THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. # 753 



the only ground on which such a theory will stand; and if the fact could he proved 

 to have transpired, there is nothing yet to show that it might not as well have heen 

 from west to east as from east to west. 



The most enthusiastic theorists on this subject have never yet entertained the idea 

 of a savage emigration across the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean, hut look to Behring's 

 Strait, where, by possibility, at certain seasons of the year (as has been said), they 

 can cross from continent to continent on the ice or in canoes; but what motive for 

 doing that, in the state in which savage society, in the frozen regions of Kamskatka, 

 six thousand years ago, when at the present time, with all their modern improve- 

 ments in boat building, in weapons, and with some ideas of commerce to stimulate 

 them, no Indian, on either coast, ventures across, except under the advice and escort 

 of civilized men who accompany them. 



Savages, of all the human family, are the least disposed to emigrate. Like animals, 

 their instinct is against it ; driven from their homes, like animals, they will return 

 to them, and without ihe stimulants of science, of commerce, or of gold, like animals, 

 they are contented to remain in them. 



If the barren and frozen coast of Siberia had been overstocked with a surplus popu- 

 lation, and the American coast opposite a luxuriant garden, instead of a coast equally 

 barren and desolate, such an emigration might have been a possible thing for Asiatics, 

 and in the space of six thousand years they might possibly have increased and spread 

 over North America, and perhaps through Central and South America, to Terra del 

 Fuego ; but if so, where are they ? 



In the whole extent of the whole American continent, from Behring's Strait to 

 Terra del Fuego, there is not to be seen, amongst the savage tribes, a Mongol, a Kal- 

 muk, or a Siberian Tartar, nor a word of their language to be heard. Languages, to 

 be sure, may be lost or changed, but physiological traits of people are never lost 

 whilst the race exists. 



Some travelers through South America, as if to aid the theory of Asiatic emigra- 

 tion, have represented the tribes of the Upper Amazon with " bridled" eyes, like the 

 Chinese, and even caricatured the Chinese obliquity, and put these more than Chinese 

 peculiarities forward as u types." But I have seen most of the tribes on the Amazon 

 and its affluents, and though the natives in those regions are generally a low degrep 

 of American aborigines, they exhibit nothing of the Mongol general character of face 

 nor Mongol obliquity of eye, other than the occasional muscular approach to it pro- 

 duced by their peculiar habits of life, living mostly, in their fisherman's lives, in their 

 canoes ; their eyes affected by the refraction of the vertical rays of the sun on water, 

 on which they are looking; and on land, walking with naked feet, requiring their 

 eyes to be constantly on the ground before their steps. 



The effect thus produced in the expressions of their eyes is very striking, but is 

 neither Mongolic nor a "type," but aberration from type, produced by the external 

 causes above named. 



I have said above that if an Asiatic population had crossed at Behring's Strait 

 they might in time have advanced through North and South and Central America, 

 and have stocked the whole continent; and this has been claimed by the advocates 

 of Asiatic immigration. This is a possibility, and therefore they say is probable ; 

 but here possibility stops, and certainly proof with it. 



The Sandwich Islands, with a population of 500,000, are more than 2,000 miles from 

 the coast of South America. How did the population of those islands get there ? Cer- 

 tainly not in canoes over ocean waves of 2,000 miles. But I am told, " The Sandwich 

 islanders are Polynesians." Not a bit of it. They are 2,000 miles north of the Poly- 

 nesian group, with the same impossibility of canoe navigation, and are as different 

 in physiological traits of character and language from the Polynesian as they are dif- 

 ferent from the American races. 



However voluminous and learned the discussions may be on the mysterious subject 

 of the origin of races, they must all come to the conclusion at last that, even if Asiatic, 

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