THE TOLTECAN FAMILY. 83 



One of the most remarkable intellectual defects of the Indians is " a great 

 difficulty in comprehending any thing that belongs to numerical relations. I 

 never saw a single man who might not be made to say that he was eighteen or 

 sixty years of age."^ Wafer made the same remark in reference to the Indians 

 of Darien ; and Mr, Schoolcraft, the United States Indian Agent, assures me that 

 this deficiency is a cause of most of the misunderstandings in respect to treaties 

 entered into between our government and the native tribes. The latter sell their 

 lands for a sum of money without having any conception of the amount, so that 

 if it be a thousand dollars or a million few of them comprehend the difference 

 until the treaty is signed and the money comes to be divided. Each man is then 

 for the first time acquainted with his own interest in the transaction, and disap- 

 pointment and murmurs invariably ensue. 



15. THE TOLTECAN FAMILY. 



In this group are embraced the civilised nations of Mexico, Peru and Bogota, 

 extending from the Rio Gila in the thirty-third degree of north latitude, along the 

 western margin of the continent to the frontiers of Chili. In North America, 

 however, the people of this family were spread from ocean to ocean, through the 

 present intendencies of Mexico, Vera Cruz, Puebla, Oaxaca, Guatimala, Yucatan, 

 Nicaragua, &c. In South America, on the contrary, this family chiefly occupied 

 a narrow strip of land between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean, and were limited 

 on the south by the great desert of Atacama. Further north, however, in the 

 present republic of New Grenada, lived the Bogotese, a people whose civilisation, 

 like their geographical position, was intermediate between that of the Peruvians 

 and Mexicans. This division of the Toltecan family had long held their mountain 

 empire at the epoch of the Spanish invasion and conquest, and were surrounded 

 on all sides by barbarous and uncongenial tribes. 



ences both in kind and degree, which characterise the individuals of each race ; indeed, to the general 

 character of all nature, in which uniformity is most carefully avoided. To expect that the Americans 

 can be raised by any culture to an equal height in moral sentiments and intellectual energy with 

 Europeans, appears to me quite as unreasonable as it would be to hope that the bull-dog may equal 

 the greyhound in speed; that the latter may be taught to hunt by scent like the hound; or that the 

 mastiff may rival in talents and acquirements the sagacious and docile poodle." — Lectures on Zoology ^ 

 p. 501. — See also a graphic view of this question in Dr. CaldwelPs Thoughts on the Unity of the 

 Human Species, p. 142. 



* Humboldt, in Lawrence's Lect. p. 569. 



