THE dim uncertainty which envelopes the most ancient period of American antiquity, like that which obscures the beginnings of Egyptian, Assyrian and Trojan history, to say nothing of the origin of the venerable Asiatic civilizations, renders much of the effort in this field unsatisfactory. Still the results are of surpassing interest. A new cosmogony, mythology and traditional history full of weird poetic inspiration, an inspiration such as is begotten in contemplating the struggles of nature’s children after a higher development, is added to the fund of human knowledge. The poetry of the Quiché cosmogony must some day find expression in verse of Miltonic grandeur. The fall of Xibalba will no doubt afford the materials for a heroic poem which will stand in the same relation to America that the Iliad does to Greece. The doctrines of the benign and saintly Quetzalcoatl or Cukulcan must be classed among the great faiths of mankind, and their author, alone of all the great teachers of morals except Christ himself, inculcating a positive morality, must be granted a precedence of most of the great teachers of Chinese and Hindoo antiquity. It is the custom of many Europeans to regard America as having no heroic or legendary period, no heroes like Achilles, Æneas, Sigfried, Beowolf, Arthur and the Cid; but who will review the romance of American antiquity and longer entertain this view? A few years ago, writers dated North American history from the discoveries made by Columbus and his immediate successors. Now they go back to the Northmen for a starting-point. May not the beginning be pushed even farther back, and the ancient history of America receive the attention of the historiographer?

The origin of the North American population cannot be positively settled at present, though the probabilities are that new facts will be brought to light establishing the relationship of the ancestors of the Nahuas with some ancient Asiatic race, as the Eskimo have clearly been proven to belong to the Arctic race which encircles the globe near the North pole.[802] We have seen that groups of facts unquestionably point to Northern Asia as the ancient home of a large share of the tribes of North America, civilized and savage. The autochthonic hypothesis which had its first great advocate in Dr. Morton, receives no support from his mistaken argument for the unity of the American race. We think we have shown, as did Prof. Wilson before us, that no such fact as ethnic unity exists in America. Dr. Morton’s own measurements of crania which we have classified, and the recent measurements of mound skulls, disprove the argument which he sought to establish. The autochthonic hypothesis owed much of its popularity to the support which it received from Prof. Agassiz’s doctrine of the separate creations of races of men, a hypothesis which has rapidly lost ground since the decease of its eminent advocate. It is impossible to determine whether the people of the mounds of the United States were preceded in this country by any other people. Certainly they had intercourse with some race having a cranial type quite different from their own, as several low-type skulls taken from the mounds testify. If the rude weapons found in New Jersey are as old as Dr. Abbott supposes[803]—belonging to the inter-glacial age—the question of man’s antiquity on this continent may have to be viewed in a different light from that in which it has hitherto appeared. It is conjectured that this supposed inter-glacial race were the ancestors of the Eskimo of to-day, and retired or were driven to the Arctic regions, where their racial characteristics became permanent. The traditional history of both Mayas and Nahuas seem to indicate an old world origin. The former people clearly claim an origin which, if their traditions are worth anything, must be assigned to some Mediterranean country. While, on the contrary, the Nahuas persistently state that they came from the north or north-west. It is certain that many of their cosmological traditions closely resemble those of Central and Western Asiatic peoples. Why should the traditions of the ancient Americans be less reliable than those of the most ancient Egyptians, Greeks, or Hindoos?[804]

Tradition, language and architectural remains furnish us the data by which to trace the migrations of peoples. In addition to the testimony of tradition, the languages of the Mayas and Quichés present affinities to the west European and African languages; also to the languages of the West Indies and the Antilles. Whether the Quiché traditions concerning their ancient home have reference to the Atlantic coast of the United States is uncertain, though Señor Orozco y Berra believes their ancestors to have migrated from Florida to Cuba and thence to Yucatan. Linguistic and architectural evidences show that the Maya-Quiché family extended its civilization north as far as Panuco, and south as far as Honduras.

The Nahua migrations are more numerous and their accounts somewhat obscure. It is not improbable that while few in number the Nahuas arrived on our north-western coast, where they found a home until they had become a tribe of considerable proportions. Crossing the watershed between the sources of the Columbia and Missouri Rivers, a large portion of the tribe probably found its way to the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, where it laid the foundations of a wide-spread empire, and developed a civilization which reached a respectable degree of advancement.

The remainder of the Nahuas, we think, instead of crossing the Rocky Mountains, migrated southward into Utah, and established a civilization the remains of which are seen in the cliff-dwellings of the San Juan Valley and such extensive ruins as exist at Aztec Springs. It must be conceded that this hypothesis rests on linguistic and traditional evidence, as no affinity between the architecture of the Cliff-dwellers and either the Mexicans or Mound-builders is traceable. We have in a preceding chapter summarized our reasons for considering the Mound-builders to have been Nahuas. The Olmecs, the first Nahuas to reach Mexico, came in ships from the direction of Florida, landed at Panuco, and journeyed southward until they came in contact with the advanced and already old civilization of the Mayas. The Toltecs came into Mexico by land from the North. The Chichimecs, their former neighbors in Hue hue Tlapalan, whether Nahuas or not originally, followed them and adopted their language. The Nahuatlaca tribes, speaking the same language, arrived centuries afterward from the same quarter—the North. Finally the Aztecs, the last of the Nahuas, reached Anáhuac four centuries before the Spanish conquest. Mr. Becker has conjectured that Aztlan (land of whiteness) was the name applied to the southern Mississippi Valley and the region of the Gulf States; that Hue hue Tlapalan (old red land), the ancient empire of the Nahuas, was situated on the great plains of the west and in the region occupied by the Cliff-dwellers and Pueblos, and further, that the “seven caves” or “ravines,” the Tulan Zuiva of the Quichés, is the region of the Colorado River, the land of cañons.

At best these can be but conjectures, yet the probabilities are that Hue hue Tlapalan bordered upon the great Mississippi Valley. Traditional and architectural evidence lead us to this conclusion. The linguistic argument is wanting, except the statement of the historians that the people of the Floridian region spoke Nahua. It remains for some one to compare the Aztec with the languages of the southern Indians before the investigation is complete. While the probability is pre-eminent that the ancient Americans are of old world origin and that the Mayas and Nahuas reached this continent from opposite directions, it is certain that the civilization developed by each people is indigenous—that it grew up on the soil where we find it, and was shaped by the wants of man as influenced and modified by the conditions of nature and physical surroundings. The most persistent investigation has failed to disclose any marked resemblance between the architecture, art, religion and customs of the North Americans considered as a whole and of any old world people. It is true that occasional analogies suggest intercourse and even relationship with particular races, as for instance the serpent and phallus worship common to the aboriginal Americans and the people of India. Sun-worship, so wide-spread, may also indicate an ancient community of residence for those peoples who practise it. The Calendar systems of Mayas and Nahuas present analogies to the systems employed by the Persians, Egyptians and certain Asiatic nations, and the presumption is very strong that the latter furnished the ground-plan upon which the Nahua system was constructed. The accuracy of the Aztec calendar must ever be a monument to their intellectual culture, and an undeniable proof of the advanced state of ancient Mexican civilization. The fact that Cortez found the Julian reckoning, employed by his own and every other European nation, to be more than ten days in error when tried by the Aztec system—a system the almost perfect accuracy of which was proven by the adjustments which took place under Gregory XIII in 1582 A.D.—excites our wonder and admiration. How the Nahuas, whether Toltec or Aztec we know not, were able to approximate the true length of the year within two minutes and nine seconds, thus almost rivalling the accuracy of the learned astronomers of the Caliph Almamon, is a mystery. The venerable civilization of the Mayas, whose forest-grown cities and crumbling temples hold entombed a history of vanished glory, no doubt belongs to the remotest period of North American antiquity. It was old when the Nahuas, then a comparatively rude people, first came in contact with it, adopted many of its features, and engrafted upon it new life. Like Rome, overwhelmed by the Teutons of the North, it no doubt succumbed to the vigorous aggressions of the invaders, and was compelled to resign the dominion of much of its northern territory. The powerful empire of the Quiché-Cakchiquels was the result of the union of the old and new races. The otherwise inviting picture of ancient American civilization is marred by the introduction of human sacrifices which in each instance occurred in the period of the political decadence of the people practising it, and no doubt was the most potent factor in the downfall of both Toltec and Aztec monarchies. Still, when we reflect upon the Druidical horrors of the Britons at the time of the Roman conquest, and realize that our Anglo-Saxon ancestors in the sixth century sold their relatives and even their own children into slavery, and were but slightly removed from the condition of cannibals if they were not actually such, the ancient American civilization with its many humane features and advanced culture rises up in splendor before us, in marked contrast with our barbarous origin. Although this civilization was indigenous and peculiar to itself, we find all of the American tribes possessed of certain arts and traditions which seem common to mankind in all parts of the world. The character of flint weapons and implements are the same among all primitive peoples. The modes of producing fire by friction and of grinding grain differ little, if any, in America, from those employed by ancient peoples elsewhere. The first efforts toward the development of the architectural idea all round the globe, seem to find expression in the rude mound and then in the more perfect pyramid. These and other considerations which have been noted in the preceding pages, lead us to the conclusion that at a remote period, before racial and national characteristics had been well defined, this continent received its population from the old world, at different times and from different quarters.

The uniformity with which the human mind operates in all lands for the accomplishment of certain ends, has in many instances resulted in the independent development of institutions common to several peoples. This fact, together with the probability that occasionally foreigners were cast upon the American shores, will be sufficient to account for many features which have been discovered in Mexican and Central American architecture, art, and religion, presenting analogies with the old world. The fact that civilizations having such analogies are developed in isolated quarters of the globe, separated from each other by broad seas and lofty mountains, and thus indicating a uniformity of mental operation and a unity of mental inspiration, added to the fact that the evidence is of a preponderating character that the American continent received its population from the old world, leads us to the truth that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men.”