3. Evidences of wars, migrations and remains of occupancy, subsequent to the arrival of Europeans.
These are to be studied in the inverse order of their being stated. We must proceed from the known to the unknown—from the recent, to the remote.
Ethnography offers a species of proof, to determine the migrations and divisions in the original family of man, which is to be drawn from geographical considerations—the relative position of islands, seas and continents—the means of subsistence as governed and limited by climate, and soil; the state of ancient arts, agriculture, languages, &c.
Philology denotes the affinities of nations, by the analogies of words, and forms of syntax, and the place of expressing ideas.
The remains of arts, monuments, inscriptions, hieroglyphics, picture writing, and architecture, constitute so many means of comparing one nation with another, and thus determining their affinities; and although most of our aboriginal nations had made but little progress in these departments, the state of ruins in Mexico, Central Mexico and Yucatan; the mounds and fortifications of the West; and even the remains of forts and barrows in Western New-York, entitle them to consideration.
There is another department of observation on our aborigines, which, from the light it has shed on the mental characteristics of the Algic, and some other stocks, offers a new field for investigation. I allude to the subject of the imaginative legends and tales of the Red Race. Such tales have been found abundantly in the lodge circles of the tribes about the Upper Lakes and the source of the Mississippi. They reveal the sources of many of their peculiar opinions on life, death, and immortality, and open, if I may so say, a vista to the philosophy of the Indian mind, and the theory of his religion.
An ample field for investigation is thus before you. And it is one full of attractions alike for the man of science, research, learned leisure and philosophy. But it is not alone to these, that the Red man and his associations, present a field for study and contemplation. His history and existence on this continent, is blended with the richest sources of poetry and imagination. His beautiful and sonorous geographical nomenclature alone, has clothed our hills and lakes and streams, with the charms of poetic numbers.—The Red man himself, who once roved these attractive scenes, with his bow and arrows, and his brow crowned with the highest honors of the war path and the chase, was a being of NOBLE MOULD. He felt the true sentiment of independence. He was capable of high deeds of courage, disinterestedness and virtue. His generosity and hospitality were unbounded. His constancy in professed friendship was universal, and his memory of a good deed, done to him, or his kindred, never faded. His breast was animated with a noble thirst of fame. To acquire this, he trod the war path, he submitted to long and severe privations. Neither fatigue, hunger or thirst were permitted to gain the mastery over him. A stoic in endurance he was above complaint, and when a prisoner at the stake, he triumphed over his enemy in his death song. The history of such a people must be full of deep tragic and poetic incidents; and their antiquities, cannot fail to illustrate it.—The tomb that holds a man, derives all its moral interest from the man, and would be destitute of it, without him. America is the tomb of the Red man.
A single objection, to the plan of the institution, remains to be answered. It may be deemed too intricate and complex to secure unity in action. The inquiries are admitted to be interesting and capable of furnishing intellectual aliment for a literary society; but why not establish it on plain principles, in the ordinary mode? All that is sought, it may be said, could be accomplished without such a weight of associated machinery. By organizing it on the basis of the several tribes, and the several clans of each tribe; spreading over so wide an area of territory, and adopting so many of the aboriginal peculiarities, in terms, form of admission, and you have exposed the institution to serious objections, and to the danger of an early decline. But, are not these traits, rather the guarantees of its success and perpetuity? It addresses itself, particularly to the Young. To them, it brings the attractions of novelty. Much of the ardor of association and desire of action, peculiar to this age, may find its gratification in these co-fraternal, and ceremonial observances; and be supposed to act as stimulants to the higher, and ulterior objects of the association. These objects are, both in their nature, and associations, of an inspiring cast. They bring before you, a new world, with its ancient inhabitants, as themes of contemplation. And these themes spring up, with a freshness and vigor, well suited to attract the pen and pencil.—Tired with poring over the dusty volumes, which detail the ruins of the temples and cities of the eastern hemisphere, the spirit of research asks, whether, in the very magnificence of the continent, there be not now a temple, whose history is worth study? Cloyed with the accounts handed down of the renowned places and renowned men of antiquity, it is inquired, whether these broad forests and far-spread vistas of woods and waters, do not conceal something of the foot-prints of past time, which is worth labor and learning to investigate, and reveal?
Nature is found here, in some of her sublimest moods. She is still in her questive youth, but it is a youth of gigantic proportions. Her largest rivers occupy thousands of miles in displaying their winding channels, between these sources and their outlets, in the sea. Her broad forests still wave with their leafy honors unshorn. Her lakes occupy a length and breadth and depth, which give them far more the aspect of seas. Ships, bear a heavy commerce on their bosoms, and navies have battled for supremacy upon their ample breasts. It is a region destined for the human race to develope itself and expand in. It is a seat prepared for the re-union of the different stocks of mankind. It is an area of magnificent extent. Higher mountains fill other parts of the world, and other parts of this continent. The Alps, the Atlas, the Andes and the Cordilleras reach into the skies, but they encumber the earth with their vast proportions, and render the surface sterile. They take away from the area of tillable soil, and add it to waste and unprofitable districts. If our greatest elevations, are humble compared to these, they are clothed with verdure, and break into countless valleys, which afford a habitation to man. No country on the globe abounds with so many beautiful lakes of every size, and our rivers display a succession of cataracts and falls, alike attractive to the eye of taste and art.
Is all this profusion designed to employ the pens of naturalists and statesmen only? Is there no field in the mighty past, for the philosopher and the historian? for the ethnologist and the antiquarian? Is civilized man alone the only object, wanting in the consideration of its former history? We answer, no. Centuries on centuries have passed away, since first the Red man planted his foot on this continent. The very paucity of his knowledge and simplicity of his arts, tell a story of great antiquity. The diversities of language answer to the same end. And, for aught that is known, long before the eras of Socrates and Pythagoras, Plato and Confucius, the Mongol and the Persian. The Tartar and the Mesopotamean, the Chinese and Japanese, and we know not how many other shades of the Red man of Asia, were in AWONEO[E] or America. Of their wonderful histories and wars and overturnings, by land and sea, of their mixtures and intermixtures of blood and language and lineage and nationality, we know little, or nothing. But, after all the centuries of separation, we find in his physiological characteristics and conformation of visage and expression, the same Asiatic type of man—whom the first adventurers to these shores, did not hesitate to pronounce the man of India. Use, has perpetuated the term, and if the discoveries of geography, have, ages since, shown the appellation of Indians, in the sense then employed, to be incorrect, physiologists and ethnographers, have but found stronger and stronger proofs, that Asia, in preference to every other quarter of the globe, was the true land of his origin.