To the second race he attributes those vast mounds of earth found throughout the whole western regions, from Lake Erie and Western Pennsylvania to Florida and the Rocky mountains. Some of them contain the skeletons of human beings, and display immense labor. Many of them are regular mathematical figures—parallelograms and sections of circles; showing the remains of gateways and subterraneous passages. Some of them are eighty feet high, and have trees growing on them apparently five hundred years old. The soil upon them differs, generally, from that which surrounds them; and they are most common in situations where it since has been found convenient to build towns and cities. Many fragments of earthenware, of curious workmanship, have been dug up throughout this vast region; some representing drinking vessels, some human heads, and some idols. They all appeared to be made by the hand, and hardened in the sun. These mounds and earthen implements indicate a race inferior to the first, which were acquainted with the use of iron.
The third race are the Indians now existing in the western territories. In the profound silence and solitude of these western regions, and above the bones of a buried world, how must a philosophic traveller meditate upon the transitory state of human existence, when the only traces of two races of men are these strange memorials! On this very spot generation after generation has stood, has lived, has warred, grown old, and passed away; and not only their names, but their nation, their language has perished, and utter oblivion has closed over their once populous abodes! We call this country the new world. It is old! Age after age, and one physical revolution after another, has passed over it, but who shall tell its history?
Priest has concluded that the Carthaginians, Phœnicians, Persians, Hindoos, Chinese, Japanese, Roman, and Greek nations of antiquity, and others, as well as Europeans after their civilization, had more to do with the peopling of the wilds of America than is generally supposed.
Ledyard, in a letter to Mr. Jefferson, from Siberia, says, “I never shall be able, without seeing you in person, and perhaps not then, to inform you how universally and circumstantially the Tartars resemble the aborigines of America. They are the same people—the most ancient and the most numerous of any other; and, had they not a small sea to divide them, they would all have still been known by the same name. * * * With respect to national or genealogical connexion, which the remarkable affinity of person and manners bespeaks between the Indians on this and the American continent, I declare my opinion to be, without the least scruple, and with the most absolute conviction, that the Indians on the one and on the other are the same people.”[[11]]
“It appears,” says Bradford, “that the red race may be traced, by physical analogies, into Siberia, China, Japan, Polynesia, Indo-China, the Malayan Islands, Hindostan, Madagascar, Egypt, and Etruria. In some of these nations the pure type of the race may be perceived existing at present, in others many of its characters have been changed and modified, apparently by intermarriage; and, in others, its ancient existence is only to be discovered by the records preserved on their monuments.”
“We are constrained to believe,” says the learned Dr. Morton, “that there is no more resemblance between the Indian and Mongol in respect to arts, architecture, mental features, and social usages, than exists between any other two distinct races of mankind.”
“I maintain that the organic characters of the people themselves, through all their endless ramifications of tribes and nations, prove them to belong to one and the same race, and that this race is distinct from all others. * * * The evidences of history and the Egyptian monuments go to prove that the same races were as distinctly marked three thousand years ago as they are now; and, in fact, that they are coeval with the primitive dispersion of our species.”
Whatever diversity of origin may have existed among the races of Indians whose remains are the burden of our speculations, one thing is certain, that the builders of the ruins of the city of Chi-Chen and Uxmal excelled in the mechanic and the fine arts. It is obvious that they were a cultivated, and doubtless a very numerous people. It is difficult to suppose that any great advance in mechanico-dynamic science could have been made by these people, without some evidence besides their works remaining. Yet it is almost impossible to suppose that those vast erections could have been made by the mere aggregation of men, unaided by science. Herodotus tells us that a hundred thousand men, relieved every three months, were employed in building the pyramid of Cheops in Egypt. Ten years were spent in preparing the road whereon the stones were to be transported, and twenty years more in erecting the edifice. Yet though Cheops had a nation of slaves to do his bidding, and though he employed such multitudes upon this stupendous work, it is generally supposed that he must have been aided by some kind of machinery more powerful than any thing known at the present day.
It is also pretty obvious that Chi-Chen, and the other cities of Yucatan, were built by a nation of slaves. All the buildings whose remains are now visible, were evidently constructed to gratify the pride of a single man or set of men. They were monuments raised to the glory of the few at the expense of the thousands. They are not the kind of works that the people join in building of their own freewill. They answer no public purpose or convenience. No nation of freemen would spend their money or their labor in that way. We may safely conclude that the doctrines of free government were quite unknown among this ancient people—that they were governed by a despotism, and that they were taxed contrary to their will, for these, the only works which were to memorialize their servitude to posterity.
So much for the builders of these ruins. The next question which occurs, when were they built? is, if possible, more difficult of solution than the one to which I have been speaking.