490 Ahoriginal Races of America. [November, 



World, botla in their features, languages, customs, arts, religions, 

 and in tlieir native genius and national propensities. 



Nor will this view of the subject contradict any theory respecting 

 human origins, whether it be that which attributes it to a single pair, 

 or to a plural creation of specific types. For in regard to the first 

 idea, even though we should choose to consider the origin of this 

 peculiar people, as having been derived from the different races of 

 the Old World, who may have accidentally, and at widely different 

 epochs, been drifted to these shores, it v/ill at once be admitted, that 

 the same physical causes that in the Old World are held capable of 

 producing four totally distinct races from the loins of Noah, would 

 undoubtedly be entirely sufficient in the New World, where the re- 

 lations of climate and terrestrial life are presented in an inverted 

 order, to give birth to a fifth race, by an amalgamation of the Mongal 

 the Malay, the Scandinavian, and inhabitants of the Nile, that may 

 have been fortuitously drifted to this continent ages ago. 



And on the other hand, if we assume the different types of man- 

 kind to have been originally created in separate and distinct proto- 

 types, or primordially organic pairs, or with Agassiz, maintaip that 

 men must have originated in nations, as the bees have originated in 

 swarms, here we have the whole continent of America, with its 

 mountain-ranges and table-lauds — its valleys and low plans — its 

 woods and prairies, exhibiting every variety of climate which could 

 influence the nature of man, inhabited by one great family, that 

 presents a prevailing type. 



Small and peculiarly shaped crania — a cinnamon complexion — small 

 feet and hands — black straight hair, and wild and savage dispositions, 

 are their physical characteristics everywhere. 



Living continually in the shadow of the virgin forests which. 

 overspread the land that they inhabit, they bear in their whole char- 

 acter the ineffaceable stamp of a peculiarly vegetative nature. 



In their temperament lymphatic, cold, unsocial, and insensible, 

 they are emphatically the children of the forest, somber and sad. 

 Hunger, thirst, penance, and self-imposed torture is a part of their 

 education, and this, together with the practice of many tribes of 

 flattening the heads of their infants, sufficiently indicate the small 

 irritability of nerve and muscular fiber that they possess, in common 

 with the other races of the human family. j. p. E. 



(to be continued.) 



