220 Distiyictive Characteristics of the 



The theories to which we have thus briefly adverted, would 

 each derive the whole American population from a single 

 source ; but various others have been hazarded of a much 

 more complex nature, by which the Indian nations are referred 

 to a plurality of races, not even excepting the Caucasian. For 

 example, the Peruvians, Muyscas and Mexicans, are by some 

 advocates of this system, supposed to be Malays or Polynesians, 

 and all the savage tribes Mongolians ; whence the civilization 

 of the one and the barbarism of the other. But we insist 

 that the origin of these two great divisions must have been 

 the same, because all their ethnographic characters, not ex- 

 cepting the construction of their numberless languages, go to 

 enforce an identity of race. 



Another doctrine which has had many disciples, (among 

 wliom was tlie lale Lord Kingsborough, author of Mexican 

 Antiquities) teaches that the whole American population is 

 descended from the Jews, through the ten lost tribes which 

 were carried away by Salmanazer, King of Assyria. Here 

 again the differences of physical organization should set this 

 question at rest foi3ver; but independently of these, can we 

 suppose that people so tenacious as the Jews, of their litera- 

 ture, language, and religion, should not have preserved a soli- 

 tary unequivocal memorial of either among the multitudinous 

 tribes of this continent, if any direct affihation had ever ex- 

 isted between them ? In short, we coincide in opinion with 

 a facetious author who sums up all the evidence of the case 

 with the conclusion, that '' the Jewish theory cannot be true 

 for the simple reason that it is impossible." 



We feel assured that the same objection bears not less 

 strongly on every other hypothesis which deduces any portion 

 of the American nations from a Caucasian source. In order 

 to solve the probbm of the origin of the monuments of 

 America, independently of any agency of the aboriginal race, 

 an opinion has been advanced that they are the work of a 

 branch of the great Cyclopean family of the old world, known 

 by the various designations of the Shepherd Kings of Egypt, 

 the Anakim of Syiia, the Oscans of Etruriaand the Pelasgians 

 04 Greece. These wandering masons^ as they are also called, 



