Aboriginal Race of America. 197 



If we turn now to the demi-civilized nations, we find the 

 dawn of refinement coupled with those barbarous usages 

 which characterize the Indian in his savage state. We see 

 the Mexicans, hke the later Romans, encouraging the most 

 bloody and cruel rites, and these too in tiie name of religion, 

 in order to inculcate hatred of their enemies, familiarity with 

 danger and contempt of death ; and the moral effect of this 

 system is manifest in their valorous though unsuccessful re- 

 sistance to their Spanish conquerors. 



Among the Peruvians, however, the case was different. 

 The inhabitants had been subjugated to the Incas by a com- 

 bined moral and physical influence. The Inca family were 

 looked upon as beings of divine origin. They assumed to be 

 the messengers of heaven, bearing rewards for the good, and 

 punishment for the disobedient, conjoined with the arts of 

 peace and various social institutions. History bears ample 

 testimony that these specious pretences were employed first to 

 captivate the fancy and then to enslave the man. The famil- 

 iar adage that '-knowledge is power," was as well understood 

 by them as by us : learning was artfully restricted to a privi- 

 leged class ; and the genius of the few soon controled the en- 

 ergies of the many. Thus the policy of the Incas inculca- 

 ted in their subjects an abject obedience which knew no 

 limit. They endeavored to eradicate the feeling of individ- 

 uality ; or in other words to unite the minds of the plebeian 

 multitude in a common will which was that of their master. 

 Thus when Pizarro made his first attack on the defenceless 

 Peruvians in the presence of their Inca, the latter was borne 

 in a throne on the shoulders of four men ; and we are told by 

 Herrera that while the Spaniards spared the Sovereign, they 

 aimed their deadly blows at his bearers : these, however, 

 never shrunk from their sacred trust ; but when one of their 

 number fell, another immediately took his place ; and the his- 

 torian declares that if the whole day had been spent in kill- 

 ing them, others would still have came forward to the passive 

 support of their master. In fact what has been called the 

 paternal government of the Incas was strictly such ; for their 

 subjects were children, who neither thought nor acted except 



