Aboriginal Races of America [pp. 59-92]

Aborignal Races of America.
alone, to form their own languages, is it not presumable that
there would be much more similarity in the languages of the
people of one continent to those of each other, than to those
of races possessing the most opposite anatomical and moral
characters? Whether the supposition be true or false, all
the languages which, in their infant state, came together
would necessarily be fused into one heterogeneous mass.
Let us illustrate this point a little farther. Suppose that
five thousand years ago, a country existed as large as Europe,
covered by a virgin forest, and that the Creator had scattered over it tribes, bearing the type of the old Teutonic
stock-each of which would commence at once forming a
language-what would be the result in our day, after five
thousand years of migrations, wars, amalgamations, etc.?
Can any one doubt that these languages would be fused into
one whole, quite as homogeneous as those of the Aborigines of America? When we reflect that there is every reason to believe that this continent has been inhabited far more
than five thousand years, the case becomes a much stronger
one. Niebuhr, in one of his letters, given in Bunsen's Life
of him, expresses views very similar to these.*
Wiseman approaches the subject from a different point of
*11 These great national races have never sprung from the growth of
a single family into a nation, but always from the association of several families
of human beings, raised above their fellow animals by the nature of their wants,
and the gradual invention of a language, each of which families probably had
originally formed a language peculiar to itself. This last idea belongs to Reinhold. By this I explain the immense variety of languages among the North
American Indians, which it is absolutely impossible to refer to any common
source, but which, in some cases, have resolved themselves into one language, as in
Mexico and Peru, for instance; and also the number of synonyms in the earliest
periods of languages. On this account, I maintain that we must make a very
cautious use of differences of languages as applied to the theory of races, and
have more regard to physical conformation, which latter is exactly the same, for
instance, in most of the Indian tribes of North America. I believe, farther, that
the origin of the human race is not connected with any given place, but is to be
sought everywhere over the face of the earth; and that it is an idea more worthy
of the power and wisdom of the Creator, to assume that he gave to each zone
and each climate its proper inhabitants, to whom that zone and climate would
be most suitable, than to. sume that the human species has degenerated in such
inn able instes."-IAfe and Letters of Bartheld George Niebuhr, etc., p.
a; b'ahe Bas, etc. New York, 1862.
1853.1