CHAPTER XVIII.
MIGRATIONS BY SEA.—MIGRATIONS IN AMERICA.
I. The peopling of Polynesia and America is a problem which presents, if I may use the expression, inverse conditions. There is, in reality, no geographical difficulty in the latter. The proximity of the two continents at Behring Straits, the existence in this channel of the Saint Laurence islands, the largest of which is situated exactly half-way between the two opposite continents, the connection formed between Kamschatka and the peninsula of Alaska by the Aleutian Islands; the maritime habits of all these peoples; the presence of the Tchukchees on the two opposite shores; the voyages which they undertake from one continent to the other on simple matters of commerce, leave no doubt as to the facility with which the Asiatic races could pass into North America through the Polar Regions.
More to the south, the current of Tessan, the kouro-sivo, or black stream of the Japanese, opens a great route for navigators. This current has frequently cast floating bodies and abandoned junks upon the shores of California. Instances of this fact have been observed in our own time. It is impossible that they should not also have happened before the period of European discoveries. Asiatic maritime nations must at all times have been carried to America from all those places which are washed by the Black Stream.
The Equatorial current of the Atlantic opens a similar route leading from Africa to America, and there are some evidences, rare it is true, showing that wrecks have been carried in this direction. It is possible, therefore, that the same may also have happened to man.
II. We shall not, therefore, be surprised at finding in the New World representatives of races which seem to belong originally to the Old World; we shall easily understand the multiplicity of American races, which is perhaps still contested by some of Morton’s followers, but firmly established in the opinion of every unprejudiced person by the testimony of Humboldt and d’Orbigny’s classical work on L’Homme Américain.
Black populations have been found in America in very small numbers only, and as isolated tribes in the midst of very different nations. Such are the Charruas of Brazil, the black Carabees of Saint-Vincent in the Gulf of Mexico, the Jamassi of Florida, the dark-complexioned Californians, who are, perhaps, the dark men mentioned in Quiché traditions, and by some old Spanish adventurers.
Such, again, is the tribe of which Balbao saw some representatives in his passage of the Isthmus of Darien in 1513. Yet it would seem, from the expressions made use of by Gomara, that these were true Negroes. This type was well known to the Spaniards, and if they had encountered black men with glossy hair, like the Charruas, they would undoubtedly have been much impressed by it, and would have mentioned the fact.
The white type is more widely represented in America than the black. Along the whole of the north-west coast, Meares, Marchand, La Pérouse, Dixon and Maurelle have observed populations, which, judging from some of their descriptions, would seem to be of pure white race. Upon the Upper Missouri, the Kiawas, Kaskaïas and the Lee Panis possess, we are assured, the attributes of the purest white races, including their fair hair. The Mandans have, from our present point of view, always attracted attention. Captain Graa, again, found in Greenland men speaking Esquimau, but tall, thin, and fair. In South America, Ferdinand Columbus, in his relation of his father’s voyages, compares the inhabitants of Guanaani to the Canary Islanders, and describes the inhabitants of San Domingo as still more beautiful and fair. In Peru, the Charazanis, studied by M. Angrand, also resemble the Canary Islanders, and differ from all the surrounding tribes. L’Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg imagined himself surrounded by Arabs when all his Indians of Rabinal were around him, for they had, he says, their complexion, features, and beard. Finally, Gomara and Pierre Martyr offer a similar testimony, and the latter speaks of the Indians of the Parian Gulf as having fair hair (capillis flavis).
It is useless to insist upon the anthropological relations between America and Asia. Most travellers have insisted upon this point. I have heard M. de Castelnau say, “When I was surrounded by my Siamese servants, I imagined myself in America;” and M. Vavasseur, assisting at the visit of the Siamese ambassadors, remarked, “But those are my Botocudos.” I should, however, observe that the skull in the Collection in the Paris Museum indicates less resemblance than the external characters.