The importance, for the history of Pre-Columbian civilization, of these discoveries cannot be overestimated. Moreover, their significance is not concerned alone with the history of America. They will compel a revision and realignment of historical frontiers in Europe and Africa as well, from a date not later than the first quarter of the fifteenth century. Lastly, "Africa and the Discovery of America" forms, as it were, a sequel to Professor Wiener's Contributions toward a History of Arabico-Gothic Culture, enabling the historian to trace the influence of the Arabs as the torch-bearers of civilization. It was they who in the eighth century, through the medium of the Spanish Mozarabs, recreated European culture, and at a later period, through that of the Arabicised Negroes, of whom the West African Mandingoes were the most important, at least almost entirely re-created, if they did not actually create, the civilization of the native American tribes, throughout both continents, and planted, so to speak, in the New World, the seeds of two great modern industries, cotton and tobacco.
Let us then consider, first, what is the bearing of Professor Wiener's work on the history of cotton. Assyria and India were centers of cotton culture at a very early date. The evidence that the Arabs popularized cotton in Africa, in connection with the ceremonial purification of the dead, that is, stuffing the orifices of the body with cotton, is shown by the fact that Arabic 'utb "cotton," a loan word from Coptic tbbe "to purify," has produced the West African "cotton" words, exactly as Arabic wudu' "ablution" has given rise, doubtless through Hausa influence, to the "cotton" words of Nigeria. What is particularly important to note, however, is that Arabic qutn "cotton" has gone everywhere into the Mandingo dialects, which have, in turn, influenced the native American languages. Thus for example, in South America, the Mandingo kotondo, etc., "cotton," derived from Arabic qutn, has left derivatives in the Indian languages "from Venezuela south to Peru, and in Central Brazil" (page 80), beside derivatives from Kimbunou mujinha "cotton," in eastern Brazil, northward and westward. If we concede the presence of cotton in South America before Columbus, we can only conclude, on the basis of linguistic evidence, that it was introduced either directly or indirectly from Africa. The Aztec word ychca, the native Mexican word for "cotton," furnishes no proof that cotton was known to the Mexicans before the coming of the Spaniards, since ychca is not originally a specific name, but has reference to any kind of fibre,—of a fluffy character, and came to mean "cotton" only secondarily.
Columbus, however, reported that on Oct. 11, 1492, the Indians of Guanahani brought parrots and cotton thread in balls, to trade for beads and hawks' bills. Either he told the truth, or he did not. If he told the truth, it is still remarkable that the Indians should not only have known of the traders' demand for cotton and parrots, but should also have offered the very articles which Cada Mosto, nearly fifty years earlier, had mentioned as coming from Africa, particularly the cotton, then offered for sale in the Negro markets. Columbus's references to growing cotton are specific in declaring that the cotton grew on trees,—hence it is obvious that he did not see any true cotton growing, but only the false cotton, the product of the tree Bombax Ceiba, used for stuffing mats, but not capable of being spun (page 28). A study of the early records of Mexico is conclusive in the evidence it furnishes to show that cotton never formed part of the tribute due the Mexican emperor, but that the payment of tribute in cotton was "an innovation of the Spaniards, and did not have the sanction of the Aztec tribute" (page 56). Hence we have nothing to indicate that, either in the Indies or in Mexico, the material of which the "cotton clothing" of the natives, mentioned by the Spaniards, was made, was really cotton. If it was cotton, its presence points to contact between America and Africa before Columbus, and the readiness of the natives to offer cotton in exchange for hawks' bills testifies clearly to the extent of trade relations between the two countries.
The contention of archæologists is that cotton culture in Peru may go back to a date as early as 200 A.D. The only criterion for such an assumption rests on the theoretical rate of accumulation of guano deposits, in which mummies, wrapped in cotton, have been found,—calculated at two and one half feet per century. This conclusion is absurd, not only for the stress it lays on the capricious habits of sea-birds, but also for the reason that it fails to take into account the irregularity of the guano deposits, as shown in the Peruvian Government Survey of 1854. No conclusion whatever as to the age of even a single mummy-case can be drawn, owing to certain facts concerning Indian burial customs, recorded by Cieza de Leon in 1553, Ondegardo in 1571, and Cobo, nearly a century later. These travellers state that the Peruvian natives were accustomed to open graves, change the clothes of the dead from time to time, and re-bury them (page 67 ff.). The proof that they told the truth is contained in the report by Baessler, of the X-ray examinations of Peruvian mummy-packs in the Royal Museum at Berlin. One such pack contains "the bones of four separate individuals, but of none there were enough to construct even distantly one complete skeleton. Besides, there were some animal bones present" (page 71). This disinterment of bodies, and of course the same confusion of the remains, revealed by the X-ray, was practised by the Indians as late as 1621. Nothing then remains to militate against the linguistic testimony so strongly in support of the conclusion that South American cotton culture is of African origin.
Professor Wiener's tentative conclusion that tobacco smoking was of African origin, outlined in his first volume of this series, has been strongly reinforced by a study of the Old-World origin of capnotherapy. "Smoking for medicinal purposes," he says on page 180, "is very old, and goes back at least to Greek medicine. A large number of viscous substances, especially henbane and bitumen, were employed in fumigation, and taken through the mouth, sometimes through the nose, for certain diseases, especially catarrh, toothache and pulmonary troubles. This fumigation took place through a funnel which very much resembles a modern pipe, but by its knot-like end at the bottom of the bowl shows its derivation from the distilling cap of the alchemist's retort." The bitumen corresponds to the tubbaq or tobbaq of the Arab doctors, a name applied to several medicinal plants containing a pungent and viscous juice. One of these plants was known in Spain as tobbaqah.
Fumigation as a curative measure soon degenerated in Europe into quackery,—the Arab smoke doctor giving place to the itinerant charlatan whose Arabic name lingers in Portuguese bufarinheiro "peddler," originally "smoke vender." In Africa, medical fumigation spread southward through the Negro country, finding its way to America perhaps a full century before the coming of Columbus. The manner in which smoking was introduced into America is made clear by the history of the Negro pombeiro, the African bootlegger in the service of the Portuguese colonists, who taught the natives to drink pombe, a kind of intoxicating liquor. This word pombe is a corruption of Latin pulpa, which through the Spanish pulpa has persisted in Mexico as pulque, the name of an intoxicant used by the Indians, exactly as Arabic hashish, through Spanish chicha, has entered Nahuatl, producing the Nahuatl chichila "to ferment, etc." The method of preparing the chicha in Peru, by masticating grain, is clearly of African origin, since in the Sudan, a kind of drink is made by chewing the fruit of the baobab. The clearest proof, however, that such pombeiros reached America in Pre-Columbian days is found in Columbus's reference to the report by the Indians of Hispaniola, that "black people had come thither from the south and south east, with spearheads of guanin." Now guanin is a Mandingo word; the name of an alloy of 18 parts of gold, 6 of silver and 8 of copper.
The history of shell and bead money, familiar as the wampum of the northern Indians, forms the third part of the present volume, and is perhaps the source of the strongest arguments to show the Pre-Columbian relation of Africa and America. Ultimately, the use of cowry shells for money comes from China, where such shells, called pei, tze-pei, pei-tze, had been used from time immemorial. The Chinese name of the cowry, ho-pei, probably anciently pronounced something like ka-par, is evidently the origin of Sanskrit kaparda, Hindustani kauri (whence English cowry), Dravidian kavadi "cowry." "From the ninth century on, we have many references in the Arabic authors to the cowries in Asia and Africa" (page 208). It is quite to be expected, then, that in the Negro languages, we should find derivatives of this ultimately Chinese word, descended through the medium of successive borrowings, via Hindustani and Arabic,—that is, Hausa al-kawara, kawara, etc., Zanzibar kauri, Wolof korre, Bambara kori, etc., side by side with a group descended from Dravidian woda "shell,"—that is Hausa wori, Malinke wuri, Bambara wari.
The substitution of beads for shells, as the development of this primitive form of currency went on, has left its mark likewise in linguistic records. That is to say, we have in Africa a group of words descended ultimately from Chinese par, pei, originally meaning "cowry," and secondarily "bead," together with a new group, traceable through an Arabic intermediary stage to Persian sang "onyx," the bead-stone par excellence. From the cowry-words have come Benin cori, kori, koli, "blue bead," whence akori, the "aggry" bead of the white traders, Neule gri "beads," and Baule worye "blue bead," a loan-word from Mandingo wori. In Bantu zimbo, we have either a Bantu plural of abuy, itself a derivative of Maldive boli, bolli, which is the Chinese pei "cowry," or a direct loan-word, through Arabic or Portuguese influence, of Chinese tsze-pei "purple shell." The transference in meaning from "cowry" to "bead" is illustrated in Kaffir in-tsimbi "beads." Similarly, the original "bead" words, from Persian sang "onyx," have given Zanzibar, Swahili ushanga "bead," Kongo nsanga "string of blue beads," with a recession of meaning in Kongo nsungu "cowry shell."
The transference of African currency to America is shown by two significant facts. First, we have the name. In the Brazilian caang "to prove, try," caangaba "mould, picture, etc.," is to be seen a form of some African derivative of Persian sang, as seen in Zanzibar ushanga "bead," Kongo nsanga "blue beads," etc., the change of meaning leading to the connotation "mould" being due to the substitution of the European idea of money as a piece of stamped metal, in place of that of bead or shell money. Exactly as the petun words for tobacco spread from South to North America along the trade routes, so the words for "money" followed the same course. Jacques Cartier's word esnogny, given as the Indian name of shell money,—the shells actually gathered by an African method of fishing for shell-fish with a dead body,—is traceable only to some form of the Brazillian çaang, which has also given Gree soniwaw "silver," Long Island sewan "money." The Chino-African cowry-word, seen in African abuy, is preserved in the North American bi, pi (plural peag, peak) "wampum," side by side with the Guarani mboi, poi, "shell bead." Lest the reader still harbor a lingering doubt of the fact of early trade relations between Brazil and Canada, Professor Wiener shows how Spanish aguja "needle" has left derivatives in a large number of Indian languages distant by many hundreds of miles from any Spanish settlement.
Secondly, we have the standard of value. From the earliest times, in China, the purple cowry was more valuable than the white. The same standard prevailed in Africa, and was transferred to the beads when beads were substituted for cowries. Among the Indians, the blue, or dark colored currency, whether shells or beads, was consistently reckoned as superior in worth to the white. Shell-money was first popularized on Long Island by the Dutch, who, as we are informed, imported cowries and aggry beads from the East to sell them to the Guinea-merchants. Moreover, Gov. Bradford has stated that it took the Massachusetts colonists two years to teach the Indians to use shell or bead money. Finally, Professor Wiener concludes that "in the Norman country, ... the wampum belt, as a precious ornament for European women, had its origin, and was by the Frenchmen transferred to Brazil and Canada" (page 258).