Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/115

Rh whether of earlier or later ages, have always been characterized by the same barbarous treatment of their captives. When any tribe was attacked by a more powerful one, or when one party in a state, in the course of civil dissensions or personal animosities, had to succumb to their enemies, the weaker party had no other resource for safety but flight. If the seas were open to them, whatever might be the insufficiency of their means of transport, there was still for them a chance of escape from imminent destruction; and thus the same causes which have often led to the foundation of powerful states, must have often led to colonies of the savage tribes, who ventured themselves from time to time on the Indian and Pacific Oceans, to escape from enemies still more dreadful than the waves. If the small islands in those oceans, often more than a thousand miles apart, were all thus, some time or other, discovered and peopled, as proved by the affinity of languages prevailing throughout those seas, or by the physical characteristics of the inhabitants — as, for instance, Otaheite and New Zealand, which are 2000 miles apart, without any land intervening, and yet, when discovered, were found to have the same language spoken in them — we may well conclude that an immense continent like America, in the course of so many ages, could not fail to have been reached and peopled by the same kindred tribes also. The same events having been in operation for unknown centuries, even if not begun until Asia had become fully populated, there would have been ample time for the peopling of America to the extent it was peopled when discovered by Columbus, as well as for that of the remoter islands of the Pacific. But from the diversity of tribes and languages found in the new continent, allowing for the natural increase of the immigrants in their new abodes, and considering their relative numbers, all very limited even among the most populous nations, according to the most probable computations, it appears to me clear, that no large migration had ever taken place at any one time. On the contrary, they seem to indicate that the American Indians were all descendants of small bands of fugitives, say of tens or twenties, or perhaps, at the utmost, of a few hundreds, who had succeeded in reaching those shores after being exposed to much labour and many dangers in so doing: and though numbers no doubt might and must have perished on the way, yet if only a few couples had succeeded in establishing themselves safely in localities favourable to the preservation of life, they would have been amply sufficient, in the course of, say, only 2000 years, to increase to more than double the numbers at