In further support of these views, we think we have grounds for asserting that we have veritable historical accounts of the Eskimo people slowly retiring before the aggressions of their Indian foes. It is no longer doubted but that Norsemen, as early as the year 1000, made voyages of discovery along the coast of North America, as far south as Rhode Island: they called the country Vineland. It is true that the Icelandic accounts of these expeditions contain some foolish and improbable statements; but so do the writings of Cotton Mather, made many years later.
These accounts refer but very briefly to the inhabitants they saw, but enough is given to show that the people were not Indians, but Eskimos. The language used is: “The men were small of stature and fierce, having a bushy head of hair, and very great eyes, and wide cheeks.”71 Their small size is frequently referred to, which would surely not be the case if they were describing the Algonkins that the English colonists found in the same section of country many years later. To the same effect is the assertion that the Eskimos did not reach Greenland until the middle of the fourteenth century.72 The traditions of the Tuscarawas Indians that place their arrival on the Atlantic coast in the year 1300, also refer to a tribe of people that were at least much like the Eskimos.73
Thus we are led, step by step, to the recognition of a Paleolithic Age in America, and finally to the belief that the descendants of these people were Eskimos. We at once notice the coincidence of these results with some of the conclusions of Prof. Dawkins, of England, and it is desirable to trace a little farther the points of resemblance and difference between this age in America and in Europe. In this latter country we have seen the Paleolithic Age can be divided into two stages, or epochs, during which different races inhabited the country. The first, or the epoch of the men of the River Drift, long preceded the epoch of the Cave-men. It was those latter tribes only that Mr. Dawkins connects with the Eskimos.
We have not yet found evidence in this country that points to such a division of the Paleolithic Age. We have no relics of Cave-men as distinguished from the men of the River Drift. It is true, we are not lacking evidence of the use of caves by various tribes,74 but there is nothing to show that such use was very ancient, or that the people were properly Paleolithic. We can not say what future discoveries will unfold, but as yet we have only implements of the River Drift type, and these are the men Dr. Abbott considers to be the ancestors of the Eskimos. In this country, then, we have shown the existence of but one race of men in the same stage of culture as the men of the River Drift, but of the same race as the men of the Cave. These results may be cited as an argument in favor of those scholars who think that the men of the River Drift and the men of the Cave were in reality the same people.75
In Europe there was apparently a long lapse of time between the disappearance of the Paleolithic tribes and the arrival of the Neolithic people, but we have no evidence of such a period in America. The Paleolithic people remained in possession until driven away by the Neolithic ones. All evidence of Paleolithic man in Europe terminated with the Glacial Age, and there is little doubt but what they date from preglacial times. Our present knowledge does not carry us any farther back in this country than the close of Glacial times. If we consider that the Glacial Age in America coincides in time with the same age in Europe, then the last statements would imply that the Paleolithic Age here was later than in Europe; in fact, that Paleolithic man had run his course in Europe before he appeared in America, and some might even go further, and say that he migrated from Europe to America. There are, however, no good grounds for such conclusions. We believe that future discoveries will show that in America also Paleolithic man was living in Glacial and preglacial times.76
We feel that we have done but scant justice to this subject, but we assure our readers that this question has been but little studied in this country. Referring all relics of stone to the Indians, our scholars have been slow to recognize traces of an earlier race in America. Our sources of information are as yet but few, and much remains to be done in this field. In Europe as in America, scholars are still hard at work on the Paleolithic Age, and we are to hold ourselves in readiness to modify our opinions, or to reject them entirely and adopt new ones as our knowledge increases.
There is one thought that occurs to us. From the combined investigations of both European and American scholars, the Eskimo is seen to be one of the oldest (if not the oldest) races of men now living. They afford a striking illustration of the fact that a race may early reach a limit of culture beyond which, as a race, they can not pass. Should the American discoveries establish the fact that the River Drift tribes are also Eskimos, then we are fairly entitled to consider them the remnant of a people who once held possession of all the globe, but who have been driven to the inhospitable regions of the North by the pressure of later people. What changes have come over the earth since that early time? In the long lapse of years that have gone by newer races, advancing by slow degrees, have at last achieved civilization. The fiat of Omnipotent power could have created the world in a perfected form for the use of man, but instead of so doing, Infinite Wisdom allowed slow-acting causes, working through infinite years, to develop the globe from a nebulous mass. Man could, indeed, have been created a civilized being, but instead of this, his starting-point was certainly very low. He was granted capacities in virtue of which he has risen. We are not to say what the end shall be, but we think it yet far off.
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