908 PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



affinities of nations, and their transference from the eastern to the 

 western hemisphere, prior to the period of Columbus, have constituted 

 subjects of interesting inquiry from the time of the discovery. And 

 viewed in the lights which are now presented by the progress of eth- 

 nography, modern geographical discovery, and other means of advanc- 

 ing the study of nations, the inquiry may be supposed to be one which 

 Ihe mind of Mr. Smithson had embraced in his enlarged conception of 

 promoting "the increase and diflusion of knowledge among men." 



The occupation of the continent itself by men diverse — in their phys- 

 ical and mental traits and their languages, from the various races of 

 its discoverers at and after 1492 ; separated as that continent is, by 

 seas and open straits, from other parts of the globe, constitutes an inter- 

 esting and unsolved problem. And its solution is still more interesting 

 when we reflect that these native races had no maritime skill adequate 

 to the construction of ships ; that the state of arts, if we make some 

 local exceptions, was v^ry low; that they were without letters or litera- 

 ture; and, when questioned as to their origin, they put forth traditions 

 which were generally better suited to engage the imagination than to 

 satisfy the judgment. 



The extent and noble proijortions of the continent, stretching for 

 thousands of miles along the Atlantic, and forming a vast and mount- 

 ainous barrier between it and the Pacific, entitled it in more than one 

 sense to the appellation it received by every succeeding navigator of 

 the New World. It was indeed a new world, not less in its grand 

 physical structure than for the races of man, who roved over rather 

 than inhabited it. And these latter races, now that 354 years have 

 passed, are quite as much a problem to historians and philosophers, in 

 respect to their early connection and national affinities with the races of 

 Asia, Africa, and Europe, as they were then. 



But when we examine this continent in all its sweeping latitudes and 

 longitudes, in its highest altitudes, and in its lowest and broadest val- 

 leys, we find imbedded in its very geological strata, as well as in its 

 surface, ruins and other evidences that it had been inhabited long an- 

 terior to the Indian race, — that there had been jjeople of diverse arts 

 and habits upon its plains and estuaries. And that, of the red race 

 itself, there are evidences of mutations and changes, reaching from mere 

 sachemships to rade colossal empires, which, like that of Montezuma, 

 broke down, in fact, under the glittering and disproportioned weight of 

 their inherent corruptions and barbarisms. 



Forts, mounds, ditches, and works of art, pottery with the triune 

 emblem of the philosophy of Zoroaster, mummies wrapped in their half 

 Miotic cerements, vast pyramidal structures of earth and of stone, pal- 

 aces and ruined cities, are among the objects of its antiquarian and his- 

 torical interest. Not only from the romantic and sublime lake of Titi- 

 caca, and the fire-crowned peaks of the valley of Mexico, do we perceive 

 centers of population, rushing out to rule and conquer, but from the yet 



