It being, however, certain that there are many considerable islands which lie between the extremities of Asia and America, viz. Japon, Yeso or Jedso, Gama’s Land, Behring’s Isle, with many others discovered by Tschirikow, and besides these, from fifty degrees north there appearing to be a cluster of islands that reach as far as Siberia, it is probable from their proximity to America, that it received its first inhabitants from them.
This conclusion is the most rational I am able to draw, supposing that since the Aborigines got footing on this continent, no extraordinary or sudden change in the position or surface of it has taken place, from inundations, earthquakes, or any revolutions of the earth that we are at present unacquainted with.
To me it appears highly improbable that it should have been peopled from different quarters, across the Ocean, as others have asserted. From the size of the ships made use of in those early ages, and the want of the compass, it cannot be supposed that any maritime nation would by choice venture over the unfathomable Ocean in search of distant continents. Had this however been attempted, or had America been first accidentally peopled from ships freighted with passengers of both sexes which were driven by strong easterly winds across the Atlantic, these settlers must have retained some traces of the language of the country from whence they migrated; and this since the discovery of it by the Europeans must have been made out. It also appears extraordinary that several of these accidental migrations, as allowed by some, and these from different parts, should have taken place.
Upon the whole, after the most critical enquiries, and the maturest deliberation, I am of opinion, that America received its first inhabitants from the north-east, by way of the great archipelago just mentioned, and from these alone. But this might have been effected at different times, and from various parts: from Tartary, China, Japon, or Kamschatka, the inhabitants of these places resembling each other in colour, features, and shape; and who, before some of them acquired a knowledge of the arts and sciences, might have likewise resembled each other in their manners, customs, religion, and language.
The only difference between the Chinese nation and the Tartars lies in the cultivated state of the one, and the unpolished situation of the others. The former have become a commercial people, and dwell in houses formed into regular towns and cities; the latter live chiefly in tents, and rove about in different hords, without any fixed abode. Nor can the long and bloody wars these two nations have been engaged in, exterminate their hereditary similitude. The present family of the Chinese emperors is of Tartarian extraction; and if they were not sensible of some claim beside that of conquest, so numerous a people would scarcely sit quiet under the dominion of strangers.
It is very evident that some of the manners and customs of the American Indians resemble those of the Tartars; and I make no doubt but that in some future æra, and this not a very distant one, it will be reduced to a certainty, that during some of the wars between the Tartars and the Chinese, a part of the inhabitants of the northern provinces were driven from their native country, and took refuge in some of the isles before-mentioned, and from thence found their way into America. At different periods each nation might prove victorious, and the conquered by turns fly before their conquerors; and from hence might arise the similitude of the Indians to all these people, and that animosity which exists between so many of their tribes.
It appears plainly to me that a great similarity between the Indian and Chinese is conspicuous in that particular custom of shaving or plucking off the hair, and leaving only a small tuft on the crown of the head. This mode is said to have been enjoined by the Tartarian emperors on their accession to the throne of China, and consequently is a further proof that this custom was in use among the Tartars; to whom as well as the Chinese, the Americans might be indebted for it.
Many words also are used both by the Chinese and Indians, which have a resemblance to each other, not only in their sound, but their signification. The Chinese call a slave, shungo; and the Naudowessie Indians, whose language from their little intercourse with the Europeans is the least corrupted, term a dog, shungush. The former denominate one species of their tea, shousong; the latter call their tobacco, shousassau. Many other of the words used by the Indians contain the syllables che, chaw, and chu, after the dialect of the Chinese.
There probably might be found a similar connection between the language of the Tartars and the American Aborigines, were we as well acquainted with it as we are, from a commercial intercourse, with that of the Chinese.
I am confirmed in these conjectures, by the accounts of Kamschatka published a few years ago by order of the Empress of Russia. The author of which says, that the sea which divides that peninsula from America is full of islands; and that the distance between Tschukotskoi-Noss, a promontory which lies at the eastern extremity of that country, and the coast of America, is not more than two degrees and a half of a great circle. He further says, that there is the greatest reason to suppose that Asia and America once joined at this place, as the coasts of both continents appear to have been broken into capes and bays, which answer each other; more especially as the inhabitants of this part of both resemble each other in their persons, habits, customs, and food. Their language, indeed, he observes, does not appear to be the same, but then the inhabitants of each district in Kamschatka speak a language as different from each other, as from that spoken on the opposite coast. These observations, to which he adds, the similarity of the boats of the inhabitants of each coast, and a remark that the natives of this part of America are wholly strangers to wine and tobacco, which he looks upon as a proof that they have as yet had no communication with the natives of Europe, he says, amount to little less than a demonstration that America was peopled from this part of Asia.