ON ETHNOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION. 909 



unexplored plains of the Eio Gila and the Colorado of California, from 

 the broad valley of the Mississippi, from the southern slopes of the Ap- 

 palachian range of the South Atlantic, and even from the colder lati- 

 tudes of the Great Lakes, where the indomitable Iroquois built up their 

 republic, we behold a concurring series of facts and discoveries which 

 prove incontestably that various races of the wide-spread and original 

 family of man have lived, and cultivated, and warred, and died at these 

 localities. 



When we come to apply to these vestiges of ancient structure the 

 scrutiny of exact observation and description, and to view the facts 

 under the lights of induction and historical analysis, we elicit several 

 classes of evidence which tend to restore important links in the history 

 of the original dispersion of our species, advance us in the scale of knowl- 

 edge, and go far to enable us to appreciate and understand our position 

 on the globe. And in proportion as this investigation is pressed, in 

 proportion as science is applied to it, and the gurrent of investigation 

 deepened, we abstract from the boundaries of mystery and conjecture, 

 and add to these of ascertained facts and history. We thus progress 

 indeed in knowledge, and compass one of the noblest ends of being. 



It is in this light that ethnology makes its appeal to modern letters ; 

 and I beg leave to bring its claim to your early consideration. It is 

 proposed to consider ethnology in the most enlarged sense of which the 

 etymology of the word admits as embracing man in his divisions into 

 nations ; their affinities and characteristics, mental and jihysical, with 

 such proofs deduced from history, philology, antiquities, and the exact 

 sciences, as may serve to link nation to nation, and race to race. In 

 this study particular reference is designed to be had to the position of 

 the American continent, and to the aboriginal races found upon it, when 

 first discovered by Europeans. In this view, it will embrace not only 

 geograi)hy, antiquities, and history, as descriptive sciences, but likewise 

 the Ga>v]y history of arts, ethnography, comparative philology, geology, 

 and physiology, and such other collateral sciences as may be found nec- 

 essary to investigate, illustrate, and exjdain the subject. 



The mode of advancing the subject, and carrying into eflect the in- 

 quiry, so as best to bring out the facts for general information, may 

 admit of some diversity of opinion. It is not an inquiry which admits 

 of extempore results. To consider diligently the various parts of the 

 continent which furnish aliment for the investigation, to scrutinize and 

 collate what has been discovered and written, to collect from mounds 

 and other sources, in various i)arts of the world, specimens of ancient 

 art, and above all to embody the present and past philology of tribes 

 and nations, is a labor requiring time and attention. Much of this, 

 when acquired, is hardly of a character to sustain popular lectures. It 

 may be doubted, indeed, whether in offering researches in a verbal form 

 they are not always in danger of suffering from the hands of theory and 

 rhetoric. Still, it is a question whether condensed statements of parts 



