The evidence of language, then, is in favour of the unity of all the American populations—the Eskimo not excepted.
The evidence, however, of language, forms but a fraction of the argument; indeed, it is only one part of the great division which contains the moral elements of ethnological difference or likeness in opposition to the physical. The complementary question as to the unity or non-unity of the general social or mental development of the aboriginal American still stands over.
What are the facts which chiefly influence opinion here?
In which direction is their influence?
The facts are of two kinds—
1. Those which disconnect the Eskimo—
2. Those which disconnect the Mexicans and Peruvians from the other Americans—the former on the strength of an inferior, the latter on the score of a superior civilizational development. What is their value? This will be best ascertained when all the sections of the American population involved in the question have been noticed. At present the Eskimo only have been dealt with; the Mexicans and Peruvians still remaining to be described. Enough, however, has been said to show that the question has taken a complication; since the evidence of the non-philological moral and mental phænomena is against the unity of the American population—the Mexicans and Peruvians on one side, and the Eskimo on the other being isolated.
The evidence, however, of the moral and mental phænomena (philological and non-philological combined), is but one division of the argument. The complementary question as to the unity or non-unity of the physical conformation of the aboriginal American still stands over. What are the facts which chiefly influence opinion here?
Mutatis mutandis, the statements which have just been made may very nearly be made here. The test of physical conformation is considered to exclude the Eskimo; and the test of physical conformation is considered to exclude, if not the Mexican, at least the Peruvian.
Notwithstanding the convenience of deferring the more general discussion of the question until the Peruvians—indeed, until the whole of the American tribes have been considered—the present is, nevertheless, a convenient time for taking in, by means of a retrospect, some of the more material facts connected with the social and civilizational capacity of the Indians which have last been described—i.e. the non-Eskimo tribes of the parts between the Rocky Mountains and the Paducas. This is to be measured by what is called the Indian biography of their men of mark like Thyandeeeya (Brandt), Tecumseh, or Powhattan, by the history of the Indian wars and confederations, and, better still, by an exponent which, because it has a special application upon the problems last indicated, will find a place amongst our present investigations—their architectural archæology.