The Ancient Monuments of North and South America, 2nd ed.

by C. S. Rafinesque

The feelings that lead some men to investigate remains of antiquity and search into their origin, dates and purposes, are similar to those actuating lofty minds, when not satisfied with the surface of things, they inquire into the source and origin of every thing accessible to human ken, and scrutinize or analize every tangible object. Such feelings lead us to trace events and principles, to ascend rivers to their sources, to climb the rugged sides of mountains and reach their lofty summits, to plough the waves and dive into the sea, or even soar into the air, to scan and measure the heavenly bodies, and at last to lift our eyes and souls to the Supreme Being, the source of all.—Applied to mankind the same feelings invite us to seek for the origin of arts and sciences, the steps of civilization on earth, the rise of nations, states and empires, tracing their cradles, dispersions and migrations by the dim records of traditional tales, or the more certain monumental evidence of human structures.

This last evidence is but a branch of the archeological science, embracing besides the study of documents, records, medals, coins, inscriptions, implements, &c., buried in the earth or hidden in recesses: while the ruins of cities, palaces and temples, altars and graves, pyramids and towers, walls and roads, sculptures and idols—reveal to our inquiries not only the existence of their devisers and framers at their locations, but give us a view of their civilization, religions, manners and abilities.

If the annals of the Greeks and Romans had been lost, as have been those of Egypt, of Assyria and many other early empires, we should still have in the ruins and monuments of Italy, and Greece, complete evidence of the existence of those nations, their location, power and skill; nay, even of the extent of their dominion by their colonial monuments, scattered from Syria to Spain, from Lybia to Britain. If the British annals should ever be lost hereafter by neglect or revolutions, the ruins of dwellings, churches, monuments &c., built in the British style, will reveal the existence or preserve the memory of the wide extent of British power by colonies sent from North America to Guyana, from Hindustan to Ceylon, South Africa and Australia.

And thus it is in both Americas where many nations and empires have dwelt and passed away, risen and fallen by turns, leaving few or no records, except the traces of their existence, and widely spread colonies by the ruins of their cities and monuments, standing yet as silent witnesses of past dominion and great power. It is only of late that they have begun to deserve the attention of learned men and historians—what had been stated by Ulloa, Humboldt, Juarros, Delrio, &c., of some of them, chiefly found in the Spanish part of America, as well as the scattered accounts of the many fragments found in North America, from the lakes of Canada to Louisiana, although confined to a few places or widely remote localities, have begun to excite the curiosity of all inquiring men, and are soon likely to deserve as much interest as the famed ruins of Palmyra and Thebes, Babylon and Persepolis; when the future historians of America shall make known the wonderful and astonishing results that they have suggested, or will soon unfold, particularly when accurately surveyed and explored, drawn and engraved; instead of being hidden and veiled, or hardly noticed by the detractors of the Americans, the false historians of the school of Depaw and Robertson, who have perverted or omitted the most striking features of American history.

The most erroneous conceptions prevail as yet concerning them, and the most rude or absurd ideas are entertained in our country of their objects and nature. As in modern Greece, every ruin is now a Paleo-castro or old castle for the vulgar peasant or herdsman, thus all our ruins of the West are Indian forts for the settlers of the Western states; and every traveller gazing at random at a few, exclaims that nothing is known about them, nor their builders. The more refined writers can be very sentimental on their veiled origin, but scarcely any one takes the trouble to compare them with others elsewhere, in or out of America, which would be, however, the only means to attain the object they seem desirous of, or to unravel their historical riddle. Some writers speak of them as if they were only a few mounds and graves, scarcely worthy of notice; yet they are such mounds as are found yet in the Trojan plains, sung by Homer, dating at least three thousand years ago, and even by many deemed earlier than the Trojan war, and still existing to this day to baffle our inquiries: while similar monuments existing by thousands in the plains of Scythia and Tartary, Persia and Arabia, as well as the forests and prairies of North America, evince a striking connexion of purpose and skill by remote ancient nations of both hemispheres.

But our monuments do not merely consist in such mounds or tumuli, since we find besides in North America, ruins of cities, some of which were walled with earth or even stones, real forts or citadels, temples and altars of all shapes, but chiefly circular, square or polygonal, some elliptical, hexagonal, octagonal, &c., quite regularly pointing to the cardinal points. We have also traces of buildings, foundations, roads, avenues, causeways, canals, bridges, dromes, or racecourses, pillars and pyramids, wells, pits, arenas, &c. And of these not a few, but hundreds of them, many of which are unsurveyed and undescribed as yet. These, it must be recollected, are all north of Mexico, or the region of the more perfect monuments of Mexican and Central America, although often in the same style. There, as in South America, structures are met of the most elaborate workmanship, of cut and carved stones, with hard cement, vaulted arches, fine sculptures and even inscriptions. The materials of our Northern monuments are often ruder, chiefly of earth, clay, gravel, small stones, or even shells near the sea-shores, sometimes of pizé or beaten and rammed clay, (as in Peru,) unbaked bricks and rough stones. These facts may confirm the Mexican traditions, stating that the nations of Anahuac (now Mexico) once dwelt further north, in our fruitful Western plains, where wood abounded and stones were scarce, wherefore they built their cities and temples of wood, raising altars, platforms, walls and entrenchments of earth or clay.

The dreams and false hypotheses upon America have amused the learned for ages: in attempting to account for the origin of the Americans and their monuments, they have generally neglected to compare them with the monuments and languages of all the other nations scattered over the whole earth, or else only taking a partial view of them, comparing a few fragments of two or three nations or regions, a few words of a centesimal part of the actual languages, the writers or historians have fallen into egregious mistakes; more fond of systematic errors than hidden truth, they have indulged, without due consideration, in mere dreams or systems, based on a few facts, that are overruled by hundreds of other facts, unknown to them, or neglected when known. It would be useless and tedious to refute again such false systems, that have been refuted and upset by each other. It may, however, be needful, perhaps, to mention three of the most absurd, in order to warn against them, or show their improbability and impossibility. They may be called for distinction sake, the Jewish system, the Mongolic system, and the American system.

Among these the first named is one of the oldest, and at the same time, has yet a powerful hold upon many minds; it ascribes the whole American population with one hundred languages and one thousand dialects, myriads of ruins and monuments, to the Jews! either of the ten dispersed tribes, who were not Jews but Israelites—or of Solomon’s time and voyages, while the Jews only began to exist as such after his death—or of patriarchal times antecedent to their existence, when they were only OBRIM, whom we miscall Hebrews, or going still further back to the times of Noah and Peleg, when not even the Obrim had any existence. It has been proved that the American nations did not possess the use of the plough, iron, alphabets, or week of seven days, which no Jewish nor Hebrew descendants could have forgotten. The American languages have as much, or more affinities with the Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Persian, Berber, Turkish, &c., languages, than with the old and modern Hebrew and Arabic. The Jews or IEUDI, who only began two thousand four hundred years ago were not navigators; therefore it is evident that they cannot have come to America and produced here the two thousand nations and tribes of this vast continent: nay, not even a single one of them perhaps.

The Mongolic opinion, lately revived by Ranking, is the most extravagant of all, since it ventures to assert seriously, and derive all these nations and languages from late colonies of Mongols within less than one thousand years ago, who came to America over the ice, bringing with them tame elephants for sport, that are since become the fossil elephants and mammoths buried in our diluvial or alluvial soil—to state these absurdities is a sufficient refutation, every man of any reading and scientific knowledge will perceive the impossibility.

Galindo and Josiah Priest have quite lately revived also the opinion of some dreaming philosophers who had asserted that America was the cradle of mankind or one of them, instead of Central Asia. Galindo allows, however, the Caucasian race of men to be distinct; but he says—“The human race of America I must assert to be the most ancient on the globe;”[8-*]