THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. a 755 



I believe they were created on tbe ground on which they have been found, and 

 that the date of their creation is the same as that of the human species on other parts 

 of the globe. This belief is founded on the reasons advanced in the foregoing chap- 

 ter, supported by the traditions of the Indians, which will be noticed, and a strong 

 and unavoidable, intuitive disbelief that all the races of man, of different colors, have 

 descended from one pair of ancestors, involving, from necessity, the crime of incest, 

 after the holy institution of marriage, as a means of peopling the earth; and the in- 

 conceivable plan of the whole surface of the earth teeming with luxuries, ''created 

 for man's use," vegetating and decaying for tens of thousands of years, until wander- 

 ing man, from one point, and from one pair, by accident, arrives there to use them. 



Some writers have advanced the belief that South America and the continent of 

 Europe were anciently united, and that the American continent received its popula- 

 tion in that way; but as this is mere hypothesis, and probably will for ever remain 

 so, it refers us for a last remaining remark, to Behring's Strait, by which route, if the 

 American Indians are the descendants of " Adam " and " Eve," at the rate that an 

 infant savage population would spread over an uninhabited and desolate country, 

 several thousand years would have been required to populate and move through the 

 vast regions of Kalmuk, Tartary and Siberia to Behring's Strait, a distance of more 

 than 10,000 miles ; and from Behring's Strait to Central and South America, and 

 Terra del Fuego, 10,000 miles more, and an equal time required— one thousand years 

 at least — for a civilization to arise sufficient to have built the splendid monuments of 

 Yucatan, and the vast space of time that has transpired since those monuments weie 

 depopulated ; in all, a space of time far transcending that allowed by sacred history, 

 or even by geology, for man's appearance on the earth ! 



The American Indians know nothing of this, yet their traditions and monuments 

 prove beyond a doubt their great antiquity; for, of 120 different tribes which I have 

 visited in North, and South, and Central America, every tribe has related to me, more 

 or less distinctly, their traditions of the Deluge, in which one, or three, or eight persons 

 were saved above the waters, on the top of a high mountain ; and also their peculiar 

 and respective theories of the Creation. 



Some of these tribes, living at the base of the Rocky Mountains, and in the planes 

 of Venezuela, and the Pampa del Sacramento in South America, make annual pil- 

 grimages to the fancied summits where the antediluvian species were saved in canoes 

 or otherwise, and, under the mysterious regulations of their medicine (mystery) men, 

 tender their prayers and sacrifices to the Great Spirit, to ensure their exemption from 

 a similar catastrophe. 



Indian traditions are generally conflicting, and soon run into fable ; but how strong 

 is the unanimous tradition of the aboriginal races of a whole continent of such an 

 event ; how strong a corroboration of the Mosaic account ; and what an unanswer- 

 able proof that the American Indian is an antediluvian race; and how just a claim 

 does it lay, with the various modes and forms which these poor people practice in 

 celebrating that event, to the inquiries and sympathies of the philanthropic and 

 Christian as well as to the scientific world ! 



Some of those writers who have endeavored to trace the American Indians to an 

 Asiatic or Egyptian origin, have advanced these traditions as evidence in support of 

 their theories, which are as yet but unconfirmed hypotheses ; and as there is not yet 

 known to exist, as I have before said, either in the American languages, or in the 

 Mexican or Aztec, or other monuments of these people, one single acceptable proof of 

 such an immigration, these traditions are strictly American — indigenous and not ex- 

 otic. 



If it were shown that inspired history of the Deluge and of the Creation restricted 

 those events to one continent alone, then it might be that the American races came 

 from the eastern continent, bringing these traditions with them ; but until that is 

 proved, the American traditions of the Deluge are no evidence whatever of an eastern 

 origin. 



