Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/102

90 In taking for consideration the subject of the probable origin of the American Indians, I trust that these preliminary observations may not be judged inapposite, when so many writers — as Professor Agassiz, Dr. Morton and others — directly, and so many — as Malte Brun, Humboldt, and others — indirectly, have advocated the doctrine of distinct races having been created, like the lower animals, suited peculiarly to particular climates and localities, and have, upon this assumption, assigned for those whom.they call the aborigines of America a different origin and creation from the other branches of the human species. Treating the subject historically, it would certainly have been a great omission to have passed by those theories without a notice, especially when it is the direct object of my arguments to shew the futility of such speculations by the evidence of facts.

But besides those theories founded upon scepticism under the guise of philosophy, there are others accounting for the origin of the American Indians, which can neither be passed over unnoticed, though we may assign no value to them to require any lengthened remark. The first to which I allude is, that the Indians of America were descendants of antediluvian inhabitants of the world, who were not comprehended in the general destruction of the deluge: the second, that there probably was, in some early period after the deluge, some great convulsion of nature, as in the days of Peleg, when some writers suppose the earth was divided into its present proportions, previously to which there were direct communications by land over the whole extent of the globe, either on the Atlantic or the Pacific side of the American continent could have reached those shores without any obstacle intervening of an ocean to be crossed over.

The first of these theories may scarcely be thought requiring an answer, though it may receive one as involved in that which the second certainly has reason to claim. To this second theory, then, of the American continent having been, at some early period, joined to the other continents by lands, over which animals as well as men had originally passed, it is alone that I direct a reply. That the world has been, at different periods, subjected to convulsions of sufficient extent to break up any connecting lands that might have formerly existed between Europe and America, or America and Asia, is indubitable from what we have recorded in history, as well as from geological deductions. With the exception, however, of Plato's myth respecting the island Atlantis — on which, notwithstanding the authorities that may be cited in its favour, I do not think any reliance can be