THE NATIVE RACES

OF THE

PACIFIC STATES.

PRIMITIVE HISTORY.

CHAPTER I.

ON THE ORIGIN OF THE AMERICANS.

SPIRIT OF INQUIRY IN THE MIDDLE AGES-UNITY OF Origin-FLOCD MYTHS ABORIGINAL TRADITIONS OF ORIGIN-CULTURE-HEROESCHINA-JAPAN-HINDOSTAN-TARTARY-THE EGYPTIAN THEORY -THE PHOENICIANS VOTAN'S TRAVELS-THE CARTHAGINIANSTHE HEBREW THEORY-THE MORMON STORY-THE VISITS of the SCANDINAVIANS-CELTIC ORIGIN-THE WELSH-SCOTCH-IRISHTHE GREEKS AND ROMANS-THE STORY OF ATLANTIS-THE AUTOCHTHONIC THEORY.

When it first became known to Europe that a new continent had been discovered, the wise men, philosophers, and especially the learned ecclesiastics, were sorely perplexed to account for such a discovery. A problem was placed before them, the solution of which was not to be found in the records of the ancients. On the contrary, it seemed that old-time traditions must give way, the infallibility of revealed knowledge must be called in question, even the holy scriptures must be interpreted anew. Another world, upheaved, as it were, from the depths of the Sea of Darkness, was suddenly placed before them. Strange races,

speaking strange tongues, peopled the new land; curious plants covered its surface; animals unknown to science roamed through its immense forests; vast seas separated it from the known world; its boundaries were undefined; its whole character veiled in obscurity. Such was the mystery that, without rule or precedent, they were now required to fathom.

And what were their qualifications to grapple with such a subject? Learning, such as it was, had hitherto been almost the exclusive property of the Church, which vehemently repudiated science as absolutely incompatible with its pretensions; now and then gleams of important truths would flash up in the writings of some heretical philosopher, illuminating for a moment the path of intellectual progress; but such dangerous fires were speedily quenched, and that they might not spring forth again to endanger the religious equilibrium of Christendom, their authors were generally destroyed. The literature of the age consisted for the most part of musty manuscripts emanating from musty minds, utterly devoid of thought and destitute of reason. The universally adopted view of the structure of the universe was geocentric, of the world, anthropocentric. To explain such ordinary phenomena as that of day and night, preposterous schemes were invented, like that of Cosmas Indicopleustes, who asserted that in the northern parts of the flat earth there is an immense mountain, behind which the sun passes and thus produces night. Any assertion to the contrary was heresy meriting death. Independent thought was an iniquity, and almost unknown. Holy writ and the writings of the early Fathers

1 'He affirms (in a work entitled Christian Topography) that, according to the true orthodox system of geography, the earth is a quadrangular plane, extending four hundred days' journey east and west, and exactly half as much north and south; that it is inclosed by mountains, on which the sky rests; that one on the north side, huger than the others, by intercepting the rays of the sun, produces night; and that the plane of the earth is not set exactly horizontally, but with a little inclination from the north: hence the Euphrates, Tigris, and other rivers, running southward, are rapid; but the Nile, having to run up-hill, has necessarily a very slow current.' Draper's Conflict between Religion and Science, p. 65.