THE AMERICAN FAMILY. 63 



localities the most remote from each other ; nor do they, as a general rule, assimi- 

 late less in their moral character and usages. It is not to be denied that different 

 tribes occasionally present very dissimilar features ; but these differences are more 

 obvious in small communities than in collective nations. There are also, in their 

 multitudinous languages, the traces of a common origin; and it may be assumed 

 as a fact that no other race of men maintains such a striking analogy through all 

 its subdivisions, and amidst all its variety of physical circumstances. 



By vvdiat rule of Anthropology ,~then, are we to group the American nations 

 into families, or, as some v^riters have attempted, into species ? The ingenious 

 Bory de St. Vincent has endeavored to show that the American race embraces 

 four species exclusive of the Eskimaux ;* but he has certainly failed to point out 

 any differences that have a claim to specific character. 



It appears to me, as heretofore indicated, that the most natural division of 

 the American race is into tv^o families, one of which, the Toltecan family, bears 

 evidence of centuries of demi-civilisation, while the other, under the collective 

 title of the American family, embraces all the barbarous nations of the new world 

 excepting the Polar tribes or Mongol- Americans. Some writers, however, suppose 

 even the Eskimaux to be a part of the same original stock, partly because there is 

 some resemblance in features, partly from partial analogy of language, and partly 

 again from a determination to merge the American in the Mongolian. It is 

 obvious, nevertheless, that the continent of America was originally peopled, as it 

 yet is, by a very distinct race, and that the Eskimaux arriving in small and 

 straggling parties from Asia, necessarily adopted more or less of the language and 

 customs of the people among whom they settled: hence the Eskimaux, and 

 especially the Greenlanders, are to be regarded as a partially mixed race, among 

 whom the physical character of the Mongolian predominates, while their language 

 presents obvious analogies to that of the Chippewyans who border them to the 

 south.f In the American family itself we observe several subordinate groups 

 or branches which may be designated under the following heads : 



* For example, the Mexicans and Peruvians are considered cognate with the Malays, and are 

 by this author referred to his Neptunian species^ (Homo neptunianus.) His Columbian species, 

 (Homo columbicus,) he supposes to have had their original seats among the Alleghany mountains, 

 and to have spread themselves from the basin of the St. Lawrence to Florida, the West Indies, 

 Honduras, Terra Firma, and Guyana. The Jimerican species, (Homo americanus,) includes the 

 tribes of the Orhioco and the Amazon, and those of Brazil, Paraguay, &c. The fourth or Patagonian 

 species, includes the nations of the far south. — U Homme, Esplces 8, f), 10 et 11. 



t Archaeolog. Araer. H, p. 118. 



