The American Race / A Linguistic Classification and Ethnographic Description of the Native Tribes of North and South America

by Daniel G. Brinton

The differentiation of the species Man into various races, with permanent traits and inhabiting definite areas, took place early in the present geologic epoch. Of these races there are four which are well-marked, each developed in one of the continental areas as they existed at the time referred to. They are the Eurafrican or white, the Austafrican or black, the Asian or yellow, and the American or red race. The color-names given them are merely approximations, and are retained for the sake of convenience, and as expressing a general and obvious characteristic.[1]

The American race was that which was found occupying the whole of the New World when it first became revealed to Europeans. Its members are popularly known as “Indians,” or “American Indians,” because Columbus thought that the western islands which he discovered were part of India; and his error has been perpetuated in the usually received appellation of its inhabitants. To the ethnographer, however, they are the only “Americans,” and their race is the “American Race.”

When investigation proved that the continent was not a part of Asia, but a vast independent land-area surrounded by wide oceans, the learned began to puzzle themselves with the problem of the origin of its inhabitants. The Hebrew myths of the creation of man and of a universal deluge in which the whole species perished except a few in Western Asia, for a long time controlled the direction of such speculations. The wildest as well as the most diverse hypotheses were brought forward and defended with great display of erudition. One of the most curious was that which advanced the notion that the Americans were the descendants of the ten “lost tribes of Israel.” No one, at present, would acknowledge himself a believer in this theory; but it has not proved useless, as we owe to it the publication of several most valuable works.[2]

Another equally vain dream was that of “the lost Atlantis,” a great island or land-connection which was imagined to have existed within recent times between Northern Africa and South America. A reminiscence of it was supposed to have survived in a story of the Egyptian priests preserved by Plato, that beyond the Pillars of Hercules was a great island which had since sunk in the sea. The account may have referred to the Canary Islands, but certainly not to any land-bridge across the Atlantic to the American Continent. Such did exist, indeed, but far back in the Eocene period of the Tertiary, long before man appeared on the scene. The wide difference between the existing flora and fauna of Africa and South America proves that there has been no connection in the lifetime of the present species.[3]

Scarcely less incredible are the theories which still have some distinguished advocates, that the continent was peopled from Polynesia, or directly from Japan or China. Several laborious works have been compiled with reference to “Fu Sang,” a land referred to as east of China, and identified by these writers with Mexico. A distinguished ethnologist has recently published a map showing the courses by which he supposes the Japanese arrived in America.[4]

It is not impossible that in recent centuries some junks may have drifted on the Northwest coast. But their crews would undoubtedly have been promptly slaughtered; and it is only in later ages that the Chinese or Japanese constructed such junks. The theory, therefore, offers no solution to the problem. Still less does that in reference to the Polynesians. They had no such craft as junks, and though bold navigators, were wholly unprepared to survive so long a voyage as from the nearest of the islands of Oceanica to the coast of America. Moreover, we have satisfactory proof that the eastern islands of Polynesia were peopled from the western islands at a recent date, that is, within two thousand years.

Probably the favorite theory at the present day is that the first inhabitants of the New World came from northeastern Asia, either by the Aleutian islands or across Behring Strait. Concerning the Aleutian islands we know by the evidence of language and archæology that they were first peopled from America, and not from Asia. Moreover, they are separated one from the other in places by hundreds of miles of a peculiarly stormy and dangerous sea.[5]

It is otherwise with Behring Straits. From East Cape in Siberia one can see the American shore, and when first explored the tribes on each side were in frequent communication. No doubt this had been going on for a long time, and thus they had influenced each other in blood and culture. But so long as we have any knowledge of the movings at this point, they have been from America into Asia, the Eskimos pushing their settlements along the Asian coast. It will be replied that we should look to a period anterior to the Eskimos. Any migration at that remote epoch is refuted by other considerations. We know that Siberia was not peopled till late in the Neolithic times, and what is more, that the vicinity of the strait and the whole coast of Alaska were, till a very modern geologic period, covered by enormous glaciers which would have prevented any communication between the two continents.[6] These considerations reduce any possible migrations at this point to such as may have taken place long after America, both North and South, possessed a widespread population.

The question which should be posed as preliminary to all such speculations is, When did man first appear on this isolated continent?

To answer this we must study its later geological history, the events which have occurred since the close of the Tertiary, that is, during the Quaternary age.