The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

Paravey has published a facsimile of a Chinese drawing representing a lama. This at once answers one of the objections of Klaproth, and carries us considerably to the south of California. Amongst the productions of Fou-Sang the Chinese authors mention the horse, which, as we know, did not exist in America. It is clear that they called by this name the animal which in Peru was used as a beast of burden. This habit of calling by a common name species which are known and new species which resemble them in certain respects, certainly existed elsewhere than in China. This habit led the Conquestadores to call the puma a lion, and the bison a cow.

But did the Chinese then extend their voyages as far as Peru? This can hardly be doubted after the preceding testimony, and after that which is contained in the Geografia del Peru by Paz Soldan. The following is the translation of a passage for which I am indebted to M. Pinart: “The inhabitants of the village of Eten in the province of Lambayéque, and the department of Libertad, seem to belong to a different race from those of the surrounding countries. They live, and intermarry, only amongst themselves, and speak a language which is perfectly understood by the Chinese, who have been brought to Peru during the last few years.”

The Chinese books studied by De Guignes and Paravey speak of religious missions, which, towards the close of the fifth century, left the country of Ki-Pin to carry to Fou-Sang the doctrines of Buddha. The researches of M. G. d’Eichthal have fully confirmed these accounts. The strongest resemblances have been pointed out between the monuments and the Buddhist figures of Asia and the same products of American art. The comparison of legends has led the author to the same result.

Finally, according to an encyclopædia, from which M. de Risny has translated a passage, the Japanese were acquainted with Fou-Sang, which they called Fou-So, and with the missions which had left the land Ki-Pin for that country. Although its real position must still be doubtful, they show that Fou-So and Japan are two different countries.

To this formal testimony derived from the Chinese, we must add that of Europeans. The first is Gomara, who witnessed the conquest of Mexico, and was a contemporary of the expedition which followed. He tells us that companions of Francesco-Vasquez de Coronado, in sailing up the Western Sea as far as 40° N. lat., met with ships laden with merchandise, which, as they were led to understand by the sailors, had been at sea for more than a month. The Spaniards concluded that they had come from Cathay or Sina.

The primary object of the ships in question was evidently that of commerce. Such pacific relations did not, however, always exist between the native Americans and the strangers from the west. This is proved by the testimony of an Indian traveller, preserved by Le Page du Prat. Moncacht-Apé (the pain-killer) was certainly a remarkable man. Impelled by the desire which drove Cosma from Körös to Thibet, the wish to discover the original home of his tribe, he went at first in a north-easterly direction as far as the mouth of the St. Lawrence, returned to Louisiana and started again for the north-west. Having ascended the Missouri to its source, he crossed the Rocky Mountains and reached the Pacific Ocean by descending a river, which he called the beautiful river, and which can be no other than the Oregon.

There he heard of white, bearded men, provided with arms hurling thunder, who came every year in a great boat to look for wood which they used for dyeing, and carried off the natives to reduce them to a state of slavery. Moncacht-Apé, who was acquainted with the nature of firearms, advised his friends to prepare an ambuscade. The plans which he suggested were a complete success. Several of the aggressors were slain. The Americans at once saw that they were not Europeans. Their clothes were quite different, and their arms more clumsy, while their powder was coarser, and did not carry so far. Everything tended to show they were Japanese, accustomed to make descents upon this coast of America exactly similar to those undertaken by some crews in search of sandal-wood in Melanesia, who seize the blacks whenever they have an opportunity, and give them up to cotton planters under the name of coolies.

The narrative of Moncacht-Apé was given in the year 1725, three or four years before the discovery of the Behring Straits, and more than thirty years before European voyages had acquainted us with the north-west of America. The exact details which he gives as to the general direction of the coast, and of its bend at the peninsula of Alaska, are a sure proof of the correctness and truth of this narrative. Thus, however much it may wound European pride, we must acknowledge that Chinese and Japanese Asiatics knew and, in different ways, explored America long before Europeans.

V. Nevertheless, these civilized nations, whose ships visited America, do not seem to have founded large settlements, which could become the starting point of a new colony. Had it been so, they would have left more traces of their passage in the language. Now, with the exception of the small Chinese colony of which I have spoken above, there is scarcely one fact of this nature which can be considered as established. Some Californian colonies are mentioned as speaking a Japanese dialect. M. Guillemin Taraire has reproduced this information in reference to a tribe of Santa Barbara; he adds that the language of some others includes Japanese and Chinese words. Unfortunately the researches of M. Pinart, far from confirming these results, only tend to contradict them; we can, therefore, only speak with great reserve upon this point.

It seems to me to have been principally in the north that the great migrations took place, and that they were undertaken by savage nations. The traditions borrowed by l’Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg from the sacred books of the Quichés, and those of the Delawares which have been preserved by Heckewelder, appear to me to offer much information on this point. By comparing the missionary’s narrative with some facts of Mexican history anterior to the conquest, I have been enabled to determine approximately the date of the arrival of the Red-Skins in the basin of the Missouri. It seems to me that we cannot refer it to an earlier date than the ninth, or at most the eighth, century.