66 DANIEL WILSON ON THE HUEON-IEOQUOIS OF 



tiuent, aud from that of the Asiatic Mongols. Humboldt, who enjoyed svich rare oppor- 

 tunities for studying the ethnical characteristics of both continents, but to whom, never- 

 theless, the northern races, with their dolichocephalic type of head were unknown, dwells, 

 in his " American Researches," on the striking resemblance which the American race 

 bears to the Asiatic Mongols. Latham classes both under the common liead of Mongolidse ; 

 and Dr. Charles Pickering, of the American Exploring Expedition, arrived at the same con- 

 clusion^ as the result of his own independent study of the races of both (Continents. 

 Nevertheless, however great may be the resemblance in many points between the 

 true Red Indian and the Asiatic Mongol, it falls short of even an approximate physical 

 identity. The Mongolian of Asia is not indeed to be spoken of as one unvarying type, 

 any more than the American. But the extent to which the Mongolian head-form and 

 peculiar physiognomy characterize one widely diffused section of the population of the 

 eastern continent, gives it special prominence among the great ethnical divisions of 

 the human race. Morton assigns 1421 as the cranial capacity of eighteen Mongol, and 

 only 1234 as that of one hundred and sixty-four American skulls other than Peruvian 

 or Mexican. Dr. Paul Topiuard, in discussing the American type, adds : " If we are 

 to rely on the method of cubic measurement followed by Morton, the American skull is 

 one of the least capacious of the whole human race." " But Dr. Morton's results are in 

 some respects misleading. The mean capacity yielded by the measirremeuts of 214 

 American skulls in the Peabody Museum of Archteology, including a considerable 

 number of females, is 1331 ; aud with a carefully selected series, excluding exception- 

 ally large and small crania, the results would be higher. Twenty-six male California 

 skulls, for example, yield a mean capacity of 1470. The Huron-Iroquois crania would 

 rank among such exceptional examples." The forehead is, indeed, low and receding, but 

 the general cerebral capacity is good ; and Dr. Morton specially notes its approximation 

 to the European mean. ' 



But any idea of simple uniformity in the ethnical characteristics of the various races 

 of North and South America is uutenable. All probabilities rather favour the idea of dif- 

 ferent ethnical centres, a diversity of origin, and considerable admixture of races. All 

 evidence, moreover, whether physical or philological, whatever else it may prove, leaves 

 no room for doubt as to a greatly prolonged period of isolation of the native races of the 

 New "World. Whether they came hither from the Mediterranean, in that old mythic 

 dawn the memory of which survived in the legend of a submerged Atlantis ; or the 

 history of their primeval migration still lingers among the fading traces of philological 

 affinity with the Basques ; or if with the still more remote glimpses which the arctic 

 fauua of the New World supplies, we seek to follow the palœolithic race of central 

 Europe's reindeer period in the long pilgrimage to Behring Straits, and so to the later 

 home of the American Mongol : this, at least, becomes more and more obvious, that they 

 brought with them no arts derived from the ancient civilizations of Egypt or of Asia. So 

 far, at least, as the northern continent is concerned, no evidence tends to suggest that 

 they greatly differed at any earlier period from the condition in which they were found 



' Anthropology, by Dr. Paul Topinard ; Bng. Trans., p. 480. 



=" " The Huron Eace and Head-form." N. S. Canadian Journal, vol. xiii., p. 11." 



' Crania Americana, p. 195. 



