SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XII. No. 293 



bach, in the last century, recognized five races, corresponding to 

 the five great land-areas of the globe and to their characteristic 

 faunal and floral centres. This division was an eminently scientific 

 one, and still remains the most in accord with anatomical and lin- 

 guistic research. About twenty years after the appearance of Blu- 

 menbach's work, however, the eminent naturalist Cuvier published 

 his great work on ' The Animal Kingdom,' in which he rejected 

 Blumenbach's classification, and proposed one dividing the human 

 species into three races, — the white or Caucasian, the black or 

 Ethiopian, and the yellow or Mongolian. In the latter he included 

 the Malays and the American Indians. 



This triple division has been very popular in France, and to some 

 extent in other countries. It is not, and it was not in its inception, 

 a scientific deduction from observed facts, but was a sort of a priori 

 hypothesis based on the physiological theories of Bichat, and at a 

 later day derived support from the philosophic dreams of Auguste 

 Comte. Bichat, for instance, had recognized three fundamental 

 physiological systems in man, — the vegetative or visceral, the osso- 

 muscular, and the cerebro-spinal. The anthropologists, in turn, 

 considered it a most happy thought to divide the human species 

 into three races, each of which should show the predominance of 

 one or other of these systems. Thus the black race was to show 

 the predominance of the vegetative system ; the yellow race, the 

 osso-muscular system ; the white race, the nervous system.' As 

 Bichat had not discovered any more physiological systems, so there 

 could be no more human races on the earth ; and thus the sacred 

 triplets of the Comtian philosophy could be vindicated. 



How little value attaches to any such generalizations you will 

 readily perceive, and you will be prepared, with me, to dismiss 

 them all, and to turn to the facts of the case, inquiring whether 

 there are any traits of the red race which justify their being called 

 ' Mongolian ' or ' Mongoloid.' 



Such affinities have been asserted to exist in language, in culture, 

 and in physical peculiarities, and I shall take these up seriatim for 

 examination. 



First, as to language. 



The great Mongolian stock is divided into the southern branch, 

 speaking monosyllabic, isolating languages, and the northern 

 branch, whose dialects are polysyllabic and agglutinating. The 

 latter are sometimes called Turanian or Ural-Altaic ; and as they 

 are geographically contiguous to the Eskimo, and almost to the 

 Athabascan, we might reasonably expect the linguistic kinship, if 

 any exists, to be shown in this branch of Mongol speech. Is such 

 the case ? Not in the least. To prove it, I think it enough to 

 quote the positive statement of the best European authority on the 

 Ural-Altaic languages. Dr. Heinrich Winkler. He emphatically 

 says, that, in the present state of linguistic science, not only is there 

 no connection apparent between any Ural-Altaic and any American 

 language, but that such connection is shown to be highly improb- 

 able. The evidence is all the other way " {Uralaltaische Volker 

 unci Sprachen, p. 167). 



I need not, therefore, delay over this part of my subject, but will 

 proceed to inquire whether there are any American affinities to the 

 monosyllabic, isolating languages of Asia. 



There is one prominent example, which has often been put for- 

 ward, of a supposed monosyllabic American language; and its 

 relationship to the Chinese has frequently been asserted, — a rela- 

 tionship, it has been said, extending both to its vocabulary and its 

 grammar. This is the Otomi, spoken \\\ and near the valley of 

 Mexico. It requires, however, but a brief analysis of the Otomi to 

 see that it is not a monosyllabic language in the linguistic sense, 

 and that in its sentence-building it is incorporative and polysyn- 

 thetic, like the great majority of American tongues, and totally 

 unlike the Chinese. I may refer to my own published study of 

 the Otomi, and to that of the Count de Charencey, as proving what 

 I say. 



Some have thought that the Maya of Yucatan has in its vocabu- 

 lary a certain number of Chinese elements ; but all these can 

 readily be explained on the doctrine of coincidences. The Mexican 



1 See Foley, Des Trois Grandes Races Hmnahies, 

 - I do not think that the verbal coincidences pointed c 

 graphie des Dene Diiidje, and by Platzmann in his A ni 

 onsideration. 



t by Petitot in his Mojio- 

 •ikanisch-Asiatische Eiy~ 



antiquary Mendoza has marshalled far more coincidences of like 

 character and equal worth to show that the Nahuatl is an Aryan 

 dialect descended from the Sanscrit. In fine, any, even the remot- 

 est, linguistic connection between American and Mongolian lan- 

 guages has yet to be shov\ n ; and any linguist who considers the 

 radically diverse genius of the two groups of tongues will not ex- 

 pect to find such relationship. 



I shall not detain you long with arguments touching supposed 

 r4ongolian elements of culture in ancient America. Any one at all 

 intimately conversant with the progress of American archseology 

 in the last twenty years must see how rapidly has grown the con- 

 viction that American culture was home-bred, to the manner born ; 

 that it was wholly indigenous and had borrowed nothing — nothing 

 from either Europe, Asia, or Africa. The peculiarities of native 

 American culture are typical, and extend throughout the continent. 

 Mr. Lewis Morgan was perfectly right in the general outline of his 

 theory to this effect, though, like all persons enamored of a theory 

 he carried it too far. 



This typical, racial American culture is as far as possible, in 

 spirit and form, from the Mongolian. Compare the rich theology 

 of Mexico or Peru with the barren myths of China. The theory of 

 governments, the method of house-construction, the position of 

 woman, the art of war, — are all equally diverse, equally un-Mon- 

 golian. It is useless to bring up single art-products or devices, 

 such as the calendar, and lay stress on certain similarities. The 

 doctrine of the parallelism of human development explains far more 

 satisfactorily all these coincidences. The sooner that Americanists 

 generally, and especially those in Europe, recognize the absolute 

 autochthony of native American culture, the more valuable wilt 

 their studies become. 



It is no longer in season to quote the opinions of Alexander von 

 Humboldt and his contemporaries on this subject, as I see in some 

 recent works. The science of archseology has virtually come into 

 being since they wrote, and we now know that the development of 

 human culture is governed by laws with which they were unac- 

 quainted. Civilization sprang up in certain centres in both con- 

 tinents, widely remote from each other ; but, as the conditions of 

 its origin were everywhere the same, its early products were much 

 alike. 



It is evident from what I have said, that the asserted Mongolian 

 or Mongoloid connection of the American race finds n'o support 

 either from linguistics or the history of culture. If anywhere, it 

 must be in physical resemblances. In fact, it has been mainly from 

 these that the arguments have been drawn. Let us examine 

 them. 



Cuvier, who, as I have said, is responsible for the confusion of 

 the American with the Mongolian race, based his racial scheme on 

 the color of the skin, and included the American within the limits 

 of the yellow race. Cuvier h^d seen very few pure Mongolians, 

 and perhaps no pure-blooded Americans ; otherwise he would not 

 have maintained that the hue of the latter is yellow. Certainly it 

 is not. You may call it reddish, or coppery, or cinnamon, or burnt 

 sugar, but you cannot call it yellow. Some individuals or small 

 tribes may approach the peculiar dusky olive of the Chinaman, but 

 so do some of the European peoples of Aryan descent ; and there 

 are not wanting anthropologists who maintain that the Aryans are 

 also Mongoloid. The one position is just as defensible as the 

 other on the ground of color. 



Several of the most prominent classifications of mankind are 

 based upon the character of the hair; the three great divisions 

 being, as you know, into the straight, the curly, and the woolly 

 haired varieties. These external features o^+he hair depend upon 

 the form of the individual hairs as seen' in cross-section. The 

 nearer this approaches a circle, the straighter is the hair. It is 

 true that both Mongolians and Americans belong to the straight- 

 haired varieties ; but of the two, the American ^has the straightest 

 hair, that whose cross-section comes nearest to a perfect circle. So 

 that by all the rules of terminology and logic, if we are to call 

 either branch a variation from the other, we should say that the 

 Mongol is a variety of the American race, and call it 'Americanoid ' 

 instead of vice versa. 



The color of the hair of the two races is, moreover, distinctly 

 different. Although superficially both seem black, yet, observed 



