450 



INCIDENTS OF* TRAVEL, 



generations of bitter servitude, even yet they are not 

 , more changed than the descendants of those terrible 

 Spaniards w^ho invaded and conquered their coun- 

 try. In both, all traces of the daring and w^arlike 

 character of their ancestors are entirely gone. The 

 change is radical, in feelings and instincts, inborn 

 and transmitted, in a measure, v\^ith the blood ; and in 

 contemplating this change in the Indian, the loss of 

 mere mechanical skill and art seems comparatively 

 nothing ; in fact, these perish of themselves, vs^hen, as 

 in the case of the Indians, the school for their exer- 

 cise is entirely broken up. Degraded as the Indians 

 are now, they are not lower in the scale of intellect 

 than the serfs of Russia, while it is a well-known 

 fact that the greatest architect in that country, the 

 builder of the Cazan Church at St. Petersburgh, 

 was taken from that abject class, and by education 

 became what he is. In my opinion, teaching might 

 again lift up the Indian, might impart to him the 

 skill to sculpture stone and carve wood ; and if re- 

 stored to freedom, and the unshackled exercise of 

 his powers of mind, there might again appear a ca- 

 pacity to originate and construct, equal to that ex- 

 hibited in the ruined monuments of his ancestors. 



The last argument, and that upon which most 

 stress has been laid, against the hypothesis that the 

 cities were constructed by the ancestors of the pres- 

 ent Indians, is the alleged absence of historical ac- 

 counts in regard to the discovery or knowledge of 

 such cities by the conquerors. But it is manifest 



