The nasal index has been recommended by some anatomists as one of the most persistent and trustworthy of racial indications. The Mongolian origin of the red race derives faint support from this quarter. From the measurements given in the last edition of Topinard’s work[[44]] the Mongolian index is 80, while that of the Eskimo and tribes of the United States and Canada, as far as observed, is 70, that of the average Parisian of to-day being 69 (omitting fractions). According to this test, the American is much closer to the white than to the yellow race.
Most of the writers (for instance, Avé-Lallemant, St. Hilaire, Peschel, and Virchow) who have argued for the Mongoloid character of the Americans, have quoted some one tribe which, it is asserted, shows marked Chinese traits. This has especially been said of the natives of three localities,—the Eskimo, the tribes of the North Pacific coast, and the Botocudos of Brazil. So far as the last-mentioned are concerned, the Botocudos, any such similarity has been categorically denied by the latest and most scientific traveller who has visited them, Dr. Paul Ehrenreich. It is enough if I refer you to his paper in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie for 1887, where he dismisses, I should say once for all, the notion of any such resemblance existing. I have already pointed out that the Eskimo are totally un-Mongolian in cranial shape, in nasal index, and in linguistic character. They do possess in some instances a general physiognomical similarity, and this is all; and this is not worth much, as against the dissimilarities mentioned. The same is true of the differences and similarities of some tribes of the north-west coast. In estimating the value of resemblances observed in this part of our continent, we should remember that we have sufficient evidence to believe that for many generations some slight intercourse has been going on between the adjacent mainlands and islands of the two continents in the regions of their nearest proximity. The same train of events led to a blending of the negro and the white races along the shores of the Red Sea; but any one who recognizes the distinction of races at all—and I am aware that certain eccentric anthropologists do not—will not, on that account, claim that the white race is negroid. With just as little reason, it seems to me, has it been argued that the native Americans as a race are Mongoloid.[[45]]
An acute philosophical writer has stated that the superficial observer is apt to be impressed with the similarities of objects; while the profounder student finds his attention more profitably attracted to their differences. By this maxim we may explain this theory of the affinities of the American race as well as many another which has been broached.
THE PROBABLE NATIONALITY OF THE “MOUND-BUILDERS.”
[The following Essay is reprinted without alteration. It appeared in the American Antiquarian for October, 1881, and has a certain degree of historic value as illustrating the progress of archæologic study in the United States. It is, I believe, the first reasoned argument that the constructors of the mounds of the Ohio Valley were the ancestors of tribes known and resident not remote from the sites of these ancient works. Though this opinion has not yet been fully accepted, the tendency of later studies is unquestionably in its favor.]
The question, Who were the Mound-builders? is one that still remains open in American archæology. Among the most recent expressions of opinion I may quote Prof. John T. Short, who thinks that one or two thousand years may have elapsed since they deserted the Ohio valley, and probably eight hundred since they finally retired from the Gulf coast.[[46]] Mr. J. P. MacLean continues to believe them to have been somehow related to the “Toltecs.”[[47]] Dr. J. W. Foster, making a tremendous leap, connects them with a tribe “who, in times far remote, flourished in Brazil,” and adds: “a broad chasm is to be spanned before we can link the Mound-builders to the North American Indians. They were essentially different in their form of government, their habits and their daily pursuits. The latter were never known to erect structures which should survive the lapse of a generation.”[[48]]
On the other hand, we have the recent utterance of so able an ethnologist as Major J. W. Powell to the effect that, “With regard to the mounds so widely scattered between the two oceans, it may be said that mound-building tribes were known in the early history of discovery of this continent, and that the vestiges of art discovered do not excel in any respect the arts of the Indian tribes known to history. There is, therefore, no reason for us to search for an extralimital origin through lost tribes for the arts discovered in the mounds of North America.”[[49]]
Between opinions so discrepant the student in archæology may well be at a loss, and it will therefore be worth while to inquire just how far the tribes who inhabited the Mississippi valley and the Atlantic slope at the time of the discovery were accustomed to heap up mounds, excavate trenches, or in other ways leave upon the soil permanent marks of their occupancy.
Beginning with the warlike northern invaders, the Iroquois, it clearly appears that they were accustomed to construct burial mounds. Colden states that the corpse was placed in a large round hole and that “they then raise the Earth in a round Hill over it.”[[50]] Further particulars are given by Lafitau: the grave was lined with bark, and the body roofed in with bark and branches in the shape of an arch, which was then covered with earth and stones so as to form an agger or tumulus.[[51]] In these instances the mound was erected over a single corpse; but it was also the custom among the Hurons and Iroquois, as we are informed by Charlevoix, to collect the bones of their dead every ten years, and inter them in one mass together.[[52]] The slain in a battle were also collected into one place and a large mound heaped over them, as is stated by Mr. Paul Kane,[[53]] and that such was an ancient custom of the Iroquois tribes, is further shown by a tradition handed down from the last century, according to which the Iroquois believed that the Ohio mounds were the memorials of a war which in ancient times they waged with the Cherokees.[[54]] Mr. E. G. Squier, who carefully examined many of the earthworks in the country of the ancient Iroquois, was inclined at first to suppose the remains he found there were parts of “a system of defence extending from the source of the Allegheny and Susquehanna in New York, diagonally across the country through central and northern Ohio to the Wabash,” and hence drew the inference that “the pressure of hostilities [upon the mound-builders] was from the north-east.”[[55]] This opinion has been repeated by some recent writers; but Mr. Squier himself substantially retracted it in a later work, and reached the conviction that whatever ancient remains there are in Western New York and Pennsylvania are to be attributed to the later Indian tribes and not to the Mound-builders.[[56]]
The neighbors of the Iroquois, the various Algonkin tribes, were occasionally constructors of mounds. In comparatively recent times we have a description of a “victory mound” raised by the Chippeways after a successful encounter with the Sioux. The women and children threw up the adjacent surface soil into a heap about five feet high and eight or ten feet in diameter, upon which a pole was erected, and to it tufts of grass were hung, one for each scalp taken.[[57]]