Diary in America, Series Two

by Frederick Marryat

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“It is perfectly clear, from the few records of their religious rites which have come down to us, and which are principally derived from the extraordinary rolls of American papyrus, (formed of prepared fibres of the Maguery) on which their beautiful hieroglyphical system is preserved (there is one of considerable extent in the Dresden Museum), that they were as simple, perhaps we may add with propriety, as innocent. Not only does it appear that they had no human sacrifices, but no animal sacrifices. Flowers and fruits were the only offerings made to the presiding divinity of their temples.”

But who were the Tultequans and Azeteques, the founders of this empire in America; who built the pyramids of Cholula and city of Palenque? Not the Jews.

Here we have a most singular diversion from the path on which we originally set out—another extraordinary discovery, marked, too, by events no less extraordinary than amazing.

They were the Canaanites, the scriptural Titans, who, according to the sacred historian, built with walls and towers reaching to the heavens. The builders of the Tower of Babel, the family of the shepherd kings who conquered Egypt, and built the pyramids, and were driven from Syria by Joshua. The men who finally founded Tyre and Carthage, navigated round the continent of Africa, and sailed in their small craft across the Atlantic, and landed in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Phoenicians were the founders of Palenque, Mitlan, Papantla. Quemada, Cholula, Chila, and Antiquerra.

When I studied the history of these people, on the ruins of Carthage, it was said by antiquarians present, that the Carthaginians had a colony at a considerable distance, which they secretly maintained; and when I was at Tangiers, the Mauritania Tangitania of the ancients, I was shown the spot where the pillar was erected, and was standing at the time of Ibnu, the Moorish historian, on which was inscribed, in the Phoenician language, “We are the Canaanites who fled from Joshua, the son of Nun, that notorious robber.” From that spot, then ... the pillars of Hercules, now known as the Straits of Gibraltar, they crossed to our continent, and founded a great empire of the Ophite worship, with Syrian and Egyptian symbols. Now, mark the issue. Fifteen hundred years after the expulsion of the Canaanites by Joshua, the ten tribes pass over the Straits of Behring to the continent of America, and poured down upon these people like the Goths and Vandals. The descendants of Joshua a second time fell on the Canaanites on another continent, knowing them well as such, and burn their temples, and destroy their gigantic towers and cities.

When Columbus discovered America, he found an innocent people in a demi-savage state, with Jewish traditions, and the only reference to early times was a vague impression that the ruins they saw were built by giants, and a people called wandering masons.

I have the most settled conviction of this theory. The magnificent ruins which are to be seen at this day in Mexico and Central America, were the works of the Phoenicians, and the irruption of the wandering tribes from the north-west coast of America swept that nation away, and have ever since maintained possession of this country, until white men have thinned their ranks, and gradually encroached upon, and usurped a great part of their territory.

The only opposition made to the general declaration of travellers, that the Indians are of Jewish descent, is, that they are red men, and are beardless. Now, take the olive complexion of the Jews in Syria, pass the nation over the Euphrates into a warmer climate, let them mingle with Tartars and Chinese, and after several generations reach this continent, their complexion would undergo some shades of hue and colour; and as to beards, they cannot grow while they are continually plucked, as is the Indian custom. The colour proves nothing against their origin. Take our fellow-citizens on our eastern borders, and compare their florid colour with the sickly hue and sallow complexions of those living on the southern shores, in the palmettoes and everglades, and we shall see a marked distinction, and yet they are members of the same family.