THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 759 



advanced in civilization and arts, that they could not have fallen by the hands of 

 native tribes ; nor is it possible to believe that the whole of such a race could have 

 been destroyed by an epidemic disease. 



All traditions of the contiguous mountain tribes are against this, and point dis- 

 tinctly to a flood, in which the tribes of the lower countries perished ; and the ocean 

 sands and deposits covering the whole surface of Yucatan and its ruins, with other 

 evidences equally strong, help to establish, beyond a doubt, the same calamity. 



The cataclysm by fire, forming a part of the traditional catastrophies of Central 

 America, and equally well established, was less extensive and less disastrous in its 

 effects, and probably took place at the same time, and from the same commotions 

 which caused the subsidence of earth, and consequently flood of water. And that 

 such eruptions of flame have been of repeated occurrence, and that they accompany 

 most earthquake commotions, there is abundance of evidence in their marks on the 

 rocks in the crevices of the mountains of Central and South America. 



The great antiquity of % the Aztec ruins is questioned by some, who find amongst 

 them [painted frescoes, painted tablets and statues, and linteled roofs and Maya 

 and Mexican inscriptions. 



The Maya Indians, who, it has already been said, migrated from the west, and took 

 possession of those ruins after they arose from the sea, found convenient shelter 

 within their walls, which they defaced, and to which they added inscriptions ; and 

 centuries after (and for centuries previous to the reign of Montezuma), a succession 

 of Mexican princes occupied the same ruins, linteled and roofed the palaces, painted 

 the frescoes and tablets, and added Mexican inscriptions, until the ablest archaeolo- 

 gists are unable to expound them ; but the very sands which cover them and the 

 whole country around them, not blown there by the wind, but deposited by the waves 

 of the ocean, show that neither the Maya Indians nor the Mexicans had anything to 

 do with their original construction. 



[Chapter 51, "Last EamWes."] 

 The Indians, where are they going? 



If the brief remarks advanced in the two preceding chapters leave the reader's mind 

 in any doubt as to the origin of the American Indians, there need be no uncertainty 

 in answering the second question, " Where are these poor people going? " It requires 

 no archaeologist, no historian, nor antiquarian for this — "to the setting sun," know- 

 ing, from the irresistible wave of civilization, which has already engulfed more than 

 one-half of the tribes on the continent, that somewhere in the western horizon the 

 last of their race will soon be extinguished. 



The first shocks to Indian civilization and advancement, which have been related 

 in the foregoing chapters, were the results of natural accidents, which none but God 

 controls ; and if those awful events could have been avoided, Columbus would have 

 discovered a continent in the west as high in civilization, in agriculture, and the arts 

 as the eastern continent was at that date. 



Staggering under this death-blow, the genius of civilization lay for centuries and 

 centuries in embers, until it again began to blaze out in Mexico and Peru, when the 

 inhuman onslaughts and revolting cruelties of civilized men, stimulated by the thirst 

 for gold, set honesty, morality, religion, and Heaven itself at defiance, in extinguish- 

 ing the last lights that were lifting these poor nations from savage darkness and igno- 

 rance. 



The last gleams of Indian civilization thus extinguished by deceptions and cruel- 

 ties, at the recital of which the hearts of honest men and philanthropists sicken, the 

 poor Indians, from one end of the continent to the other, have stood aghast at white 

 man's cruelty ; and, suspicious, have everywhere resisted his proffered civilization 

 and religion, and yet the dupes of only one inducement — his rum and whisky. 



