As I have remarked elsewhere, it is not impossible that stray ships of many nations have at various times and in various places been cast upon the American coast, or even that adventurous spirits, who were familiar with the old-time stories of a western land, may have designedly sailed westward until they reached America, and have never returned to tell the tale. The result of such desultory visits would be exactly what has been noticed, but erroneously attributed to immigration en masse. The strangers, were their lives spared, would settle among the people, and impart their ideas and knowledge to them. This knowledge would not take any very definite shape or have any very decided effect, for the reason that the sailors and adventurers who would be likely to land in America under such circumstances, would not be thoroughly versed in the arts or sciences; still they would know many things that were unknown to their captors, or hosts, and would doubtless be able to suggest many improvements. This, then, would account for many Old World ideas and customs that have been detected here and there in America, while at the same time the difficulty which arises from the fact that the resemblances, though striking, are yet very few, would be satisfactorily avoided. The foreigners, if adopted by the people they fell among, would of course marry women of the country and beget children, but it cannot be expected that the physical peculiarities so transmitted would be perceptible after a generation or two of re-marrying with the aboriginal stock. At the same time I think it just as probable that the analogies referred to are mere coincidences, such as might be found among any civilized or semi-civilized people of the earth. It may be argued that the various American tribes and nations differ so materially from each other as to render it extremely improbable that they are derived from one original stock, but, however this may be, the difference can scarcely be greater than that which apparently exists between many of the Aryan branches.262
Hence it is many not unreasonably assume that the Americans are autochthones until there is some good ground given for believing them to be of exotic origin.263 To express belief, however, in a theory incapable of proof appears to me idle. Indeed, such belief is not belief; it is merely acquiescing in or accepting a hypothesis or tradition until the contrary is proved. No one at the present day can tell the origin of the Americans; they may have come from any one, or from all the hypothetical sources enumerated in the foregoing pages, and here the question must rest until we have more light upon the subject.
CHAPTER II.
INTRODUCTORY TO ABORIGINAL HISTORY
Origin and Earliest History of the Americans Unrecorded – The Dark Sea of Antiquity – Boundary between Myth and History – Primitive Annals of America compared with those of the Old World – Authorities and Historical Material – Traditional Annals and their Value – Hieroglyphic Records of the Mayas and Nahuas – Spanish Writers – The Conquerors – The Missionaries – The Historians – Converted Native Chroniclers – Secondary Authorities – Ethnology – Arts, Institutions, and Beliefs – Languages – Material Monuments of Antiquity – Use of Authorities and Method of Treating the Subject.
The preceding résumé shows pretty conclusively that the American peoples and the American civilizations, if not indigenous to the New World, were introduced from the Old at a period long preceding any to which we are carried by the traditional or monumental annals of either continent. We have found no evidence of any populating or civilizing migration across the ocean from east or west, north or south, within historic times. Nothing approaching identity has been discovered between any two nations separated by the Atlantic or Pacific. No positive record appears even of communication between America and the Old World, – intentionally by commercial, exploring, or warlike expeditions, or accidentally by shipwreck, – previous to the voyages of the Northmen in the tenth century; yet that such communication did take place in many instances and at different periods is extremely probable. The numerous trans-oceanic analogies, more or less clearly defined, which are observed, may have resulted partially from this communication, although they do not of themselves necessarily imply such an agency. If scientific research shall in the future decide that all mankind descended from one original pair, that the centre of population was in Asia rather than in America, and that all civilization originated with one Old World branch of the human family – and these are all yet open questions – then there will be no great difficulty in accounting for the transfer of both population and culture; in fact the means of intercontinental intercourse are so numerous and practicable that it will perhaps be impossible to decide on the particular route or routes by which the transfer was effected. If, on the other hand, a contrary decision be reached on the above questions, the phenomena of American civilization and savagism will be even more easily accounted for.
Regarding North America then, at the most remote epoch reached by tradition, as already peopled for perhaps hundreds of centuries, I propose in the remaining pages of this volume to record all that is known of aboriginal history down to the period when the native races were found by Europeans living under the institutions and practicing the arts that have been described in the preceding volumes of this work. Comparatively little is known or can ever be known of that history. The sixteenth century is a bluff coast line bounding the dark unnavigable sea of American antiquity. At a very few points along the long line headlands project slightly into the waters, affording a tolerably sure footing for a time, but terminating for the most part in dangerous reefs and quicksands over which the adventurous antiquarian may pass with much risk still farther from the firm land of written record, and gaze at flickering mythical lights attached to buoys beyond. As a rule, nothing whatever is known respecting the history of savage tribes until they come in contact with nations of a higher degree of culture possessing some system of written record. Respecting the past of the Wild Tribes by whom most of our territory was inhabited, we have only a few childish fables of creation, the adventures of some bird or beast divinity, of a flood or some other natural convulsion, a victory or a defeat which may have occurred one or a hundred generations ago. These fables lack chronology, and have no definite historical signification which can be made available. The Civilized Nations, however, had recorded annals not altogether mythical. The Nahua annals reach back chronologically, although not uninterruptedly to about the sixth century of our era; the Maya record is somewhat less extensive in an unbroken line; but both extend more or less vaguely and mythically to the beginning of the Christian era, perhaps much farther. Myths are mingled in great abundance with historical traditions throughout the whole aboriginal period, and it is often utterly impossible to distinguish between them, or to fix the boundary line beyond which the element of history is absolutely wanting. The primitive aboriginal life, not only in America but throughout the world, is wrapped in mystery. The clear light of history fades gradually, as we recede from the present age, into an ever-deepening shadow, which, beyond a varying indefinable point, a border-land of myth and fable, merges into the black night of antiquity. The investigations of modern science move back but slowly this bound between the past and present, and while the results in the aggregate are immense, in shedding new light on portions of the world's annals, progress toward the ultimate end is almost inappreciable. If the human mind shall ever penetrate the mystery, it will be one of its last and most glorious triumphs. America does not differ so much as would at first thought appear from the so-called Old World in respect to the obscurity that shrouds her early history, if both are viewed from a corresponding stand-point – in America the Spanish Conquest in the sixteenth century, in the eastern continent a remote period when history first began to be recorded in languages still in use. Or if we attach greater importance to Biblical than to other traditions, still America should be compared, not with the nations whose history is traced in the Hebrew record, but with the distant extremities of Asia, Europe, and Africa, on whose history the Bible throws no light, save the statement that they were peopled from a common centre, in which populating movement America has equal claims to be included. To all whose investigations are a search for truth, darkness covers the origin of the American peoples, and their primitive history, save for a few centuries preceding the Conquest. The darkness is lighted up here and there by dim rays of conjecture, which only become fixed lights of fact in the eyes of antiquarians whose lively imagination enables them to see best in the