The lost Atlantis, and other ethnographic studies

by Sir Daniel Wilson

It is not, therefore, adequate time that is wanting for the growth of a native American civilisation. The only satisfactory indication of the affiliation of the American races to those of Asia or Europe, or of Africa, must be sought for in their languages. But any trace of this kind, thus far observed, is at best obscure and remote. The resemblance in physical traits points to affinity with the Asiatic Mongol, and the agglutinate characteristics common to many languages of the continent, otherwise essentially dissimilar, is in harmony with this. But Asiatic affinities are only traceable remotely, not demonstrable on any definite line of descent; and all the evidence that language supplies points to a greatly prolonged period of isolation. The number of languages spoken throughout the whole of North and South America has been estimated to considerably exceed twelve hundred; and on the northern continent alone, more than five hundred distinct languages are spoken, which admit of classification among seventy-five ethnical groups, each with essential linguistic distinctions, pointing to its own parent stock. Some of those languages are merely well-marked dialects, with fully developed vocabularies. Others have more recently acquired a dialectic character in the breaking up and scattering of dismembered tribes, and present a very limited range of vocabulary, suited to the intellectual requirements of a small tribe, or band of nomads. The prevailing condition of life throughout the whole North American continent was peculiarly favourable to the multiplication of such dialects, and their growth into new languages, owing to the constant dismemberment of tribes, and the frequent adoption into their numbers of the refugees from other fugitive broken tribes, leading to an intermingling of vocabularies and fresh modifications of speech.

But, by whatever means we seek to account for the great diversity of speech among the communities of the New World, it is manifest that language furnishes no evidence of recent intrusion, or of contact for many generations with Asiatic or other races. On any theory of origin either of race or language, a greatly prolonged period is indispensable to account for the actual condition of things which presents such a tempting field for the study of the ethnologist. Among the various races brought under notice, the Huron-Iroquois of Canada and the neighbouring states most fitly represent the North American race east of the Rocky Mountains. Their language, subdivided into many dialects, furnishes indications of migrations throughout the greater portion of that area eastward between the Mississippi and the Atlantic seaboard, and its affinities have been sought for beyond the American continent. Mr. Horatio Hale, an experienced philologist familiar with the races and languages most nearly akin to those of the New World, in his Indian Migrations, as evidenced by Language, after remarking that there is nothing in the languages of the American Indians to favour the conjecture of an origin from Eastern Asia, thus proceeds: “But in Western Europe one community is known to exist, speaking a language which in its general structure manifests a near likeness to the Indian tongues. Alone of all the races of the old continent the Basques or Euskarians, of northern Spain and south-western France, have a speech of that highly complex and polysynthetic character which distinguishes the American languages.” But to this he has to add the statement that “there is not, indeed, any such positive similarity in words or grammar as would prove a direct affiliation. The likeness is merely in the general cast and mould of speech, but this likeness is so marked as to have awakened much attention.”[^[41]]

Assuming the affinity thus based on a general likeness in cast and mould of speech to be well founded, there need be no surprise at the lack of any positive similarity in words or grammar; for, used only as a test of the intervening time since Basque and Red Indian parted, it points to representatives of a prehistoric race that occupied Europe before the advent of Celtic or other Aryan pioneer, long prior to the historic dawn. And if the intervening centuries between that undetermined date and the close of the fifteenth century, when intercourse was once more renewed between the Iberian peninsula and the transatlantic continent, sufficed for the evolution of all the classic, mediæval, and renaissance phases of civilisation in Europe, what was man doing through all those centuries in this New World? A period of time would appear to have transpired ample enough for the development of a native civilisation; but neither the languages nor the arts of the Indian nations found in occupation of the northern continent reveal traces of it; nor does archæology disclose to us evidence of civilised precursors. Whatever their origin may have been, the Red Indian appears to have remained for unnumbered centuries excluded by ocean barriers from all influence of the historic races. But on this very account an inquiry into the history of the nations of the American continent, in so far as this may be recoverable from archæological or other evidence, may simplify important ethnical problems, and contribute results of some value in reference to the condition and progress of primeval man elsewhere.

In Europe man can be studied only as he has been moulded by a thousand external influences, and by the intermixture of many dissimilar races. The most recent terms of ethnological classification, the Xanthocroi and Melanochroi, are based on the assumed interblending of widely dissimilar races in times long anterior to any definite chronology. There was a time, as is assumed, when the sparsely peopled areas of Europe were occupied by a population still imperfectly represented by the Finns, the Lapps, and the Basques. Those are supposed to be surviving fragments of a once homogeneous population in prehistoric centuries. On this the great Aryan migration intruded in successive waves of Celtic, Slavic, Hellenic and Teutonic invaders, not without considerable intermixture of blood. Such is the great ethnical revolution by which it is assumed that Europe was recolonised from the same source from whence India and Persia derived their ancient civilised and lettered races. The Finnic hypothesis, and the once favoured idea of an Asiatic cradleland for the whole so-called Aryan races, have been greatly modified by later research. Community of language is no longer accepted as necessarily involving a common ethnic origin. But the results in no way affect the general conclusion as to the displacement of a succession of barbarous races by the historic races of Europe long before the Christian era.

The year 1492 marks the beginning of an analogous ethnical revolution by which the Aryan, or Indo-European stock intruded, in ever-increasing numbers, on the aboriginal populations of the New World. The disparity between the first Celtic or other Aryan immigrants into Europe and the aborigines whom they encountered there was probably less than that which separated the first American colonists from the Red Indian savages whom they displaced. In both cases it was the meeting of cultured races with rude nomads whom they were prone to regard with an aversion or contempt very different from the repellent elements between conquering and subject nations in near equality to each other. The disparity, for example, between the native Briton and the intruding Saxon, or between the later Anglo-Saxon and the intruding Dane or Northman, was sufficiently slight to admit of ready intermixture, ultimately, in spite of their bitter antagonism. Nor was even the civilised Roman separated by any such gulf from the Gaul or German who bowed to the Imperial yoke, and exchanged their independence for Roman citizenship. But other elements have also to be kept in view. The pioneers of emigration are not, as a rule, the most cultured members of the intruding race; while the disparity in the relative numbers of the sexes inevitably resulting from the conditions under which any extensive migration takes place forms an effective counterpoise to very wide ethnical differences. In every case of extensive immigration, with the excess of males and chiefly of hardy young adventurers, the same result is inevitable. On the American continent it has already produced a numerous race of half-breeds, descendants of white and Indian parentage, apart from that other and not less interesting “coloured race,” now numbering upwards of six millions in the United States alone, the descendants of European and African parentage. In the older provinces of Canada, the remnants of the aboriginal Indian tribes have been gathered on suitable reserves; and on many of these, so far are they from hastening to extinction, that during the last quarter of a century the returns of the Indian Department show a steady numerical increase. In the United States, under less favourable circumstances, similar results are beginning to be recognised. In a report on “Indian Civilisation and Education,” dated Washington, November 24, 1877, it is set forth as more and more tending to assume the aspect of an established fact, “that the Indians, instead of being doomed to extinction within a limited period, are, as a rule, not decreasing in numbers; and are, in all probability, destined to form a permanent factor; an enduring element of our population.” Wherever the aborigines have been gathered together upon suitable reserves, and trained to industrious habits, as among the Six Nation Indians, settled on the Grand river, in the Province of Ontario; or where they have mingled on terms of equality with the white settlers, as within the old Hudson’s Bay territory on the Red river, they have after a time showed indications of endurance. It is not a mere intermingling of white and Indian settlers, but the increase of the community by the growth of a half-breed population; and when this takes place under favourable circumstances, as was notably the case so long as the hunter tribes of the prairies and the trappers of the Hudson’s Bay Company shared the great North-West as a common hunting-ground, the results are altogether favourable to the endurance of the mixed race. On a nearly similar footing we may conceive of the admixture of the earliest Aryans with the Allophylians of Europe, resulting in some of the most noticeable types of modern European nationalities. The growth in the territory of the Hudson’s Bay Company of a numerous half-breed population, assuming the status of farming hunters, distinct alike from the Indians and the Whites, is a fact of singular interest to the ethnologist. It has been the result of alliances, chiefly with Indian Cree women, by the fur trappers of the region. But these included two distinct elements: the one a Scottish immigration, chiefly from the Orkney Islands; the other that of the French Canadians, who long preceded the English as hunters and trappers in the North-West. The contrasting Scottish and French paternity reveals itself in the hybrid offspring; but in both cases the half-breeds are a large and robust race, with greater powers of endurance than the pure-blood Indian. They have been described to me by more than one trustworthy observer as “superior in every respect, both mentally and physically,” and this is confirmed by my own experience. The same opinion has been expressed by nearly all who have paid special attention to the hybrid races of the New World. D’Orbigny, when referring to the general result of this intermingling of races says: “Among the nations in America the product is always superior to the two types that are mixed.” Henry, a traveller of the last century, who spent six years among the North American Indians, notes the confirmatory assurance given to him by a Cristineaux chief, that “the children borne by their women to Europeans were bolder warriors and better hunters than themselves.” Finally, of the hardy race of the Arctic circle Dr. Kane says: “The half-breeds of the coast rival the Esquimaux in their powers of endurance.” There is also a fine race in Greenland, half Danes; and Dr. Rae informs me that numerous half-breed Eskimo are to be met with on the Labrador coast. They are taller and more hardy than the pure-blooded Eskimo; so that he always gave the preference to them as his guides. The Danish half-breeds are described by Dr. Henry Rink, in his Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, as dating back to the earliest times of the colonisation of Greenland. The mixed marriages, he says, “have generally been rich in offspring. The children for the most part grow up as complete Greenlanders”; but the distinction between them and the native Eskimo is unmistakable, although individuals of the hybrid offspring represent the mixture of European and native blood in almost every possible proportion.

From the conquest of Mexico in 1520, and of Peru in 1534, this admixture of races of the Old and the New World has been going on in varying ratio according to the relative circumstances under which they meet. In Mexico and in the more civilised portions of South America the half-breeds are estimated to constitute fully one-fifth of the whole population, while the so-called “coloured people,” the descendants of European and African parentage, now number not less than fifteen millions throughout the mainland and the Islands of North and South America.

Throughout the northern, southern, and western states of America, on the Pacific slope, and in Canada, the growth of a mixed race of White and Indian blood has everywhere taken place in the first period of settlement, when the frontier backwoodsman and the hunter were brought into contact with the native tribes. Along the borders of every frontier state a nearly exclusive male population is compelled to accept the services of the Indian women in any attempt at domestic life. The children grow up to share in perfect equality the rude life of their fathers. The new generation presents a mixed race of hardy trappers, mingling the aptitudes of both races in the wild life of the frontier. With the increase of population, and the more settled life of the clearing, the traces of mixed blood are lost sight of; but it is to a large extent only a repetition of what appears to have marked the advent of the Aryan immigrants into Europe. The new, but more civilised race predominated. Literal extermination, no doubt, did its work, and the aborigines to a large extent perished. But no inconsiderable remnant finally disappeared by absorption into the general stock; not without leaving enduring evidence of the process in the Melanochroi, or dark whites—the Iberians, or Black Celts, as they are sometimes styled,—of Western Europe; as well as in the allied type, not only of the Mediterranean shores, but of Western Asia and Persia. A process has thus been going on on the American continent for four centuries, which cannot fail to beget new types in the future; even as a like process is seen to have produced them under analogous conditions in ancient Europe.

Viewed in this aspect, the archæology and ethnology of the New World presents in some important respects a startling analogy to pre-Aryan Europe. Assuredly the status of the Allophylian races of Europe can scarcely have been inferior to that of some, at least, of the aborigines of America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Probably the Aryan pioneers were fully equal to its first European immigrants. But if the ethnical characteristics of American man are simple, and the aspect of his social life appears to realise for us a living analogy to that of Europe’s Neolithic, if not in some respects to that of its Palæolithic era, the question of his antiquity acquires a new interest; for it thus becomes apparent that man may remain through countless ages in the wild hunter stage, as unprogressive as any other denizen of the wilderness propagating its species and hunting for its prey. But the whole question of the antiquity of man has undergone a marvellous revolution. The literature of modern geology curiously illustrates its progress, from the date of the publication of Dean Buckland’s Reliquiæ Diluvianæ, in 1823, to the final edition of Sir Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, in 1872, and the latest embodiment of his conclusions on the special question involved in his Antiquity of Man.

The determination of a Palæolithic period for Europe, with its rude implements of flint or stone, chipped into shape without the aid of any grinding or polishing process, and belonging to an era when man was associated with animals either extinct or known only throughout the historic period in extreme northern latitudes, has naturally stimulated the research of American archæologists for corresponding traces on this continent. Nor is the anticipation of the possible recovery of the traces of man’s presence in post-glacial, or still earlier epochs in unhistoric areas, limited to either continent. If it be accepted as an established fact that man has existed in Europe for unnumbered ages, during which enormous physical changes have been wrought; upheaval and denudation have revolutionised the face of the continent; the deposition of the whole drift formation has been effected; the river-valleys of Southern England and the north of France have been excavated, and the British Islands detached from the neighbouring continent: it cannot be regarded as improbable that evidence may yet be found of the early presence of man in any region of the globe. Nevertheless some of the elements already referred to tend to mark with a character of their own the investigations alike of the archæologist and the geologist into the earliest traces of human art in what we have learned habitually to speak of as a New World. In Europe the antiquary, familiar already with ancient historic remains, had passed by a natural transition to the study of ruder examples of primitive art in stone and bronze, as well as to the physical characteristics of races which appeared to have preceeded the earliest historic nations. The occupation of the British Islands, for example, successively by Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and Normans, was so familiar to the popular mind that the problem of a sequence of neolithic, bronze, and the ruder iron implements with their correlated personal ornaments, pottery, etc., was universally solved by referring them to Celtic, Roman, and Scandinavian art. Erroneous as this interpretation of the evidence proves to have been, it had, nevertheless, sufficient accordance with truth to prepare the way for the ultimate reception of more accurate inductions. The fact of the occurrence of successive phases of art, and their indication of a succession of races, were undoubted; and researches directed to the solution of the problem of European archæology were unhesitatingly followed up through mediæval, classical, Assyrian and Egyptian remains, to the very threshold of that prehistoric dawn which forms the transitional stage between geological and historical epochs. A significant fact, in its bearing on the recent disclosures of the river-drift in France and England, is that some of the most characteristic flint implements, such as a large spear head found along with the remains of a fossil elephant in Gray’s Inn Lane, London, and implements of the same type obtained from the drift of the Waveney Valley, in Surrey, underlying similar fossil remains, had been brought under the notice of archæologists upwards of a century before the idea of the contemporaneous existence of man and the mammals of the Drift found any favour; and they were unhesitatingly assigned to a Celtic origin. The first known discovery of any flint implement in the quaternary gravels of Europe is the one already noted which stands recorded in the Sloane catalogue as “A British weapon found, with elephant’s tooth, opposite to black Mary’s, near Grayes Inn Lane.”

A just conception of the comprehensiveness even of historical antiquity was long retarded in Europe by an exclusive devotion to classical studies; but the relations of America to the Old World are so recent, and all else is so nearly a blank, that for it the fifteenth century is the historic dawn, and everything dating before the landing of Columbus has been habitually assigned to the same vague antiquity. Hence historical research has been occupied for the most part on very modern remains, and the supreme triumph long aimed at has been to associate the hieroglyphics of Central America, and the architectural monuments of Peru, with those of Egypt. But we have entered on a new era of archæological and historical inquiry. The palæolithic implements of the French Drift have only been brought to light in our own day; and, though upwards of half a century has elapsed since the researches of Mr. J. MacEnery were rewarded by the discovery of flint implements of the earliest type in the same red loam of the Devonshire limestone caves which embedded bones of the mammoth, tichorhine rhinoceros, cave-bear and other extinct mammals, it is only recently that the full significance of such disclosures has been recognised.