50 ON THE ORIGIN AKD MIGEATIONS OF THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 



many years past — ^has assured me that lie coincides entirely with 

 me in the views I have stated both in regard to the origin of 

 the Polynesian nation in the Indian Archipelago and to the courses 

 which the individuals of that nation must have taken in crossing 

 the Pacific in the regions of its greatest breadth from their start- 

 ing point in the Philippine Islands to Pasquas or Easter Island, 

 which he reckons is situated 2,200 miles from the American land. 

 There he leaves me, however, not from any doubt as to my being 

 then on the right track for ascertaining how both North and 

 South America were originally peopled, but because he had 

 never entertained the thought of following the Polynesians across 

 the intervening tract of ocean that separates Easter Island from 

 the mainland of America. 



Taking it for granted, therefore, for the sake of argument, that 

 that continent was originally reached by a canoe full of Poly- 

 nesians, who had been accidentally blown oiFthe land from Easter 

 Island by one of those sudden, violent, and protracted westerly 

 gales that prevail at certain seasons in the southern Pacific, and 

 had crossed the intervening breadth of ocean to the American 

 land, somewhere near Copiapo, in the Republic of Chili, what 

 would be the result of these unfortunates finding themselves in 

 their new-found-land ? Why, like all emigrants from the old 

 world to some colonial field beyond seas, they would just repro- 

 duce in their new settlement the whole framework of society on 

 the model on which it was constructed in their native isle. 

 They would practice the same manners and customs as had 

 obtained in their fatherland, and they would construct both their 

 private habitations and their public buildings on the same ])lan 

 or model to which they had been accustomed in the land of their 

 nativity. 



Now, this is precisely what we find to have been the result of 

 the supposed original discovery of America by a handful of 

 famished Polynesians at a very early period in the history of 

 mankind. "W^e find the whole framework of society among the 

 aborigines of America constructed on precisely the same model 

 as in Polynesia ; we find the same singular manners and customs 

 prevalent in both cases ; and \Te find those wonderful remains of 

 an extinct civilization in America that excite the astonishment of 

 modern civilization, of precisely the same character and aspect 

 as if they had been erected by a Polynesian architect. 



Eeserving the proof of this for the present, I would now 

 present the Society with a brief statement of the theories put 

 forth by a great variety of authorities in regard to the origin of 

 the Indians of America, in the recent work of an eminent 

 American historian, Mr. Bancroft, entitled " The Native Eaces 

 of the Pacific States of North America." Before doing so, how- 

 ever, I would lay down as a test for judging and deciding on all 



