NO. II MELANESIANS AND AUSTRALIANS HRDLICKA 5 



cans include Milius (1607), Grotius (1642), De Laet (1643), Horn 

 (1652), Holm (1702), Charlevoix (1744), and Clavigero (1807). 

 They collectively add little if anything original. But the two last 

 mentioned, unquestionably the best instructed, though adhering to 

 American polygeny, each expressed independently a view on the 

 problem which deserves to be quoted. 



Charlevoix (1744) regards the majority of the theories hitherto 

 advanced as " purely chimerical " and is of the opinion that 



nearly all the writers on the subject have based their conjectures on such 

 ruinous foundations, or had recourse to such frivolous deductions from names, 

 customs, religion, and languages, that it appears quite as useless to try to refute 

 the same as to conciliate them with each other. (Vol. 5, p. 2.) 



And a similar sentiment is voiced by Clavigero, who says (vol. 2, 

 p. 205) : 



There are authors who, in order to do wrong to no people, believe the 

 Americans the descendants of all the nations of the world. So great a variety 

 and extravagance of opinion is owing to a persuasion that, to make one nation 

 be believed to have sprung from another, no more is necessary than to find 

 some affinity in the words of their languages, and some similarity in their 

 rites, customs, and manners. 



LATER THEORIES 



Scientific work proper on the American Indian commences with 

 Linne, Bufifon, and Blumenbach abroad, and with Jefferson and 

 Barton in this country. All these write on the subject toward the 

 end of the eighteenth or beginning of the nineteenth century; and 

 since then there is a long list of students of man who occupy them- 

 selves with the problem of American origins. A majority of all these, 

 particularly those of this continent and who had the broadest experi 

 ence with the Indian, although well aware of the multiplicity of types 

 and tribal variation, incline strongly toward the idea of his general 

 north- and east-Asiatic afiinities. Yet there were and are also other 

 notions, particularly among European anthropologists, who have had 

 less extensive direct contact with the Indian. 



During the nineteenth and the present centuries polyracial theories 

 of the origin of the American Indians are advanced not only by 

 writers such as Coates and Baldwin, but also by a number of pro- 

 fessional scientific men, among them Ouatrefages, Rudolph Virchow, 

 Rivet, and Correa. But the theories change and crystallize in new 

 directions. The hypotheses of European, north-African and western 

 Asiatic origins have practically been given up, but new ideas arise and 

 are strongly supported. Basing their beliefs on apparent linguistic, 



