holmes] aboriginal AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES PART I H 



by enthusiastic supporters of vague theories and preconceived views, 

 and the demand for sensational matter by the public press, a large 

 contingent of which is ready to accept for public consumption what- 

 ever is novel or sensational, without serious regard for its verity. 

 The diversity of invented and exaggerated statements wdiich find 



currency is, indeed, appalling. The world hears con- 

 Faise Reports stantly of the discovery of skeletons of giants and 



of pygmies; of caverns filled with mummified bodies 

 and rich plunder; of ruined cities abounding in marvelous works of 

 art; of hardened copper; of walls and buildings of astonishing mag- 

 nitude; of sunken continents; of ancient races associated with extinct 

 species of animals; of inscribed tablets of doubtful origin and extraor- 

 dinary import; of low-browed crania attributed to prehistoric races 

 but which are mere local variations or pathological freaks; of fossil 

 bones of animals parading as the bones of man ; of reputed petrified 

 human bodies which, on inspection, turn out to be of modern cement ; 

 of faked pottery, metal work, and the like, so well wrought and so 

 insidiously brought to the attention of scholars as to have become 

 in certain instances the types of anti(iuity; of learned readings of 

 undecipherable inscriptions: and of the remains of man and his 

 culture from formations of all ages, dating from the present back 

 to the Carboniferous age. The output is so great and the public 



mind so receptive to error that the tide of misinfor- 

 Tenacity of Error mation kceps Steadily on, hardly reduced in bulk by 



the never-ceasing etforts of science. The compilations 

 of a Bancroft, a Winsor, or a Fiske, illumined as they are b}' excep- 

 tional genius, could not always rise above the vitiated records upon 

 which they drew ; and our best authorities in many cases are subject 

 to the danger of combining the original errors into new fictions so 

 compounded and difficult of analysis as to elude the vigilance even 

 of the critical scientific world. 



From the first, potent agencies of error have conspired to obscure 



the aboriginal record. The attitude of the propa- 

 Fanaticai Destruc- ^^j^^|.^ ^f Christianitv at the period of discovery was 



tion of Art W orks t- . i J 



such that the first impulse of the Spanish conquerors 

 was to destroy at once all traces of the native religion, and a vast 

 number of important sculi^tures, the "idols" of the people, were 

 mutilated or beaten to fragments, and the native books and paint- 

 ings, the treasures of native learning and art, were ruthlessly de- 

 stroyed. The impulse to destroy was perhaps not so strong on the 

 part of the French and Fnglish when they reached Xorth America, 

 but this may have been due in part to the fact that there was little 

 to destroy that could bo regarded as dangerous to the cause of reli- 

 gious fanaticism. 



