USA > New York > History of the state of New-York : including its aboriginal and colonial annals, vol. pt 1 > Part 8
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Origin of the Aborigines and ancient Ruins. [PART I
contradictory hypotheses upon the peopling of America. Although the probability is, that the Asiatic stock preponder- ates, yet formidable migrations have no doubt, in different ages, been made from the north of Europe. It will appear under the third division of the present part, that the Scadinavi- ans probably visited the north-eastern coasts of this continent, and for a long time contended for supremacy with the natives, whom by way of contempt they denominated, Skrælings. What extent of dominion they acquired, how long they re- mained, or what portion of their countrymen intermixed with the natives, and continued among them after the northern voy- agers had ceased to visit the country, are altogether uncertain. It may be, that their superior warlike skill had enabled them to achieve an easy conquest, and to sustain their ascendency un- til the Asian population overwhelmed them. To them, and others, perhaps, from the more central borders of Europe, may be ascribed the erection of those works that bear the im- press of European skill and civilization. Among these, may have been the whites, whom Indian tradition describes as hav- ing occupied the states north-east of the Ohio.
But whether the northern Alligewi, that extraordinary peo- ple, whom the Asian Tartars (the ancestors of the natives of this State) met and vanquished, were of the Scandinavian origin-Danish, Swedish or Norwegian, or of any other European descent, is a question which it is impossible to de- termine. It is not improbable that they erected many of the fortifications in the vicinity of our lakes, as well as those east of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and that many of these works may be referred to the period of the tenth or eleventh century. They may have been European Tartars from the Scandinavian or Norman stock, and advanced in the arts, as far as the authors of similar works in England, Scotland, and Wales. They may have penetrated into the north-eastern part of this country from the north-west of Europe, in the age, and perhaps about the periods, when the prowess and superior mi- Jitary skill of the Danes and Normans, secured to Canute, and to the Conqueror, the throne of England. They may have
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ý 20.] Past and Prospective Revolutions.
been the whites, whom Indian tradition describes as the former residents of the north-eastern country ; who were conquered and expelled; whose scattered remnants have occasionally been seen and described by travellers ; and who, some have imagined, were of Welsh extraction. But that these were the first people of America, or that America was first peopled in the tenth, eleventh, or twelfth centuries, would be an impro- bable proposition.
Philologists, antiquaries, and moral philosophers, may iden- tify portions of the present American family, with their Asiatic, European, or African kindred. But to identify the whole with any particular primitive stock, except the common ancestors of all mankind, we believe would be impossible, though it may continue to be attempted, and not essentially important, if it were possible. After so many ages have elapsed, so many intermixtures taken place, and so little history, even of a tra- ditionary kind is before as, the investigation may still exhibit the depth of research, but can hardly repay its labour.
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We have not, in our review, entered into the details or ar- guments of writers. Enough, however, has appeared, in the course of this inquiry, to evince a probability that this conti- nent has been shaken by terrible revolutions. Events which have agitated the moral, political, and physical foundations of Asia, Africa, and Europe, have here also been displayed with a frightful fidelity of resemblance and effect. In the antiquitie- of this continent what a range for investigation is presented ! . What a field for speculation ! What wonders for contempla- tion ! They blend the revolutions of, perhaps, an alternate se- ries of dark ages-the fate of millions, who have successively swarmed over this hemisphere, and, possibly, the fate of conti- nents once connected with this, but now reposing under the miglity wave of the Atlantic and the Pacific.
But while contemplating the past, a phenomenon is passing before us, gradually productive of a living revolution as com-
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Origin of the Aborigines and ancient Ruins. [PART I.
plete, and as silent, as. those that lie concealed in the dark ages of our aboriginal story. We refer to the rapid and un- obtrusive disappearance of the Indian nations from the face of this continent. We refer to this event, not because it is a sub- ject of regret to behold arts, science, religion, political liber- ty ; all the endearments which concentrate within the magic circle of domestic felicity, under the benign influence of civili- zation ; all the enjoyments and advantages which expand the domestic into the broad circle of social happiness, uniting mil- lions in one great family compact, and elevating and dignifying the character of man as a rational being : not because these are the exchanges for the cheerless wild, and the sterility and dreariness of savage life --- but we refer to it, as a phenomenon worthy the contemplation of the philosopher and philanthro- pist.
Impressive and affecting as is the illustration of the fact, be- vond the confines of our State, we need not pass our own na- tive Indians, in order to perceive the probable fate that awaits those beyond the Mississippi. There, tribes, discordant and alien to each other, seem to be flocking and crowding together in tremulous suspense, as if, on the approach of civilized man, they had a presage of some portentous doom-a superstitious impression, perhaps, of the approach of their evil Manitto, who comes to sweep them to the tumuli of their fathers. Neither need we travel beyond the regions of Onondaga, the former seat of our native highlanders and mountaineers, the capital of the confederated Iroquois, to read the instability of national potency, and the evanescent tenure of human glory. Yes, within the boundaries of this State, are indications of event- ful revolutions in ages past, exhibiting the melancholy and pro- phetic earnest of those which may in some remote period be reacted, with all the tragical consequences, which, we may presume, resulted from storming, sacking, and devastating that once populous town, whose ruins have been traced in Pom- pey .*
See ante, p. 13. 60.
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Pest and Prospective Revolutions.
The Lenni Lenape,* and Mengwe,f are dispersed from the ancient seats and sepulchres of their forefathers. The territo- ries of the former, (including those of their subdivided tribes or descendants) once extended from the Potomac to the north- east bounds of New-England, along the eastern shores of the Hudson, until they met their rivals, the Iroquois, on the green mountains, beyond the Iroquois Lake (Champlain,) at the north-eastern boundaries of Irocoisia.# The middle, western, and northern portions of our State, including that part of Ver- mont, which was a part of New-York until the revolution, was the proper residence of the Iroquois. But less than a century ago, their territorial dominion, (taking in that of their confe- derate, subject, or tributary allies) embraced an empire, which might be compared to that of ancient Rome in the height of her imperial prosperity. Stretching from the junction of the Outawais and St. Lawrence, their line extended through Ca- nada, westward to the north of Lake Huron, southward (inclu- ding Michigan) to the junction of the Illinois and Mississippi, (and, in fact, they claimed, by conquest, nearly to the mouths of this river) thence across Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, to the sources of the Susquehanna and the Hudson. This for- midable and renowned confederacy, who were the favourite allies of our Dutch and English colonial governments, who were the dread of the French in Canada, who carried the ter- ror of their arms from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to that of Mexico, and at whose name, nations quaked, and tribes fled, are now nearly reduced to a thousand warriors.§ Some rem-
* Delawares.
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t Or Mengica or Minguse, (confederated six nations) as denominated by the Delawares ; hence, Mingoes, by the whites ; Maqua, so called by the Mahiccani ; Iroquois, by the French; and Irokesen, os altered by the Dutchi. See hereafter Indian history.
{ The name of the country, proper, of the Iroquois.
§ It will appear hereafter (in the history of those Indians) that one of the Canada nations or tribes of Indians, actually broke up and fled from the mere terror which the Iroquois' name had spread abroad. (See Charlevoix, Nonvelle France, &c.) and Colden (Hlist. Five Nations) tells us what pa - nic the name of Mohawk struck into the New-England Indians.
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Origin of the Aborigines and ancient Ruins. [PART I.
nants of their nations are in Canada, or with those of the un- fortunate Lenape, and are found here and there in the western . country. They have melted away, or have mingled their des- tiny with that which awaits the western Indians. With regard to the latter, the tide of migration, which once set so irresisti- bly from the west, has long been checked by civilization, and is rapidly receding from the shock of its wave, as it rushes upon their confines. By and by they will have passed the Rocky Mountains, and in a few centuries, scarcely a remnant will be seen, unless along the beach of the Pacific, the utmost boundaries to which they can flee, where, as they gaze upon the illimitable expanse, and turn back to the country of their an- cestors, they will mingle, with the resounding surge, the death- song of departed nations.
Whence is this revolution ?" From what causes is it in com- plete operation ? Is it, that an invisible decree has fixed the date of their existence, and marked the periods of their reces- sion and final extinction ? Or does the tree of civilization, when planted in their territory, become as contaminating as the poison of the fabled Bohon Upas ? Whatever the cause may be, they are passing away in a manner probably differ- ent from that of the authors of the ruins which we have con- templated, but not less fatally effectual.
But while nation after nation has disappeared within a few years, and tribe after tribe is imperceptibly vanishing before us; while their patrimony has become our inheritance, let their descendants become the objects of our commiseration and our care. Let us at least avoid any cruelty or injustice to- wards them ; or, perhaps, the period may come, and its arri- val be prematurely accelerated, (if there is any reality in na- tional virtue and reward, national crime and amenability) when the bones of their ancestors, which lie bleaching beneath our feet, will become to us dragon's teeth and armed men. !
" Policy," says an eloquent French civilian, (61) " may have its plans and its mysteries, but reason ought to preserve her influence and dignity. Equity is the virtue of empires-mo- deration is the wisdom of great nations, as well as of great
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Past and Prospective Revolutions.
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men." While we should continue to recognise, in our public treaties and intercourse, these Indian nations as independent. let principles like those remain the maxims of our policy ; and whether in peace or war, let us practically apply towards them, as'well as civilized nations, that most excellent definition of the law of nations, "Do in peace the greatest possible good ; in war, the least possible evil."
While such principles distinguish our national policy, it may be our turn to reign for ages masters of the ascendant, and reap the reward of that equity which is the virtue of empires, until the period (which the annals of other nations inform us may follow upon a long course of public prosperity) shall arrive, when, by national degeneracy and criminality, we shall have become ripened for ruin. Then, having passed the pe- riods of our rise, our progress, and our decline, the instru- ments of our punishment may be found among the future bar- barians of the northern hives, (if not of Asia and Europe) per- haps of this continent, in those boundless regions beyond the latitude of our own Caspian and Euxine seas, where hordes scarcely less numerous and formidable than those which pour- ed upon degenerate Rome, will have been gathering for ages. equally fierce and daring ; restless from inclemency of cli- mate, famine, love of change, and war; disciplined for ra- pine ; roused by the prospect of plunder, and attracted by the polished improvements and submissive effeminacy, which lux- ury and vice will have induced : they may mark their victo- rious and sanguinary descent upon our country with havoc and desolation, prostrate temples and edifices, sacked and ra- vaged cities, wasted kingdoms ; sparing nothing, except such works of art and fortifications of defence, as those which form so interesting a portion of our antiquities, the materials of which would resist not only the incursions of barbarians, but the ravages of time.
Then will recommence the dark ages of this contineut. During the succeeding reign of barbarism and of ignorance. the monuments of our civilization will slumber in forgetful. VOL. ! 13
98 Origin of the Aborigines and ancient Ruins. [PART I.
ness, until the full circle of revolution will have been comple- ted, and the sun of science shall have arisen to dispel the gloom, and civilization reappeared and resumed her ancient dominion. Then the future antiquary will pass over our State, view the remains of cities, temples, sepulchres, fortifications, mark the manifest vestiges of an unknown people, far more advanced in arts than the immediate pre-occupants of the soil, and as he approaches those works which will appear to him, from their broken culverts, shattered locks, and decayed banks, to have been artificial rivers, he will pause to contem- plate this wonder. He will explore their extent ; he will per- ceive their design ; and, with intense interest and solicitude, cxclaim : What eclipse of reason could have given birth to the wild fancy of unitingthe great Caspian and Mediterranean seas of North America with the Atlantic Ocean ? What pene- trating genius could have perceived its possibility ? What comprehensive intellect could have embraced the plan, and traced its bearings, and proved its practicability ? What da- ring spirit could have grappled with the gigantic difficulties which must have arisen in the nature of so bold a scheme, from an honest belief in its insurmountability and ruinous ex- penditure ? What kindred spirits arose to foster the mighty project ? What enterprising and opulent people were found to give impulse to so stupendous a work ? In what age did they flourish -- in what disastrous era were their liberties annihila- ted ? Thus will he view those venerable remains, which will appear to him shrouded in impenetrable mystery, until at length he will perhaps discover, in the enclosure of some prostrate marble column, or amidst the rubbish of some half- buried ruins of ancient edifices, the means of unravelling the mystery, and of holding up to the admiration and emulation of new ages, the illustrious genius of our State and age.
Is this the vision of morbid fancy, or is it a prophetic in- scription, which past experience has written upon the fabric of society, to admonish nations of their duty or their destiny ?
It is an inscription which, in Africa, may be traced on the spot where Matins raminated over the ruins of Carthage.
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Past and Prospective Revolutions.
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and beread in hieroglyphics upon the pyramids of Egypt. It is an inscription which, in Europe, was written in characters of blood by the Goths, Vandals, Franks, Huns, Saxons, through- out the extended empires they subverted; and after their bar- barous dominion of ten ages had passed, it was an inscrip- tion which their civilized successors could decipher on the fallen columns of ancient Roman and Grecian magnificence. It is an inscription which in Asia may be traced to ancient Scythia, followed up in the wasteful ravages of their Tartar descendants, and in the wide-spread desolation of the Ara- bians. In almost every instance it will appear to have been written upon civilization, the arts, the sciences, opulence, and splendour. And no where is it to be discerned at this mo- ment in more legible characters, than in the countries con- quered by the last-mentioned people.
From the ninth to the fourteenth century, while Europe was in utter darkness, civilization lighted up the dominions of Arabia. The sciences and arts, enriched by the treasures of Greece, Persia, and Chaldea, and by the literary relics of the subject provinces of Syria, Armenia, and Egypt ; arose to the highest pitch of perfection, under the patronage of her caliphs .* Now superstition and ignorance, moral darkness and political dismay, brood over those extensive dominions.
" The rich countries of Fez and Morocco, f illustrious for five centuries, by the number of their academies, their universi- ties, and their libraries, are now only deserts of burning sand, which the human tyrant disputes with the beast of prey. The smiling and fertile shores of Mauritania, where commerce, arts, and agriculture attained their highest prosperity, are now the retreats of corsairs, who spread horror over the seas, and who only relax from their labours in shameful debauche-
* See page 9. ante.
+ Says Sismondi, in his glowing picture and eloquent description of the past and present literature, and condition of those regions, where Islamism reigned and still reigns. See Vol. I. ch. 2. ib. Roscoe's elegant transla-
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Origin of the Aborigines and ancient Ruins. [PART I.
ries, until the plague periodically comes to select its victims from amongst them, and to avenge offended humanity. Egypt has by degrees been swallowed up by the sands, which formerly fertilized it. Syria and Palestine are desolated by the wandering Bedouins, less terrible still than the Pacha who opposes them. Bagdad, formerly the residence of luxury, of power, and of knowledge, is a heap of ruins. In this immense extent of territory, twice or thrice as large . as Europe, no- thing is found but ignorance, slavery, terror, and death. The prodigious literary riches of the Arabians no longer exist in any of the countries where the Arabians and the Mussulmans rale. What have been preserved are in the hands of their enemies, in the convents of the monks, or in the royal libra- ries of Europe. And yet these vast countries have not been conquered. It is not the stranger who has despoiled them of their riches, who has annihilated their population, and de- stroyed their laws, their manners, and their national spirit. "The poison was their own ; it was administered by themselves, and the result has been their own destruction.
" Who may say that Europe itself, whither the empire of let- ters and of science, has been transported, which sheds so bril- liant a light, which forms so correct a judgment of the past, and which compares so well the successive reigns of the litera- inre and manners of antiquity, shall not, in a few ages, be- come as wild and deserted as the hills of Mauritania, the sands of Egypt, and the valleys of Anatolia ?"
And who may say that when Europe shall have paid the deep retributive debt, which she owes to the wrongs of Africa and the East Indies, or when, from whatever causes she shall have transcended the period of her decline, that America, (now in the youth of her existence, yet the home of the exile, the asylum of the oppressed, and perhaps the last intrenchment of liberty, ) may not be the country in which the European name is destined to become merged, as that of Rome had been lost in Europe ! (62) Who may say that when our country also shall have passed onward to its full maturity of magnificence and of crime ; when, perhaps, after the fondest visions of the
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sages and patriots of old shall have been realised, in the per- fect accomplishment of the political experiment of a govern- ment, founded like ours, strengthening as it expands, and adapted to embrace in one vast compact, a population whose territory shall be laved by the two oceans; when having attain- ed a prosperity too unexampled, and too intoxicating to be enduring, national degeneracy shall have prepared the way ; then the revolutionary wheel, having slowly passed its round of ages, from the Antipodes through desolated Europe, may at last appear in our hemisphere, distant at first, like a por- tending speck, more apparent and appalling as it approaches, until its awful recognition will be seen and felt in the wreck and crush of kingdoms! Who can say, therefore, that the fatal and monitory inscription which the Scythians, the Tartars, and the Scandinavians, as they successively poured in upon this continent from the north of Asia and of Europe, have written in our own State and country upon the monuments in ruins, of a people now unknown, may not also be inscribed upon those grand works, upon which the genius and resources of our State have been profusely lavished, which constitute so much of our national pride, and which we fondly but vainly hope will give an imperishable celebrity to our name and national era !
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Secondly, Was America known to Europe before Columbus ?
IN the review of the preceding question, an answer to the second, viz. : Was America known to Europe before Colum- bus ? has been anticipated in a great measure.
If a minute inquiry into the origin of the peopling of Ameri- ca, or the remote causes and events which antedated and in- fluenced its discovery by Columbus, had been consistent with the limited scope of this work, there also might have been investigated the maritime skill and sagacity, commerce and enterprise of the ancients ; there also might have been dis- cussed the relative merits of the pretensions which almost every nation has set up, (since Columbus disclosed a new world,) to the honour of before discovering, or the credit of originally peopling it.
The system which placed the sun in the centre, was taught in ancient schools of philosophy. This theory naturally led to the supposition of antipodes. The opinion of their ex- istence had partisans in the time of St. Augustine, for that father opposed it. Its truth was condemned in the eighth century : hence it must have been believed by some, even in that dark age. Thales, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Anaxago- ras accounted for a solar eclipse : Aristotle explained a lunar one. The spherical figure of the earth was not only probably known to the ancients, but they may have had faint ideas of this, as a part of the Indian continent. (63) They doubtless appear to have entertained some idea of a western continent. The sunken Atlantis of Plato, has formed the subject of one of the learned hypotheses, explanatory of the origin of the aborigines of this portion of that vast island*
* See ante p.76. 83.
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§ 21.] Ancient Navigation-Compass, &c.
The attractive properties of the magnet were anciently known; and for aught we can say, navigation might, in re- mote ages, have had all the facilities which we possess. Bishop Huet in his history of the commerce and navigation of the ancients,* presents in a condensed form, sufficient evidence of that bold and adventurous spirit, which might have ventured at times into the trackless ocean. He main- tains that the Cape of Good Hope was frequented and doubled in the days of Solomon, and that the isle of Fortu- natus might have been America, to which Carthagenian ships in the days of Hanno were driven by a tempest.
We have already suggested that the compass was known in the Arabian dominions, (of which Spain was a provincial pari,) in the eleventh century .; Whether the coetancous Scandinavians, or Madoc in the following century, or Zeuof in the fourteenth, had its guidance, is problematical. Re- verting to an anterior period, while the legends of Arthur, Malgo, and the frior of Lynne may be ranked with the mon- sters of fable, and the indefinite allusion to a spot in Africa or elsewhere, by Virgil, (64) in foretelling the extent of Cæsar's dominions, and the still more unlocated prediction of Seneca, in his Muedean tragedy, of the discovery of a new country, and some other visions of a similar incertitude may be considered pictures of fancy, as destitute of "a local habitation" as Plato's commonwealth, Moore's Eutopia, Har- rington's Oceana, or Bacon's new Atlantis : nevertheless there are other accounts, (some of which have fallen under the first question,) indiscriminately proscribed by some as fabulous, which merit serious deliberation.
* Translated from the French, Lond. 1717. See also Belknap's American Biography, Prel. Diss. Anarcharses, vol. II. Edward's West Indies, vol. I. Clarke's Progress of Maritime Science,
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