Aboriginal Race of America. 199 



Guascar, he caused the latter, together witli thirty of his 

 brothers, to be put to death in cold blood, that nothing might 

 impede his progress to the throne. 



We have thus endeavored to shew that the same moral 

 traits characterize all the aboriginal nations of this continent, 

 from the humanized Peruvian to the rudest savaee of the 

 Brazilian forest. 



3. Intellectual Faculties. It has often been remarked that 

 the intellectual faculties are distributed with surprising equal- 

 ity among individuals of the same race who have been simi- 

 larly educated, and subjected to the same moral and other 

 influences : yet even among these, as in the physical man, we 

 see the strong and the weak, with numberless intermediate 

 gradations. This equality is infinitely more obvious in sav- 

 age than in civilized communities, simply because in the 

 former the condition of life is more equal ; whence it hap- 

 pens that in contrast to a single master mind, the plebeian 

 multitude are content to live and die in their primitive igno- 

 rance. 



This truth is obvious at every step of the present investi- 

 gation ; for of the numberless hordes which have inhabited 

 the American continent, a fractional portion only has left any 

 trace of refinement. I venture here to repeat my matured 

 conviction that as a race they are decidedly inferior to the 

 Mongolian stock. They are not only averse to the restraints 

 of education, but seem for the most part incapable of a con- 

 tinued process of reasoning on abstract subjects. Their minds 

 seize with avidity on simple truths, while they reject what- 

 ever requires investigation or analysis. Their proximity for 

 more than two centuries to European communities, has 

 scarcely effected an appreciable change in their manner of 

 life ; and as to their social condition, they are probably in 

 most respects the same as at the primitive epoch of their ex- 

 istence. They have made no improvement in the construc- 

 tion of their dwellings, except when directed by Europeans 

 who have become domiciliated among them ; for the Indian 

 cabin or the Indian tent, from Terra del Fuego to the river 



