,^ according to the legend, whispered into ^ Morgan, ^ nci'en* Society, p. 125. ^ Whether there was ever such a person as Hiawatha is, to say 40 THE DISCOVEBY OF AMERICA- the ears of the Onondaga sachem, Daganoweda. This union of their resources combined, with their native bravery and cunning, and their occupation of the most commanding military position in eastern North America, to render them invincible among red men. They exterminated their old enemies the Adirondacks, and pushed the Mohegans over the momitains from the Hudson river to the Con- necticut. When they fii-st encountered white men in 1609 their name had become a terror in New England, insomuch that as soon as a single Mohawk was caught sight of by the Indians in that country, they would raise the cry from hill to hill, "A Mo- hawk ! a Mohawk I " and forthwith would flee like sheep before wolves, never dreaming of resistance.^ After the Five Nations had been svipplied with firearms by the Dutch their power increased with portentous rapidity.^ At first they sought to per- suade their neighbours of kindred blood and speech, the Eries and others, to join their confederacy ; the least, doubtful. As a traditional culture-hero his attributes are those of loskeha, Michabo, Quetzalcoatl, Viracocha, and all that class of sky-gods to "which I shall ag'ain have occasion to refer. See Brinton's Myths of the New World, p. 172. When the Indian speaks of Hiawatha "whisperins^ advice to Daganoweda, his mean- ing is probably the same as that of the ancient Greek when he attributed the wisdom of some mortal hero to Avhispered advice from Zeus or his messenger Hermes. Longfellow's famous poem is based upon Schoolcraft's book entitled The liiuifatha 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 Eites, pp. 86, 180-183. 1 Cadwallader Golden, History of the Five Nations, New York, 1727. 2 Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 12. ANCIENT AMERICA. 47 and failing in this they went to war and extermi- nated them.i Then they overthrew one Algonquin tribe after another until in 1690 their career was checked by the French. By that time they had reduced to a tributary condition most of the Algon- quin tribes, even to the Mississippi river. Some writers have spoken of the empire of the Iroquois, and it has been siu'mised that, if they had not been interfered with by white men, they might have played a part analogous to that of the Romans in the Old World ; but there is no real similarity be- tween the two cases. The Romans acquired their mighty strength by incorporating vanquished peo- ples into their own body politic.^ No American aborigines ever had a glimmering of the process of state-building after the Roman fashion. No incor- poration residted from the victories of the Iroquois. Where their burnings and massacres stopped short of extermination, they simply took tribute, which was as far as state-craft had got in the lower period of barbarism. General Walker has summed up their military career in a single sentence : " They were the scourge of God upon the aborigines of the continent." ^ The six groups here enumerated — Dakota, Mandan, Pawnee, Maskoki, Algonquin, Iroquois 1 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. ^ See my Beginnings of New England, chap. i. 5 F. A. Walker, "The Indian Question," North American Be- viem, April, 187.S, p. 370. /48 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. — made up the great body of the aborigines of North America who at the time of the Discovery- lived ill the lower status of barbarism. All made pottery of various degrees of rudeness. Their tools and weapons were of the Neolithic type, — stone either polished or accurately and must be die- artistically chipj)ed. For the most from field part thcv Hvcd in stockaded villages, agriculture. i i • n . i l ■ and cultivated maize, beans, pumpkins, squashes, sunflowers, and tobacco. They depended for subsistence j)artly upon such vegetable prod- ucts, partly vipon limiting and fishing, the women generally attending to the horticulture, the men to the chase. Horticulture is an approj^riate desig- nation for this stage in which the ground is merely scratched with stone spades and hoes. It is incip- ient agriculture, but should be carefully distin- guished from i\\e field agriculture in which exten- sive pieces of land are subdued by the plough. The assistance of domestic animals is needed be- fore such work can be carried far, and it does not appear that there was an approach to field agri- culture in any part of pre-Columbian America except Peru, where men were harnessed to the lilough, and perhaps occasionally Hamas were used in the same way.* Where subsistence depended upon rude horticulture eked out by game and fish, it required a large territory to support a sparse popidation. Tlie great diversity of languages contributed to maintain the isolation of tribes and prevent extensive confederation. Intertribal 1 See Humboldt, Ansichten der Natur, ?,A ed., Stuttgart, 1849, vol. i. p. 203. ANCIENT AMEBIC A. 49 warfare was perpetual, save now and then for truces of brief duration. Warfare was attended by wholesale massacre. As many prisoners as coidd be managed were taken home by Perpetual their captors ; in some cases they were "''"^''"'«- adopted into the tribe of the latter as a means of increasing its fighting strength, otherwise they were put to death witli lingering torments.^ There was nothing which afforded the red men such ex- quisite delight as the spectacle of live human flesh lacerated with stone knives or hissing under the touch of firebrands, and for elaborate ingenuity in devising tortures they have never been equalled.^ ^ " Women and children joined in these fiendish atrocities, and when at length tho 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 thnt 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 tlu^own into the seething pot, and hands and feet, ajms and legs, head and trunk, were all stewed into a horrid mess and eaten amidst yells, songs, and dances." Jeffries Wy- man, in Seventh Report of Peabody Museum, p. 37. For details of the most appalling- character, see Butterfield's History of the Girtys, pp. 1T6-1S2 ; Stone's Life of Joseph Brant, vol. ii. pp. 31, 32; Dodge's Plains of the Great West, p. 418, and Oar Wild In- dians, pp. 525-52;) ; Parkman's Jesuits in North America, pp. 387-391 ; and many other places in Parkman's writings. 2 One often hears it said that the cruelty of the Indians was not greater than that of medieval 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 defiuite moral purpose which, however lamentably mistaken or pervorted, gave it a very different char- acter from torture wantonly inflicted for amusement. The atro- cities formerly attendant upon the sack of towns, as e. g. Beziers, Magdeburg, etc., might more properly be regarded as an illustra- 50 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. Cannibalism was quite commonly practised.^ The tion of the survival of a spirit fit only for tbe lowest barbarism : and the Spanish conquerors of the New World themselves often exhibited cruelty such as even Indians seldom surpass. See be- low, vol. ii. p. 444. In spite of such eases, however, it must be held that for artistic skill in inflicting the greatest possible in- tensity of excruciating pain upon every nerve in the body, the Spaniard was a bungler and a novice as compared with the In- dian. See Dodge's Our Wild Indians, pp. 5.36-5:38. 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. Callous- ness to the suffering of others than self is part of this brute-in- heritance, and under the influence of certain habits and occu- pations 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 every- body's door. This state of things keeps alive the passion of re- venge and stimulates cruelty to the highest degree. As long as such a state of things endures, aa it did in Europe to a limited extent throughout the Middle Ages, there is sure to be a dread- ful amount of cruelty. The change iu the conditions of modern warfare has been a very important factor in the rapidly increas- ing mildness and humanity of modern times. See my Reyinnings 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 rep- resentative types of their own race to anything like the same extent as the Indians who tortured Br^beuf or Crawford. If the fiendish Pedrarias was a Spaniard, so too was the saintly Las Casas. The latter type would be as impossible among barbari- ans 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 - 1 See the evidence collected by Jeffries Wyman, in Seventh Re- ANCIENT AMERICA. 51 scalps of slain enemies were always taken, and until they had attained siicli trophies the young- men were not likely to find favour in the eyes of women. The Indian's notions of morality Avere those that belong to that state of society in which the tribe is the largest well-established political aggregate. Murder without the tribe was meri- torious unless it entailed risk of wai' at an obvious disadvantage ; murder within the tribe was either revenged by blood-feud or compounded by a pres- ent given to the victim's kinsmen. Such rudi- mentary wergild was often reckoned in wampum, or strings of beads made of a kind of mussel shell, and put to divers uses, as personal ornament, mnemonic record, and finally money. Religious thought was in the fetishistic or animistic stage,-^ while many tribes had risen to a vague conception of tutelar deities embodied in hmnan or animal forms. Myth-tales abounded, and the folk-lore of the red men is fomid to be extremely interesting and instructive.^ Their religion consisted mainly port of Peabodij Museum, pp. 27-37; ef. Wake, Evolution of Mo- rality, vol. i. p. 24;^. Many illustrations are given by Mr. Park- man. In this connection it may be observed that tlie name "Mohawk" means "Cannibal." It is an AIg;onquin word, ap- plied to this Iroquois tribe by tlieir enemies in the Connecticut valley and about the lower Hudson. The name by which the Mohawks called themselves was " Canieng-as," or " People-at- the-Flint." See Hale, The Iroquois Book of Rites, p. ]7o. ' For accounts and explanations of animism see Tylor's Primi- tive Culture, London, 1871, 2 vols. ; Caspari, Urgeschichle der Menschheit, heipsic, 1877, 2 vols.; Spencer's I'riiicijiles of Soci- ology, part i. ; and my Myths and Mythmakers, chap. vii. ^- No time should be. Ipst in gathering and recording every scrap of this folk-lore that can be found. Tlie American Folk- Lore Society, founded chiefly through the exertions of my friend 62 • THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. in a devout belief in witchcraft. No well-tlefined priestly class had been evolved; the so-called "medicine men" were mere conjurers, though possessed of considerable influence. But none of the characteristics of barbarous society above specified will carry us so far toward realizing the gulf which divides it from civilized society as the imperfect development of its do- mestic relations. The importance of this subject is such as to call for a few words of special eluci- dation. Thirty years ago, when Sir Henry Maine \)uh- lished that magnificent treatise on Ancient Law, which, when considered in all its potency of sug- gestiveness, has perhaps done more than any other single book of our century toward placing the study of history upon a scientific basis, he be- gan by showing that in primitive soci- Ancioiit Law. '^ ,.-,..?,. , . ety the individual is nothing and the state nothing, while the family-group is everything, and that the progress of civilization politically has Mr. W. W. Newell, and organized Jannary 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 the Journal of American Folk-fyre, published for the society by Messrs. Houghton, MilHin & Co., nine numbers have appeared, and the reader will find them full of valuable information. One may also profitably consult Knortz's Miihrchen and Sagen der nordamerika- nischen Indianer. ,Jena, 1871 ; Brinton's Mi/ths of the New World, N. Y., 1808, and his American Ilero-Mi/ths, Phila., 1882 ; Leland's Algonquin Legends of New England, Boston, 1884 ; Mrs. Emerson's Indian Myths, Boston, 1884. Some brief reflections and criticisms of much value, in relation to aboriginal American folk-lore, may be found in Curtin's Mi/ths and Folk-Lore of Ireland, pp. 12-27. ANCIENT AMERICA. 53 consisted on the one hand in the aggregation and building up of family-groups through intermediate tribal organizations into states, and on the other hand in the disentanglement of individuals from the family thraldom. In other words, we began by having no political communities larger than clans, and no bond of political union excejat blood relationship, and in this state of things the indi- vidual, as to his rights and obligations, was sub- merged in the clan. We at length come to have great nations like the English or the French, in which blood-relationship as a bond of political union is" no longer indispensable or even much thought of, and in which the individual citizen is the possessor of legal rights and subject to legal obligations. No one in our time can forget how beautifully Sir Henry Maine, with his profound knowledge of early Aryan law and custom, from Ireland to Hindustan, delineated the slow growth of individual ownership of property and individ- ual responsibility for delict and crime out of an earlier stage in which ownership and responsibility belonged only to family-groups or clans. In all these brilliant studies Sir Henry Maine started with the patriarchal family as we find it at the dawn of history among all peoples of Aryan and Semitic speech, — the patriarchal family of the ancient Roman and the arcimi lamiiy .-_ . „ .1. I'll" "**^ primitive. ancient Jew, the family in which kin- ship is reckoned through males, and in which all authority centres in the eldest male, and descends to his eldest son. Maine treated this patriarchal family as primitive ; but his great book had hardly 54 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. appeared when other scholars, more familiar than he with races in savagery or in the lower status of barbarism, showed that his view was too restricted. We do not get back to primitive society by study- ing Greeks, Romans, and Jews, j)eoples who had nearly emerged from the later period of barbarism when we first know them.^ Their patriarchal fam- ily was perfected in shape during the later period of barbarism, and it was 23receded by a much ruder and less definite form of family-grou]^ in which kinship was reckoned only through the mother, and the headshijj never descended from father to son. As so often hapjjens, this discovery was made almost simidtaneously by two investigators, each working in ignorance of what the other was doing. In 1861, the same year in which "Ancient Law " was published. Professor Bachofeil, of Basel, " Mother- published his famous book, "■ Das Mut- "^''*' terrecht," of which his co-discoverer and rival, after taking exception to some of his state- ments, thus cordially writes : " It remains, how- ^ Until lately our acquaintance witli human history was derived afeiost 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. AVith vision thus restricted to civilized man and his ideas .nnd works, peojjle felt free to speculate about uncivilized races (generally grouped together indiscriminately as " savages ") according to any a priori whim that might happen to captivate their fancy. But the discoveries of the last half-century have opened such stupendous vistas of tlie past tliat the age of Abra- ham 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. ANCIENT AMERICA. o5 ever, after all qualifications and deductions, that Bachofen, before any one else, discovered the fact that a system of kinship through mothers only, had anciently everywhere prevailed before the tie of blood between father and child had found a place in systems of relationships. And the honour of that discovery, the importance of which, as affording a new starting-point for all history, can- not be overestimated, must without stint or qual- ification be assigned to him." ^ Such are the gen- erous words of the late John Ferguson McLennan, who had no knowledge of Bachofen's work when his own treatise on " Primitive Marriage " was published in 1865. Since he was so modest in urg- ing his own claims, it is due to the Scotch la^vyer's memory to say that, while he was inferior in point of erudition to the Swiss professor, his book is char- acterized by greater sagacity, goes more primitive directly to the mark, and is less encum- """'^s"^- bered by visionary speculations of doubtful value.^ Mr. McLennan proved, from evidence collected chiefly from Australians and South Sea Islanders, and sundry non-Aryan tribes of Hindustan and Thibet, that systems of kinship in which the father is ignored exist to-day, and he furthermore discov- ered unmistakable and very significant traces of the former existence of such a state of things among the Mongols, the Greeks and Phoenicians, and the ancient Hebrews. By those who we^e inclined to ' McLennan's Studies in Ancient History, comprising a reprint of Primitive Marriage, etc. London, 1876, p. 421. ^ There is inucli that is unsound in it, however, as is often inevitably the case with books that strike boldly into a new field of inquiry. 66 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. regard Sir Henry Maine's views as final, it was ai'gued that Mr. McLennan's facts were of a spo- radic and exceptional character. But when the evidence from this vast archaic world of America began to be gathered in and interpreted by Mr. Morgan, this argument fell to the ground, and as to the point chiefly in contention, Mr. McLennan was proved to be right. Throughout abo- reckoning™ " riginal America, with one or two ex- through cejotions, kinship was reckoned through females only, fgj^^^^jgg Only, and in the exceptional in- stances the vestiges of that system were so promi- nent as to make it clear that the change had been but recently effected. During the past fifteen years, evidence has acciunulated from various parts of the world, until it is beginning to apjjear as if it were the patriarchal system that is excep- tional, having been reached only by the highest races.^ Sir Henry Maine's work has lost none of 1 A general yiew of the subject may be obtained from the fol- lowing works : Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht, Stjittgart, 1871, and Die Sage von Tanaquil, Heidelberg, 1870; McLennan's Stud- ies in Ancient History, London, 1871), and The Patriarchal Theory, London, 1884; Morgan's Systems of Consanguinity (Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. xvii.), Washing- ton, 1871, and Ancient Society, New York, 1877 ; Kobertsou Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, Cambridge, Eng., 1885; Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, .5th ed., London, 1889; Giraud-Tenlon, La Mere chez certains pcuples de I'antiquitl, Paris, 1867, and Les Origines de la Fannlle, Geneva, 1874; Stareke (of Copenhagen), Tlie Primitive Family. London, 1889. 8ome criti- cisms upon McLennan and Jlorgan niaj- be found in Maine's later works. Early History of Institutions, London, 1875. and Early Law and Custom, London, 188.3. By far the ablest critical survey of the whole field is that in Spencer's Principles of Sociology, voli L pp. 621-797. ANCIENT AMERICA. 57 its value, only, like all human work, it is not final ; it needs to be supplemented by the further study of savagery as best exemplified in Australia and some parts of Polynesia, and of barbarism as best exemplified in America.- The subject is, "more- over, one of great and complicated difficulty, and leads incidentally to many questions for solving which the data at our command are still inade- quate. It is enough for us now to observe in general that while there are plenty of instances of change from the system of reckoning kinship only through females, to the system of reckoning through males, there do not appear to have been any instances of change in the reverse direction ; and that in ancient America the earlier system was prevalent. If now we ask the reason for such a system of reckoning^ kinship and inheritance, so strange ac- cording to all our modern notions, the true answfer doubtless is that which was given by xmi 1 1 Original rea- prudent {jren-vv^ivo^) ielemacmis to the son tor the A1 1 1 111' system. goddess Athene when she asked him to tell her truly if he was the son of Odysseus : — " My mother says I am his son, for my part, I don't know ; one never knows of one's self who one's father is." ^ Already, no doubt, in Homer's time 1 ''AW' aye /xci rtjSe e(Vt Kal arpe/cews /carc{Ae|oi/, 61 5// e| avTolo 76(705 TTa^s eis '05u fj.dK* arpcKews ayopei'trai. fi'fjTTjp fxif r 4fj.4