274 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



nent. The frame is, in general, symmetrical, rather tumid; in 

 the one, below the middle stature; in the other portion, gener- 

 ally above it; and among some tribes, equal to the largest men 

 of the old continent. With regard to mental qualifications, the 

 nations of North America, not having passed beyond the state 

 of hunters, show, for want of the laboring Ox and conquering 

 Horse, the characteristics of others in the same condition. 

 Thoy arc active, vigilant, daring, revengeful, restless, cruel, but 

 capable of lofty feelings ; full of hospitality, of the love of truth, 

 and of vast earnestness of purpose, when once their attention is 

 roused. Ruins still extant in nearly every region of the conti- 

 nent, and, still more, history, as written by their enemies, attest 

 that they could work out systems of self-development, creating 

 civilizations which were fast advancing to a more reasoned 

 maturity, notwithstanding that the foundations were often 

 stricken down by successive hordes of new invaders, till the 

 whole was finally crushed by European zeal and cupidity; for, 

 notwithstanding our view of a foreign element having worked 

 in the development of the indigenous social institutions, it must 

 be recollected that a few strangers cannot sway a distinct peo- 

 ple unprepared to receive their suggestions. They must be 

 homogeneous, — the result of time and of national engraftings, 

 — before they can take root. Now, the Mexican civilization 

 was a reconstruction of one or more preceding it ; and the 

 Ulmec and Toltec, so much older, were, most likely, not the 

 first that pervaded the warmer regions of Western America ; 

 therefore, the American mind, resulting, as we claim it to be, 

 from two typical stocks of Man, is only inferior in capacity, so 

 far as the existing races are more or less removed from the 

 means of attainment of social improvement; and the cold 

 philosophy of modern science, which inflicts the accusation, is 

 not totally destitute of cognate participation, in producing the 

 conditions of existence it stigmatizes. Luckily, a host of 

 writers, and among them, lately, Prescott, have fairly summed 

 up what the intellectual powers of the aboriginal races had 



