354 
CURRENT OPINION FOR MARCH 
covery of America was such that the first 
impulse of the Spanish conquerors was to 
destroy at once all traces of the native 
religion. A vast number of important 
sculptures, or “idols,” of the people were 
mutilated or broken to fragments, and the 
native bo : 1 : and paintings, the treasures 
of native art and learning, were ruthlessly 
destroyed. The accumulation of knowl¬ 
edge in this field is therefore difficult and 
progress slow. The pioneers are not to be 
blamed for the propagation of the first 
errors of judgment,- but the persistence of 
certain fallacies A amazing. The cloud 
over archeology is not wholly lifted from 
the popular mind, which seems prone, per¬ 
haps from lor to find error more 
fascinating t 1 - .ruth: 
“Among the fallacies which early took hold 
of the popular mind, appearing everywhere 
in the older literature, are those of the pres¬ 
ence in America of civilized pre-Indian popu¬ 
lations. The mound-builders, so-called, were 
supposed to have reached a high stage of cul¬ 
ture and to have disappeared completely as 
a race, a conclusion reached after superficial 
examination of the monumental remains of 
the Mississippi Valley. This idea has held 
with great tenacity, notwithstanding the facts 
that many articles of European provenance 
are found in the mounds as original inclu¬ 
sions, indicating continuance of construction 
into post-Columbian times, and that the abo¬ 
rigines in various parts of the American Con¬ 
tinent, as in Mexico, Central America and 
Peru, when first encountered by the Spanish 
invaders, were occupying a culture stage far 
in advance of anything suggested by the an¬ 
tiquities of the Mississippi Valley. 
“A fallacy similar to that regarding the 
mound-builders fastened itself upon the an¬ 
cient cliff-dwellers of the arid region when 
traces of their interesting culture first came 
to light, but more recent investigation has 
shown that the ancient occupants of the re¬ 
gion who built and dug their dwellings in the 
cliffs were in general the immediate ancestors 
of the Pueblo tribes which occupy the same 
region to-day. 
‘‘Speculation has ever been rife regarding 
the origin of the aborigines, and supposed sig¬ 
nificant analogies have been made out with 
nearly every race and people of the Old 
World. A favorite theory of the earlier stu¬ 
dents of the subject regarded them as de¬ 
scendants of the lost tribes of Israel,’ and as 
a result, oddly enough, literature has been 
enriched by the publication of several valu¬ 
able works on the habits and characteristics 
of the Indians, written with the view of es¬ 
tablishing identities between the two races— 
works which otherwise would never have ex¬ 
isted. Perhaps the most important of these 
works are Adair’s ‘History of the North 
American Indians’ (1775), and Lord Kings- 
borough’s ‘Mexican Antiquities’ (1830-48). 
“The myth of Welsh settlement in North 
America has also been very persistent, dm, 
scendants of a colony reputed to have been 
founded by Prince Madoc about 1170 having 
been identified, mainly on linguistic analo¬ 
gies, with numerous tribes, including the 
Tuscarora, the Mandan, the- Ho'pi and the 
Modoc.” 
The literature of middle and southern 
America records many attem. s to iden¬ 
tify the native tribes with foAAn peoples, 
the misconceptions beginning with the be¬ 
lief of Columbus that the people of the 
New World were identical with those of 
Cathay. A mythical Atlantis has had a 
large share in the theoretical peopling of 
the western world. The laborious com¬ 
pilations of Donnelly, tho marshaling all 
available facts and suggestive culture 
analogies, fail to give this latter myth a 
scientific standing. The fascination of 
these misconceptions is well illustrated by 
the recent elaborate and costly staging of 
a play which embodied, not unknowingly, 
most of the errors regarding our aborigi¬ 
nes which our men of science have been 
combating for years. Fortunately the play 
had but a short run. 
Among the varied misconceptions em¬ 
bodied in our literature is the belief that 
the native culture had reached before the 
Columbian discovery its highest develop¬ 
ment and had given way to a period of 
general decline, conforming thus with the 
fate of certain Old-World civilizations. 
Altho fully promulgated, this theory by no 
means conforms with the facts with re¬ 
gard to the race as a whole. Doubtless, 
some advanced groups, such as the Maya, 
had reached a climax of progress and had 
retrograded. Still, it would be difficult to 
prove that any of these cultures, repre¬ 
sented as they are by important achieve¬ 
ments, were, on the whole, greatly su¬ 
perior to the culture achievements of the 
Aztec or the Incas at the period of the 
discovery. 
