ISRAELITE AND INDIAN. 53 



Father Lafiteau was so much excited by coincidence in sound 

 of some of the Iroquoian names and expressions with the language 

 of the ancient inhabitants of Thrace and Lycia that he based 

 thereon a theory of descent. On similar grounds ancestors of the 

 Indians have been found among the Phoenicians, Scandinavians, 

 Welsh, Irish, Carthaginians, Egyptians, Tartars, Hindus, Malays, 

 Chinese, Japanese, and all the islanders of Polynesia. It is not 

 wonderful that, with the choice of three hundred Indian lan- 

 guages, besides their dialects, from which to make selections of 

 sounds, some one should be likened to some other language, for 

 all spoken languages can in that manner i. e., by a comparison of 

 vocables show identity of sound and a percentage of coincidences 

 of significance. Philology now applies more discriminating rules 

 of comparison. 



But all arguments that the Indians are descended from the 

 " lost tribes " are demolished by the fact, now generally accepted, 

 that those tribes were not lost, but that most of their members 

 were deported and absorbed, their traces remaining during centu- 

 ries, and that others fled to Jerusalem and Egypt. If any large 

 number of them had remained in a body, and had migrated at a 

 time long before the Columbian discovery, but later than the 

 capture of Samaria in the seventh century b. c, their journey 

 from Mesopotamia to North America would have required the 

 assistance of miracles that have not been suggested except in the 

 Book of Mormon. 



For brevity, the term "Indians" may be used leaving the 

 blunder of Columbus where it belongs without iterating their 

 designation as North American, though I shall not treat of the 

 aboriginal inhabitants south of the United States. This neglect 

 of Mexico and Central and South America is not only to observe 

 my own limits, but because some of the peoples of those regions 

 had reached a culture stage in advance of the northern tribes. 

 To avoid confusion, the term " Israelites " may designate all the 

 nation. Although the tribes became divided into the kingdoms 

 of Israel and of Judah, when it is necessary to speak of the north- 

 ern tribes they may be designated as the kingdom of Samaria. 

 The shortest term, Jews, would be incorrect, as the people now 

 scattered over the world and called " Jews " are chiefly the de- 

 scendants of the southern branch or fractional part of the chil- 

 dren of Israel, and have a special history beyond that common to 

 them and their congeners. 



The parallel presented is not selected because its two counter- 

 parts are more similar to each other than either of them is to other 

 bodies of people among the races of the earth. A similar parallel 

 can be drawn between both the Indians and the Israelites and the 

 Aryan peoples, from which I and most of my hearers are supposed 



