Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/809

 Dc Roo : History of America before Columbus 799 In Peru the llama furnished animal food, and the customs developed in herding this animal were continued in herding the inferior tribes whom the Incas conquered. The governing tribes are brought from the southeast and the subject tribes from the east and north, some of them by sea. The limits of the Aymara and Quichua languages are given and the fact noted that both arose from the same stock. Notwithstanding the fact that the Peruvians had developed pictographs and systems of writing to a much less extent than the Mexicans, nevertheless reliable evidences of Inca history existed at the time of the Conquest which verify their oral traditions in a remarkably clear and complete manner. The char- acter and influence of the eleven pre-Spanish Incas are described in de- tail, together with an excellent presentation of the characteristics of the Inca political system. In the final comparison of the Mexican and Peru- vian cultures Payne terms the Incas brutal and sanguinary tyrants " com- pared with whom the cannibal chiefs of Anahuac appear almost in the light of polished and civilized rulers." In general the Peruvian culture was of a lower grade than the Mexican. The people were lower in mental cultivation if not absolutely inferior in mental capacity. How- ever, the Peruvian culture was presumably much more recent. The his- tory of the conquest of Peru is reserved for the next volume. Two features of this book are strikingly prominent : it is a philosophic essay rather than an ethnographic description of the Amerinds, and it emphasizes those phases of Amerindian culture which are unique and hence important in the building up of arguments in support of the theory of development of language or institutions. Naturally 548 pages do not permit a very complete account of a race nor does the author attempt to deal, except in the most general manner, with the majority of American stocks. The volume is provided with a very complete table of contents with corresponding marginal titles, but there are no chapter divisions or interruptions of the text from the first page to the last. Many rare publications are cited but we cannot avoid the impression that portions of the volume would have been improved by adherence to more modern authorities. Frank Russell. History of America before Coliiinbus, according to Documents and Appnwed Ant/tors. By P. de Roo. (Philadelphia : J. B. Lip- pincott Co. 1900. Pp. I, 613 ; xxiii, 613.) These handsome volumes are a monument alike of the author's in- dustry, and of his utter lack of the historic sense. In fact the work must be looked at not so much as a history, as a polemic in support of the claim that there are to be found in America " vestiges of a Christianity, which evidently M'as not introduced by the relatively late Northmen; " and as an extended narrative of the early Roman Catholic missions to Greenland. The questions of the origin and antiquity of man upon this continent, the claim that America was known to the ancient Greeks and