USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Wilkes-Barre > A history of Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania : from its first beginnings to the present time, including chapters of newly-discovered early Wyoming Valley history, together with many biographical sketches and much genealogical material. Volume I > Part 11
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101 | Part 102 | Part 103
"Indian traditions are generally conflicting, and soon run into fable ; but how strong is the unanimous tradition of the aboriginal races of a whole continent of such an event ! How strong a corroboration of the Mosaic account, and what an unanswerable proof that the American Indian is an antediluvian race !"
In 1841 Mr. Catlin first published his great work entitled "Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Condition of the North Amer- ican Indians ; Written During Eight Years' (1832-'39) Travel among the Wildest Tribes of Indians in North America." Of this book ten editions were published-the last one in 1866-and in it the author says :
"As to the probable origin of the North American Indians, which is one of the first questions that suggests itself to the inquiring mind, and will be perhaps the last to be settled, I shall have little to say in this place, for the reason that so abstruse a subject, and one so barren of positive proof, would require in its discussion too much circumstan- tial evidence for my allowed limits. * * * Very many people look upon the savages of this vast country as an anomaly in nature, and their existence and origin and locality things that needs must be at once accounted for. * * * It seems natural to inquire at once who these people are and whence they came ; but this question is natural only because we are out of nature. To an Indian such a question would seem absurd. * * * I never yet have been made to see the necessity of showing how these people came here, or that they came here at all, which might easily have been done by the way of Behring's Strait from the north of Asia. * *
"For myself, I am quite satisfied with the fact-which is a thing certain and to be relied on-that this continent was found peopled in every part by savages, and so nearly every island in the South Sea, at a distance of several thousand miles from either continent. * *
* The North American Indians, and all the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands, speaking some two or three hundred different languages, entirely dissimilar, may have all sprung from one stock. * * * I believe with many others, that the North Ameri- can Indians are a mixed people ; that they have Jewish blood in their veins-though I would not assert, as some have undertaken to prove, that they are Jews, or that they are the lost Ten Tribes of Israel. From the character and conformation of their heads I anı compelled to look upon them as an amalgam race, but still savages ; and from many of their customs (which seem to me to be peculiarly Jewish), as well as from the character of their heads, I am forced to believe that some part of those ancient tribes who have been dispersed by Christians, in so many ways and in so many different eras, have found their way to this country, where they have entered amongst the native stock and have lived and intermarried with the Indians until their identity has been swallowed up and lost in the greater numbers of their new acquaintance. * * * I am conipelled to believe that the continent of America, and each of the other continents, have had their aboriginal stocks, peculiar in color and in character, and that each of these native stocks has under- gone repeated mutations (at periods of which history has kept no records) by erratic colonies from abroad that have been engrafted upon them. By this process I believe that the North American Indians, even where we find them in their wildest condition, are several degrees removed from their original character, and that one of their principal alloys has been a part of those dispersed people, who have mingled their blood and their customs with them. * * *
"The first and most striking fact amongst the North American Indians that refers us to the Jews is that of their worshipping in all parts the Great Spirit, or Jehovah, as the Hebrews were ordered to do by divine precept, instead of a plurality of gods, as ancient
85
pagans and heathens did, and their idols of their own formation. The North American Indians are no where idolaters. They appeal at once to the Great Spirit, and know of no mediator, either personal or symbolical. *
* * As the Jews had, they have their high priests and their prophets. Amongst the Indians, as amongst the ancient Hebrews, the women are not allowed to worship with the men, and in all cases also they eat separately. The Indians everywhere, like the Jews, believe that they are the favorite people of the Great Spirit, and they are certainly, like those ancient people, persecuted. *
* * In their marriages the Indians, as did the ancient Jews, uniforinly buy their wives by giving presents. In their preparations for war, and in peace-making, they are strikingly similar. In their treatment of the sick, burial of the dead and mourning they are also similar. In their bathing and ablutions, at all seasons of the year, as a part of their religious observances-having separate places for men and women to perform these immersions- they resemble again. * *
"Amongst the list of their customns, however, we meet a number which had their origin, it would seem, in the Jewish ceremonial code, and which are so very peculiar in their forms that it would seem quite improbable, and almost impossible, that two different people should ever have hit upon them alike without some knowledge of each other. These, I consider, go farther than anything else as evidence, and carry, in my mind, con- clusive proof that these people are tinctured with Jewish blood, even though the Jewish Sabbath has been lost and circumcision probably rejected ; and dog's flesh-which was an abomination to the Jews-continued to be eaten at their feasts by all the tribes of Indians, not because the Jews have been prevailed upon to use it, but because they have survived only, as their blood was mixed with that of the Indians, and the Indians have imposed on that mixed blood the same rules and regulations that governed the members of the tribes in general.
"Many writers are of opinion that the natives of America are all from one stock, and their languages from one root ; that that stock is exotic, and that that [parent] language was introduced with it. And the reason assigned for this theory is, that amongst the various tribes there is a reigning similarity in looks, and in their languages a striking resemblance to each other. Now, if all the world were to argue in this way, I should reason just in the other, and pronounce this, though evidence to a certain degree, to be very far from conclusive ; inasmuch as it is far easier and more natural for distinct tribes or languages, grouped and used together, to assimilate than to dissimilate-as the pebbles on the sea-shore, that are washed about and jostled together, lose their angles, and incline at last to one rounded and uniform shape. So that if there had been, ab origine, a variety of different stocks in America, with different complexions, with dif- ferent characters and customs, and of different statures, and speaking entirely different tongues (where they have been for a series of centuries living neighbors to each other, moving about and intermarrying), I think we might reasonably look for quite as great a similarity in their personal appearance and languages as we now find. On the other hand, if we are to suppose that they were all from one foreign stock, with but one language, it is a difficult thing to conceive how or in what space of time, or for what purpose, they could have formed so many tongues, and so widely different, as those that are now spoken on the continent. * *
"I do not believe, with some very learned and distinguished writers, that the languages of the North American Indians can be traced to one root, or to three or four or any number of distinct idioms ; nor do I believe all or any one of them will ever be fairly traced to a foreign origin."
In 1861-twenty years after the first publication of his "Letters and Notes," from which the foregoing paragraphs have been extracted- Mr. Catlin published his "Life Amongst the Indians"; and seven years later (in 1868) he published the "Last Rambles" previously mentioned. In these two books the author gives his final speculations in relation to the origin of the North American Indians. Years of observation of the red men, aided by extensive reading and association with men learned in the various branches of science, in all parts of the world, had peculiarly fitted Mr. Catlin for discussion as to the ethnology of the Indian. In his earliest works he avoided ethnological discussion, and gave expression to very few speculative theories. He was preëminently an observer and a chronicler, not a discusser of theories. The following paragraphs are from Chapters IX and X of "Last Rambles" :
"The reader has learned, by following me through these two little volumes, that I have, during fourteen years of research-not amongst books and libraries, but in the open air and wilderness-studied the looks and character of the American native races in every latitude, from Behring's Strait to Terra del Fuego ; and here will be learned that, from the immutable, national, physiological traits with which the Almighty
86
stamps this and every other race, I believe the native tribes of the American continent. are all integral parts of one great family, and that He who made man from dust created these people from the dust of the country in which they live, and to which dust their bodies are fast returning. I believe they were created on the ground on which they have been found, and that the date of their creation is the same as that of the human species on other parts of the globe. I can find nothing in history, sacred or profane, against this. * * *
"The American Indians are as distinct from all the other races of the earth as the other races of the earth are distinct from each other, and, both in North and South and Central America, exhibit but one great original family type, with only the local changes which difference of climate and different modes of life have wrought upon it. * * * Some of those writers who have endeavored to trace the American Indians to an Asiatic or Egyptian origin, have advanced these traditions [relating to a deluge] as evidence in support of their theories-which are as yet but unconfirmed hypotheses ; and as there is not yet known to exist (as I have before said) either in the American languages, or in the Mexican or Aztec or other monuments of these people, one single acceptable proof of such an immigration, these traditions are strictly American-indigenous and not exotic. If it were shown that inspired history of the deluge and of the Creation restricted those events to one continent alone, then it might be that the American races came from the Eastern Continent, bringing these traditions with them ; but until that is proved the American traditions of the deluge are no evidence whatever of an Eastern origin."
John Ledyard, the noted American traveler of the eighteenth century, was (so far as the present writer can ascertain) the first investi- gator and writer who, from personal knowledge of and experience with both Siberian Tartars and American Indians, confidently and earnestly declared that the two races were one and the same people .* This declaration was made as early as the year 1787. Ledyard was born in Groton, Connecticut, in 1751,t during the ministry there of the Rev. Jacob Johnson (as mentioned on page 82), and it may be possible that he derived his first ideas as to the eastern origin of the red men from the Groton minister. Ledyard seems to have early made a study of the characteristics and habits of the Mohegan Indians who dwelt in his native county of New London, as well as of the Indians of the Mohegan and other tribes who were his fellow-students in 1772 in the Rev. Eleazer Wheelock's school (afterwards Dartmouth College).
In 1787 Ledyard journeyed from Irkutsk to Yakutsk in Siberia, a distance of over 1,500 miles, and from the journal which he then kept many interesting facts may be gleaned. At Irkutsk he mnet a French exile who at one time had been an Adjutant at the City of Quebec, Canada, and who was of the opinion that the Tartars in Siberia were "much inferior to the American Indians, both in their understanding and persons." Ledyard wrote :
"Among the Kalmuks I observe the American moccasin, the common moccasin, like the Finland moccasin. The houses of the Kalmuks have octagonal sides, with a.
fire-place in the center and an aperture for smoke ; the true American wigwam. * * The Tartars from time inmemorial (I mean the Asiatic Tartars) have been a people of a wandering disposition. Their converse has been more among beasts of the forest than among men ; and when among men it has only been those of their own nation. They have ever been savages, averse to civilization. * * * I know of no people among whom there is such a uniformity of features (except the Chinese, the Jews and the Negroes) as among the Asiatic Tartars. They are distinguished, indeed, by different tribes ; but this is only nominal. Nature has not acknowledged the distinction, but, on the contrary, marked them, wherever found, with the indisputable stamp of Tartars. Whether in Nova Zembla, Mongolia, Greenland or on the banks of the Mississippi, they are the same people, forming the most numerous and, if we must except the Chinese, the most ancient nation of the globe. But I, for myself, do not except the Chinese, because I have no doubt of their being of the same family. The Tongusians [wandering Tartars living solely by the chase], the Kuriles and the Nova Zembleans are tattooed. The Mohegan tribe of Indians in America practice tattooing.}
* See "Life of John Ledyard" by Jared Sparks, pages 327, 359, etc.
+ He died at Cairo, Egypt, in November, 1788, in the thirty-eighth year of his age.
# So, also, did the Lenâpé, or Delaware, tribe. See page 104.
87
"I find as yet nothing analogous to the Amer- ican calumet,* except in the use of it. The Tar- tars here when they smoke the pipe give it round to every one in the company. The form of the pipe is universally the identical form of the Chinese pipe. I expect to find it in America, since the form of the pipe on the tomahawk resembles it. * *
* All the Asiatic Tartars, like the aborigines of America, entertain the same general notions of theology, namely, that there is one great and good God, and that He is so good that they have no occasion to address Him for the bestowment of any favors ; and, being good, He will certainly do theni no injury. But they suffer many calamities ; so they say there is another being, the source of evil, and that he must be very powerful because the evils inflicted on them are numerous. The wampum so universally in use among the Tartars, apparently as an ornament, I cannot but suspect is used as a substitute for letters in representing their language, by a kind of hieroglyphic record."
Such were some of the observations of this traveler regarding the aboriginals of Siberian Asia.
In considering the Kalmuks, Tongusians and Yakuti as descend- ants of the Mongols he was in accord with other writers ; but in class- ifying all these races with the North American Indians, Greenlanders and Chinese he advanced a novel and bold opinion-but one which now, after the lapse of nearly a century and a-quarter, is firmly held by many anthropologists. After his return from Siberia Ledyard wrote to Thomas Jefferson, and others, on this subject as follows :
"The difference of color in the human species (the observation applies to all but the Negroes, whom I have not visited ) originates from natural causes. * The Asiatic Indians, called Tartars, and all the Tartars who formed the later armies of Genghis Khan, together with the Chinese, are the same people ; and the American Tartar is of the same family-the most ancient and numerous people on earth, and the most uni- formly alike. *
* I am certain that all the people you call red people on the conti- nent of America, and on the continents of Europe and Asia as far south as the southern parts of China, are all one people, by whatever names distinguished ; and that the best general name would be Tartar. I suspect that all red people are of the same family. I am satisfied that America was peopled from Asia, and had some, if not all, its animals from thence."
On the subject of the difference of color in man Ledyard wrote, at one time, that he considered it to be "not the effect of any design in the Creator, but of causes simple in themselves, which perhaps will soon be well ascertained." Sometime later he wrote: "I am now fully con- vinced that the difference of color in man is solely the effect of natural causes, and that a mixture by intermarriage and habits would in time make the species in this respect uniformn. I have never extended my opinion, and do not now, to the Negroes."
Thomas Pennant, LL. D., F. R. S. (born 1726 ; died 1798), a cele- brated Welsh traveler and writer-some of whose works extorted from Dr. Johnson the remark, "He's the best traveler I ever read, he observes more things than any one else does"-believed that the inhabitants of the American continent were originally derived from eastern Asia. About the time of the death of Ledyard, Pennant wrote as follows con- cerning certain customs common to the inhabitants of both continents :
"The custom of scalping was a barbarism in use with the Scythians, who carried about with them at all times this savage mark of triumph ; they cut a circle round the neck, and stripped off the skin as they would that of an ox. A little image, found among the Kalmuks, of a Tartarian deity, mounted on a horse, and sitting on a human skin,
* A pipe with a stone bowl and reed stem, adorned with feathers, and used as the symbol of peace and hospitality by the Indians of North America. See pages 94 and 104.
88
with scalps pendant front the breast, fully illustrates the custon of the Scythian progen- itors, as described by the Greek historian. This usage, as the Europeans know by horrid experience, is continued to this day in America. The ferocity of the Scythians to their prisoners extended to the remotest part of Asia. The Kamtschadales, even at the time of their discovery by the Russians, put their prisoners to death by the most lingering and excruciating inventions-a practice in full force to this very day among the aboriginal Americans. A race of the Scythians were styled Anthropophagi, from their feeding on liuman flesh. The people of Nootka Sound still make a repast of their fellow creatures ; but what is more wonderful, the savage allies of the British army have been known to throw the mangled limbs of the French prisoners into the horrible cauldron, and devour them with the sanie relish as those of a quadruped.
"The Scythians were said, for a certain time annually, to transforni themselves into wolves, and again to resume the human shape. The new discovered Americans about Nootka Sound disguise themselves in dresses made of the skins of wolves and other wild beasts, and wear even the heads fitted to their own. These habits they use in the chase to circumvent the animals of the field. But would not ignorance or superstition ascribe to a supernatural metamorphosis these temporary expedients to deceive the brute creation ? * * * In their march the Kamtschadales never went abreast, but followed one another in the same track. The sanie custom is exactly observed by the Americans.
"The Tungusi, the most numerous nation resident in Siberia, prick their faces with small punctures, with a needle, in various shapes ; then rub charcoal into them, so that the marks become indelible. This custom is still observed in several parts of America. The Indians on the back of Hudson's Bay to this day perform the operation exactly in the same manner, and puncture the skin into various figures, as the natives of New Zealand do at present, and as the ancient Britons did with the herb glastum, or woad, and the Vir- ginians, on the first discovery of that country by the English. Herodian delivers down to us this custom of the Britons. He says that they painted their bodies with figures of all sorts of animals, and wore no clothes lest they should hide what was probably intended to render themselves more terrible to their enemies.
"The Tungusi use canoes inade of birch bark, distended over ribs of wood and nicely sewed together. The Canadian and many other American nations use no other sort of boats. The paddles of the Tungusi are broad at each end ; those of the people near Cook's River and Oonalaska are of the same form. In burying of the dead many of the American nations place the corpse at full length, after preparing it according to their customs ; others place it in a sitting posture, and lay by it the most valuable clothing, wampum and other matters. The Tartars did the same, and both people agree in cover- ing the whole with earth, so as to form a tumulus, barrow or carnedd.
"In respect to the features and form of the human body, almost every tribe found along the western coast has some similitude to the Tartar nations, and still retain the little eyes, small noses, high cheeks and broad faces. They vary in size from the lusty Kalmuks to the little Nogaians. The internal Americans, such as the Five Indian Nations, who are tall of body, robust in make and of oblong faces, are derived from a variety among the Tartars themselves. The fine race [tribe] of Tschutski* seem to be the stock from which those Americans are derived. The Tschutski again from that fine race of Tartars the Kabardinski, or inhabitants of Kaharda."
Coming down to more modern times we find that twenty years ago, at least, many noted and conservative anthropologists and archæologists entertained the belief that the earliest men in America came here from Asia. Among those who thus believed was Prof. Daniel G. Brinton, t M. D., LL. D., of Philadelphia, one of the most eminent and authori- tative ethnologists of his time. "Who are the Indians ?" "When was America peopled ?" and "By what route did the first inhabitants come here ?" were three extensive and knotty questions which he discussed in a course of lectures prior to 1890. In that year he stated in "Races and Peoples : Lectures on the Science of Ethnography," that, in the earlier lectures referred to, he had marshalled "sufficient arguments to show satisfactorily that America was peopled during, if not before, the great Ice Age; that its first settlers probably came from Europe
* Chuckchee. See page 90.
+ DANIEL GARRISON BRINTON, born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, May 13, 1837 ; graduated from Vale College, 1858 ; received degree of M. D. from Jefferson Medical College in 1860; from 1867-'87 Editor of The Medical and Surgical Reporter ; in 1886 became Professor of American Linguistics and Archeology in the University of Pennsylvania-which chair he held until his death, July 31, 1899. He was the author of "The Myths of the New World : a Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America" ; "Essays of an Americanist" ; "The American Race : a Linguistic Classification and Ethnographic Description of the Native Tribes of North and South America," and many other books, essays and lectures.
89
by way of a land connection which once existed over the northern Atlantic, and that their long and isolated residence in this continent has molded them all into a singularly homogeneous race, which varies but slightly anywhere on the continent, and has maintained its type unimpaired for countless generations. Never at any time before Columbus was it influenced in blood, language or culture by any other race."
The following paragraphs are from an article entitled "The First Americans," published in Harper's Magazine, August, 1882, page 353 :
"When we speak of the discovery of America we always mean the arrival of Europeans, forgetting that there was probably a time when Europe itself was first dis- covered by Asiatics, and that for those Asiatics it was almost as easy to discover America. * * * Bering Strait is but little wider than the English Channel, and it is as easy to make the passage from Asia to America as from France to England ; and indeed easier for half the year, when Bering Strait is frozen. Besides all this, both geology and botany indicate that the separation between the two continents did not always exist. * * *
"The colonization of America from Asia was thus practicable, at any rate, and that far more easily than any approach from the European side. The simple races on each side of Bering Strait, which now communicate with each other freely, must have done the same from very early times. They needed no consent of sovereigns to do it ; they were not obliged to wait humbly in the antechamber of some king, suing for permission to discover for him another world." .
The lack of scientific evidence to demonstrate the possible origin of American races in Asia, led to the sending of an expedition to British Columbia in 1897, under the leadership of Dr. Franz Boas, in charge of the ethnological collections of the American Museum of Natural History, in the city of New York. A large number of articles, either taken from Indian burial-places or obtained from people then living, was brought back by this expedition ; and as a result two other expeditions with similar objects in view were sent out in March, 1898, one of them going to Bering Strait and the other to Mexico, and both of themn-as the expedition of the previous year had been-provided for by the liberality of Morris K. Jesup of New York, President of the American Museum of Natural History.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.