There appears to be but little resemblance between the Maya, and the Mexican or Aztec, although they are both intensely guttural, and have a great similarity when viewed superficially by a cursory observer. The Maya bears evident marks of very great antiquity, and may have been the language of Mexico before the great invasions of the Toltecs and Aztecs. There are some who suppose that the present inhabitants of Yucatan are but the scattered remnants of a great nation, which once ruled a large portion of the continent, and had its central seat of power in the peninsula; and that it was gradually forced to yield to the assaults of more warlike nations, who invaded it from the North, and retired within the boundaries of the peninsula, where it decayed by degrees, until all vestige of political power was lost, long before the arrival of the Spaniards. Its temples and pyramids, and its spoken tongue, are the only memorials from which we can form any idea respecting its origin. This question necessarily involves a solution of the great problem of the origin of the American race in general.
The opinions of writers upon this subject are diverse, and are supported on each side with a great variety of interesting facts and inferences. It has long been a favorite idea with most who have treated of this topic, that America originally derived its population from Europe or Asia, or, to speak in the usual manner, that the New World was peopled from the Old. This hypothesis seems to have been assumed in the first instance as a premise; at least, most arguments upon this head seem to indicate that it has served as a sort of basis to the train of deductions; and the most ingenious suppositions and skilfully arranged facts have been adduced to support a foregone conclusion. Whether the American continent was peopled at a very remote or a comparatively recent date, is not of so much moment, although there is a great diversity of opinion also in this respect. Mr. Gallatin, in his “Prefatory Letter,” above mentioned, is of opinion that “this continent received its first inhabitants at a very remote epoch, probably not much posterior to the dispersion of mankind;” thus evidently referring to and supporting the theory of immigration, and of the derivation of all diversities of the human race from one type; while Mr. Bradford, in the final chapter of his elaborate work, before cited, agrees with Mr. Gallatin in the hypothesis that “the Red Race penetrated at a very ancient period into America,” but differs with him in the conclusion that it “appears to be a primitive branch of the human family.” Baron Von Humboldt, however, in his great work upon New Spain, terms the Indians “indigenous,” and, although he quotes the opinions of many authors in favor of their Asiatic origin, he at the same time combats their views with sundry striking facts, and finally modestly dismisses the subject with the remark, that “the general question of the first origin of the inhabitants of a continent is beyond the limits prescribed to history, and is not, perhaps, even a philosophical question.”
We will candidly confess that we could never understand why philosophers have been so predisposed to advocate the theory which peoples America from the Eastern hemisphere. We think the supposition that the Red Man is a primitive type of a family of the human race, originally planted in the Western continent, presents the most natural solution of the problem; and that the researches of physiologists, antiquaries, philologists, and philosophers in general, tend irresistibly to this conclusion. The hypothesis of immigration, however inviting it appear at first to the superficial observer, and however much he may be struck with certain fancied analogies between the architectural or astronomical peculiarities of the American and the Asiatic, is, when followed out, embarrassed with great difficulties, and leads to a course of interminable and unsatisfying speculations.
APPENDIX.
APPENDIX.
A BRIEF MAYA VOCABULARY.
Acquaintance, kaholâl.
Adder, can, or cam.