Lives of Famous Indian Chiefs / From Cofachiqui, the Indian Princess, and Powhatan; down to and including Chief Joseph and Geronimo. Also an answer, from the latest research, of the query, Whence came the Indian? Together with a number of thrillingly interesting Indian stories and anecdotes from history

by Norman B. Wood

Concerning Ham, Japheth and Shem, it is written: "These are the three sons of Noah; and of them was the whole earth overspread" (Gen. ix:19).

Broadly speaking, we find that Ham and his descendants received Africa, Arabia, Canaan and Persia. Japheth and his descendants received Central, Northern and Western Asia and all of Europe.

We will not follow the history of these two sons of Noah further at this time except to say that the descendants of Ham were the first, and those of Japheth the last to establish civilization.

As to Shem and his descendants, broadly speaking, their possessions began with Canaan, which was taken from the Hamites and extended east and southeast through Southern Asia, including what is now known as India, Burmah, China, Japan, and the great ancient Malay or Polynesian Empire.

As proof that they migrated eastward, we read of the sons of Joktan, a near descendant from Shem, "And their dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar, a mount of the East."

We thus find that the general direction of the Shemites was east. As proof that the adjacent islands were peopled at this early age, Josephus says, in his "Antiquities of the Jews," chap. v., "After this they were dispersed abroad on account of the difference of their languages, and went out by colonies everywhere, and each colony took possession of that land unto which God led them, so that the whole continent was filled with them, both the inland and maritime countries. There were some also who passed over the sea in ships, and inhabited the islands; and some of those nations still retain the denominations which were given them by their first founders, but some have lost them, and some have only admitted certain changes in them, that they might be more intelligible to the inhabitants."

There can be but one meaning to this language. It is that the Hamites extended their settlements to the islands adjacent to Africa, such as Madagascar and the Cape Verde Islands. The Japhethites extended their settlements to those adjacent to Europe, such as the British Islands, and the Shemites extended their settlements to those islands they found east and southeast from Asia, which were beyond a doubt what afterward became the Malay or Polynesian Empire.

This empire was described by El-Masudi, who wrote in the tenth century. He represented it as lying between the dominions of India and China, and as an empire whose splendor and high civilization were greatly celebrated; and he says: "The population, and the number of the troops of this kingdom, can not be counted, and the islands under the sceptre of its monarch (the Mahrajh, the Lord of the Sixth Sea) are so numerous that the fastest sailing-vessel is not able to go round them in two years."

We find this empire was referred to by Ptolemy and Marco Polo, the great Venetian traveler, who visited it. They called it Ja-ba-din. It included the peninsula of Malacca, Aracan, Chittagong, the country of the Lower Ganges, the coast of Coromandel, the Island of Borneo, one of the largest in the world, Celebes, Java and Sumatra, and all others between Australia and Eastern Asia. Traces of the colonies and ancient commercial power of the Malays are found in the Indian Ocean, the Isles of Bourbon and Mauritius in the Southern Hemisphere, whose aborigines are of Malayan descent. Moreover, the descendants of the Malays, with much of their language, and traces of their ancient civilization, are found on all the larger islands between Asia and this hemisphere, as also the western part of South America.

Pickering, the learned ethnologist of the United States Exploring Expedition, commanded by Lieutenant Wilkes, during a three-years' voyage, who had an excellent opportunity for comparing the different races of the Pacific Ocean and the opposite shores of the continents separated by it, thinks that all the copper-colored aborigines of North and South America are of Mongolian descent except the Esquimaux (who seem to be of the same race with the Northern Asiatics), and the aboriginal Peruvians and Chilians, whom he supposes to be of Malayan extraction; and he has made that distribution of them upon the ethnographical chart published with the maps of the report of the expedition. His opinion is entitled to great respect, and is substantially the same as that of the celebrated missionary, Williams, who, after spending thirty years among the tropical islands of the Pacific Ocean, was massacred by the savages of one lately discovered.