USA > New York > History of the state of New-York : including its aboriginal and colonial annals, vol. pt 1 > Part 6
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" Cov. C. in MS. view of this question, with which he has favoured us,
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Origin of the Aborigines and ancient Ruins. [PART f.
one place divided by a strait, and where the distance enlarges, access can be easily had by intervening islands. Grotius says, that the Peruvians were a Chinese colony, that the Spaniards found at the entry of the Pacific Ocean, after coming through the straits of Magellan, the wrecks of Chinese vessels. Captain Shaler, our intelligent consul-general at Algiers, is well assured that a Chinese junk was wrecked on the north-west coast of America ; some of the money of that country was found on board. Forster supposes that the fair South Sea race came from the Malays, and the blacks from the Moluccas.
It is mentioned in the General History of the Canaries, that in 1770, a small vessel laden with corn, and bound from Lancerotte to Santa Cruz, in Teneriffe, was driven to sea while none of the crew were on board. The motion of the waters from east to west, carried it to America, where it went on shore at La Guaira, near Caraccas. .
In 1682 and 1684, American savages, of the race of the Esquimaux, were driven out to sea in their leather canoes during a storm, and, left to the guidance of the currents, reached the Orcades. Pliny says, that certain Indians were driven by tempests on the coast of Germany, and presented 10 Quintus Metellus, by the King of the Suevi. Thirty persons, (according to Lettres edifiantes et curieuses ecrites des Missions etrangeres, tom. 15.) of both sexes in two canoes, arrived in the isle of Samal, one of the Philippines who had been driven by storms from an island three hundred leagues distant, and had been at sea seventy days. Captain Cook in his last voyage, found in the island of Walevo, two hundred leagues distant from the Society Islands, some of the natives who had been driven thither by a storm, in a canoe. Tupaya, an Otabeitan, had, according to Captain Cook, sailed four hundred leagues from home, or about twenty degrees of longitude. Captain Porter states, that the Mar- quesas frequently sail out in their boats on a venture, without knowing the destination.
When a mutiny took place on board of the ship Bounty.
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Transit of the first people.
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Lieut. Bligh commander, he and eighteen men were put into an open boat on the 28th of April, 1788, and on the 29th of May, arrived at New-Holland, distant nearly four thousand miles. But the Quarterly Review (No. 52,) mentions an occurrence still more extraordinary. "A native of Ulea, one of the numerous islets forming the great group of the Carolinas, was, with three companions, driven by a violent storm out of their course, and drifted about in the open sea eight months. Being expert fishermen, they lived on the produce of the sea, and when the rain fell, laid in fresh water. One of them being an expert diver, got water in a cocoa-nut shell from the bottom of the sea where it is not salt."
These facts show how the different races of men may have been spread over the globe, and indicate that America has derived its population from different sources in different ways, and at different times ; by long voyages, and by short excursions, by tempests, by voyages of commerce and dis- covery, and by the other various causes which govern the conduct, and affect the destiny of man."
In further coincidence with this opinion of a Scythian or 'Tartarian origin, and that the several quarters of the globe have contributed to people this continent in various ways, and at different times ; we might superadd other writers, distinguish- ed for their learning and research. America, according to one of them,* was inhabited before the deluge .; After this event, men and animals penetrated into the country by sea and land, through accident and design. The Scythians from the north were the first founders ; the Phoenicians and Cartha- ginians followed next across the Atlantic ; and the Chinese, the Pacific ; people of other nations succeeded, or were dri- ven hither by tempest. Some Jews and Christians by like means, might have been brought hither. Another migration of the Phoenicians is supposed by this writer to have taken
* Georgi Horni de Originibus Americanis, 1652. (Printed at Hague.)
¡ The tradition of the deluge is prevalent among some of the Indian na- tous ; remarkably so among the Caddos. See note. ET
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Origin of the Aborigines and ancient Ruins. [PART I.
place during the three years' voyage, made by the Tyrian fleet, in the service of king Solomon, and on the authority of Jo- sephus ; he says that the port of its embarkation lay in the Mediterranean. The fleet, he continues, went in quest of elephants' teeth, &c. to the western coast of Africa, that is Tarshish ; then to Ophir* for gold, which is Haïti, or the Island of Hispaniola. He superadds migrations since the Christian era.
Caleb Atwater, Esq. whose contributions of facts to the collections of the American Antiquarian Society have been curious and valuable, supposes that the first settlers sprang from one common origin, as carly as the days of Abraham and Lot ; that their improvements were originally rude, such as were common to those early ages ; their progress in arts slow, but apparently improving as they advanced from the north to the south. j The works described in those collecfions are offered as evidence of a race widely different from any now known.j
The hypothesis of an Israelitish origin, or that the Ameri- can Indians are descendants of the long-lost tribes of Israel, has been ably assumed by Adair, § supported by Boudinot,||
* Dr. Robertson (ITist. Am. B. I. p. 8. 12mo.) thinks that Tarshish and Opbir were ports in India or Africa.
f In Archæl. Amer. Vol. I. Sce p. 223, as to the progress in arts, in workmanship of gold, silver, copper, bricks, iron, pottersware.
# Sec Review in Vol. III. (new series) North American Review. p. 225.
$ History of American Indians. Lond. 1775.
| Star in the West, or an attempt to discover the long-lost ten tribes of Israel. Trenton N. J. 1316. This is an improvement upon Adair, as Mr. Boudinot acknowledges. p. 211. See Rob. Ingram's accounts of ten tribes being in America originally, published by R. Manassah Ben Israel. Print- ed Colchester, Eng. 1792. A reverend writer in Vermont has also publish- ed a work on this hypothesis, and is said to be engaged in preparing ano- ther edition. Sce also Campbell on Western Antiquities. Port Folio. June 1816. See the custom (given in Lewis and Clark's Travels, Vol. I. p. 366, 382.) of the Shoshonees uncovering their feet, likened to the Mosaic. Asiatic Researches, Vol. II. p. 76, as to Jews discovered in China, called Afghans. See Jenk's Antiquarian Address.
$ 14.]
Israclitish.
and denied by Jarvis,* on the assumption that there is no affinity between the Indian and Hebrew tongues.
One writer has gone so far as to trace the primogenitors of the American Indians to the descendants of the murderer Cain. His essay is ingenious, and contains a full quotation and explanation of scripture references. He insists, however, upon the former union of the Asiatic and American conti- nents.f
It has been further urged that the progressive movements of the human family were uniformly eastward and northward from the Euphrates. The inhabitants of Asia being the de- scendants of Shem, did not move to the westward in any num- bers. The aborigines, therefore, belonged to a stock of those who moved eastward from the Euphrates, and crossing at Behring Straits, came to our western country from the north-west. Some of the Mexicans declare that their ances- tors came from the north-west. .
At the deluge, arts had arrived to great improvement and refinement. A respectable portion of this knowledge was preserved from the wreck, and communicated by the sons of Noah. From the descendants of Shem, the first settlers of Asia, that is, the Israelites, (or what is synonymous, the ten tribes) we derive the commencement of all that knowledge. - which served to keep the vast continent of Asia from total barbarism. The Israelites carried captive by Salmaneser. in the time of Hoshea, became, in a great measure, incorporat. ed with the neighbouring nations ; and from this source, or in this channel, we deduce many of the customs which prevailed, and continueto prevail in Asia, and which have been frequent- ly recognised among the Tartars, the aborigines of the western country, and the present race of Indians.1
Discourse in No. 3. N. Y. Hist. Collec. and reviewed in Vol. SI V. Am. Rev. p. 103.
¿ In Vol. I. (old) Am. Mag. p. 196. 246, &c.
# Ecc Campbell on the Antiquities of the western part of our country. See Port Folio, June 1316. A. to the migration of the human race after "he deluge. see the translator's preface to D'Anville's Ancient Geography.
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Origin of the Aborigines and ancient Ruins. [PART I.
§ 14.
Mr. Jefferson was of opinion that emigrants might have easily passed from the north-east of Asia, or north-west of Europe into America ; but he considered the red Americans more an- cient than those of Asia, upon the assumption that radical changes of language among the former have taken place in greater numbers, than they have among the latter .*
Some philosophers, considering this continent coexistent with that of Asia, are not more willing to yield to the lat- ter any claim to remote antiquity over the former, than they are to Europe a pretension to physical superiority, so arro- gantly maintained by De Pauw and Buffon, but so ably re- futed by Mr. Jefferson and the Abbé Clavigero.
We heretofore observed that Baron Humboldt (54) was astonished to find in the New World, so called, institutions, religious ideas, and edifices, flourishing in the fifteenth cen- tury, which in Asia indicated the dawn of civilization. Abbé Clavigero (55) thought the first American people descended from different families after the confusion of tongues, and that the language and customs of the Asiatics will in vain be ex- amined for the origin of the people of the New World. It is his belief that there has been an equinoctial union of America and Africa, as well as a former connexion at the north with Asia and Europe.
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Siguenza (whose opinion was adopted by Bishop Huet) supposed that the Mexicans belonged to the posterity of Naphtuhim, and that their ancestors left Egypt not long after the confusion of tongues, and travelled towards America. This is a conjecture which Abbé Clavigero considers well sup- ported, but not sufficiently sustained to be pronounced a truth.
* Notes on Virginia. See Dr. Jarvis' Discourse, note C. in Vol. III. 5. Y. Hist. Coll. p. 927 -- 928.
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$ 15.] Romans -- Africans-Voian.
The ruins of an ancient city near Palenque, in the province of Chiapa, and kingdom of Guatemala, in Spanish America, are described as exhibiting the remains of magnificent edifices, temples, towers, aqueducts, statues, hieroglyphics, and un- known characters. This city (since called the Palencian city) was first discovered by Captain Antonio Del Rio, in 1787. He says in his report, that the town appears to have been se- ven or eight leagues in length, and at least half a league in breadth ; that from a Romish similarity in location, in that of a subterranean stone aqueduct, and from certain figures in Stucco, he thought that an intercourse once existed between the original natives and Romans. The Palencian edifices are of very remote antiquity, having been buried for many ages in the impenetrable thickets covering the mountains, and un- known to the historians of the new world.
Among the few historical American works that escaped the flames of the Spanish conquerors, (who destroyed most of the memorials of the natives) was an ancient narrative, which is said to have fallen into the hands of the bishop of Chiapa, who refers to it in his Diocesan Const tution, printed at Rome 1702. This was the narrative of Votan, which, it is conjec- tured by Doct. Cabrera, of New Guatemala, ; may still be ex- tant. A copy (as Doct. C. believes) of the original, in hiero- glyphics, (taken soon after the conquest) was communicated to him in a memoir from a learned friend.
From an interpretation of this copy of the hieroglyphic nar- rative of Votan, he is made to say, that he conducted seven families from Valum Votan to this continent, and assigned lands to them ; that he is the third of the Votans ; that having determined to travel till he arrived at the root of heaven, in
* See Description of the Ruins of an Ancient City, &c. from the MS. of Don Antonio del Rio, and Teatro Critico Americano, or Critical In vestigation, &c. into the history of the Americans, by Doct. Paul Felix Ca- brera. Lond. 1822.
t Ib. Descrip. of Ruins, &c. Vol .. I.
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74 Origin of the Aborigines and ancient Ruins. [PART I.
order to discover his relations, the Culebreas,* and make himself known to them, he made four voyages to Chivim; that he arrived in Spain, and went to Rome ; that he saw the great house of God building, &c.
According to Doctor Cabrera's hypothesis, the figures and deities of the Palencian city, and particularly the hierogly- phics, are Egyptian. A maritime communication existed be- tween the American and African continents, in the very remo- test ages of antiquity. The grandfather of Votan was a Hi- vite, originally of Tripoli, in Syria, (of a nation famous for having produced Cadmus) and was the first populator of the New World. That Votan, his grandson, made four voyages to the old continent, and landed at Tripoli. The earliest in- habitants consequently came from the east to America, proceeded from its castern part to the northward, and again descended. At any rate, this, according to Dr. Cabrera, is the solution of the grand historical problem, so far as it re- gards the first peopling of the countries bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, and islands adjacent. He admits, that from various accidents since the introduction of the art of naviga- tion, it is probable that many other families, besides those conducted hither by Votan, may have been conveyed to diffe- rent parts of America and formed settlements.
Among the ruins of the Palencian city, were found several figures and idols. Agreeably to the Doctor's interpretation of these figures, Votan is represented thereon as on both con- tinents, with an historical event, the memory of which he was desirous of transmitting to future ages. His voyages to, and return from, the old continent, are also depicted. One of the idols, bearing a mitre or cap, with bulls' horns, and found in the temple of the city, is the Osiris, and another, the Isis of the Egyptians. These transmarine deities were known also to the Greeks, Romans, and Phoenicians.
How striking are these incidents, compared with those related of Ma- doc! Sce p. 54, and note 33. Are the words Valin Votan, Culebras. C'his im, &c. of Welsh etymology !
Origin of the Aborigines und ancient Ruins. [PART I. .
to have been a fishing vessel. Lacrtius relates nearly the same circumstance. Hornias says, that in very remote ages, three voyages were made to America, the first by the Atlantes, or descendants of Atlas, who gave his name to the ocean, and the islands, Atlantides : this name Plato appears to have learned from the Egyptian priests, the general custodes of antiquity. The second voyage, mentioned by Hornius, is given on the authority of Diodorus Siculas, lib. 5, cap. 19, where he says, the Phoenicians, having passed the columns of Hercules, and impelled by the violence of the winds, abandoned themselves to its fury ; and after experiencing many tempests, were dri- ven upon an island in the Atlantic Ocean, distant many days sail to the westward of the coast of Lybia. This island, upon which were large buildings, had a fertile soil, and navigable rivers. The report of this discovery soon spread among the Carthaginians and Romans, the former being harassed by the wars of the latter, and the people of Mauritania, sent a colony to that island with great secrecy, that, in the event of being overcome by their enemies, they might possess a place of retreat.
But according to Doct. Cabrera, Votan's ancestors must have emigrated prior to this second voyage of the Phoenicians, for the latter found houses, &c. and anterior to the Punic wars.
The other voyage in the Atlantic, spoken of by Calmet, was anterior to the preceding, and is that attributed to Her- cules, who is the supposed author of the Gaditanian columns, and whom Galleo ranks as contemporary with Moses, and chief of the Canaanites, who left Palestine on the invasion of Joshua. The Hivites founded the kingdom of Tyre. Sallust affirms, that the soldiers of Hercules Tyrius, and their wives, spoke the African language. Diodorus asserts, that one Her- cules navigated the whole circuit of the earth, and built the city of Alecta in Septimania. From what Doct. Cabrera considers an irrefragable body of evidence, founded upon the coincidence of the memorials of writers of the old continent,
> 15.]
Votun
In order to sustain his conclusion, the Doctor is forced to enter upon a train of bold conjecture. The speeches of Mon- tezuma, (who has already been claimed as the descendant of Madoc by his advocates) to Cortes, on his submission to the dominion of Charles V. and his address to his chiefs and ca- riques, are supposed to refer to the arrival and departure of Votan.
In the range of his conjectures, while attempting to trace the affinity of Votan's grandfather with the ancient Hivites, their migration to Egypt, and the antiquity of Votan's voy- age, and those of his grandson, the Doctor enters learnedly into ancient mythology, and lays much stress upon the opi- nion of the benedictine Calmet, in his commentary on the Old Testament, and upon Hornius, as cited by Calmet.
. Accordingly, on the ingress of the Hebrews into Palestine, and in consequence of the Hebrew wars, the Canaanites, who were expelled by Joshua and the judges, fled into Egypt, pursued their course to the remotest regions of Africa, having occupied its coasts gradually, as they were oppressed by the Hebrew wars, (though many of the Hivites abandoned their dwellings before Joshua entered Palestine ;) that these colo- nies existed prior to the Trojan war, (the era of which is 240 years after the death of Joshua) because Greeks returning thence, found that every part of the coast of Africa where they landed, had been already peopled by the Phoenicians ; that on this point. Greek and Latin writers agree, according to the testimony of Bochart, in his work entitled Canaan, and of Hornius, on the origin of the people of America, lib. 2, cap. 3, 4, quoted by Calmet. Hence the foundation of the first colony in America, by the grandfather of Votan. Hornius, supported by the authority of Strabo, affirms, as certain, that voyages from Africa and Spain into the Atlantic Ocean, were both frequent and celebrated, adding, from Strabo, that Eu- doxias, sailing from the Arabian gulf to Ethiopia and India, found the prow of a ship that had been wrecked, which, from having the head of a horse carved on it, he knew belonged to a Phrenician bark, and some Gaditani merchants declared it
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Votan.
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with the tradition, as introduced in Montezuma's two discour- ses, that the Mexicans came originally from the cast ; the narrative of Votan; the incidents commemorated by a discovered medal ; the report of Captain Del Rio, and the figures of the ultramarine deities, sketched by him in the temple of the Palencian city, the Doctor concludes, that Hercules Tyrius was the progenitor of Votan, Septimania, beyond a doubt, the island Atlantis, or Hispaniola ; the city of Alecta was Valum Votan, the capital of that island whence Votan embarked his first colony to people the continent of America, and whence he departed for the countries on the old hemisphere.
Votan, the grandson of Hercules, and author of the narra- tive, was the third of his race, and flourished between three and four hundred years before the Christian era. The Ro- mans and Carthaginians derived their first knowledge of America from Votan himself, on his return to the old conti- nent, and his visit to Rome ; and the first Carthaginian colony was sent previous to the first Punic war, and after the inform- ation thus communicated.
This hypothesis is not, it seems, founded upon that of au ancient union of the two continents.
$16.
So formidable, however, have been the interposing difficul- ties, as viewed by the learned, in arriving at any certainty when and whence came the first people of America, and how and when animals first appeared there,* that many suppose, (for instance, Acosta, Grotius, Buffon, and Abbé Clavigero,) that this continent was once connected with the old continents, and by some great convulsion, the communications have been destroyed. There cannot be any doubt that our planet has
* Sec Barton's Views. Recs's New Cyclop.
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Origin of the Aborigines and ancient Ruins. [PART I.
been subject to great vicissitudes since the deluge. Lands over which ships once sailed, are now the seats of cultivation; lands which were formerly cultivated, are now covered by wa- ter. Earthquakes have swallowed some lands, subterrancous fires have thrown up others. Rivers have formed new soil with their mud ; the sca has retreated from shores and length- ened the land ; or advancing, diminished it, or separated terri- tories which were united, and formed new straits and gulfs. Pliny, Seneca, Diodorus, and Strabo, report a great many instances of such vicissitudes. According to them, Spain and Africa were united, and by a violent irruption of the ocean upon the land between the mountains Abyla and Calpe, that communication was broken, and the Mediterranean sea formed. Sicily had been united to the continent with Naples, and Eubea, (the Black sea,) to Bootia. The people of Ceylon have a tra- dition that an irruption of the sea separated their island from the peninsula of India ; so those of Malabar, with respect to the isles of Malvidia; and by the Malayans with respect to Suma- tra. (56) It is certain, says the Count de Buffon, that in Ceylon the earth has lost by the sea thirty or forty leagues, while Ton -. gres, a place of the low countries, has gained thirty leagues of Jand from the sea. The northern part of Egypt owes its exis- tence to the inundation of the Nile. The earth which this river has brought from the inland countries of Africa, and deposited in its inundations, bas formed a soil of more than twenty-five cubits of depth." In like manner, adds the above author, the province of the Yellow river in China, and that of Louisiana, have been formed from the mud of rivers. The peninsula of Yucatan, in America, no doubt was once the bed of the sea. In the channel of the Bahama, indications appear of a former existing union of Cuba with Florida. In the strait which sep- arates America from Asia, are many islands, which probably were the mountains belonging to that tract of land, which we suppose to have been swallowed by earthquakes, a probability
* Ali Bey maintains (in his travels) that the great African desert was once an ocean.
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Union of Continents.
, 161
strengthened by the knowledge we have of the multitude of volcanos in the peninsula of Kamschatka. The sinking of that land, and the separation of the two continents, however, is imagined to have been ocasioned by those great and extraor- dinary earthquakes mentioned in the history of the Americans, which formed an era almost as memorable as that of the de- luge. (57) Abbé Clavigero is pursuaded that there was an ancient union between the equinoctial countries of America and those of Africa, and a united continuation of the north- ern countries of America with those of Europe or Asia; the latter affording a passage for beasts of cold climes, the former for quadrupeds and reptiles peculiar to hot climes. He also believes that there was formerly a great tract of land, which united the now most castern part of Brazil to the most western part of Africa, and that all that space of land may have been sunk by some violent earthquakes, leaving only some traces of it in the isles of Cape de Verd, Fernando de Norona, Ascen- sion, St. Matthew, and others, and the many sand-banks disco- vered by different navigators, and particularly by De Bauche, who sounded that sea with particular care and exactness. 'Those islands and sand-banks may probably have been the highest parts of that sunken continent. It is also the belief of Abbé Clavigero, that the most westerly part of America was formerly united by means of a smaller continent to the most casterly part of Tartary, and perhaps America was united also by Greenland with the northern countries of Europe. Dr. Foster entertained an opinion, which however he afterwards questioned, that Friesland, (larger according to Hakkuet than Ireland) to which the Venetian Zenos in the beginning of the fourteenth century proceeded, and thence adventured at sea for years in the service of Sichmi, the enterprising chief of the island, was situated between Iceland and Greenland, and has since been swallowed by the sea in a great carthquake. Dr. Belknap* coincided in this opinion, and thought the sunken
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