Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/582

566 566 ANCIENT AMEEICAN ARCHITECTURE. Part III. the other to the Red Indians. The former, I cannot help thinking, rejjresent the Toltecs. It does seem that all along the east coast of America, from Behring's Straits to California, races have always ex- isted more or less closely allied to the Kamtchatdales or Esquimaux ; and these may, at some early period, have advanced to the plains of Mexico. If they were of that blood there is no difficulty in under- standing hoAV they became builders. On the other hand, there seems little doubt that the Aztecs were Red Indians, allied to those tribes who, so far as we know, always inhabited the valley of the Mississippi and the countries to the east- ward of it. They may have been capable of taking up an earlier civilization, and, if their blood was mixed at all with the earlier inhabitants, of carrying it further ; but in themselves they are utterly im])rogressive and incapable of developing any attributes of civilized life. In Yucatan we certainly have another race, but whether they were Caribs, or some other people Avhose traces have been lost, cannot now be easily ascertained. In Peru, and possibly also further north, there is certainly a strongly developed Polynesian element, and there may be other races still ; but these four alone, mixed in varying quantities, are more than sufficient to account for all the varieties we find there in the course of our inquiries. There still remains one question which is more germane to our present subject than even the others, though perhaps on the whole still more difficult to answer. It is this : Are the civilization and arts of the ancient Americans original and indigenous, or did they receive any impulse from the natives of the Old World ? One part of this may easily be disposed of. The absence of all domestic animals, the pos- session of only one of the cereals, the total ignorance of alphabetic writing and of the use of iron — though the country is full of the ore — and many other minor facts, seem sufficient to prove that no immigration of tribes or families could have taken place in such numbers as to bring their animals, their grain, or their materials with them. This, however, by no means preludes the possibility of many missionaries having reached their shores, who, though bringing nothing but what they carried in their brains, could communicate doctrines, teach arts, and improve processes, and so communicate much of the civilization of the countries from which they came. Without laying too much stress on the somewhat mythic story of Quetzalcoatl, though there seems no good reason for doubting its main features, we have only to refer to the history of India between 250 e.g. and 700 a.d. to see what missionary zeal prevailed in those days. Asoka set the example, and by his missionaries and their successors the doctrines of Buddha were propagated from the shores of the