J 52 INTRODUCTION. 



stitutinfT western New- York, for a very long period anterior to the first visit of the 

 Europeans. But Cusick's chronology is almost as wild as that of the Chinese 

 or the Hindoos, for he gives accounts of the reigns of a long hne of kings, reach- 

 intr throuf^h a period of thousands of years. There are two points, however, in 

 the traditions of the Six Nations which are both curious and important, to wit, the 

 resemblance between their cosmogony and that of the Hindoos, and the fact that 

 the Noachian deluge is incorporated in their legends, as it has been found in all 

 the barbarous nations on the eastern continent. A discourse, pronounced before 

 the Historical Society of New- York, in the year 1811, by De Witt Clinton, pre- 

 sents the most useful compendium of the history of the Six Nations. Sir William 

 Johnson wrote a series of letters to Arthur Lee of Virginia, upon the manners, 

 customs and government of the Six Nations, but it is not known whether the work 

 is extant. The reverend Samuel F. Jarvis, then of New- York, but now of Con- 

 necticut, in 1819, produced a learned and eloquent treatise on the rehgion of the 

 North American Indians, in the form of a discourse before the New- York Histo- 

 rical Society. William Smith, in his History of New- York, has given the history 

 of the Six Nations, but it is little more than a compendium of Colden's writings 

 on the same subject. 



The most elaborate and authentic modern work upon the origin of the Ameri- 

 can red man, and the antiquities of that race, is that recently given to the pubhc 

 by Alexander W. Bradford. His researches and inquiries embrace the wide 

 region from the snow huts of the Esquimaux to the palace of the Incas. His 

 conclusions are, that all the various nations and tribes inhabiting America at the 

 time of its discovery were derived from one primitive civilized source, and that 

 the emigration to this continent proceeded from southeastern Asia through the 

 Indian Archipelago, and across the islands of the Pacific ocean. This theory, 

 however, has yet to abide the test of inquiry. 



George Catlin spent several years among the aboriginals of the far west, and 

 his volumes are curious and interesting, regarded as a sketch of the living 

 manners of the inhabitants of the forest. In the department of Indian philology, 



