extreme south, may be regarded as a mark of Mongolian ancestry (atavism). Although they are not essential marks of all the nations of Northern Asia, they occur only in the Mongolian race, for Fritsch has now satisfactorily proved that they do not occur in Hottentots, and that their limited local appearance in Australia may be attributed to a mixture of Malay blood.24 In only one physical character some American tribes differ from the Asiatic Mongols. A small snub nose with a low bridge is typical in the latter; whereas in the hunting tribes of the United States, and especially among the chiefs, we meet with high noses. It is known, moreover, that the Mexicans and other civilized nations of Central America, represented the faces of their gods with very prominent noses, so that some few individuals among these also must have had this marked feature. This deviation from the Mongol type occurs in South America even in high latitudes: among the extinct Abipones, as well as among the Patagonians of the present day, the so-called eagle nose was and is no rarity. But a peculiarity which appears only locally, and is not common to all the aborigines of the New World, can not be regarded as characteristic of race. A complete separation of the American from the Asiatic Mongols could only be founded on the internal diversity of the languages. Yet the greatest divisions in the present system have been based on physical characters. We will now inquire whether the type of their languages does not clearly indicate that the Americans, before their immigration into the New World, were in the same stage of development as the Ural-Altaic nations. As we have already seen, the American languages are peculiar in that the structure of the sentence is merged in the form of the word, on which account they have been called polysynthetic. If this is true, it has been a great mistake to attribute an entirely isolated position to the Innuit language. Like the Ural-Altaic languages, it employs suffixes only for the definition of meaning, but it is also capable of forming a complex sentence in a single word; in other words, it is polysynthetic. The Greenlander uses a single word to express the idea, 24 See above, p. 322. "he says that you, also, are going in haste to buy a beautiful knife.” 25 But it is most important to recollect that this loose combination of roots is not genuine incorporation, for in the American languages the connected syllables are always curtailed of some sounds. Steinthal, as we have seen, 26 says that the fullest development of incorporation is in the Mexican Nahuatl language, which places the object between the subject and the verb, and resolves all the three into one whole. But this method is not quite peculiar to American languages, for it occurs also in the Ural-Altaic family, in the Ugrian and Bulgarian groups, in the Magyar, Ostiak, Vogul, and Mordvin languages. In the last of these, and also in the Moksha dialect, the inflected words and objective personal pronouns are closely interwoven in the Mexican manner.27 This fact shows us that, in the midst of strictly suffix languages, some adopted incorporation : we here see the internal relationship of the American and the Ural-Altaic languages. There are many inventions, customs, and myths common to Northern Asiatics and the natives of America. We need not attach much weight to the fact that the leathern tent occurs on both continents, for no great thought was required in its invention. The resemblance in all points of the Siberian Shaman to the North American medicine-man is of less importance, from the fact that the Shamans of other quarters of the world correspond as closely. It is more significant that the war dances and Shamanistic customs of the Ostiaks are repeated in a minutely identical form by the Kolushes. 28 Many of the legends of the Old World have reached the New. The story of an adventurer who climbs up to heaven by a high tree, and then lets himself down again, either by a leathern strap, by a wisp of straw, or by tresses of hair, and sometimes by the column of smoke from a hut, is told by the Ugrian tribes, 29 and by the Athabaskan Dogrib Indians of the extreme north of 25 Knife beautiful to buy go haste will likewise thou also he says. sauig- ik- sini- ariartok- asuar- omar- y- otit- tog- og. 26 See above, p. 124. 27 In Moksha palasamak means, thou kissest me, and palaftärämak, if thou wouldst not have kissed me. Ahlquist, Mokscha-mordwinische Grammatik, p. 60. Petersburg, 1868. 28 Adolf Erman, Reise um die Erde, vol. i. p. 675. 29 Ahlquist, p. 109. Legends and Superstitions. 407 America.30 Legends, however, float like winged seeds over wide regions, and are therefore of little weight as evidence of common descent; still they indicate an ancient intercourse. It is far less likely that superstitious ideas should have been thus interchanged. But the Itelmes of Kamtshatka consider it very sinful to take up a burning stick otherwise than with the fingers, as, for instance, with the point of a knife;31 and in the same manner it is forbidden to the Sioux or, more properly, the Dahcotas, to take glowing brands or embers from the fire with an awl or a knife.32 Charlevoix relates that the tribes on Hudson's Bay show great respect to the bear.33 When they have killed one of these animals his head is painted over with great ceremony, and songs of praise are sung in honour of the victim. Throughout Siberia bears are held in respect. The Giliaks on the Amoor,34 the Aino,35 the Yenesei Ostiaks, 36 and lastly, the true Ostiaks, have the same feeling; these last hang the skin of the animal on a tree, pay it homage in every way, and beg the animal's pardon for having killed it. They also swear by the bear.37 It may be suggested that this similarity of habit is also due to intercourse at some past period, but if so, it is very suspicious that useful inventions, such as the manufacture of earthenware, were not also diffused by this intercourse; but, when first visited by Europeans, the Itelmes of Kamtshatka, the Aleutians, the Kolushes, and in part the Assiniboins, cooked only by means of stones. 38 It has never been disputed that, according to their physical characters, the peoples of America belong to a single race, but there are also many mental features common to the inhabitants of both parts of the continent. The similarity of the North American 30 Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 443. 31 Steller, Kamtschatka, p. 274. 32 Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 354. 33 Nouvelle France, vol. iii. p. 300. 34 Petermann's Geogr. Mittheilungen, p. 305. 1857. 35 Watson in Nature, April 2, 1872, p. 424. 36 Castrèn, Ethnologische Vorlesungen, p. 88. 37 Pallas, Voyages; Erman (Reise um die Erde) records precisely the same, vol. i. p. 670. 38 See above, p. 167. medicine-man and the Shaman of Brazil has already been mentioned.39 The remarkable masquerades witnessed by Spix and Martius, and more recently by Bates, among the Tecuna tribes on the Amazon,4° we have already found among the Kolushes ; 41 they recur again among the Aht of Vancouver's Island,42 and the Moqui Indians of the " seven villages."43 Sexual excesses of the most detestable description, namely, those associated with the appearance of man in female attire, were observed by Herr von Martius among the Guaycuru in the states of La Plata,44 by the first Spanish discoverers among the people of the Isthmus of Darien, 45 and by Cabeça di Vaca 46 among the tribes in Louisiana and Texas, and vices of the same nature are prevalent among all the Behring's nations, even among the Tshuktshi on the frozen ocean of Siberia.47 Men in women's clothes occur among the hunting tribes of the United States, and, strangely enough, among the old Illinois, who, according to their own traditions, migrated to their present dwelling-place from the west.48 Among the peculiarities of the Red Indians are the customary modes in which nations address one another, as, for instance, the title of grandfather which the Delawares have secured to themselves by compact; and the Iroquois in the same way imposed upon the subjugated Hurons the condition that they should in future always be addressed as younger brothers.49 The same custom occurs in Brazil, where the tribes address one another as grandfathers or uncles. In the legends of the Mexicans and the inhabitants of the Antilles, living beings are supposed to have first proceeded 39 See above, p. 263. 40 Martius, Ethnographie, vol. i. p. 445. Bates, Naturalist on the Amazon, p. 409. 41 See above, p. 400. 42 Whymper, Alaska, p. 58. 43 Waitz, Anthropologie, vol. iv. p. 208. 44 Ethnographie, vol. i. p. 75. 45 Gomara, Hist. de las Indias, cap. 68. Petrus Martyr, De orb novo, Dec. iii. cap. I. 46 Ramusio, Navigationi e Viaggi, vol. iii. p. 270. 47 See above, p. 397, note 35, and p. 399. 48 Charlevoix, Nouvelle France, vol. iii. p. 303. 49 Waitz, Anthropologie, vol. iii. p. 22. el Extent of the New World. 409 from caves, and caves play a similar part in the legends of creation current among the Tehueltecs.50 These examples would suffice to prove a mental relationship between the inhabitants of the two continents, but in addition to this the resemblance in the structure of the languages indicates a common derivation. Let us now cast a glance over the regions inhabited by Americans. The fact that the people of the Old World had attained a much greater control over nature than had the denizens of the New, has always been ascribed to the obviously superior form, and to the division of labour of the West. Yet this advantage was confined to two districts only of the New World, namely, Europe with the Asiatic and African shores of the Mediterranean, and the south-east portion, where Asia and Australia are brought nearer to each other by peninsulas and chains of islands; though this portion has never been especially favourably distinguished by its civilization. It may here be questioned whether on the whole the New World does not appear more propitiously organized than the Old. In graceful outline and slender form the land of the so-called western hemisphere is far more pleasing to the eye than the somewhat cumbrous masses of the Old World. But even if the upright form and apt arrangement of Europe be considered sufficient to account for the superiority of occidental civilization over any civilization to be found in America in the year 1492, this explanation does not meet the fact that China is capable of a civilization almost equally superior, though there the advantages of an advantageous arrangement of the land either did not exist or came into play only when the culture of that country had long been superior to any civilization in Anahuac, or in the empire of the Incas of Peru. The various districts of the Old World must have other advantages in common, by which the education of mankind is far more powerfully promoted than has been the case in the two Americas. It is strange that as yet no one has looked for and discovered the cause of the superiority just where it lies most obviously before us, namely, in the greater extent. Asia alone is rather larger than the New World, and as Europe and Africa together are 50 Musters, p. 99. |