A Letter addressed to President Hayes. 59 



The wonder is, that the primitive American civilization ever readier! the 

 height it did in the lack of two chief instruments of progress, the use of iron 

 and the arts of alphabetical writing — the one to shape and to hold the staples 

 and materials, which skilled labor proves to be serviceable; the other to recori 

 the advancement of knowledge, and to preserve the items and details of inven- 

 tion and discovery. The al)sence of these two instruments from Europe would 

 have thrown a pall over that continent as dark as that which enveloped the 

 aboriginal tribes of North America. Indeed, all Europe within the period o' 

 authentic history, was repeatedly plunged into barbarism. Not a ray of light 

 shone from within. The torch of knowledge, the altar-fires of faith, the head- 

 lights of culture, were brought from without, kindled and replenished by 

 foreign hands, until by slow and painful processes Europe learned to keep what 

 had been given, and to multiply her lights into the ilhimination of modern 

 society. 



Similar results might have been reached on this continent, if an ocean of 

 fire had rolled between the Old World and the New, to keep off the boasted 

 civilization of Europe. Bancroft (Native Races, Vol. I) says, "Left alone, the 

 nations of America might have unfolded into as bright a civilization as that of 

 Europe. They were already well advanced and still rapidly advancing towards 

 it when they were so mercilessly stricken down." It is impossible to conjecture 

 what those races might have become, if their rights had been respected, or If 

 they had had the power to enforce respect. But it is not difficult to conclude 

 that if they had been treated, not as wild beasts to be exterminated, but as 

 (fellow creatures to be helped, and to confer benefits in return, many of them 

 would have been developed into a manhood reflecting credit upon the race, 

 and into a culture worthy of the age. 



It is not visionary to suppose that if the European civilization had coalescCf} 

 with the Tolto-Aztec on this Continent, the combination would have benefitted 

 both by the one exchanging with the other its best and most peculiar qualities ; 

 and thus the relics and memorials of pre-historic ages in the New World, de- 

 veloped out of its own original stock, and joining in the march of human 

 progress, would have been preserved to the eternal honor of the "superior' 

 race. 



This were idle musing, were it not that "the dream is not all a dream." 

 A tribe of Hydahs or Tlinkets coasting along the shores of the Baltic .^ea a 

 thousand years ago, would have been- justified in looking with indifterence 

 upon the state of art among Northern Europeans. Their admiration could 

 have been excited by one work of art, the sea going vessel, which the Phoeni- 

 cians had taught the Scandinavians to make a thousand years.before ; and by 

 one metal, which the Tlinkets would have prized above the copper and the 

 gold in their own mountains. A knowledge of the use of iron before the 

 advent of the Europeans would have made them too formidable for any Rus- 

 sian armament that ever floated along their shores. They reached a certain 

 degree of advancement long before their country was discovered, and then 

 paused. In this they resernble the Asiatic civjlijatjons, for instance, the Hin- 



