SCHOOLCRAFT'S NATIONAL WORK. 139 



" Thousands of years must have elapsed to produce such diversities of languages 

 and character, and general obscuration. Instead of eighteen hundred years, as the 

 apocryphal Spanish pictographs presuppose as the period of their roving in these 

 forests, there is more probability that the period of their abiding on the continent 

 is thrice that time." (Vol. V. p. 69.) 



Mr. Schoolcraft has no very high estimate of the value of the picture writings of 

 Mexico, and thinks the loss of those destnxyed by the Spanish ecclesiastics not so 

 great as might be expected. He quotes Mr. Gallatin's statement, that those which 

 have been preserved contain but a meagre account of Mexican history for one 

 hundred years preceding the concpaest, and hardly anything that relates to prior 

 events. (Vol. V. p. 102.) 



The pictographic scrolls often commented upon as betokening an inkling of 

 Christianity among the natives, he regards as undoubtedly of a date since the con- 

 quest. The supposed existence of traditions of the Deluge, in both North and South 

 America, he apprehends to be due to the " fervor of imagination, or the enthusiasm 

 of theory.'' "While there are no traces of the Christian scheme to be found among 

 the Indian tribes, and no Hindoo element in their population, no relics of Buddhism 

 or Brahminism,or Mahomedanism, " their manners and customs present some traits 

 which denote them to be the descendants of a more ancient race whose opinions 

 and dogmas once overspread the oriental world." " There are evidences of the 

 ancient prevalence of the worship of the sun throughout America." (Vol. V. pp. 

 62, 63.) 



Elsewhere he says : " Any attempt to fix on local divisions of the oriental world 

 as the probable theatre of the origin of the Indian tribes, in the absence of all 

 history — without even traditions, poor as they generally are — and on the mere 

 basis of suppositions, must prove unsatisfactory. But where history is baffled, 

 conjecture may sometimes plausibly step in." " The only nation, it must be con- 

 fessed, with which his (the Indian's) origin has been, with some just probability, 

 compared, is the Hebrew, or at least the Shemitic stock. There are not only some 

 striking principles of agreement in the plan of utterance of the Indian with the 

 Shemitic, but some apparent vestiges of the vocabulary." (Vol. V. pp. 86, 87. 1 ) 



1 Some of the preceding sentences have been transposed for convenience of quotation, but without 

 affecting their sense or connection. In a note the writer says, " The Hebraic theory has not been, in 

 my opinion, thoroughly examined. The attempt of Mr. James Adair, in 1774, to prove it, by customs 

 and languages, is an utter failure on the face of it." On p. 82, Vol. Y., he refers to the arguments of 

 President Smith, and Boudinot, on this point, as unsatisfactory, and to the Discourse of Dr. Jarvis 

 questioning the theory as "deemed a paper of sound deduction."' He directs the attention of the 

 reader to Vol. I. pp. 30 to 43, for a summary of traits which appear to connect the Indian with the 

 oriental world ; and to Yol. II. p. 353, and Vol. IT. p. 3S6, for some evidences for a comparison of 

 the Indian with the Hebrew language. But it is intimated that the subject requires more time, read- 

 ing, and elaboration, than the nature of this work admitted. He says, in the same connection, *' It 

 has likewise, thus far, been impossible, in this volume, to bring forward, in a digested form, the com- 

 parison of manners, customs, rites, and opinions, social and religious, which appear to refer the origin 

 of the Indian tribes to an ancient and general epoch of political mutations over a wide surface of the 

 Asiatic continent, affecting the Mongol, Chinese, and their affiliated nations." Yol. V. p. 82. 



