The first great question to be decided in the history of the Red Race, is, whether they were, as they have been vaguely called, the aborigines, or were preceded, on the continent, by other races? The second, whether the type of civilization, of which we behold evidences in Mexico, Yucatan and South America, was an indigenous development of energies latent in the human mind, or derived its leading and suggestive features from foreign lands? There is intermingled with these inquiries, the scarcely less important one, whether or not, the antiquarian ruins of America, denote an element or elements of European population, in the later eras, whose fate became involved in the hunter mass, and who may be supposed to have been completely obliterated from the traditions of the existing tribes, prior to the discovery by Columbus.
Indian tradition has little or nothing to offer on this head. Time and barbarism have blotted out all. The entire sum of the traditions of all the various races of Red men, on the continent, when sifted from the mass of fabulous and incongruous matter by which it is accompanied, and when there is any allusion to it at all, amounts to this: that their ancestors came from the east; a few tribes, assert that they had come by water.[9 ] The land from whence they set out, the time devoted to the purposes of their long migration, and the actual period of their landing, and all such questions, are indefinite. And we must re-construct their chronology, in the best way possible, from a careful system of patient historical and antiquarian induction. Exactitude it cannot have, but it may reach plausibility. Granting to the Scandinavian, the Cimbrian and the Italian periods of adventure, which have been named, the fullest limits, in point of antiquity, which have under any circumstances been claimed, we cannot carry even this species of history beyond the year A. D. 1001; leaving 999 years to be accounted for, to the commencement of the Christian era. The Aztec empire which had reached such a point of magnificence when Mexico was first entered by Cortez, in 1519, did not, according to the picture writings and Mexican chronologists, date back farther than 1038, or by another authority, 958. The Toltecs, who preceded them in the career of empire, and whom together with the Chichimecs and their allies they overthrew, do not, allowing them the most liberal latitude of authors, extend their reign beyond A. D. 667. Prior to this, Indian chronology makes mention of the Olmecs—a people who are described as having mechanical arts, and to whom even the Toltecs ascribed the erection of some of their most antique and magnificent monuments. According to Fernando D'Alva, himself of Aztec lineage, the most ancient date assigned to the entire group of Mexican dynasties is A. D. 299. There are monuments in those benignant latitudes of perpetual summer, exempted as they are from the disintegrating effects of frosts, which corroborate such a chronology, and denote even a more ancient population, who were builders, agriculturists and worshippers of the sun. But we require a far longer period than any thus denoted, to account for those changes and subdivisions which have been found in the American languages.
Language is itself so irrefragable a testimony of the mental affinities of nations, and so slow in the periods of its mutations, that it offers one of the most important means for studying the history of the people. Grammars and vocabularies are required of all the tribes, whose history and relations we seek to fathom, before we can successfully compare them with each other, and with foreign languages. It is a study of high interest, from the diversity and curious principles of the dialects. There is a general agreement in the principles of Indian utterance, while their vocabularies exhibit wide variances. Some of the concords required, are anomalous to the occidental grammars, while there is a manifest general resemblance to these ancient plans of thought. The most curious features consist in the personal forms of the verbs, the constant provision for limiting the action to specific objects, the submergence of gender in many cases into two great organic and inorganic classes of nature, marked by vitality or inertia, and the extraordinary power of syllabical combination, by which Indian lexicography is rendered so graphic and descriptive in the bestowal of names. They are all, or nearly all, transpositive and polysynthetic; yet although now found in a very concrete form, this appears to have been not their original form, but rather the result of the progress of syllabical accretion, from a few limited roots and particles, which are yet when dissected found to be monosyllabic. That they have incorporated some of the Hebrew pronouns, and while like this language, wanting the auxiliary verb to be, have preserved its solemn causative verb, for existence, are among the points of the philology to be explained. But I have not time to pursue this subject. Even these notices are made at the sacrifice of other and perhaps more generally interesting traits of their antiquity.
The Astronomy of the American tribes, has been thought to merit attention, in any attempts to compare them with foreign nations. The evidences of the attainments of the ancient Mexicans in this science, as well as the facts of their general history, chronology and languages, have been examined by the venerable archæologist and ex-statesman, who presides over this society, in a critical dissertation, published by the American Ethnological Society, which is the ablest paper of the age. The results of Mr. Gallatin's labors, and his reading of the ancient scrolls of Mexican picture writing, preserved in the folios of Lord Kingsborough, while they limit the amount of precise historical information in these unique records to very narrow grounds, yet denote a degree of system and exactitude, both in their chronology and astronomy, which are very remarkable.
The simple astronomy of our Aonic tribes of the north, gave them a lunar year, consisting of twelve moons. They consequently had a year of about three hundred and sixty days. As they had no names for days, no week and no subperiods of a moon, but noticed and relied simply on the moon's phases, they did not become acquainted with the necessity of intercalations for the true length of the year. The Aztecs of Mexico, on the contrary, had a solar year, and had made an extraordinary advance in computing the true time. Their year consisted of eighteen months, of twenty days each, a perfectly arbitrary system. This division would give but three hundred and sixty days to the year. The remaining five were called empty or superfluous days, and were added to the last month of the eighteen. A tropical year is, however, about six hours longer than three hundred and sixty-five days, and by throwing away six hours annually, there would be an entire day lost every four years. The Mexican astronomers were well aware of this fact; but instead of supplying the deficiency every fourth year as we do, they disregarded it entirely, till a whole cycle consisting of fifty-two years was completed, and then they intercalated thirteen days, to make up the time and complete their cycle. In this way they came to the same result as the Egyptians, but by a different process, since the Egyptian calendar was founded on a computation of twelve lunar months of thirty days each. It was precisely the same in the old Persian calendar, which consisted of a year of three hundred and sixty days, made up of twelve months of thirty days each.
The Aztecs divided their cycle of fifty two years, into four periods of thirteen years; called Tlalpilli, and their month of twenty days, into four sub-periods, or weeks, of five days. The cycle was called Xiuhmolpilli, which signifies, "the tying up of years." Each day of the month had a separate name, derived from some animate, or inanimate object, as Tochtli, a rabbit, Calli, a house, Atl, water, Tecpatl, Silex, Xochitl, a flower, Cohuatl, a serpent. The fifth day, was a fair or market day. The names of the days were represented by hieroglyphic figures of the objects described. The divisions were perfect and regular, and enabled them to denote, in their scrolls of picture writing, the chronology of the month, and of the Tlalpilli, or period of thirteen years.[10 ]
The scheme itself denotes, not only a very certain mode of keeping the record of time, but a very exact knowledge of the tropical year. It is now known that the length of the year is precisely three hundred and sixty five days, five hours, forty eight minutes, and forty eight seconds; and it is perfectly well ascertained, that the Aztecs computed its length, at the period of their highest advance, at three hundred and sixty five days, five hours, forty six minutes, and nine seconds, differing only two minutes and thirty nine seconds from our own computation.[11 ] There is evidence, indeed, that the ancient inhabitants of this continent, had more science, than is generally conceded. If we are to credit writers, the Aztecs understood the true causes of eclipses, as well as we do. Diagrams exist, in their pictorial records, in which the earth is represented as projecting its disc upon the moon—thus indicating, clearly, a true knowledge of this phenomenon. Mr. Gallatin remarks that the Indian astronomical system, as developed in Mexico, is not one of indigenous origin, but that they had, manifestly, received it, at least their calendar, from a foreign source. Its results could not have been attained without long and patient observations. Some of its methods of combination, in the double use of names and figures, in their cycles, are thought to denote an ancient primitive system of oriental astronomy, reaching back to the earliest times. Here, then, we have one probable fact to serve as the nucleus of antiquarian testimony. We begin it abroad.
The architecture of the ancient inhabitants of Mexico and Peru, has been illustrated, within a few years, by several elaborate works; and the subject may be deemed to have been brought, by these works, within the scope of study and comparison. There are two features in this unique order of architecture, which appear to denote great antiquity in the principles developed, namely, the arch and the pyramid. These nations appear to have had the use of squares and parallelograms, in their geometry, without circles, or parabolic lines. The only form of the arch observed, is that called the cyclopean arch, which is made by one course of stones overlapping another, till the two walls meet, and a flat stone covers the space. This is the earliest type of the arch known among mankind, and is believed to be more ancient than the foundation of any city in Europe.
The pyramid, as developed in the temple of the sun at Tezcuco, the Mexican teocalli, and the Aonic mounds of North America, compose a form of architecture equally ancient; which can be traced back over the plains of Asia, to the period of the original dispersion of mankind. The temple of Belus, was but a vast pyramid, raised for the worship of Bel. Originating in the Hamitic tribes, in the alluvial vallies and flat-lands of Asia Minor, a perfect infatuation, on the subject, appears to have possessed the early oriental nations, and they carried the idea into the valley of the Nile, and, indeed, wherever they went. It appeared to be the substitute of idolatrous nations, on alluvial lands, for an isolated hill, or promontory. It was at such points that Baal and Bel were worshipped, and hence the severe injunctions of the sacred volume, on the worship established in the oriental world "on high places." Such was the position of the pyramids in the vallies of the Euphrates and the Nile, and the idea appears to have reached America without any deviation whatever in its relative position, or its general design. It was every were, throughout America, as we find it, in the vallies of Mexico and the Mississippi, erected in rich and level vallies, or plains, and dedicated to idolatrous worship.
The mound builders of North America, north of the tropical latitudes, appear like bad copyists of a sublime original. They retained the idea of the oriental pyramid, but being no mechanics constructed piles of earth to answer the ancient purpose, both of worship and interment. Our largest structures of this kind, are the mound of Grave Creek in Western Virginia, containing about three millions of cubic feet, and the great group of the Monks of La Trappe in Illinois, estimated at seven millions of cubic feet.[12 ] Those of Saint Louis, mount Joliet, and the Blue mounds respectively are now known to be of geological origin.