14 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 60 



Speculation lias ever been rife i-egarding the origin of the abo- 

 rigines and supposed significant analogies have been 

 Supposed Euro- ^^j.^jg q,,^ ^.j^j-^ nearly every race and people of the 



pean Origins . 



Old World. A favorite theory of the earlier stu- 

 dents of the subject regarded them as descendants of the " lost 

 tribes of Israel," and as a result, oddly enough, literature has 

 been enriched by the publication of several valuable works on 

 the habits and characteristics of the Indians, written with the 

 view of establishing identities between the two races — works which 

 otherwise would never have existed. Perha})s the most important of 

 these works are Adair's History of the North American Indians 

 (1775), and Lord Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities (1830-48). 



The myth of AVelsh settlement in North xVmerica has also been 

 very persistent, descendants of a colony, reputed to have been 

 founded by Prince Madoc about 1170, having been identified, mainly 

 on linguistic analogies, with numerous tribes, including the Tusca- 

 rora, the Mandan, the Hopi, and the ^Nlodoc.^ 



The literature of INIiddle and South America records many at- 

 tempts to identify the native tribes with foreign peoples, the mis- 

 conceptions beginning with the belief of Columbus that the people 

 of the New World were identical with those of far Cathay; and a 

 mythic Atlantis has had a large share in the theoretic peopling of 

 the western Avorld. The laborious compilations of Donnelly, though 

 marshaling all available facts and suggestive culture analogies, fail 

 to give this latter myth a scientific standing. The fascination of 

 these misconcei:)tions is well illustrated by the recent elaborate and 

 costly staging of a play which embodied, not unknowingly, most 

 of the errors regarding our aborigines which men of science have 

 been combating for half a century. Fortunately, the play had but 

 a short run, not, however, because it promulgated error, but because 

 of other defects which the public was able to appreciate. 



Among the varied misconceptions embodied in our literature is 

 the belief that the native culture had reached before 

 IrZ'^ ""^ °"''^'''" the Columbian discovery its highest development and 

 had given way to a period of general decadence, con- 

 forming thus with the fate of certain Old AVorld civilizations. Al- 

 though frequently promulgated, this theory is not fully sustained 

 by facts with regard to the race as a whole; doubtless some advanced 

 groups, as the Maya, had reached a climax of progress and had 

 retrograded, but it would be difficult to prove that any of these 

 cultures, represented as they are by important works of sculpture 

 and architecture, were on the Avhole greatly superior to the culture 



'Consult ^loouoy, The Growth of a Myth; and Bowen, America Discovered by the 

 Welsh. 



