330 THE AMERICAN MIOrJRATION. 



even approximately to the demands of science ; and that theory is probably, in 

 every point of view, the most tenable and exact which assumes that man, like 

 the plant, a mundane being, made his appearance generally upon earth when 

 our planet had reached that stage of its development which unites in itself the 

 conditions of man's existence. In conformity with this view I regard the 

 American as an autQchthon ; consequently there can no question be here en- 

 tertained respecting an immigration into America. 



The idea of the migration of American tribes is, for the most part, and by 

 early writers nearly always, confounded with this immigration into America. 

 While the American continent exhibits monuments, not to be. mistaken, of a 

 migration of the native tribes within the same, the idea of a foreign intrusion has 

 been strongly sustained for three hundred years, during which these monuments 

 have received a false interpretation. On the other hand, the surprisingly high 

 culture witnessed by the first European visitors in a part of the world assumed 

 to be inhabited by savages remained so inexplicable, and the knowledge at that 

 time of the degree of civilization existing among the further Asiatic nations 

 was so limited, that recourse was had to hypotheses which later inquiry has by 

 no means tended to substantiate. Only in the most recent times and with diffi- 

 culty has some progress been made in favor of the opinion which regards the 

 American autochthons as a people who had attained a form of civilization by 

 modes of their own, a conclusion which enriches the philosophy of history with 

 a fact of no inconsiderable import. 



Were we disposed to reduce into one comprehensive system all the fallacious 

 hypotheses advanced, and which would, in fact, scarcely exclude any nation 

 from the honor of having peopled, or at least civilized, America, we should find 

 that they fall into two categories, which were only too often advocated by one 

 and the same author, thus introducing into the question a truly embarrassing 

 complexity. To the first category belong those hypotheses according to which 

 America remained unoccupied and waste until, in process of time, some immi- 

 gration, no matter on which side, took place from the Old World ; a consequence, 

 perhaps, of the general movement by which men separated themselves more and 

 more widely from their original abode in Central Asia. This is the theory of a 

 simply populating immigration. To the second category pertain those opinions 

 which, in order to account for the singular degree of culture in America, sup- 

 pose an immigration, no matter again on which side, of a peopleal ready civil- 

 ized, though in times, of course, considerably nearer to our own. This immi- 

 gration is also regarded by many as the occasion of the actual and acknowledged 

 American migiation ; a view which obtained especial credit from the partial 

 acquiescence of A. von Humboldt, who, indeed, avowed that he considered an 

 ancient intercourse between western America and eastern Asia as more than 

 probable, though he could not determine the manner in which the connexion of 

 these Asiatic branches of the human family took place.* As distinguished from 

 thei first, I would call this last the theory of a civilizing immigration. But this, 

 also, receives no countenance from the results of the latest investigations. 



Freed from all these theories of immigration of whatever name, it remains to 

 contemplate the migration of the American indigenes as an historical phenome- 

 non, which stands alone and independent, like those observed in the Old World, 

 with which we have, of course, far better means of being acquainted. To as- 

 certain the causes of these, as well as of the migration of populations beyond 

 the ocean, is a hitherto unachieved task ; everything in relation thereto is mere 

 conjecture. Whoever, like myself, entertains the persuasion that man in his 

 development, and hence, indirectly in his history, is potentially influenced by 



* Vthtr Stcppen und JVilsten, in the Ansichten der Natur, Stuttgard, 1859, vol. I, p. 151. 

 See, also, numerous passages of Humboldt's masterly but little read work, Vucs des Cor- 

 dilleras et Monumcns des Fcvples Indigenes de V Amirique, Paris, 1816, vol. II. 



