8 AUTHENTIC HISTORY 



many ages, preserved in our annals, we know that he departed from these 

 countries, to conquer new regions in the East, leaving a promise, that in 

 the process of time, his descendants should return, to model our laws, 

 and mend our government." 



On this subject Mr. Schoolcraft^ writes thus: "The tradition of the 

 origin of the empire in bands of adventurers from the Seven Caves, rests 

 upon the best authority we have of the Toltec race, supported by the 

 oral opinion of the Aztecs in 1579. An examination of it by the lights 

 of modern geography, in connection with the nautical theory of oceanic 

 currents and the fixed courses of the winds in the Pacific, gives strong 

 testimony in favor of an early expressed opinion in support of a migra- 

 tion in high latitudes. It is now considered probable that those caves 

 were seated in the Aleutian Chain. This chain of islands connects the 

 continents of Asia and America at the most practicable points; and it 

 begins precisely opposite to the Asiatic coast north-east of the Chinese 

 empire, and quite above the Japanese group, where we should expect the 

 Mongolic and Tata hordes to have been precipitated upon those shores. On 

 the American side of the trajet, extending south of the peninsula of Ona- 

 laska, there is evidence, in the existing dialects of the tribes, of their 

 being of the same generic group with the Toltec stock." 



"Thus we have traditionary gleams of a foreign origin of the race of 

 the North American Indians, from several stocks of nations, extending 

 at intervals from the Arctic circle to the valley of Mexico. Dim as these 

 traditions are, they shed some light on the thick historical darkness which 

 shrouds that period. They point decidedly to a foreign — to an Oriental, 

 if not a Shemitic, origin. Such an origin had from the first been inferred. 

 At whatever point the investigation has been made, the Eastern hemis- 

 phere has been found to contain the physical and mental prototypes of 

 the race. Language, mythology, religious dogmas — the very style of 

 architecture, and their calendar, as far as it is developed, point to that 

 fruitful and central source of human dispersion and nationality."^ 



3. Passing from this general consideration of the origin of the North 

 American Indians to the Indians of Pennsylvania, who will be repeat- 

 edly referred to in the course of this history, it seems proper that a sketch 

 of them should be inserted at this place, in order that the reader may be 

 placed in a position to form an independent judgment on questions 

 relating to that ill-fated race. The subjoined account is taken from 

 Gordon's History of Pennsylvania, who has drawn his information from 

 the writings of Heckewelder and other Moravian missionaries. 



"Although divided into many tribes, the Indians inhabiting the vast 

 expanse between Canada and Virginia, traced their origin to two sources, 

 the Lenni Lenape and Mengive. The former, known among their deriva- 

 1 Vol. I.— p. 22. 2 Vol. 3— p. 26. 



