When it first became known to Europe that a new continent had been discovered, the wise men, philosophers, and especially the learned ecclesiastics, were sorely perplexed to account for such a discovery. A problem was placed before them, the solution of which was not to be found in the records of the ancients. On the contrary, it looked as if old-time traditions must give way, the infallibility of revealed knowledge must be called in question, even the holy scriptures must be interpreted anew. Another world, upheaved, as it were, from the depths of the Sea of Darkness, was suddenly placed before them. Strange races, speaking strange tongues, peopled the new land; curious plants covered its surface; animals unknown to science roamed through its immense forests; vast seas separated it from the known world; its boundaries were undefined; its whole character veiled in obscurity. Such was the mystery that, without rule or precedent, they were now required to fathom.
And what were their qualifications to grapple with such a subject? Learning had been almost exclusively the property of the Church, and although from its fold many able writers and profound thinkers had been evolved, yet the teachings of science and the speculations of philosophy were ever held subordinate to the holy scriptures. Now and then it is true some gleams of important truth would flash up in the writings of some philosopher disconnected with the religious orders illuminating the path of intellectual progress, but such writings seldom made any permanent impress upon the literature of the age. It is to the priesthood almost exclusively we have to look for any advancement for many centuries in literature, science, and art. The universally adopted view of the structure of the universe was geocentric, of the world, anthropocentric. To explain such ordinary phenomena as that of day and night, preposterous schemes were invented, like that of Cosmas Indicopleustes, who asserted that in the northern parts of the flat earth there is an immense mountain, behind which the sun passes and thus produces night.[I-1] Any assertion that seemed to clash with preconceived notions of the teachings of holy writ or the writings of the fathers was looked upon with doubt and disfavor. Indeed the bible was regarded as the all-sufficient manual of science, containing all that was necessary to be known, and to inquire further was thought to be prying into the secret things of the most high.[I-2] The learning of the masses consisted not in the acquisition of knowledge, but in the blind and meaningless repetition of prescribed maxims, in forms of rhetoric, in anything except that which would enlighten the mind and impart true wisdom; it was, in short, a systematic course of leading men as far as possible away from the known, and leaving them lost and bewildered in a labyrinth of uncertainty and doubt.[I-3]
SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
When, therefore, the questions arose, whence were these new lands peopled? how came these strange animals and plants to exist on a continent cut off by vast oceans from the rest of the world? the wise men of the time unhesitatingly turned to the sacred scriptures for an answer. These left them no course but to believe that all mankind were descended from one pair. This was a premise that must by no means be disputed. The original home of the first pair was generally supposed to have been situated in Asia Minor; the ancestors of the people found in the New World must consequently have originally come from the Old World, though at what time and by what route was an open question, an answer to which was diligently sought for both in the sacred prophecies and in the historical writings of antiquity.[I-4]
But if the more modern writers on this subject have been less hampered by unanswerable and impassable dogmas; if they have been able to believe that there may be some difficult questions upon which the Bible throws no light; if they have felt themselves free to discuss, without impiety, the possibility of all mankind not having sprung from one pair, their theories are scarcely less wild, their reasoning is but little sounder, their tendency to establish maxims by which any given problem may be solved is no more satisfactory.
SPIRIT OF INQUIRY.
Theories in themselves are good things, for they lead us to facts; it is often through the doubtful or the false that we attain the truth; as Darwin says: "False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often long endure; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, as every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed, and the truth is often at the same time opened."[I-5] But the value of inquiry depends much upon the spirit in which it is made, and therefore it is that the manner in which most of the writers who have speculated on the origin of the Americans have conducted their researches, is greatly to be deplored. Their work does not impress one as being a steadfast striving to develop unstable postulates into proven facts, but rather as a reckless rushing, regardless of all obstacles, to a preconceived conclusion. They do not offer a theory as a suggestion of what might possibly be, but as a demonstration founded upon an unassailable basis. Each imagines that he has hit upon the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; he asserts that the Aztecs were of Hebrew descent—that is settled; to prove this he clutches at the lightest straws in the way of analogies, and if the facts obstinately refuse to fit his theory, then—tant pis pour les faits—he warps them till they do fit.
But analogies, even when fairly drawn, are by no means conclusive evidence. So much depends upon the environment of a people, that a similarity in that particular is of itself sufficient to account for most of the resemblances which have been discovered between the customs, religion, and traditions of the Americans, and those of Old World nations.[I-6]
For my own part I have no theory upon the subject—would have no theory. The problem of the origin of the American aborigines is, in my opinion, enveloped in as much obscurity now as it ever was; and when I consider the close proximity of the north-western and north-eastern extremities of America to Asia and Europe; the unthought of and fortuitous circumstances that may at any time have cast any people upon the American coasts; the mighty convulsions that may have changed the whole face of the earth during the uncounted years that man may have dwelt upon its surface; and lastly, the uncertainty, perhaps I might say improbability, of the descent of mankind from one pair;—when I think of all these things it seems to me that the peopling of America may have been accomplished in so many ways that no more hopeless task could be conceived than the endeavor to discover the one particular manner of it.
In the following résumé I wish neither to tear down nor to build up, but simply to give an account of what has been thought and written upon the subject, and to show, with as little criticism as possible, the foundation upon which each theory stands. Of the comparative value of the opinions the reader must be his own judge. Of the value of this discussion of the subject there is this to be said; as a curiosity, showing the color given to mind by its environment, showing the blind and almost frenzied[I-7] efforts of different men of different epochs, creeds, and culture, to fathom a hitherto unfathomable mystery,—this, together with the collateral light thrown upon the subject of aboriginal America, if there be no other advantage in it, will amply repay the investigation.