5 z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ISRAELITE AND INDIAN: A PARAELEL IN PLANES 



OF CULTURE.* 



Br GAERICK MALLERY. 

 I. 



AXIOMS and postulates long limited man's study of man. 

 This hampering has been peculiarly marked in reference 

 to America, the assumption being that it must have been peopled 

 from the eastern hemisphere, and that its languages, religions, 

 and customs must have been inherited from nations registered in 

 Eurasian records. Whatever was found here was assumed to 

 have come through descent or derivation. The conceptions of 

 autogeny and of independent growth, by which men in the same 

 plane of culture act and think alike, with only the modifications 

 of environment, had not arisen to explain observed facts. 



Many authors have contended that the North American Indians 

 were descendants of the " ten lost tribes of Israel." Prominent 

 among them was James Adair, whose work, highly useful with 

 regard to the customs of the southeastern Indians, among whom 

 he spent many years, was mainly devoted to proof of the proposi- 

 tion. The Rev. Ethan Smith is also conspicuous. Even the latest 

 general treatise on the Indians, published last year, and bearing 

 the comprehensive title, " The American Indian," favors the same 

 theory. 



The authors of the school mentioned rest their case on the 

 fact, which I freely admit with greater emphasis, that an astound- 

 ing number of customs of the North American Indians are the 

 same as those recorded of the ancient Israelites. The lesson to 

 be derived from this parallel is, however, very different from that 

 drawn by those who have advocated the descent in question. 



The argument, strongly urged, derived from an alleged simi- 

 larity between Hebrew and some Indian languages, especially in 

 identity of certain vocables, may be dismissed forthwith. Per- 

 haps the most absurd of all the coincidences insisted upon by 

 Adair was the religious use of sounds represented by him to be 

 the same as the word Jehovah. The " lost " Israelites when de- 

 ported did not use orally the name given in the English version 

 as " Jehovah," and the mode of its spelling and pronunciation is 

 at this moment in dispute, though generally accepted as Jahveh ; 

 therefore, it would be most extraordinary if the tribes of Indians 

 supposed to be descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel should 

 at this time know how to pronounce a name which their alleged 

 ancestors practically did not possess. 



* Address of the Vice-President of the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, Section H, Anthropology, delivered at the Toronto meeting, August, 1889. 



