THE TOLTECAN FAMILY. 85 



With respect to the American languages, it may be sufficient in this place to 

 observe that they present resemblances not less remarkable than those we have 

 noticed in the physical and moral traits of these people. All the nations from 

 Cape Horn to the Arctic sea, have languages w^hich possess " a distinct character 

 common to all, and apparently diflfering from those of the other continent with 

 which we are acquainted."* This analogy, adds Dr. Wiseman, is not of an 

 indefinite kind, but consists for the most part in peculiar conjugational modes of 

 modifying the verbs by the insertion of syllables ; whence the remark of Vater 

 that this wonderful uniformity observed from one extremity of America to the 

 other, "favors in a singular manner the supposition of a primitive people, which 

 formed the common stock of the American indigenous nations."! 



Note. — On Certain Mixed Races in America, -^The various grades of amalgamation between 

 the white and Negro population of America, are too well known to require specification in this place; 

 but there are two other mixed races which, from being much more partial, are much less familiar : 

 viz, those which have resulted from intermarriages between the Europeans and Indians, and between 

 the Indians and Negroes. Of the first class the frontier settlements every where present isolated 

 examples; but at San Paulo, in Paraguay, there is an entire community of these people who are 

 known by the name of Mamelukes, They are the offspring of Indian women by men of the 

 Portuguese, Dutch, French, Itahan, German and Spanish nations. The fathers were often outlaws, 

 the mothers the very refuse of the Indian tribes. It is not surprising, therefore, that the children of 

 such parents should have surpassed the indigenous savages in barbarity and devastation. Their 

 habitual custom was to attack the missionary stations of the Jesuits, and either destroy or carry into 

 hopeless slavery all the Indians who fell into their hands. Whole districts were thus depopulated, 

 and even the Spanish cities were repeatedly attacked and pillaged, and the inhabitants reduced to 

 slavery. " It is asserted that in one hundred and thirty years, two millions of Indians were slain, or 

 carried into captivity by the Mamelukes of Brazil; and that more than one thousand leagues of 

 country, as far as the river Amazon, were stripped of inhabitants. Pedro de Avilla, Governor of 

 Buenos Ayres, declared that Indians were openly sold, in his sight, by the inhabitants of San Paulo 

 at Rio Janeiro; and that six hundred thousand Indians were sold in this town alone from the year 

 1628 to 1630."J These atrocious practices were at last done away by the severest measures on the 

 part of the parent governments of Spain and Portugal, but first by a victory gained over these lawless 

 banditti by the combined tribes of the Guarany nation. 



Allied in origin to these are the Confusos of Brazil, a numerous community with long and curled 



for the most part a spherical head, (tete generalement spherique,) while the Columbian species of the 

 same author, embracing the Peruvians and Mexicans, is described with an elongated head, (tete 

 allongee.) It is only necessary to compare the plates of the present work to be satisfied of the 

 inaccuracy of the latter observation. — Vide Bulletin des Sciences Univ, VI, p. 245. 



* Gallatin, in Archasolog. Amer. II, p. 5, US. t Wiseman, Lectures, p. 80. 



jDoBRizHOFFER, Abipoucs, I, p. 161.— MuRATORi, Paraguay Missions, p. 5G, 

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