64 DANIEL WILSON ON THE HURON-IROQUOIS OP 



manner, Professor John (îanipbell seeks in the same obsenre dawn for some philological 

 traces of long-forgotten Hittite migrations, smh as may harmonize with the idea of the 

 mythic Atlantidos, the people of a continent once stretching westward into the Atlantic 

 main. But the interval to be bridged over, between such remote traces of Asiatic or other 

 affinities and the oldest of Iroquois traditions, is too vast to hope for any present aid from 

 the latter source. But if Akkad, Hittite, Egyptian, Phœnician, or other of the world's grey- 

 fathers, transijlanted to America the germs of its long indigenous stock, we look in vain 

 for any traces of their old-world civilization north of the Mexican Gulf. Nor is it by any 

 means an established truth that the indigenous arts of Central America or Peru are of 

 any very great antiquity. Their metallurgy was at a crude, yet suggestive, stage at which 

 it was not likelj" to be long arrested. The same may be said of their hieroglyphic 

 records ; though they certainly present some highly significant analogies to the Chinese 

 phase of word-writing, calculated, along with other aspects of resemblance to that peculiar 

 stage of partial, yet long-enduring, civilization of which China is the Asiatic examplar, 

 to modify our estimate of the jjossible duration of Central and Southern American 

 civilization. NcA'ertheless the assumption of an antiquity in any degree approximating 

 to that of Egypt seems to me irreconcilable with the evidence. Their architecture vras 

 barbaric, though imposing from the scale on w^hich their great temples and j)alaces were 

 built. In Central America especially,the aggregation of numerous ill-lighted little cham- 

 bers, like honey-combed cells excavated out of the huge pile, is strongly suggestive of 

 affinity to the Casas Grandes, and the Pueblos of the Zuni : and this is confirmed by the 

 correspondence traceable between many of their architectural details and the ornamenta- 

 tion of the PiTcblo pottery. 



The astronomy and the calendars, both of Mexico and Peru, with their detailed 

 methods of recording their divisions of time, are all suggestive of an immature phase of 

 civilization in the A'ery stage of its emergence from barbarism, modified, in some cases, by 

 the recent acquisition of certain arts. As to the peculiar phase of Mexican art, and what- 

 ever other evidence of progress Mexico supplies, they appear to me no more than natural 

 products of the first successful intrusion of the barbarians of the northern continent on 

 the seats of tropical civilization. Certain it seems, at least, that if an earlier native 

 civilization had ever existed in the north, or if the rehires entatives of any type of old world 

 civilization were present there in numbers for any length of time, some traces of their lost 

 arts must long since have come to light. 



But the conservative power of language is iudisimiable, and the evidence of the 

 origin or aifiliation of races, which it sui^iilies, surpasses all other kinds of proof. The 

 study of the ancient languages of India has ox^ened up a boundless field of research. 

 The alfiuitics of language preserve subtle traces of unheeded relations ; and if the kin- 

 ship now claimed for the polysynthetic languages of ])oth hemispheres be correct, we are 

 only on the threshold of significant disclosiires. The Huron-Iroquois tongue, in its 

 numerous ramifications, as well as some of the native languages that have outlived the 

 last of th(> races to which they Ix'longcd, may preserve traces of affinities as yet unrecog- 

 nized. But we must be content at the present stage to accumulate the needful materials ; 

 to master the history of the races of our own Dominion ; and to determine, as far as 

 possible, their affinities to each other, and to the typical stocks of the northern continent. 

 "When this has been accomplished, we shall still have to await the careful inductions of 



