594 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
the greatest antiquity, when, in reality, they are the youngest. In a comparatively 
recent epoch they migrated from the Caucasian Mountains, took possession of 
Europe, and have been able to spread themselves throughout the greater part of 
America, and, aided by the strength of their youth and talent, they are now invad- 
ing Asia and Africa. The Indian race, on the contrary, is in a decrepit old age, 
having passed many centuries ago through youth, civilization, and even decadence. 
The North Americans solved the problem by beheading the unfortunate 
natives of the continent, or driving them away to the west, where they gradually 
perished.! The new governments of that part of America that formerly was Spanish 
admitted them into their societies and endeavored to have them share the benefits 
of civilization; but this policy, though it honored its authors, will be useless. The 
Indian race is in the last centuries of its age, and soon will disappear from the earth. 
As a general rule, power and civilization travel westward. Looking for their 
origin toward the East, we go from France to Greece, from the latter to Egypt, to 
China, and, finally, we come to America in the fartherest eastern end. China, the 
oldest nation of the Trans-Pacific Hemisphere, is about to disappear, and perhaps 
will become a colony of a far-distant island. The Indian race, which was the ances- 
tor of China or Tartary in the evolution of civilization, has in a greater degree than 
China reached an old age incapable of regeneration. We see this clearly in Central 
America. The extensive Mosquito Coast, inhabited by natives who are entirely 
free from foreign domination, surrounded by civilized colonies and states, and in 
spite of the fact that the English authorities have endeavored to educate the chil- 
dren of their leading men, that people are still in a state of most degrading bar- 
barism. 
It is necessary to consider the Indian race in olden times in order to render 
to it the respect it deserves; it is necessary to state other facts in order to destroy 
the fullest vanity of the white or Caucasian race of being the mother of the Indian 
race or the origin of its civilization. We have seen that this is, by analogy, the 
oldest human species of the globe; if we admit the blunder that the Indians descend 
from the Africans or the Europeans, and that the climate has changed the color of 
their skin, how is it, then, that the American Indian preserves in all climates the 
same bronze color? If the climate of the West Indies darkened the descendant of 
the European, the snowy mountains of Canada, Quito, and Patagonia should have 
turned their skin into the same whitish color. If the old nations of the Trans- 
Atlantic hemisphere should have had authentic information concerning these 
regions, they would have communicated it to posterity. Some learned men of that 
hemisphere, even before Columbus, suspected that there were lands here, just as 
we reasonably suppose that there are such in the center of the unknown portion of 
the Southern Ocean. But why should we endeavor to make the American a de- 
scendant of the other continent? Is it possible that there have come thence the 
tapir, the llama, and so many other animals of the hot lands of the American tropics? 
There is no trace of their race in the other hemisphere, and it is impossible that 
whole species or kinds of animals should come without leaving behind a single 
specimen of their race. They could not have come swimming by sea; from the 
north they could not have arrived, at least in the present state of the globe, because 
the cold would have killed them. No man could have brought ferocious wild 
animals in ships. 
Based on these reasons and other data, I establish the two following epochs of 
American civilization: Of the primitive, as is to be supposed because of its antiquity, 

‘This is an interesting commentary upon our treatment of the Indians, written 85 years ago by a foreigner, 
who felt himself under no obligations to refrain from telling the truth as he saw it. 
