126 Distinctive characteristics of the 



refractory tribes. In these instances, however, the native ferocity of 

 their race broke forth even in the bosom of the Incas ; for we are 

 told by Garcilaso, the descendant and apologist of the Peruvian 

 kings, that some of their wars were absolutely exterminating ; and 

 among other examples he mentions that of the Inca Yupanqui 

 against the province of Collao, in which whole districts were so 

 completely depopulated that they had subsequently to be colonized 

 from other parts of the empire : and in another instance the same 

 unsparing despot destroyed twenty thousand Caranques, whose 

 bodies he ordered to be thrown into an adjacent lake, which yet 

 bears the name of the Sea of Blood. In like manner when Atahualpa 

 contested the dominion with Guascar, he caused the latter, together 

 with thirty of his brothers, to be put to death in cold blood, that 

 nothing might impede his progress to the throne. 



We have thus endeavored to shew that the same moral traits 

 characterize all the aboriginal nations of this continent, from the 

 humanized Peruvian to the rudest savage of the Brazilian forest. 



3. Intellectual Faculties. It has often been remarked that the 

 intellectual faculties are distributed with surprising equality among 

 individuals of the same race who have been similarly educated, and 

 subjected to the same moral and other influences : yet even among 

 these, as in the physical man, we see the strong and the weak, with 

 numberless intermediate gradations. This equality is infinitely more 

 obvious in savage than in civilized communities, simply because in 

 the former the condition of life is more equal ; whence it happens 

 that in contrast to a single master mind, the plebeian multitude are 

 content to live and die in their primitive ignorance. 



This truth is obvious at every step of the present investigation ; 

 for of the numberless hordes which have inhabited the American 

 continent, a fractional portion only has left any trace of refinement. 

 I venture here to repeat my matured conviction that as a race they 

 are decidedly inferior to the Mongolian stock. They are not only 

 averse to the restraints of education, but seem for the most part 

 incapable of a continued process of reasoning on abstract subjects. 

 Their minds seize with avidity on simple truths, while they reject 

 whatever requires investigation or analysis. Their proximity for 

 more than two centuries to European communities, has scarcely 



