THE AMERICAN MIGRATION. 333 



researches of Squicr and Davis* regarding ilic remarkable antiquities of the 

 valley of the Mississippi have disclosed in America u civilization which pre- 

 ceded the bronze era, and wna marked by the use of a pure red copper, which 

 was hammered in a cold state, and whose sources are to be sought on Lake 

 Superior, where it still occurs in large quantities. AVhen this American age of 

 copper existed, is not now to be deteimined ; we only know that it must at least 

 reach back to a thousand years, since such a period would certainly be requisite 

 for the growth of the venerable forests which now cover the remains of that 

 ancient civilization.! The end of the bronze age, on the other hand, may be 

 determined through the beginning of that of iron, which made its appearance 

 with the first settlement of Europeans in America, and is characteristic of the 

 existing era of civilization. 



The question might here suggest itself, in view of the existence of a con- 

 siderable degree of culture in America before the migration, whether, in general, 

 tribes in a state of civilization readily accommodate themselves to a migratory 

 condition. ]f this question cannot be unconditionally answered in the affirma- 

 tive, it cannot still be wholly negative, for experience has taught us that tribes 

 who address themselves to migration, as, for instance, the above-mentioned Celts 

 of Eui-ope, always possess a certain if not very high degree of civilization ; at 

 all events, if not actually civilized, they are susceptible of becoming so. Even 

 those hordes which, in the dawn of the middle age, overran Europe and over- 

 threw Rome, the Goths, Vandals, Heruli, and Huns, were by no means devoid 

 of all culture, possessing, as they did, even more of it than the races which they 

 found and subjugated in Germany and Gaul. For these countries the migra- 

 tion was no retrogradation ; neither had that of the Celts been so, who had pre- 

 viously wandered out of Asia. That a people in the full enjoyment of civiliza- 

 tion, with political institutions, and the manifold resources of social life amply 

 developed, should deliberately quit their abode in obedience to some inexplicable 

 impulse of migration, calls for no long discussion. In single individuals — in 

 numbers, indeed, of single individuals — the migratory impulse, through social, 

 political, or other motives, may still be aAvakened, as we witness constantly in 

 the case of European emigration. But whole races of men never set themselves 

 in motion when they have once transcended a certain limit of civilization. It 

 is, perhaps, not superfluous to observe that, if we speak here of an- advanced 

 civilization in ancient America, the phrase is by no means to be taken in an 

 European sense. The sumptuous structures of Chichen-Itza and Palenque sus- 

 tain no comparison with the simplest monuments of Greek and Roman cultiva- 

 tion. The American drawings and sculptures are very far from indicating any 

 truly artistic insight, while to any further advances in civilization in an Euro- 

 pean sense, the total absence of phonetic writing,| familiar as this was to the 



* Ancient Monuments of the Mississijipi Valley, (Smithsoniau Contributions to Knowledge, 

 vol. i : Wtisliing-ton, ]84f , 4*". ) Tie antiquities of this valley constitute already a considerable 

 body of literature, which, for want of .space, I cannot here further discvimiuate. Sutfice it 

 to say, that the work just cited is the most complete of those now existing. 



t See upon this subject the views developed in the "Natur," by the learned Dr. Otto Ule, 

 of Halle. (Blicke in die zorgeschichtiiche Zeil des Menschcn. 1865.) 



t Several nations of America were possessed of writlen hicroglyphical signs, but it was in 

 Mexico that these had been most cultivated, and indeed the Mexican liistorieal inqnirei, 

 Abbe Brasseur de Bourboiug, believes in the existence of a sort of phonetic Avriting. But a 

 correspondence which I have held on this subject with the distinguished linguist, Don Fran- 

 cisco rimentel, Count of Heras, has not resulted in a confirmation of this assertion. Dou 

 Pimentel writes to me, '21st September, 1865: "I have yet seen nothing to convince me 

 that the ancient Americans had written characters like ours, although M. Brasseur is of a 

 ditleient tipinion. They appear to have had only a representative and a symbolical mode of 

 wiiting: the first a mere copy of the objects; the second expressive of ideas which admit of 

 no material representation, as by placing a serpent to express imc. Something phonetichas 

 been surmised in the character.s employed to convey the pronunciation of the names of places 

 and other proper names, but in my view this proves nothing, because all these names are 

 significant, and might very well be expressed in a direct manner." 



