754 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



or Egyi^tian, or Polynesian populations found their way to the American continent, 

 at whatever date, they found, and intermingled with, an aboriginal American race 

 as ancient as, or more ancient than, the races they descended from. 



Some have contended that the American Indians are Jews, and that the "ten lost 

 tribes of Israel " got to the American coast and gave a population to the continent. 

 How chimerical is this. At the date of the disappearance of the "ten tribes " the ruined 

 cities of Yucatan and Guatemala were in full splendor ; and, with no advantages of 

 navigation, the ten tribes would have had to wander through the barbarous and sav- 

 age tribes of Chinese, Kalmuk, Mongol, and Siberian Tartary to the snowy and icy 

 regions of Kamskatka and Behring's Strait, a distance of more than 10,000 miles. 

 And for what? For a new continent they never had heard of; for if any one had 

 ever reached it, certainly no one had ever gone back. 



This interesting but unimportant question of, " Where the American Indians came 

 from," has been elaborately and ingeniously discussed by able writers, and still will 

 probably continue to be discussed for centuries to come, without being further under- 

 stood than at the present time ; and enough has been said of it in this little work to 

 prepare the minds of its readers for my own opinions, which I am about to advance 

 as to that part of the question put in the beginning of this chapter, not "Where they 

 came fronij" but ' ' Who are the American Indians ? " 



fCliapterX, " Last Eambles."] 

 The Indians, who are they ? 



The reader has learned, by following me through these two little volumes ["Life 

 Amongst the Indians," 1861, and " Last Rambles," 1867], that I have, during fourteen 

 years of research, not amongst books and libraries, but in the open air and the wilder- 

 ness, studied the looks and character of the American native races in every latitude, 

 from Behring's Strait to Terra del Fuego ; and here will be learned that, from the immu- 

 table, national, physiological traits with which the Almighty stamps this and every 

 other race, I believe the native tribes of the American continent are all integral parts 

 of one great family, and that He who made man from dust created these people from 

 the dust of the country in which they live, and to which dust their bodies are fast 

 returning." 



I can find nothing in history, sacred or profane, against this ; and from their color 

 and physiological traits, which are different from all other races on the earth, as well as 

 from reasons advanced in the foregoing chapter, I am compelled to believe that, in 

 His boundless and unerring wisdom, the Almighty, who " created the cattle of the 

 fields, the fishes in the sea, and fowls of the air " of this vast and glowing continent 

 " for man's use " (not that they should grow and decay for thousands of centuries, until 

 man should accidentally reach them to enjoy them), placed these red children there 

 and said to them, in some way, " I am your Father, your Maker ; I give you these 

 things ;, go forth and enjoy them." And that in the undisputed enjoyment of this 

 rich inheritance given them, of unlimited fields and forests abounding in game, and 

 unbounded liberty for using «it, they were, in Mexico, in Yucatan, and Peru, duly 

 and successfully using those faculties which God had given them, and intended for 

 raising them gradually into civilization and splendor, when cataclysms sunk the 

 splendid edifices and the people in one, and more than barbarous or savage cruelties 

 of mercenary men crushed their rising power, robbed them of their gold, and carried 

 the sword and death amongst the others, and sent a drowning wave of discourage- 

 ment through the remotest tribes of the continent. 



The American Indians are as distinct from all the other races of the earth as the 

 other races of the earth are distinct from each other, and, both in North and South and 

 Central America, exhibit but one great original family type, with only the local 

 changes which difference of climate and different modes of life have wrought upon it. 



