The War-chief kills the Monster Rattlesnake

PAGE

272

"He leaned his shoulder against the rock"

276

"With one great step he reached the distant headland” "They arrived at the abode of the Water-god"

280

286

"He emerged in his own country"

294

66

Everything happened as the Man of Wood had predicted '

298

"Once more the Rabbit entered, disguised as a man

302

"He seized hold of the hair"

316

A Fishing Expedition in Shadowland

324

"The mists came down, and with them the Supernatural People"

328

MAP SHOWING THE LINGUISTIC STOcks of the North
AMERICAN INDIANS

361

CHAPTER I: DIVISIONS, CUSTOMS,
AND HISTORY OF THE RACE

The First Indians in Europe

A

LMOST immediately upon the discovery of the
New World its inhabitants became a source of

the greatest interest to all ranks and classes among the people of Europe. That this should have been so is not a little surprising when we remember the ignorance which prevailed regarding the discovery of the new hemisphere, and that in the popular imagination the people of the new-found lands were considered to be inhabitants of those eastern countries which European navigation had striven so long and so fruitlessly to reach. The very name 'Indian bestowed upon the men from the islands of the far western ocean proves the ill-founded nature and falsity of the new conditions which through the discovery of Columbus were imposed upon the science of geography. Why all this intense and vivid interest in the strange beings whom the Genoese commander carried back with him as specimens of the population of the new-found isles? The Spaniards were accustomed to the presence and sight of Orientals. They had for centuries dwelt side by side with a nation of Eastern speech and origin, and the things of the East held little of novelty for them. Is it not possible that the people, by reason of some natural motive difficult of comprehension, did not credit in their hearts the scientific conclusions of the day? Something deeper and more primitive than science was at work in their minds, and some profound human instinct told them that the dusky and befeathered folk they beheld in the triumphal procession of the Discoverer were not the inhabitants of an Orient with which they were more or less familiar, but

erstwhile dwellers in a mystic continent which had been isolated from the rest of mankind for countless centuries.

There are not wanting circumstances which go far to prove that instinct, brushing aside the conclusions of science, felt that it had rightly come upon the truth. The motto on the arms granted to Columbus is eloquent of the popular feeling when it states,

To Castile and Leon

Columbus gave a new world,

and the news was greeted in London with the pronouncement that it seemed "a thing more divine than human"-a conclusion which could scarcely have been arrived at if it was considered that the reaching of the farthest Orient point alone had been achieved.

The primitive and barbarous appearance of the Indians in the train of Columbus deeply impressed the people of Spain. The savage had before this event been merely "a legendary and heraldic animal like the griffin and the phoenix." In the person of the Indian he was presented for the first time to the astonished gaze of a European people, who were quick to distinguish the differences in feature and general appearance between the Red Man and the civilized Oriental-although his resemblance to the Tartar race was insisted upon by some early writers.

Popular interest, instead of abating, grew greater, and with each American discovery the Indian' became the subject of renewed controversy. Works on the origin and customs of the American aborigines, of ponderous erudition but doubtful conclusions, were eagerly perused and discussed. These were not any more extravagant, however, than many theories propounded at a much later date. In the early nineteenth century a school of enthusiastic antiquaries, perhaps the most distin

INDIANS AS JEWS

guished of whom was Lord Kingsborough, determined upon proving the identity of the American aborigines with the lost Ten Tribes of Israel, and brought to bear upon the subject a perfect battery of erudition of the most extraordinary kind. His lordship's great work on the subject, The Antiquities of Mexico, absorbed a fortune of some fifty thousand pounds by its publication. The most absurd philological conclusions were arrived at in the course of these researches, examples of which it would but weary the reader to peruse. Only a shade less ridiculous were the deductions drawn from Indian customs where these bore a certain surface resemblance to Hebrew rite or priestly usage.

•Indians as Jews

As an example of this species of argument it will be sufficient to quote the following passage from a work published in 1879:1

"The Indian high-priest wears a breastplate made of a white conch-shell, and around his head either a wreath of swan feathers, or a long piece of swan skin doubled, so as to show only the snowy feathers on each side. These remind us of the breastplate and mitre of the Jewish high-priest. They have also a magic stone which is transparent, and which the medicinemen consult; it is most jealously guarded, even from their own people, and Adair could never procure one. Is this an imitation of the Urim and Thummim? Again, they have a feast of first-fruits, which they celebrate with songs and dances, repeating 'HaleluHalelu-Haleluiah' with great earnestness and fervour. They dance in three circles round the fire that cooks these fruits on a kind of altar, shouting the praises of

The Migration from Shinar, by Captain G. Palmer (London). 3

Yo-He-Wah (Jehovah ?). These words are only used in their religious festivals."

To what tribe the writer alludes is not manifest from the context.

Welsh-speaking Indians

An ethnological connexion has been traced for the Red Man of North America, with equal parade of erudition, to Phoenicians, Hittites, and South Sea Islanders. But one of the most amusing of these theories is that which attempts to substantiate his blood-relationship with the inhabitants of Wales ! The argument in favour of this theory is so quaint, and is such a capital example of the kind of learning under which American ethnology has groaned for generations, that it may be briefly examined. In the author's Myths of Mexico and Peru (p. 5) a short account is given of the legend of Madoc, son of Owen Gwyneth, a Welsh prince, who quitted his country in disgust at the manner in which his brothers had partitioned their father's territories. Sailing due west with several vessels, he arrived, says Sir Thomas Herbert in his Travels (1634), at the Gulf of Mexico, "not far from Florida," in the year 1170. After settling there he returned to Wales for reinforcements, and once more fared toward the dim West, never to be heard of more. But, says the chronicler, "though the Cambrian issue in the new found world may seeme extinct, the Language to this day used among these Canibals, together with their adoring the crosse, using Beades, Reliques of holy men and some other, noted in them of Acusano and other places, points at our

Madoc's former being there." The Cambrians, continued Sir Thomas, left in their American colony many names of "Birds, Rivers, Rocks, Beasts and the like,