[176] Native Races, vol. v, p. 11.
[177] Deserts, vol. i, p. 26. But what else could be expected of the editor of that curiosity of Americo-Germanic literature executed by some German school-boy and unearthed in the Arsenal Library at Paris, entitled Manuscript Pictographique Américain précédé d’une notice sur l’Ideographie des Peaux-Rouges, par l’Abbé Em. Domenech, Paris, 1860. Published under the auspices of the Minister of State and of the Emperor Napoleon III. See also Le Livre des Sauvages au Point de Vue de la Civilization Française, Brussels, 1861. The internal evidences of this remarkable MS. being the work of a German boy are plain to any one having the slightest knowledge of the German language. How the Abbé and the Emperor could have been so blinded to its real character we cannot imagine; however, it would be unfair to leave the impression that, because of the theory of Ophir’s colonization and because of this literary blunder, the Abbé’s work entitled Seven Years’ Residence in the Great Deserts of North America is without value. On the contrary, it contains much useful information. The following passage occurs on p. 66 of the above work: “The most careful study concerning the origin of the red-skins, made on the spot, has confirmed us in the belief that there is nothing in science to contradict the Bible, which represents Adam as the sole stock whence sprung the three great races which form the principal types of the human family.”
[178] Storia Ant. del Messico, tom. iv, p. 15. We quote the following from the translation by Cullan, London, 1807: “We do not doubt that the population of America has been very ancient, and more so than it may seem to have been to European authors: 1. Because the Americans wanted those arts and inventions, such, for example, as those of wax and oil for light, which on the one hand being very ancient in Europe and Asia, are on the other most useful, not to say necessary, and when once discovered are never forgotten. 2. Because the polished nations of the new world, and particularly those of Mexico, preserve in their traditions and in their paintings the memory of the creation of the world and of the building of the Tower of Babel, the confusion of languages and the dispersion of the people, though blended with some fables, and had no knowledge of the events which happened afterwards in Asia, in Africa, or in Europe, although many of them were so great and remarkable that they could not easily have gone from their memories. 3. Because neither was there among the Americans any knowledge of the people of the old continent, nor among the latter any account of the passage of the former to the new world.” He then cites Votan. See further on early views, Gottfried Wagner’s De Originibus Amer. Disertatio Lipsiæ, 1669; Hugo Grotius’s Dissertatio de Origine Gentium Americanorum Amstelodami, 1642; Jean De Laet’s Notæ ad Diss. H. Grotii de Originine Gent. Americ., 1643; Jean De Laet’s Responsio ad H. Grotii Diss. de Origine Gent. Americ., 1644; Poisson’s Animadrersiones in Originem Peruvianorum et Mexicanorum, Parisiis, 1644; Georgius Hornius’s De Originibus Americanis Hagæ, 1652; Rocha’s Tratado Unico y Singulare del Origin de los Indios Occidentales, del Peru, Mexico, Santa Fe, y Chile; Lima, 1681; Engel’s Essai sur Cette Question: Comment l’Amérique est-elle été Peuplée d’Hommes et d’Ammaux, Amsterdam, 1767; Corn. De Pauw’s Recherche sur l’Amérique et les Americans, Berlin, 1774; Vater’s Untersuchungen über America’s Bevölkerung aus dem alten Continent, Leipzig, 1810.
[179] D. B. Warden’s Recherches sur les Antiquités de l’Amérique du Nord, in Antiquités Mexicaines, tom. ii, div. ii. Paris, 1834, quarto.
[180] Native Races, vol. v, chap. i. The literary apparatus contained in the notes accompanying the chapter is remarkably full and valuable.
[181] “I know of no man better qualified than was Brasseur de Bourbourg, to penetrate the obscurity of American primitive history. His familiarity with the Nahua and Central American languages, his indefatigable industry and general erudition, rendered him eminently fit for the task, and every word written by such a man on such a subject is entitled to respectful consideration. Nevertheless there is reason to believe that the Abbé was often rapt away from the truth by the excess of enthusiasm, and the reader of his wild and fanciful speculations cannot but regret that he has not the opportunity or the ability to criticise by comparison the French savant’s interpretation of the original documents.”—Bancroft’s Native Races, p. 127.
[182] The work in which he repudiates his first interpretation of the Codex Chimalpopoca, and in which he advocates the allegorical meaning together with the theory of Atlantis, is entitled Quatre Lettres sur le Mexique, Paris, 1868.
[183] This work, p. 135.
[184] Among these we may cite Adair’s History of the American Indians; Jones’ History of Ancient America; Giordan’s Tehuantepec; Rossi’s Souvenirs d’un Voyage en Orégon, pp. 276–7; Ethan Smith’s Views of the Hebrews; Thorowgood’s Jewes in America; Domenech’s Deserts, vol. i, and Simon’s Ten Tribes.
[185] Mexican Antiquities, London, 1831–48, 9 vols. imperial folio.