100 Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation. 



the unfolding of its intellectual faculties, and in its tendency 

 towards civilisation.* 



" Tke indigenous race of the New world," observes Dr. Yon 

 Martius, an eminent Bavarian philosopher, who travelled in the 

 Brazils during the earlier portion of the present century, " is 

 distinguished from all the other nations of the earth, externally 

 by peculiarities of make, but still more internally, by their state 

 of mind and intellect. The aboriginal American is at once in 

 the incapacity of infancy and unpliancy of old age ; he unites 

 the opposite poles of intellectual life." And again — " The first 

 germs of development of the human race in America can be 

 sought nowhere except in that quarter of the globe. "f In short, 

 both Humboldt and Dr. Von Martius give it as their deliberate 

 opinion, that the aborigines of America are all, with the excep- 

 tion of the Esquimaux of the Polar Circle, one people, and unlike 

 every other people, on the face of the earth. It is only necessary 

 to add, in reference to this last allegation, that neither of these 

 two eminent philosophers had ever had an opportunity of com- 

 paring the Indo- Americans with the Polynesians, or of tracing 

 any resemblance between them. 



I shall add onlv one other testimony in confirmation of my 

 theory of the absolute identity of the aborigines of America, as 

 well as of their actual derivation from Polynesia. It is that of 

 the late Dr. Morton, of Philadelphia, a gentleman of the highest 

 standing and attainments in the scientific world, and the author 

 of a great work, entitled " Crania Americana," of which there is 

 a copy in folio in our Parliamentary library, and in which he 

 exhibits the result of his scientific examination of the skulls of all 

 the known aboriginal tribes of America, both ancient and modern, 

 both savage and civilized, from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn. 

 Talking over the subject when spending an evening with Dr 

 Morion in his own house in Philadelphia, in the year 1840 — for 

 he had quoted me in his book, and we became great friends all at 

 once — I asked him what was the general conclusion he had 

 arrived at, from his examination of the crania of the Indo- 

 American tribes, in regard to the alleged difference of race 

 among them ; to which he replied that there was no difference of 

 race among them — they were all one people and of one origin. I 

 then asked him as to whether there was not a remarkable differ- 

 ence in the craniological development of the people who had 

 erected the wonderful monuments of antiquity that still remain 

 in America, as compared with that of the wild Indian of the 

 present day ; for the mummy pits of Peru contain numberless 

 remains of the more civilised natives ; to which he replied unhesi- 



* Humboldt's ReseaJches, toI. 1. page 200. 

 t Von dem Rechtzustande unter der Ureinwohnern Braziliens. A paper 

 by Dr. Von Martins : Royal Geographical Society's Journal, Vol II. 



