158 



OJ5SERVATI0NS ON COiS^OHOLOGIOAL 11EL108 OF THE llED INDIANS OF (J. W. 



[1855. 



slicll now exhibited from Nottawasaga lias tlie tipper whorls 

 removed, so as to expose the internal canal. Five lines, or 

 notches, are cut on the inner face of the canal, and it is perfo- 

 rated on the opposite edge, showing in all probability where 

 the wampum, scaljJ-lock, or other special decoration of its 

 owner was attached. It also exhibits abundant traces of its 

 long and frequent use. The surface is smooth and polished, 

 as if by constant handling, except whei-e it is worn oif, or 

 decayed, so as to expose the rough inner lamin* of the shell : 

 and all the natural prominences are worn nearly flat by frequent 

 attrition. We shall not probably greatly err in assuming the 

 2v/ruliie thus venerated by the ancient Indians of Canada West, 

 to have closely corresponded to the Conopas, or rude Penates 

 of the Peruvians, as described by Rivero and Von Tschudi. 

 Any singular or rare object in nature or art seems to have 

 sufficed for one of these Peruvian minor deities, amulets, or 

 charms. " Every small stone or piece of wood of singular 

 form was worshipped as a conopa. These private deities were 

 buried with their owners, and generally hung to the neck of 

 the dead."* The choice of natural objects for their singularity 

 of form is thus seen to present the same psychological charac- 

 teristic which leads to the Chinese veneration for the sinis- 

 trorsal turbinella. 



Trifling as such relics of Indian superstition, or of the rude 

 traffic of barbarous tribes, may appear, they are not without 

 some value to us, both in regard to the light they throw on the 

 ancient history of this continent, and also, perhaps, in respect 

 to some of the forms in which the progressive civilization of 

 its new occupants may be modified by the same physical causes 

 which largely controlled the ancient intercourse between north 

 and south, and between west and east. 



In no respect is this continent, to which these Indian relics 

 pertain, more directly diverse froin that of Europe than in its 

 broadly-marked physical characteristics. The greatest diameter 

 of Europe is from east to west, so that its chief area of occupa- 

 tion is embraced within a nearly similar range of temperature. 

 Yet along with this climatological homogeneity, its surface is 

 broken up by mountain ranges, and its coasts indented by bays, 

 estuaries, and land-locked seas, by means of which its various 

 populations are even now isolated as by clearly defined natural 

 lines of demarcation. Altogether different is it with this 

 continent, where the great levels are so little broken, that not 

 only the boundaries ol properties and townships, but even of 

 states, provinces, and dominions, are drawn without reference 

 to any natural features ol the country, excepting in the cases 

 of the great lakes, the St. Lawrence, the Rio Grande, and very 

 partially' in that of the Mississippi. We have to note, more- 

 over, that the most iinportant navigable river of Europe flows 

 from east to west, in one parallel of latitude, and through a 

 population in all ages rendered somewhat homogeneous by 

 influences of climate and all external circumstances : but the 

 Mississippi and the Missouri flow together through 20° of 

 latitude, with all the varieties of climate still furtlier increased 

 on a continent which extends its widest area within the arctic 

 circle, and where consequently the curves of equal temperature, 

 in the isothermal lines drawn across the two continents, 

 approach as much towards the equator in the meridian of 

 Canada as they recede from it in that of the west of Europe, 

 while under the tropics the isothermal lines are everywhere 

 parallel to the equator. 



Looking back into the most ancient history of Europe, we 

 * "Peruvian Antiquities," translateil hy F. L. Hawks, D.D., p. 172. 



find that that continent also had its northern mineral treasures ; 

 its tin, pertaining to the Kassiterides, or British Islands, and 

 its amber, found then as now in most abundance on the shores 

 of the Baltic. But it was by maritime intercourse, through the 

 agency of the Phojnician merchantmen of Asia, that the north 

 of Europe exchanged its mineral treasures for the coveted pos- 

 sessions of regions lying towards the tropics. Herodotus, in 

 the earliest known reference to the British Isles as the source 

 of tin, refers to them only to declare his total ignorance of them ; 

 and in noticing the rumour that amber is brought from the 

 northern sea in which they lie, he says : — " I am not able, 

 though paying much attention to the subject, to hear of any 

 one that has Ijeen an eye witness that a sea exists on that side 

 of Europe." Nor did this singular isolation, so peculiarly 

 characteristic of Europe, disappear even in the later ages of 

 Roman rule. Dr. Arnold, in contrasting our knowledge of the 

 globe with the ignorance of earlier ages, remarks : — " The 

 Roman colonies along the Rhine and the Danube looked out 

 on the country beyond those rivers as we look up at the stars, 

 and actually see with our eyes worlds of which we know 

 nothing." 



The class of Indian relics to which I have drawn attention, 

 when taken into consideration with the copper weapons, imple- 

 ments, and ornaments of Southern grave mounds, appear to 

 throw a light on the past history of this continent in its ante- 

 historic ages, and to show it then as now, as clearly distinct in 

 political as in physical characteristics from ancient or modern 

 Europe. Europe never could be for any length of time the 

 area for a nomadic population. In America, with its great 

 unbroken levels, even the home-loving Anglo-Saxon becomes 

 migratory, and seems to lose in a degree his old characteristic of 

 local attachnrent. In Europe the diverse ethnological elements 

 are still kept apart by its physical features : the Iberian of 

 Ante-Christian centuries surviving in the Pyrenees, and the 

 Gaul and Briton of the fii'st century finding still their repre- 

 sentatives on the coasts of Brittany, and in the mountains of 

 Wales. But on this continent a homogeneous aboriginal popu- 

 lation appears to have occupied nearly its entire area ; and now 

 that its ancient tribes are being displaced by the colonists that 

 Spain, England and Ireland, Poland, Hungary, France and 

 Germany, pour unceasingly on its shores, the distinctions of 

 Iberian, German, Celt and Saxon, which have survived there 

 for well nigh two thousand years, appear to vanish almost with 

 the generation that sets foot on this continent. When we 

 consider how largely all European history has been affected by 

 the peninsular character of Greece and Italy, and by the insular 

 character of Britain ; as well as, in a secondary degree, by the 

 similar isolation of Spain, France, Denmark, and the Scandi- 

 navian peninsula, we cannot fail to perceive in this a key to 

 some of the contrasting elements of fusion already noticeable 

 throughout this continent. 



It is obvious that a very difierent future awaits America 

 Irom that which fills the ample page of history in relation to 

 Europe. The wars of Marlborough and WelHngton, in so far 

 as they constituted practical protests against the dismember- 

 ment of Europe's old nationalities, were assertions of the 

 eternal laws written by the finger of God on the whole physical 

 aspect of the continent ; and it is in the assertion of a like 

 great principle that England has now once more unsheathed 

 her sword. But on this continent, our own Canadian frontier 

 is, if not the only one, at least one of the very few clearly 

 defined lines, whereby nature has recorded her enduring 

 protest against n-nnexation. Southward and Westward, the 



