ORIGIN OF THE ABORIGINES.
The origin of the aborigines of America is involved in mystery. Many have been the speculations indulged and the volumes written by learned and able men to establish, each one, his favorite theory. Conjecture, by a train of ingenious reasonings and comparisons, has grown into probability, and finally almost settled down into certainty. For a time, as in the case of the celebrated “Letters of Junius,” the question has seemed decided; so plausible have appeared the proofs, that it would have been deemed almost like incredulity to gainsay them. But another supposition, more likely, has been started, and has supplanted the former; each, in its turn, has passed away, and we are perhaps no nearer the truth than before. We will notice a few of the most prominent of these opinions.
1. The Indians have been supposed, by certain writers, to be of Jewish origin; either descended from a portion of the ten tribes, or from the Jews of a later date. This view has been maintained by Boudinot and many others; and Catlin, in his “Letters,” has recently advocated it, especially with respect to the Indians west of the Mississippi. In proof of this opinion, reference is made to similarities, more or less striking, in many of their customs, rites, and ceremonies, sacrifices, and traditions. Thus, he has found many of their modes of worship exceedingly like those of the Mosaic institutions. He mentions a variety of particulars respecting separation, purification, feasts, and fastings, which seem to him very decisive. “These,” he says, “carry in my mind conclusive proof, that these people are tinctured with Jewish blood.” Efforts have also been made, but with little success, to detect a resemblance of words in their language to the Hebrew, and some very able writers have adopted the opinion, that this fact is established. That there may be such resemblances as are supposed is very probable, yet they are perhaps accidental, or such only as are to be found among all languages. Besides, allowance must be made for the state of the observer’s mind, and his desire to find analogies, as also for his ignorance of the Indian language in its roots, and his liability to confound their traditions with his own fancies. Many of these similarities, moreover, belong rather to the general characteristics of the Patriarchal age, than to the peculiarities of the Jewish economy. Even admitting the analogies in manners and customs mentioned by Catlin and others, they are not so striking as are those of the Greeks, as depicted by Homer, to those of the Jews, as portrayed in the Bible. There are striking resemblances between the ideas and practices of our American Indians, and those of many Eastern nations, which show them to be of Asiatic origin, but yet they do not identify them more with the Jews than with the Tartars, or Egyptians, or even the Persians.
2. Some have supposed that the ancient Phœnicians, or the Carthaginians, in their navigation of the ocean, penetrated to this Western Continent, and founded colonies. As this is mere conjecture, and is sustained by no proof in history, though here also fancied resemblances have been detected in language and some minor things, it may be dismissed as unworthy of serious consideration.
3. Others again have imagined that the Eastern and Western Continents were once united by land occupying the space which is now filled by the Atlantic Ocean; and that previous to the great disruption an emigration took place. With respect to this view, it is embarrassed by greater difficulties than the former. There is not the remotest trace of such an event recorded in history. It is only, therefore, entitled to be considered as a possible mode by which the Western Continent might have been peopled.
4. The pretensions of the Welsh have been put forth with not a little zeal, and have been considered by some as having more plausibility. They assert, that, about the year 1170, on the death of Owen Gwyneth, a strife for the succession arose among his sons; that one of them, disgusted with the quarrel, embarked in ten ships with a number of people, and sailed westward till he discovered an unknown land; that, leaving part of his people as a colony, he returned to Wales, and after a time again sailed with new recruits, and was never heard of afterwards. Southey has built on this tradition his beautiful poem of “Madoc,” the name of the fancied chieftain who was at the head of the enterprise. The writer, by whom the story was first published, is said, however, to have lived at least 400 years after the events, and discredit is thus thrown over the whole. Mr. Catlin, in the appendix to his second volume, forgetful, apparently, that he had already attributed certain rites and ceremonies of the same people to Jewish origin, seems to suppose that the Mandans are undoubted descendants of Madoc and his Welshmen, who, he thinks, entered the Gulf of Mexico, and sailed up the Mississippi even to the Ohio River, whence they afterwards emigrated to the Far West. He furnishes some words of the Mandan language, which he compares with the Welsh, and which must be allowed to have considerable resemblance to each other, for the same ideas. Still, the theory must be regarded as wholly fanciful.