Referring to the numerous islands of the Pacific as one means of access of population to America, Prescott quotes Cook’s voyages to illustrate how easily the Polynesians travelled from island to island hundreds of miles apart, and adds, “it would be strange if these wandering barks should not sometimes have been intercepted by the great continent, which stretches across the globe, in unbroken continuity, almost from pole to pole.
“Whence did the refinement of these more polished races [of America] come? Was it only a higher development of the same Indian character, which we see, in the more northern latitudes, defying every attempt at permanent civilization? Was it engrafted on a race of higher order in the scale originally, but self-instructed, working its way upward by its own powers? Was it, in short, an indigenous civilization? or was it borrowed, in some degree, from the nations of the Eastern world? If indigenous, how are we to explain the singular coincidence with the East in institutions and opinions? If Oriental, how shall we account for the great dissimilarity in language, and for the ignorance of some of the most simple and useful arts, which, once known, it would seem scarcely possible should have been forgotten? This is the riddle of the Sphinx, which no Œdipus has yet had the ingenuity to solve.”
In the light of the facts brought together in the present memoir, it requires no Œdipus to answer the riddle. For the only two objections which Prescott raises in opposition to the great mass of evidence he cites in favour of the derivation of American civilization from the Old World can easily be disposed of. Rivers has completely disposed of one by his demonstration of the fact that people—moreover those on the direct route across the Pacific to America—do actually “forget simple and useful arts” ([65]). The other objection is equally easily disposed of, when it is remembered that it requires only a few people of higher culture to leaven a large mass of lower culture with the elements of a higher civilization (see also on this point, Rivers, [68]). Moreover, if language is made a test, the affinities of the various American tribes one with the other would have to be denied. Thus, the language difficulty cuts both ways. But when we have disposed of his objections, the whole of his admirable summary then becomes valid as an argument in favour of the derivation of American culture from Asia across the Pacific.
Since then it has become the fashion on the part of most ethnologists either contemptuously to put aside the probability or even the possibility of the derivation of American civilization from the Old World (characteristic examples of this attitude will be found in Fewkes’ address, [18], and Keane’s text-book, [41]). On the other side the discussion has been seriously compromised from time to time by a wholly uncritical and often recklessly inexact use of the evidence in support of the reality of the contact, which has to some extent prejudiced the serious discussion of the problem. Perhaps the least objectionable of such unfortunate attempts are Macmillan Brown’s ([7]) and Enoch’s books ([16]). The former has been led astray by grotesque errors in chronology and the failure to realize that useful arts can be lost. Enoch, on the other hand, has collected a large series of interesting but incompatible statements, and has made no serious attempt to sift or assimilate them.
But from time to time serious students, proceeding with the caution befitting the discussion of so difficult a problem, have definitely expressed their adherence to the view that elements of culture did spread across, or around, the Pacific from Asia to America ([8]; [9]; [10]; [15]; [20]; [21]; [29]; [30]; [38]; [48]; [49]; [50]; [51]; [60]; [73]; [102]; [103] and [105]). Among modern demonstrations I would especially call attention to the evidence collected by Dall ([73], p. 395), Cyrus Thomas ([73], p. 396), Tylor ([102]) and Zelia Nuttall ([49] and [50]), and of the older literature the remarkable statement of Ellis ([15], p. 117). [In Mrs. Nuttall’s monograph ([49]) there is a great deal, especially in the introductory part, to which serious objection must be taken: but in spite of the strong bias in favour of “psychological explanation” with which she started, eventually she was compelled to admit the force of the evidence for the spread of culture.]
For detailed statements concerning the discussions of this problem in the past the reader is referred to Bancroft’s excellent summary ([3]), which also supplies a wonderfully rich storehouse of facts and traditions wholly corroborative of the conclusions at which I have arrived in the present memoir.
I find it difficult to conceive how there could ever have been any doubt about the matter on the part of anyone who knows his “Bancroft.”
It will naturally be asked, if the case in proof of the actual diffusion of culture from Asia to America is so overwhelmingly convincing, on what grounds is assent refused? One school (of which the most characteristic utterance that I know of is Fewkes’ presidential address, [18]) refuses to discuss the evidence: with pontifical solemnity it lays down the dogma of independent evolution as an infallible principle which it is almost sacrilege to question. I can best illustrate the methods of the other school of reactionaries by a sample of its dialectic.
No single incident in the discussion of the origin of American civilization has given rise to greater consternation in the ranks of the “orthodox” ethnologists than Tylor’s statement ([102]):—
“The conception of weighing in a spiritual balance in the judgment of the dead, which makes its earliest appearance in the Egyptian religion, was traced thence into a series of variants, serving to draw lines of intercourse through the Vedic and Zoroastrian religions, extending from Eastern Buddhism to Western Christendom. The associated doctrine of the Bridge of the Dead, which separates the good, who pass over, from the wicked, who fall into the abyss, appears first in ancient Persian religion, reaching in like manner to the extremities of Asia and Europe. By these mythical beliefs historical ties are practically constituted, connecting the great religions of the world, and serving as lines along which their interdependence is to be followed out. Evidence of the same kind was brought forward in support of the theory, not sufficiently recognised by writers on culture history, of the Asiatic influences under which the pre-Columbian culture of America took shape. In the religion of old Mexico four great scenes in the journey of the soul in the land of the dead are mentioned by early Spanish writers after the conquest, and are depicted in a group in the Aztec picture-writing known as the Vatican Codex. The four scenes are, first, the crossing of the river; second, the fearful passage of the soul between the two mountains which clash together; third, the soul’s climbing up the mountain set with sharp obsidian knives; fourth, the dangers of the wind carrying such knives on its blast. The Mexican pictures of these four scenes were compared with more or less closely corresponding pictures representing scenes from the Buddhist hells or purgatories as depicted on Japanese temple scrolls. Here, first, the river of death is shown, where the souls wade across; second, the souls have to pass between two huge iron mountains, which are pushed together by two demons; third, the guilty souls climb the mountain of knives, whose blades cut their hands and feet; fourth, fierce blasts of wind drive against their lacerated forms, the blades of knives flying through the air. It was argued that the appearance of analogues so close and complex of Buddhist ideas in Mexico constituted a correspondence of so high an order as to preclude any explanation except direct transmission from one religion to another. The writer, referring also to Humboldt’s argument from the calendars and mythic catastrophes in Mexico and Asia, and to the correspondence in Bronze Age work and in games in both regions, expressed the opinion that on these cumulative proofs anthropologists might well feel justified in treating the nations of America as having reached their level of culture under Asiatic influence.”