“From Adair’s book the world has derived most that is known of the manners and customs of the Southern Indians.... Its style is exceedingly figurative and characteristic—partakes much of the idiom of the Indian dialects to which the author was so long accustomed; and this imparts to it a quaintness, which with the novelty of the subject, the remarkable life of the writer, the cogency of his reasoning, his ingenious philosophy, earnest truthfulness and stalwart vigor renders it one of the most interesting as well as valuable works relating to American history.”
In behalf of Adair, in his theory of the Jewish origin of the American aborigines, it should be pointed out that a long line of writers both before and after him held the same view. Soon after the discovery of America, the theory was advanced that the Indians derived from the Lost Tribes of Israel. Garcia, in his Origen de las Medianos (1607), declared that these tribes passed Behring Strait and made their way southward, and claimed to have found many Hebrew terms in the American languages. Las Casas was of the same opinion, and the first English writer on the subject, Thomas Thorowgood in his Jews in America (1650 and 1660) followed Las Casas and the Puritan Apostle to the Indians, John Eliot in his Conjectures.
Antonio Montesinos (1644) found like evidence in Peru, and the learned Jew Manasseh ben Israel visited among the Indians of the New World and reached the same conclusion. Cotton Mather, Roger Williams and William Penn shared the same view.
Charles Beatty in his Journal of Two Months Tour (1678) and S. Seawell (1697) advanced proofs in support of the argument.
A list of those who wrote after Adair’s period in attempts at corroboration of the theory of such origin would include, among others: The celebrated Jonathan Edwards; Elias Boudinot, in A Star of the West (1816) which book has long extracts from Adair; E. Howitt in his Selection from Letters (1820); Ethan Smith (1825); Israel Worsley in his View of the American Indians (1828); Calvin Colton in A Tour of the Lakes (1838); Josiah Priest, American Antiquities (1834); Mrs. Simons in The Ten Tribes (1836); Modecai M. Noah in Marryatt’s Diary in America (1837), and G. Jones in the History of Ancient America (1843)—not to mention later writers. It will be noted that Jewish writers and observers are in accord.[[27]] “The theory has not entirely disappeared from ethnological literature.”
Lord Viscount Kingsborough produced by far the most elaborate argument that the ancients and Indians of America were of Jewish origin. He published (London, 1830-48) nine sumptuous volumes, imperial folio, in which many ancient Spanish, French and Mexican manuscripts were for the first time printed. This exhaustive work cost Lord Kingsborough, it is said, above 32,000 pounds, wrecked his fortune and lost him his life. He died a prisoner for debt. In this production Kingsborough reprinted the first part of Adair’s book—the “Arguments.” Kingsborough bestowed much research and care in the annotation of these “Arguments,” and the editor of the present reprint has availed freely of his notes. Kingsborough thus prefaces his notes: “The following illustrations of Adair’s History of the American Indians are chiefly extracted from the inedited works of French and Spanish authors, and afford the most satisfactory proof of Adair’s veracity in the minutest particular.”
Of the entire History of Adair there has never been a reprint in English. Kingsborough’s work is beyond the reach of the average reader or student; it has become excessively rare, bringing about $500 in the book market.
The book of Adair was translated into German by Schack Hermann Ewald and published in Germany: Geschichte der amerikanischen Indianer, besondere dem am Mississippi, am Ostund Westflorida, Georgien, Sud-und Nord-Karolina und[und] Virginien angrenzenden nationen, nebst einem anhange, von James Adair, Esquire. Aus dem englischen übers. Breslau, J. E. Myers, 1782.
The book of Adair was paid the unwanted compliment of being plagiarized by Jonathan Carver in his Travels through the Interior Parts. Carver appropriated portions of the work during Adair’s lifetime, and an edition of his book was brought out by Charles Dilly, “in the Poultry,” London, who had printed Adair’s History.
After the passage of more than a century and a half from the date of its original publication, the book comes to a sort of rebirth in this reprint, and in a style, so far as format is concerned, of which our maker and writer of history would not be ashamed.