Cuvier, the great naturalist, and the greatest of all comparative anatomists, classifies the whole human race into only three varieties, the white, black and yellow. This is certainly the most simple and correct. He includes the whole of the aboriginal races of the American Continent in the same class to which he assigns the Chinese, Japanese, Mongols and Malays. He could find nothing to distinguish our American aborigines from these Asiatics, except a greater average projection of the nose, and somewhat larger eyes. He is evidently correct in placing them all in one class—the yellow race. He asserts that if a congregation of twelve representatives from Malacca, China, Japan, Mongolia and the unmixed natives of the Sandwich Islands, the pure-blooded Chilian, Peruvian and Brazilian Indians, and others selected from the unmixed Chickasaws, Comanches, or any other North American tribes, were all assembled, and dressed in the same costume, or exhibited undressed and unshaven, that the most skilful painter or the most practised anatomist, judging from their appearance only, could not separate them into their different nationalities. He would decide that they were all the same people, and men of one type.
Another evidence of the Tartar origin of the North American Indian is the universal practice of scalping their enemies, which bloody custom was observed by their ancestors, the Scythians, whose ancient dominion embraced all Russia in Asia, and even extended into Europe. Their complexion, straight black hair, scant beards, black eyes and general appearance, identify them with the Asiatic yellow race of Cuvier.
The great majority of the aboriginal tribes of North America prove their descent from the Scythians of northeastern Mongolia, by their anatomical marks, as we have seen, their manners, customs and superstitions, as strongly as their relations, the modern Japanese, Chinese and Tartars. They show substantially the same color, and high cheek-bones. They exhibit the same fondness for narcotics and stimulants, substituting indigenous plants, like the tobacco, and coca, for the betel-nut, hemp and poppy. Their wandering habits, the use of the bow, the wearing of the scalp-lock, represented by the long, plaited cue of the Chinese, and cultivated by all the warriors of the most savage and warlike of the North American tribes, and observed by no nation of antiquity except the Scythians; the common belief among them all, that all material things, whether men, animals, or weapons, have souls or spiritual counterparts, in the invisible and eternal world; the worship of the spirits of their ancestors, and many other strongly marked peculiarities, identify all the branches of this yellow race as blood relations and the descendants of the Scythians.
The great German scholar, Oscar Peschel, in his work called "The Races of Man," says: "It is not impossible that the first migrations took place at a time when what is now the channel of Behring's Strait was occupied by an isthmus. The climate of those northern shores must then have been much milder than at the present day, for no currents from the Frozen Ocean could have penetrated into the Pacific. That the severance of Asia from America was, geologically speaking, very recent, is shown by the fact that not only the strait, but the sea which bears the name of Behring is extraordinarily shallow, so much so indeed that whalers lie at anchor in the middle of it."
Sir Daniel Wilson, LL.D., F.R.S.E., president of the University of Toronto, says, in "The Lost Atlantis," "The present soundings of Behring's Strait, and the bed of the sea extending southward to the Aleutian Islands, entirely accord with the assumption of a former continuity of land between Asia and America." But it is always dangerous to rely on geological events, which themselves require more accurate proof. We therefore prefer to assume that at the time at which the Asiatics passed over into America, Behring's Strait already possessed its present character. In this connection it is worth remembering that the first question asked by Gauss, the great German mathematician, of Adalbert von Chamisso, the circumnavigator, at Berlin, in 1828, was whether the coast of America was visible from any point in Asia; in such a way that the two continents might be connected by a triangle? Chamisso was able to answer this query in the affirmative, so that no accidental discovery need be supposed, for the Asiatics of Behring's Strait, when they crossed over to America, saw their goal before their eyes.
Lest it should be thought strange that people who were still without adequate means of protection could have continued to exist in a climate so severe, we will quote from George Steller, who states that children of the North are more comfortable in severe weather than in a milder temperature. "When, in winter mornings," he wrote, "I was freezing under my feather-bed and fur coverlets, I saw the Itelmes, and even their little children, lying in their kuklanka naked and bare halfway down the chest, without coverlets or feather-beds, and yet were warmer to the touch than I was." In another place he adds that the Kamtskadals always place a large vessel filled with water, which they cool with pieces of ice, by their side at night, and drain this to the last drop before the break of day.
This shows that the rigid climate would not impede a migration from Asia to America. In fact, as Peschel assures us, "Trade has always been carried on between the Behring's Strait nations of Asia and America. The Tshuktshi pass over to Diomede's Island, and the Malemutes cross from the extreme northwesterly point of America to exchange reindeer hides for furs. The trade is so brisk that the clothing of the natives several hundred miles up the Yukon River consists of Asiatic skins obtained from the Tshuktshi."
George Steller states that, "the inhabitants of Choumagin Islands, on the coast of Alaska, are as like the Itelmes of Kamtchatka as one egg is to another."
When the exploring expedition sent out by the Empress of Russia (Catherine) made their report it was stated that the narrow sea which divides Kamtchatka from Alaska is full of islands, and that the distance from a promontory at the eastern extremity of Asia, and the coast of America, is not more than two degrees and a half of a great circle. The report further stated 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. Moreover, the inhabitants of both sides resemble each other in their persons, habits, customs, food and language. It is also added that the boats of the natives on the American side pointed across to the opposite shore as the inhabitants of each coast are very similar. And when they found that the source whence their ancestors came, they considered that it amounted to little less than a demonstration that North America was peopled from this part of Asia.
After we had reached our conclusions, we were gratified to find that Ridpath, the greatest historian of recent years, takes substantially the same position. In his great work on "The Races of Mankind," he says: