Aboriginal Races of America [pp. 59-92]

72 Aboriginal Races of America. LJuly,
yars 1,000 in Hungary, the Parsees as mnany ages in India,
the Basques or Iberians in France and Spain, for more than
3,000, without material change; and if the Anglo-Saxons
and Spaniards have lived through ten generations in America without approximating the Aboriginal type of the country, it is a reasonable inference that the intellectual and
physical differences of the Toltecan and barbarous tribes,
are not attributable to secondary causes, either moral or
physical.
Mr. Squier makes the following remarks:
"The casual resemblance of certain words, in the languages of America, and those of the Old World, cannot be taken as evidences of
a common origin. Such coincidences may be easily accounted for as
the result of accident, or at most, of local infusions, which were without any extended effect. The entire number of common words is said
-to be one hundred and eighty-seven; of these, one hundred and four
coincide with words found in the languages of Asia and Australia, forty-three with those of Europe, and forty with those of Africa. It can
hardly be supposed that these facts are sufficient to prove a connection
between the four hundred dialects of America, and the various languages of the other continent. It is not in accidental coincidences of
sound or meaning, but in a comparison of the general structure and
character of the American languages with those of other countries, that
we can expect to find similitudes at all conclusive, or worthy of remark,
in determining the question of a common origin. And it is precisely
in these respects that we discover the strongest evidences of the essen-.
tial peculiarities of the American languages; here they coincide with
each other, and here exhibit the most striking contrasts with all the
others of the globe. The diversities which have sprung up, and which
have resulted in so many dialectical modifications, as shown in the numberless vocabularies, furnish a wide field for investigation. Mr. Gallatin draws a conclusion firom the circumstance, which is quite as fatal to
the popular hypothesis, respecting the origin of the Indians, as the more
sweeping conclusion of Dr. Morton. It is the length of time which
this prodigious subdivision of languages in America must have required,
making every allowance for the greater changes to which unwritten languages are liable, and for the necessary breaking up of nations, in a
hunter state, into separate communities. For these changes and modifications, Mr. Gallatin claims, we must have the very longest time