Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/112

92 fails to give us positive knowledge about the origin of the red man and his relation to the other races of human beings on the other continents. Lack of knowledge stimulates guessing and theorizing: for these the range is as free as ever. The theories are so varied and conflicting that one becomes confused and wearied with them to such a degree as to be impatient of rehearsing them. The favorite view of the Protestants, especially of our Puritan ancestors — in their love of the old Hebrew Scriptures — was that the Indians were the descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel, whom, Cotton Mather suggested, Satan might have inveigled hither to get them away from the tinkle of the gospel bells. It was under the prompting of this idea, which was largely and learnedly argued, that the Puritans quickened their zeal to reclaim and convert the savages. Many ingenious attempts have been made to trace among the Indians usages and institutions akin to those of the Mosaic law. The French Jesuit missionaries, not being especially partial to the Old Testament, did not lay stress on this motive for converting the savages. Roger Williams in his day could write, “From Adam and Noah that they spring, it is granted on all hands.” But all do not grant that now. So free and wild has been the guessing on the origin and kinship of the Indian race, that resemblances have been alleged to exist, in their crania and features, with the Tartars, the Celts, the Chinese, Australasians, Romans, and Carthaginians. This is truly a large range for aliases and an alibi. There is somewhat of the grotesque in the aspect of a European intruder, of another stock, coming from across the sea, meeting the native red men, regarding them as an impertinence or an anomaly, and putting the question, “Who are you? Where did you come from?” The Indian rightly thought that it was for him to put and for the white man to answer the query. The Indian regards himself as a perfectly natural person where he is and as he is; a product and a possessor, not a