The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 5, Primitive History The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 5
PREFACE TO VOLUME V
This volume concludes the Native Races of the Pacific States. During the year in which it has been going through the press, I have received letters of encouragement from the most eminent scholars of Europe and America, and flattering commendations from learned societies. None but an author can know the value of such cheering words. This, my first attempt, was made in a new field; the scope of the work was very extensive; the system and machinery by which alone it could be accomplished were untried; and the subject was not one of great popular interest. It was not, therefore, without misgivings that I sent it forth.
That the work had been so planned as to embody practically all information extant on what I had come to regard as an important subject, and that the plan had been faithfully executed, I thoroughly believed. But that others would, to any great extent, share my opinion; that the subject would interest so many classes of readers; that mine would be so quickly and cordially recognized by men of science and letters throughout the world as a work worth doing and well done; and that it would be at once accorded a place in literature, I had not dared to hope. The leading journals of England, France, Germany, and the United States, have deemed the volumes as issued worthy of extended reviews; and criticism for the most part has been liberal, and just – save a tendency to what might seem, to a mind less prejudiced than mine, extravagant praise. Minor defects have been fairly pointed out; and in the few instances where fault has been found, either with the plan or its execution, one critic condemns what another approves, so that I am led to believe no serious error of judgment has been committed.
I cannot here make proper acknowledgments to all to whom they are due; but let those who have manifested their kind good-will, and those who have not, so long as they feel it, accept my grateful thanks.
San Francisco, November, 1875.
CHAPTER I.
ON THE ORIGIN OF THE AMERICANS
Spirit of Inquiry in the Middle Ages – Unity of Origin – Flood Myths – Aboriginal Traditions of Origin – Culture-Heroes – China – Japan – Hindostan – Tartary – The Egyptian Theory – The Phœnicians – Votan's Travels – The Carthaginians – The Hebrew Theory – The Mormon Story – The Visits of the Scandinavians – Celtic Origin – The Welsh – Scotch – Irish – The 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 looked as if 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 had been almost exclusively the property of the Church, and although from its fold many able writers and profound thinkers had been evolved, yet the teachings of science and the speculations of philosophy were ever held subordinate to the holy scriptures. Now and then it is true some gleams of important truth would flash up in the writings of some philosopher disconnected with the religious orders illuminating the path of intellectual progress, but such writings seldom made any permanent impress upon the literature of the age. It is to the priesthood almost exclusively we have to look for any advancement for many centuries in literature, science, and art. 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.1 Any assertion that seemed to clash with preconceived notions of the teachings of holy writ or the writings of the fathers was looked upon with doubt and disfavor. Indeed the bible was regarded as the all-sufficient manual of science, containing all that was necessary to be known, and to inquire further was thought to be prying into the secret things of the most high.2 The learning of the masses consisted not in the acquisition of knowledge, but in the blind and meaningless repetition of prescribed maxims, in forms of rhetoric, in anything except that which would enlighten the mind and impart true wisdom; it was, in short, a systematic course of leading men as far as possible away from the known, and leaving them lost and bewildered in a labyrinth of uncertainty and doubt.3
When, therefore, the questions arose, whence were these new lands peopled? how came these strange animals and plants to exist on a continent cut off by vast oceans from the rest of the world? the wise men of the time unhesitatingly turned to the sacred scriptures for an answer. These left them no course but to believe that all mankind were descended from one pair. This was a premise that must by no means be disputed. The original home of the first pair was generally supposed to have been situated in Asia Minor; the ancestors of the people found in the New World must consequently have originally come from the Old World, though at what time and by what route was an open question, an answer to which was diligently sought for both in the sacred prophecies and in the historical writings of antiquity.4
But if the more modern writers on this subject have been less hampered by unanswerable and impassable dogmas; if they have been able to believe that there may be some difficult questions upon which the Bible throws no light; if they have felt themselves free to discuss, without impiety, the possibility of all mankind not having sprung from one pair, their theories are scarcely less wild, their reasoning is but little sounder, their tendency to establish maxims by which any given problem may be solved is no more satisfactory.
Theories in themselves are good things, for they lead us to facts; it is often through the doubtful or the false that we attain the truth; as Darwin says: "False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often long endure; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, as every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed, and the truth is often at the same time opened."5 But the value of inquiry depends much upon the spirit in which it is made, and therefore it is that the manner in which most of the writers who have speculated on the origin of the Americans have conducted their researches, is greatly to be deplored. Their work does not impress one as being a steadfast striving to develop unstable postulates into proven facts, but rather as a reckless rushing, regardless of all obstacles, to a preconceived conclusion. They do not offer a theory as a suggestion of what might possibly be, but as a demonstration founded upon an unassailable basis. Each imagines that he has hit upon the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; he asserts that the Aztecs were of Hebrew descent – that is settled; to prove this he clutches at the lightest straws in the way of analogies, and if the facts obstinately refuse to fit his theory, then —tant pis pour les faits– he warps them till they do fit.
But analogies, even when fairly drawn, are by no means conclusive evidence. So much depends upon the environment of a people, that a similarity in that particular is of itself sufficient to account for most of the resemblances which have been discovered between the customs, religion, and traditions of the Americans, and those of Old World nations.6
For my own part I have no theory upon the subject – would have no theory. The problem of the origin of the American aborigines is, in my opinion, enveloped in as much