Aboriginal Race of America. 191 



Anthropology, the Natural History of Man, is essentially 

 a modern Science. At a time when the study of Nature in 

 her other departments, had been prosecuted with equal zeal 

 and success, this alone, the most important of them all, re- 

 mained comparatively neglected and unkno\vn ; and of the 

 various authors who have attempted its exposition during the 

 past and present centuries, too many have been content with 

 closet theories, in which facts are perverted to sustain some 

 baseless conjecture. Hence it has been aptly remarked that 

 Asia is the country of fables, Africa of monsters, and America 

 of systems, to those who prefer hypothesis to truth. 



The intellectual genius of antiquity justly excites our ad- 

 miration and homage ; but in vain we search its records for 

 the physical traits of some of the most celebrated nations of 

 past time. It is even yet gravely disputed whether the an- 

 cient Egyptians belonged to the Caucasian race or to the Ne- 

 gro ; and was it not for the light which now dawns upon us 

 from their monuments and their tombs, this question might 

 remain forever undecided. The present age, however, is 

 marked by a noble zeal for these inquiries, wiiich are daily 

 making man more conversant with the organic structure, the 

 mental character and the national affinities of the various and 

 widely scattered tribes of the human family. 



Among these the aboriginal inhabitants of America claim 

 our especial attention. This vast theatre has been thronged, 

 from immemorial time, by numberless tribes which lived only 

 to destroy and be in turn destroyed, without leaving a trace of 

 their sojourn on the face of the earth. Contrasted with these 

 were a few civilized communities, whose monuments awaken 

 our surprise without unfolding their history ; and he who 

 would unravel their mysteries may be compared, in the lan- 

 guage of the poets, to a man standing by the stream of time, 

 and striving to rescue from its waters the wrecked and shat- 

 tered fragments which float onward to oblivion. 



It is not my present intention even to enumerate the many 

 theories which have been advanced in reference to the origin 

 of the American nations ; although I may, in the sequel, in- 

 quire whether their genealogy can be traced to the Polyne- 



