BRADFORD'S ANTIQUITIES. 11,-, 



language, religion, traditions, and methods of interring the dead ; and from the 

 general prevalence of certain arbitrary customs; nearly all the aborigines appear to 

 be of the same descent and origin ; and that the barbarous tribes are the broken, 

 scattered, and degraded remnants of a society originally more enlightened and cul- 

 tivated : 



"IV. That two distinct ages may be pointed out in the history of the civilized 

 nations — the first and most ancient, subsisting for a long and indeterminate period 

 in unbroken tranquillity, and marked towards its close by the signs of social deca- 

 dence ; the second, distinguished by national changes, the inroads of barbarous or 

 semi-civilized tribes, the extinction or subjugation of the old and the foundation of 

 new and more extensive empires : and, 



"V. That the first seats of civilization were in Central America; whence popula- 

 tion was diffused through both continents, from Cape Horn to the Arctic Ocean."' 



In relation to the question of their origin, it appears : 



" I. That the Red race, under various modifications, may be traced phj'sieally 

 into Etruria, Egypt, Madagascar, ancient Scythia, Mongolia, China, Hindoostan, 

 Malaya, Poljnesia, and America, and was a primitive and cultivated branch of the 

 human family : and, 



" II. That the American aborigines are more or less connected with these several 

 countries, by striking analogies in their arts, their customs and traditions, their 

 hieroglyphical painting, their architecture and temple-building, their astronomical 

 systems, and their superstitions, religion, and theocratical governments. 



" It has long been a favorite theory, to trace the aborigines to a Tartar or Mongol 

 migration from Siberia, by Behring's straits. But the Mexicans and Peruvians 

 resemble the cultivated nations of oriental Asia even more closely than do the 

 ruder tribes, the Siberian nomades ; in fact they are all of the same race, and both 

 in Asia and America, a decline into barbarism has produced analogous develop- 

 ments, which in connection with the relics of their ancient religion and customs, 

 nearly assimilate the savages of both continents. It is not to be denied that there 

 are some tribes in North America, which may have proceeded in modern times 

 from Siberia; for example, the Chippcwyans, and perhaps the Sioux, the Osages, 

 Pawnees, and some of the northwestern nations; but even in relation to these, the 

 proof depends mainly upon vague and uncertain traditions. But to suppose that 

 the Mexicans, the Toltecs, the Chiapanese, the Mayas, and the Peruvians, were the 

 descendants of such degraded and savage hordes as occupy northeastern Asia; or 

 that they wandered from more southern Asiatic countries through the cold and 

 inhospitable regions of the north, without leaving any vestiges of civilization on 

 their way, appears equally contrary to experience and philosophy. The ancient 

 monuments in Siberia are situated to the west and to the south, those of America 

 are limited in their extent on the northwest; and in spite of the facility of com- 

 munication afforded by the contiguity of the two continents in that direction, these 

 facts would seem to be decisive of that question. On the other hand, the evidences 

 of an early knowledge of the compass in China, of the great maritime skill of the 

 Malays, and of their navigation, in remote ages, of the Asiatic seas, the facts stated 

 in relation to the peopling of Islands by the accidental drifting of canoes, and more 



