So far as the physical traits of the American aborigines furnish any evidence of ethnical affinity they unquestionably suggest some common line of descent with the Asiatic Mongol; and this is consistent with the agglutinate characteristics common to a large class of languages of both continents. But, on the other hand, the characteristic head-form of the Huron-Iroquois, as well as that of Algonkin and other northern tribes, deviates alike from the brachycephalic type of the southern Indians and from that of the Asiatic Mongols. Humboldt, who enjoyed rare opportunities for studying the ethnical characteristics of both continents, but to whom, nevertheless, the northern races, with their dolichocephalic type of head were unknown, dwells, in his American Researches, on the striking resemblance which the American race bear to the Asiatic Mongols. Latham classes both under the common head of Mongolidæ; and Dr. Charles Pickering, of the American Exploring Expedition, arrived at the same conclusion as the result of his own independent study of the races of both continents. Nevertheless, however great may be the resemblance in many points between the true Red Indian and the Asiatic Mongol, it falls short of even an approximate physical identity. The Mongolian of Asia is not indeed to be spoken of as one unvarying type any more than the American. But the extent to which the Mongolian head-form and peculiar physiognomy characterise one widely diffused section of the population of the eastern continent, gives it special prominence among the great ethnical divisions of the human race. Morton assigns 1421 as the cranial capacity of eighteen Mongol, and only 1234 as that of 164 American skulls other than Peruvian or Mexican. Dr. Paul Topinard, in discussing the American type, adds: “If we are to rely on the method of cubic measurement followed by Morton, the American skull is one of the least capacious of the whole human race.”[[123]] But Dr. Morton’s results are in some respects misleading. The mean capacity yielded by the measurements of 214 American skulls in the Peabody Museum of Archæology, including a considerable number of females, is 1331; and with a carefully selected series, excluding exceptionally large and small crania, the results would be higher. Twenty-six male California skulls, for example, yield a mean capacity of 1470. The Huron-Iroquois crania would rank among such exceptional examples.[[124]] The forehead is, indeed, low and receding, but the general cerebral capacity is good; and Dr. Morton specially notes its approximation to the European mean.[[125]]
But the assumption of uniformity in the ethnical characteristics of the various races of North and South America is untenable. All probabilities rather favour the idea of different ethnical centres, a diversity of origin, and considerable admixture of races. All evidence, moreover, whether physical or philological, whatever else it may prove, leaves no room for doubt as to a greatly prolonged period of isolation of the native races of the New World. Whether they came from the Mediterranean, in that old mythic dawn the memory of which survived in the legend of a submerged Atlantis; or the history of their primeval migration still lingers among fading traces of philological affinity with the Basques; or if, with the still more remote glimpses which affinite Arctic ethnology has been assumed to supply, we seek to follow the palæolithic race of Central Europe’s Reindeer period in the long pilgrimage to Behring Straits, and so to the later home of the American Mongol; this, at least, becomes more and more obvious, that they brought with them no arts derived from the ancient civilisations of Egypt or of Asia. So far, at least, as the northern continent is concerned, no evidence tends to suggest that the aborigines greatly differed at any earlier period from the condition in which they were found by Cartier when he first entered the St. Lawrence. They were absolutely ignorant of metallurgy; and notwithstanding the abundance of pure native copper accessible to them, they cannot be said even to have attained to that rudimentary stage of metallurgic art which for Europe is spoken of as its “Copper Age.” Copper was to them no more than a malleable stone, which they fashioned into axes and knives with their stone hammers. Their pottery was of the most primitive crudeness, hand-fashioned by their women without the aid of the potter’s wheel. The grass or straw-plaiting of their basket-work might seem to embody the hint of the weaver’s loom; but the products of the chase furnished them with skins of the bear and deer, sufficient for all purposes of clothing. They had advanced in no degree beyond the condition of the neolithic savage of Europe’s Stone age when, at the close of the fifteenth century, they were abruptly brought into contact with its cultured arts. The gifted historian, Mr. Francis Parkman, who has thrown so fascinating an interest over the story of their share in the long-protracted struggle of the French and English colonists of North America, says of them: “Among all the barbarous nations of the continent the Iroquois stand paramount. Elements which among other tribes were crude, confused, and embryotic, were among them systematised and concreted into an established polity. The Iroquois was the Indian of Indians. A thorough savage, yet a finished and developed savage. He is perhaps an example of the highest elevation which man can reach without emerging from his primitive condition of the hunter.” Yet with this high estimate of the race as pre-eminent among Red Indian nations, he adds: “That the Iroquois, left under their institutions to work out their destiny undisturbed, would ever have developed a civilisation of their own, I do not believe.”[[126]] They had not, in truth, taken the first step in such a direction; and, were it not for the evidence which language supplies, it would be conceivable that they, and the whole barbarian nations of which they are a type, were Mongol intruders of a later date than the Northmen of the tenth century; who, it seems far from improbable, encountered only the Eskimo of the Labrador coast, or their more southern congeners, then extending to the south of the St. Lawrence. The prevalence of a brachycephalic type of head among southern Indian tribes, while dolichocephalic characteristics are common to the Eskimo and to the Huron-Iroquois and other northern nations, lends countenance to the idea of an intermixture of Red Indian and Eskimo blood. The head-forms, however, though both long, differ in other respects; and a divergence is apparent on comparing the bones of the face, with a corresponding difference in their physiognomy.
Dr. Latham recognised the Iroquois as one of the most typical families of the North American race, and Mr. Parkman styles them “the Indian of the Indians.” The whole Huron-Iroquois history illustrates their patient, politic diplomacy, their devotion to hunting and to war. But their policy gave no comprehensive aim to wars which reduced their numbers, and threatened their very existence as a race. Throughout the entire period of any direct knowledge of them by Europeans, there is constant evidence of feuds between members of the common stock, due in part, indeed, to their becoming involved in the rivalries of French and English colonists, but also traceable to hereditary animosities perpetuated through many generations. The strongly marked diversities in the dialects of the Six Nations is itself an evidence of their long separation, prior to their confederation, in the earlier half of the fifteenth century. By far the most trustworthy narrative of this famous league is embodied by Mr. Horatio Hale in The Iroquois Book of Rites, a contribution to aboriginal American literature of singular interest and value. Among the members of this confederacy the Tuscaroras occupy a peculiar position. They were reunited to the common stock so recently as 1714, but their traditions accord with those of the whole Huron-Iroquois family in pointing to the Lower St. Lawrence as their original home; and the diversity of the Tuscarora dialect from those of the older nations of the league furnishes a valuable gauge of the significance of such differences as evidence of the length of period during which the various members of the common stock had been separated. On the other hand, the manner in which, in the absence of any hereditary feud, the Iroquois respected the bonds of consanguinity, and welcomed the fugitive immigrants from North Carolina, throws an interesting light on the history of the race, and the large extent of country occupied by it in the time of its greatest prosperity.
The earliest home of the whole Huron-Iroquois stock was within the area of Quebec and Eastern Ontario, and they have thus a claim on the interest of Canadians as their precursors in the occupation of the soil; while, in so far as its actual occupancy by the representatives of the common stock is concerned, the Hurons were welcomed to a friendly, if fatal, alliance with the early French colonists; and the Iroquois of the Six Nations have enjoyed a home, under the protection of England, on the western Canadian reserves set apart for their use upwards of a century ago.
There is one notable inconsistency in the traditions of the Huron-Iroquois which is significant. The fathers of the common stock dwelt, according to their most cherished memories, in their northern home on the St. Lawrence, and beside the great sea. It ranked also among the ancient traditions of the “Wampum-keepers,” or official annalists, that there came a time when, from whatever cause, the Caniengas—Ka-nyen-ke-ha-ka, or Flint people, i.e. the Mohawks,—the “eldest brother” of the family, led the way from the northern shore of the St. Lawrence to their later home in what is now the State of New York. But the prehistoric character of this later tradition is shown by the fact that the Oneidas, Onondagas, and Senecas, all claimed for themselves the character of autochthones in their later home. The precise spot where, according to the cherished legend of the Oneidas, they literally sprang from the soil, is still marked by “the Oneida Stone,” a large boulder of flesh-coloured syenite, from which the latter called themselves Oniota-aug, “the people begot from the stone.” It occupies a commanding site overlooking a fine expanse of country stretching to the Oneida Lake. But, according to Mr. Hale, the name of the Oneida nation, in the council of the league, was Nihatirontakowa, usually rendered the “great-tree people,” or literally “those of the great log.” This designation is connected, most probably as an afterthought, with a legendary meeting of their people with Hiawatha.[[127]] The beautiful legend of this benefactor of his people has been embalmed in the Indian epic of Longfellow, and dealt with as a chapter of genuine history in Mr. Horatio Hale’s Iroquois Book of Rites. At a period when the tribes were being wasted by constant wars within and without, a wise and beneficent chief arose among the Onondagas. His name is rendered: “he who seeks the wampum belt.” He had long viewed with grief the dissensions and misery of his people, and conceived the idea of a federal union which should ensure peace. The system which he devised was to be not a loose and transitory league, such as the Indian tribes were familiar with; but a permanent organisation, foreshadowing as it were the federal union of the Anglo-American Colonies. “While each nation was to retain its own council and its management of local affairs, the general control was to be lodged in a federal senate, composed of representatives elected by each nation, holding office during good behaviour, and acknowledged as ruling chiefs throughout the confederacy. Still further, and more remarkably, the confederation was not to be a limited one. It was to be infinitely expansive. The avowed design of its proposer was to abolish war altogether. He wished the federation to extend until all the tribes of men should be included in it. Such,” says Mr. Hale, “is the positive testimony of the Iroquois themselves, and their statement is supported by historical evidence.”[[128]] The league survived far on into the eighteenth century; but the dream of universal peace among the nations of the New World, if it ever found any realisation, had vanished in the reawakening of the demon of strife.
In all the accounts of the Iroquois their league is noted as distinguishing them from the Algonkins and other ruder tribes of North America. The story of this league has been reproduced by successive historians, not without rhetorical exaggerations borrowed from the institutions of civilised nations, both of ancient and modern times. The late Hon. L. H. Morgan says of this tribal union: “Under their federal system the Iroquois flourished in independence, and capable of self-protection, long after the New England and Virginia races had surrendered their jurisdictions, and fallen into the condition of dependent nations; and they now stand forth upon the canvas of Indian history, prominent alike for the wisdom of their civil institutions, their sagacity in the administration of the league, and their courage in its defence. When their power and sovereignty finally passed away, it was through the events of peaceful intercourse, gradually progressing to this result.”[[129]] Schoolcraft in like manner refers to “their advancement in the economy of living, in arms, in diplomacy, and in civil polity,” as evidence of a remote date for their confederacy.[[130]] But while thus contrasting the “power and sovereignty” of the Iroquois with the “dependent nations” to the south, Schoolcraft leaves it manifest that, whatever may have been the extent of the ancient confederacy, in the seventeenth century their whole numbers fell short of 12,000; and in 1677 their warriors or fighting men were carefully estimated at 2150. The diversity of dialects of the different members of the league is a source of curious interest to the philologist; but the fact that, among a people numerically so small, local dialects were thus perpetuated, is a proof of the very partial influence of the league as a bond of union. It serves to illustrate the general defect of native American polity. “Nothing,” says Max Müller, “surprised the Jesuit missionaries so much as the immense number of languages spoken by the natives of America. But this, far from being a proof of a high state of civilisation, rather showed that the various races of America had never submitted for any length of time to a powerful political concentration.[[131]] The Iroquois were undoubtedly pre-eminent in the highest virtues of the savage; and could they have been isolated in the critical transitional stage, like the ancient Egyptians in their Nile valley, the Greeks in their Hellenic peninsula, or the Anglo-Saxons in their insular stronghold—
. . . . set in the silver sea
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive—
until they learned to unite with their courage and persistency in war some of the elements of progress in civilisation ascribed to them, they might have proved the regenerators of the continent, and reserved it for permanent occupation by races of native origin. “Wherever they went,” says Schoolcraft, “they carried proofs of their energy, courage, and enterprise. At one period we hear the sound of their war-cry along the Straits of the St. Mary’s, and at the foot of Lake Superior; at another, under the walls of Quebec, where they finally defeated the Hurons under the eyes of the French.”[[132]] And after glancing at the long history of their triumphs, he adds: “Nations trembled when they heard the name of the Konoshioni.”