The word "Hohgates," I believe is but a variation of the word "Hagoth," the name of the man who started these maritime expeditions, and it would be altogether in keeping with Nephite customs[[38]] for those who sailed away in his vessels to be called "Hagothites" or "Hohgates." The vessel of this tradition may be one of those lost to the Nephites, which finally found its way to the Californian coast where its occupants landed with their ideas of Nephite civilization, and lived as described in the tradition. One is tempted to smile at the childish ending of the tradition; but under it may not one see that it is but the legendary account of the fact that the vessel sailed away from the California shores and was lost, or, at least, was heard of no more by the natives of those shores.
VI.
Native American Race Unity.
The subject of American antiquities should not be closed without a brief reference, at least, to the unity of the American race. Barring such migrations of other races to America as may have taken place since the fall of the Nephites at Cumorah, at the close of the fourth century A. D., and such as to a limited extent may have been going on in the extreme north via Behring Strait at an earlier date, the Book of Mormon requires substantial unity of race in the later native American people. That is to say, they ought to be of Israelitish descent, a mixture of the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh and Judah—but chiefly, if not all, of Hebrew descent; and even the Jaredites were but a more ancient branch of the same stock.[[39]]
On this subject, as upon all others pertaining to American antiquities and peoples, writers are divided; yet it is not difficult to marshal in support of race unity for native Americans the very highest authority; and what is of most importance is the facts are beyond question behind their theory.
Citing the facts on which certain authors rely to establish the unity of the American race, Bancroft says:
It was obvious to the Europeans when they first beheld the natives of America, that these were unlike the intellectual white-skinned race of Europe, the barbarous blacks of Africa, or any nation or people which they had hitherto encountered, yet were strikingly like each other. Into whatsoever part of the newly discovered lands they penetrated, they found a people seemingly one in color, physiognomy, customs, and in mental and social traits. Their vestiges of antiquity and their languages presented a coincidence which was generally observed by early travelers. Hence physical and psychological comparisons are advanced to prove ethnological resemblances among all the peoples of America. * * * * * * Morton and his confreres, the originators of the American homogeneity theory, even go so far as to claim for the American man an origin as indigenous as that of the fauna and flora. They classify all the tribes of America, excepting only the Esquimaux who wandered over from Asia, as the American race, and divided it into the American family and the Toltecan family. Blumenbach classifies the Americans as a distinct species. The American Mongolidae of Dr. Latham are divided into Esquimaux and American Indians. Dr. Morton perceives the same characteristic lineaments on the face of the Fuegian and the Mexican, and in tribes inhabiting the Rocky mountains, the Mississippi valley, and Florida. The same osteological structure, swarthy color, straight hair, meagre beard, obliquely cornered eyes, prominent cheek bones, and thick lips, are common to them all. * * * * * * Humboldt characterizes the nations of America as one race, by their straight glossy hair, thin beard, swarthy complexion and cranial formation.[[40]]
Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, professor of American archaeology and linguistics in the University of Pennsylvania—than whom no higher authority upon the subject can be quoted—says:
On the whole, the race is singularly uniform in its physical traits, and individuals taken from any part of the continent could easily be mistaken for inhabitants of numerous other parts. * * * * * * The culture of the native Americans strongly attests the ethnic unity of the race. This applies equally to the ruins and relics of its vanished nations, as to the institutions of existing tribes. Nowhere do we find any trace of foreign influence or instruction, nowhere any arts or social systems to explain which we must evoke the aid of teachers from the eastern hemisphere. * * * * American culture, wherever examined, presents a family likeness which the more careful observers of late years have taken pains to put in a strong light. This was accomplished for governmental institutions and domestic architecture by Lewis H. Morgan, for property rights and the laws of war by A. F. Bandelier, for the social condition of Mexico and Peru by Dr. Gustav Bruhl, and I may add for the myths and other expressions of the religious sentiment by myself. * * * The psychic identity of the Americans is well illustrated in their languages. There are indeed indefinite discrepancies in their lexicography and in their surface marphology; but in their logical sub-structure, in what Willhelm von Humboldt called the "inner form," they are strikingly like. The points in which this is especially apparent are in the development of pronominal forms, in the abundance of generic particles, in the overweening preference for concepts of action (verbs) rather than concepts of existence (nouns), and in the consequent subordination of the latter to the former in the proposition.[[41]]
Following the same general line of thought Nadaillac says: