Aboriginal America

by Jacob Abbott

  We see the same differences spontaneously arising from births in the animal creation. There are black cats and grey cats, and tawny cats and white cats, and yet nobody supposes that these difference are produced by differences of climate, or by any other external cause whatever.

  Important Conclusion

  We conclude from this that even if it were proved that differences of climate and other similar causes are not sufficient to account for the great diversities which prevail among the different races of men, it is very far from being proved, on that account, that these several races must each have had an independent origin. There are other causes, far more deeply seated and more radical and powerful in their action, which may have operated in addition to these, and perhaps in combination with them, to produce the results.

  The Distinction of Race Fixed and Permanent

  The differences which we observe in comparing the different races of men with one another, although we grant that they have resulted either from the operation of secret internal or of known external causes, or both, taking effect upon one single species which descended from one single pair, are still very great, and they are fixed and permanent. By this it is not meant that they are absolutely and perpetually permanent, for it is obvious that the operation of the same causes which produced them may remove or reverse them, but only that they are permanent through any moderate number of successive generations, and not removable by means of any outward influences which man can bring to bear upon them. In other words, as they have not probably been produced by the operation of external causes which are under the control of men, so they cannot be removed by such causes.

  The operation of outward influences, such as those of education and mode of life, will produce great effects; but such causes do not change the real and essential characteristics of the race. The Indian remains an Indian, and the African an African, under all the changes of circumstances to which he can be subjected, and in a a vast majority of cases he approximates toward the characteristics of the Caucasian race only so far as Caucasian blood flows in his veins.

  Objection To This View

  Some persons are very reluctant to admit that any race of men is marked by a fixed and permanent characteristic of inferiority to the others, for fear that this will be made an excuse by unjust and wicked men for treating them oppressively and cruelly; but there surely can be no justification for tyranny in the weakness and helplessness of the object of it. To believe that people of the Indian race, for example, are inferior in intellectual capacity and power to those of European descent, is no reason for believing that it is right to defraud and oppress them by depriving them of their lands or other property without a fair equivalent, or being guilty of any wrong or injustice toward them whatever.

  The Weak Especially Entitled to Protection From the Strong

  Indeed, the contrary of this is true. The weak and the helpless in any community, instead of being rightfully subject to the oppression of the strong, are specially entitled to protection. If the Author of nature, in order to provide for the more efficient and easy performance of some of the subordinate functions of society to which a high state of civilization gives rise, or for the occupation of certain portions of the earth not adapted to a high state of civilization, or which are from any cause temporarily precluded from it, has prepared races of men with faculties and sentiments which adapt them to this work or to those situations--faculties and sentiments which fit them to be the employed rather than the employers, to labor rather than to plan, to endure fatigue rather than assume and bear responsibility--surely all generous minds among the higher races will see in that relation a reason, not for taking advantage of their power to do injustice to those thus placed at their mercy, but rather to use it for their protection. They will feel bound, when engaging in any common operation, as, for example, in employing them to hunt and trap for furs among the lakes and forests of the north country, to take care that while they themselves plan and superintend, and their less capable auxiliaries labor and toil to execute, the anvils of the common industry shall be so divided as to give to their subordinates the fair and proper share, whatever that may be, for the part which they perform. In this way, though themselves in no respect equal to the higher races, they may enjoy equal rights with them, namely, the same protection and the same enjoyment of the fair and proper reward, comparatively small though it be, for the performance of the inferior functions which their capacity enables them to fulfill.

  There is no need, therefore, of maintaining that the Indian is equal to the Caucasian, in order to prevent our having an excuse for oppressing and abusing him. The more inferior and the more helpless he is, the greater is his claim on the higher and nobler race for justice and protection.

  Original Peopling of the Continent

  On the supposition that the American continent was originally peopled by a branch or branches of the human family migrating from the old world, there have been a great many speculations in respect to the time and the manner of their first introduction.

  In the first place, they may have come from the northern part of Europe, by the way of Norway and Iceland, to Greenland, and thence down through Labrador to the lake country, and thus have spread through the whole interior of the continent.

  The supposition that they may have come in this way, or at least that some may have so come, is confirmed by the fact that there is a great resemblance between some of the Indian tribes and the Scandinavian nations, so called, who inhabit the northern parts of Europe and Asia.

  Crossing the Northern Seas

  In respect to the manner in which these supposed emigrants crossed the seas in coming from the north of Europe on one side, or the north of Asia on the other--for the water which separates the new continent from the old is still narrower on the western side than it is on the eastern--several suppositions may be made. They may have been blown off from their own shores by accident. The people in all those regions live a great deal upon the sea. They make boats of a very substantial character, and evince a great deal of skill and courage in navigating them. In fact, they are compelled to acquire great skill and to exercise great courage in these pursuits, for they obtain almost all their living on the ice-floes, or upon the water between them, and thus they are in constant danger of being caught in the ice and carried away. These ice-floes are kept by the winds and currents in a state of constant motion, and are carried by them hundreds of miles over the sea, and a party caught upon one of them might, perhaps, by making a hut of their boat and killing seals and white bears and other animals that frequent them for food, succeed in making quite a long voyage on such an embarkation in safety.

  Traveling Upon the Ice

  Then, again, a whole tribe or congeries of families might undertake to migrate purposely over the ice, to escape from enemies or from famine. They might travel very far on such expeditions, over ice either fixed or moving, with sledges drawn by dogs or reindeer. The Laplanders and the Esquimaux, it is found at the present day, make very long journeys in this way.

  The Pacific Islanders

  Scattered over almost all parts of the Pacific Ocean are groups of islands which are inhabited by races of men that are almost as much at home on the sea as upon the shore. A boat for the water is sometimes an object of even greater necessity to them than a hut for the land; and the magnitude of some of the boats which the islanders that are most advanced in these arts are able to construct and navigate is truly wonderful

  Indeed, these islanders, like the inhabitants of the Arctic regions, have every possible inducement to become seamen, and they enjoy every facility for learning and practicing the nautical art. In the first place, there is no possible communication between the different islands of the same group except by water. Then, moreover, between the different parts of the same island the passage is made much more easily by sea than by land, for the water near the shore is almost always smooth, being protected by coral reefs coming up to the surface at a short distance from the lan
d, while the way through the interior is obstructed by almost impassible thickets, or is made rough and impracticable by volcanic rocks, which the savages have no means of leveling or removing.

  It results from this state or things that these islanders all acquire a great degree of skill in navigating the seas around them. The children take to the water at the earliest age. They find it always warm, and, as they wear no clothing, it is difficult to say which they love best--playing in the surf upon the water, or in the sun upon the shore.

  The children begin their attempts at navigation by means of any floating substance that they can lay their hands upon, almost as soon as they can walk. Shipmasters, who touch at these islands to get fresh provisions for their crews, say that they have known children not more than three years old to swim out to the ship anchored in the offing, having only a cocoa nut, with the husk left on, to buoy themselves up with in the water.

  In some of the islands the native build canoes of great size and of very complicated construction, and capable, some of them, of conveying a considerable supply of provisions. With these they undertake quite extended expeditions, either of war, of commerce, or of migration. Such boats as these must often be driven away from their course, and carried by winds and currents to distant lands. It is undoubtedly in this way that the innumerable islands of the Pacific Ocean have become stocked, and it is not at all improbable that similar migrations may have taken place in former ages to the American shores.

  Currents of the Ocean

  This supposition is rendered still more probable from the fact that it is now ascertained that the ocean is subject to the flow of certain great permanent currents, which have the velocity and the force and the steady continuance of the currents of rivers, only on a much grander scale than any rivers in the world. A large canoe driven out of its course, and containing a good supply of provisions, might be carried a very long distance on one of these ocean streams, even without any assistance from the wind.

  Antiquity of the Aboriginal Population of America,

  The remoteness of the period in which the progenitors of the Indian tribes came to America is shown by the number of distinct Indian language which have been formed, and by the great dissimilarity which exists between these languages and any now known in other parts of the world.

  A language once formed, even though unwritten, is extremely permanent. It is subject to slight modifications and changes, it is true, such as those by which different dialects are formed in different provinces of the same country; but to make a radical change in the form and structure of a language requires a very long course of time. Now, the languages of America are essentially different, not only in the words but in the whole system on which they are founded, from any languages of the old world, and they are also divided into several distinct classes, which are almost totally different from each other.

  This shows that the process of bringing the American languages to their present state has been going on for a very long time and, consequently, that the separation of the races speaking them from the original stock in the old world must have taken place at a very remote period.

  Ancient Nations of North America

  At the time when America was discovered nations were found in the central and southern part of the continent that had attained to quite a high degree of civilization, and many ruins of ancient temples and cities are now from time to time discovered in those countries overgrown with enormous trees, the roots of which are intertwined with the remains of other enormous trees, which show that the structures that they cover must have been in ruins for a great many centuries.

  There are no such ruins of ancient cities in the territory now belonging to the United States, but there are remains of ancient fortifications and mounds, of an extremely curious character, scattered through very extensive regions of the western country, which indicate the existence there in former times of a higher civilization and different modes of life from those manifested by the present race of Indians.

  Durability of Earthworks

  It is a very singular fact that works formed of earth and grassed over are among the most permanent and lasting of all the constructions made by man. The grassy mounds in the country of Nineveh and Babylon have remained without the least apparent change for many centuries. There are also in England old druidical mounds, and rings in the grass called fairy rings, which have been known and described in books from the earliest periods of English history, and they remain now, from century to century, apparently without any change, while hundreds of massive buildings of stone have gone entirely to decay, and the ruins of those that still remain are found to change rapidly, if neglected, from year to year. In the first settled portions of the United States, too, it is not improbable that the oldest structures of which any traces now remain are the beaver dams.

  In fact, any artificial conformation of the surface of the ground, once well covered with greensward, and left undisturbed by the plough, seems to be more enduring than any other work of man.

  The remains of ancient fortifications in the upper part of the valley of the Mississippi are very numerous, and they are on a very extended scale. They are laid out regularly, and denote the existence of considerable towns, or of places of encampments for large bodies of men. In some of them spaces of fifty and a hundred acres are inclosed.

  Ancient Fields

  There are also in certain parts of the prairies marks of ancient corn fields, of every great size, and extending over the country for a hundred and fifty miles. The land in these fields lies in ridges, like those always seen in a corn field that is left, after the corn is harvested, to grass itself over, without being leveled by the plough and harrow. These ridges are so regular, and they are confined so strictly to circumscribed and well defined fields--fields, too, occupying situations exactly suitable for the cultivation of corn--as to leave no room for doubt in respect to the nature of them.

  They are very ancient too, as is proved by the trees often found standing upon them. Some persons, in examining these fields, once caused an oak tree to be cut down which was growing in one of them, and on counting the layers of wood they found that the tree was three hundred and twenty-five years old. This carries the time when the fields were cultivated far beyond the settlement of the country by Europeans; and inasmuch as no Indian tribes have been known, since the coming of Europeans; to cultivate the ground so extensively, it is supposed that these fields denote that in ancient times there existed a more numerous and civilized population over all this region than exists at the present day.

  The Copper Mines

  This opinion is confirmed by certain indications that are observed in the Lake Superior copper region. Ancient mines are found here with traces of former workings that are on a scale fare beyond the capacity of the Indians of the present day.

  Copper is a metal that comes into use in the history of civilization much earlier than iron, for copper is often found in a metallic and malleable condition, in its native state, while iron, being so easily oxidizable, almost always exists in the form of an ore, which it is necessary to reduce by a highly artificial process before the iron can be obtained. To make implements of copper it is only necessary to find masses of native metal of the proper size, such as are often found upon or near the surface of the ground, and then to bring them to the required shape by hammering them with smooth and hard stones, or by grinding them upon rough ones.

  Accordingly, as might naturally be expected, copper implements and ornaments have been, from time immemorial, very much in use among all the Indian tribes. But at the period of the discovery of America, and since that time, the supply of copper for these purposes was obtained almost entirely from specimens found near the surface of the ground. There is no evidence of any systematic or extended workings of the mines within a period of several centuries; but there is abundant evidence that before that time, as is shown by the age of the trees growing over the old excavations, mining operations in this region were carried on upon
a very considerable scale. The miners of the present day frequently come to old trenches, half filled in and grassed over, and with immense trees growing in them, at the bottom of which, when they dig them out anew, they find remains of the ancient works. They come down, when digging in such places, to great masses of copper blocked up on skids of wood which have been preserved from decay by lying all the time in water, with marks of fire upon them, and broken tools lying all around.

  The tools which these old miners used were very curious. The principal one was a sort of hammer made of a smooth and hard stone. The handle of these hammers, instead of passing through the stone, was formed of a withe, and was carried round it in a small groove, which they contrived in some way to pick in the stone. The withe was brought round the stone in this groove while it was green, and the two ends were then twisted together and secured by a cord wound round tight, close to the stone. Then when the withe became dry it formed a very stiff and substantial handle, and the groove prevented it from slipping off the stone.

  Trees have been found growing over ancient works in these mines with five hundred concentric layers of wood in them, proving that the excavations and the works carried on in them were finally abandoned at least five hundred years ago.