You will permit me to avoid the discussion as to what constitutes races in anthropology. To me they are zoölogical sub-species, marked by fixed and correlated characteristics, impressed so firmly that they have suffered no appreciable alteration within the historic period either through time or environment. In this sense, Blumenbach, in the last century, recognized five races, corresponding to the five great land-areas of the globe, and to their characteristic faunal and floral centres. This division was an eminently scientific one, and still remains the most in accord with anatomical and linguistic research. About twenty years after the appearance of Blumenbach’s work, however, the eminent naturalist Cuvier published his great work on “The Animal Kingdom,” in which he rejected Blumenbach’s classification, and proposed one dividing the human species into three races,—the white or Caucasian, the black or Ethiopian, and the yellow or Mongolian. In the latter he included the Malays and the American Indians.
This triple division has been very popular in France, and to some extent in other countries. It is not, and it was not in its inception, a scientific deduction from observed facts, but was a sort of a priori hypothesis based on the physiological theories of Bichat, and at a later day derived support from the philosophic dreams of Auguste Comte. Bichat, for instance, had recognized three fundamental physiological systems in man—the vegetative or visceral, the osso-muscular, and the cerebro-spinal. The anthropologists, in turn, considered it a happy thought to divide the human species into three races, each of which should show the predominance of one or other of these systems. Thus the black race was to show the predominance of the vegetative system; the yellow race, the osso-muscular system; the white race, the nervous system.[[36]] As Bichat had not discovered any more physiological systems, so there could be no more human races on the earth: and thus the sacred triplets of the Comtian philosophy could be vindicated.
How little value attaches to any such generalizations you will readily perceive, and you will be prepared, with me, to dismiss them all, and to turn to the facts of the case, inquiring whether there are any traits of the red race which justify their being called “Mongolian” or “Mongoloid.”
Such affinities have been asserted to exist in language, in culture, and in physical peculiarities, and I shall take these up seriatim for examination.
First, as to language.
The great Mongolian stock is divided into the southern branch, speaking monosyllabic, isolating languages, and the northern branch, whose dialects are polysyllabic and agglutinating. The latter are sometimes called Turanian or Ural-Altaic; and as they are geographically contiguous to the Eskimo, and almost to the Athabascans, we might reasonably expect the linguistic kinship, if any exists, to be shown in this branch of Mongol speech. Is such the case? Not in the least. To prove it, I think it enough to quote the positive statement of the best European authority on the Ural-Altaic languages, Dr. Heinrich Winkler. He emphatically says, that, in the present state of linguistic science, not only is there no connection apparent between any Ural-Altaic and any American language, but that such connection is shown to be highly improbable. The evidence is all the other way.[[37]]
I need not, therefore, delay over this part of my subject, but will proceed to inquire whether there are any American affinities to the monosyllabic, isolating languages of Asia.
There is one prominent example, which has often been put forward, of a supposed monosyllabic American language; and its relationship to the Chinese has frequently been asserted—a relationship, it has been said, extending both to its vocabulary and its grammar. This is the Otomi, spoken in and near the valley of Mexico. It requires, however, but a brief analysis of the Otomi to see that it is not a monosyllabic language in the linguistic sense, and that in its sentence-building it is incorporative and polysynthetic, like the great majority of American tongues, and totally unlike the Chinese. I may refer to my own published study of the Otomi, and to that of the Count de Charencey, as proving what I say.[[38]]
Some have thought that the Maya of Yucatan has in its vocabulary a certain number of Chinese elements; but all these can readily be explained on the doctrine of coincidences. The Mexican antiquary Mendoza has marshalled far more coincidences of like character and equal worth to show that the Nahuatl is an Aryan dialect descended from the Sanscrit.[[39]] In fine, any, even the remotest, linguistic connection between American and Mongolian languages has yet to be shown; and any linguist who considers the radically diverse genius of the two groups of tongues will not expect to find such relationship.
I shall not detain you long with arguments touching supposed Mongolian elements of culture in ancient America. Any one at all intimately conversant with the progress of American archæology in the last twenty years must see how rapidly has grown the conviction that American culture was homebred, to the manor born: that it was wholly indigenous and had borrowed nothing—nothing, from either Europe, Asia, or Africa. The peculiarities of native American culture are typical, and extend throughout the continent. Mr. Lewis Morgan was perfectly right in the general outline of his theory to this effect, though, like all persons enamored of a theory, he carried it too far.