Daily National Intelligencer

ZOOLOGICAL DISQUISITION.

FROM THE COLUMBIAN.

The original inhabitants of America shown to be of the same family and lineage with those of Asia; by a process of reasoning not hitherto advanced. By SAMUEL L. MITCHILL, M. D. Professor of Natural History in the University of New York; in a communication to De Witt Clinton, Esq. President of the New York Philosophical Society, dated New York, March 31, 1816.

The view which I took of the varieties of the human race, in my course of Natural History, delivered in the University of New York, differs in so many particulars from that entertained by the great zoologists of the age, that I give you for information, and without delay, a summary of my yesterday's lecture to my class.

I denied in the beginning, the assertion that the American aborigines were of a peculiar constitution, of a race sui generis, and of a copper color. All these notions were treated as fanciful and visionary.

The Indigenes of the two Americas appear to me to be of the same stock and genealogy with the inhabitants of northern and southern Asia. The northern tribes were probably more hardy, ferocious and warlike, than those of the south. The tribes of the lower latitudes seem to have been greater proficients in the arts, particularly of making clothes, clearing the ground and erecting works of defence.

The parallel between the people of America and Asia, affords this important conclusion, that on both continents the hordes dwelling in the higher latitudes have overpowered the more civilized, though feebler inhabitants of the countries situated towards the equator. As the Tartars have overrun China, so the Aztecas subdued Mexico. As the Huns and Alans desolated Italy, so the Chippewas and Iroquois prostrated the populous settlements on both banks of the Ohio.

The surviving race in these terrible conflicts between the different nations of the ancient native residents of North America, is evidently that of the Tartars. This opinion is founded upon four considerations.

1. The similarity of physiognomy and features. His excellency M. Genet, late minister plenipotentiary from France to the United States, is well acquainted with the faces, hues and figures of our Indians and of the Asiatic Tartars: and is perfectly satisfied of their mutual resemblance. Mons. Cazeaux, consul of France to New York, has drawn the same conclusion from a careful examination of the native man of North America and Northern Asia.

Mr. Smibert, who had been employed, as Josiah Meigs, now commissioner of the land office of the United States, relates, in executing paintings of Tartar visages, for the Grand Duke of Tuscany, was so struck with the similarity of their features to those of the Narraganset Indians, that he pronounced them members of the same great family of mankind. The anecdote is preserved, with all its circumstances, in the fourteenth volume of the Medical Repository.

Within a few months, I examined over and again seven or eight Chinese sailors, who had assisted in navigating a ship from Macao to New York. The thinness of their beards, the bay complexion, the black lank hair, the aspect of the eyes, the contour of the face, and in short, the general external character, induced every person who observed them, to remark how nearly they resembled the Mohegans and Oneidas of New York.

Sidi Mellimelli, the Tunisian envoy to the United States in 1804, entertained the same opinion, on beholding the Cherokees, Osages and Miamies, assembled at the city of Washington, during his residence there. Their Tartar physiognomy struck him in a moment.

2. The affinity of their languages. The late learned and enterprising professor Barton took the lead in this curious enquiry. He collected as many words as he could from the languages spoken in Asia and America, and he concluded, from the numerous coincidences of sound and signification, that there must have been a common origin.

3. The existence of corresponding customs. I mean at present to state that of shaving away the hair of the scalp, from the fore part and sides of the head, so that nothing is left but a tuft or lock on the crown.

The custom of smoking the pipe, on solemn occasions, to the four cardinal points of the compass, to the heavens and to the earth, is reported, upon the most credible authority, to distinguish equally the hordes of Asiatic Tartars, and the bands of the American Sioux.

4. The kindred nature of the Indian dogs of America, and the Siberian dogs of Asia.

The animal that lives with the natives of the two continents, as a dog, is very different from the tame and familiar creature of the same name in Europe. He is either a different species, or a wide variety of the same species. But the identity of the American and Asiatic curs is evinced by several considerations. Both are mostly white. They have shaggy coats, sharp noses and erect ears. They are voracious, thievish, and to a considerable degree indomitable. They steal whenever they can, and sometimes turn against their masters. They are prone to snarl and grin, and they have a howl, instead of barking. They are employed in both hemispheres for labour: such as carrying burdens, drawing sleds over the snow, and the like; being yoked and harnessed for the purpose like horses.

This coincidence of our Indian dog with the Canis Sibericus, is a very important fact. The dog, the companion, the friend or the slave of man, in all his fortunes and migrations, thus reflects great light upon the history of nations and of their genealogy.

II. The exterminated race in the savage encounters between the nations of North America in ancient days, appears clearly to have been that of the Malays. The bodies, and shrouds, and clothing of some individuals, have, within a few years been discovered in the caverns of saltpetre and copperas within the states of Kentucky and Tennessee; their entire and exsiccated condition, has led intelligent gentlemen who have seen them, to call them mummies. They are some of the most memorable of the antiquities that North America contains. The race or nation to which they belonged is extinct; but, in preceding ages, occupied the region situated between Lakes Ontario and Erie on the north, and the Gulf of Mexico on the south, and bounded eastwardly by the Alleghany mountains, and westwardly by the Mississippi river.

That they were similar in their origin and character to the present inhabitants of the Pacific islands and of Austral Asia, is argued from various circumstances.

1. The sameness of texture in the plain cloth or matting that enwraps the mummies, and that which our navigators bring from Wakash, the Sandwich Islands and the Feejees.

2. The close resemblance there is between the feathery mantles brought nowadays from the islands of the South Sea and those wrappers which surround the mummies lately disinterred in the western states. The plumes of birds are twisted or tied to the threads, with peculiar skill, and turn water like the back of a duck.

3. Meshes of nets regularly knotted and tied, and formed of a strong and even twine.

4. Mockasons or coverings for the feet, manufactured with remarkable ability, from the bark or rind of plants worked into a sort of strong matting.

5. Pieces of antique sculpture, especially of human heads and of some other forms, found where the exterminated tribes had dwelt, resembling the carving at Otaheite, New-Zealand, and other places.

6. Works of defence or fortifications, overspreading the fertile country formerly possessed by these people, who may be supposed capable of constructing works of much greater simplicity than the morais or burial places, and the hippas or fighting stages of the Society Islands.

7. As far as observations have gone, a belief that the shape of the skull and the angle of the face in the mummies correspond with those of the living Malays.

I reject therefore the doctrine taught by the European naturalists, that the man of western America differs in any material point from the man of eastern Asia. Had the Robertsons, the Buffons, the Raynals, the De Paws, and the other speculators upon the American character and the vilifiers of the American name, procured the requisite information concerning the hemisphere situated to the west of us, they would have discovered that the inhabitants of vast regions of Asia, to the number of many millions, were of the same blood and lineage with the undervalued and despised population of America.

The learned Dr. Williamson has discussed this point with great ability.

I forbore to go farther than to ascertain by the correspondences already stated, the identity of origin and derivation to the American and Asiatic natives. I avoided the opportunity which this grand conclusion afforded me, of stating, that America was the cradle of the human race; of tracing its colonies westward over the Pacific Ocean, and beyond the sea of Kamschatka, to new settlements; of following the emigrants by land and by water, until they reached Europe and Africa: and lastly, of following adventurers from the former of these sections of the globe, to the plantations and abodes which they found and occupied in America. I had no inclination to oppose the current opinions relative to the place of man's creation and dispersion. I thought it was scarcely worth the while to inform an European, that on coming to America, he had left the new world behind him for the purpose of visiting the old. I thought, nevertheless, to be remarked, that there are many important advantages derived to our reasoning from the present manner of considering the subject. The principles being now established, they will be supported by a further induction of facts and occurrences, to an extent and an amount that it is impossible, at this moment, fairly to estimate. And the conclusion of Jefferson, Lafon, and others favourable to the greater antiquity of American population, will be daily reinforced and confirmed.

Having thus given the history of these races of man, spreading so extensively over the globe, I considered the human family under three divisions.

First, the TAWNY man, comprehending the Tartars, Malays, Chinese, the American Indians of every tribe, Lascars, and other people of the same cast and breed. From these seemed to have proceeded two remarkable varieties, to wit,

Secondly, the WHITE man, inhabiting naturally the countries in Asia and Europe, situated north of the Mediterranean Sea; and, in the course of his adventures, settling all over the world. Among these, I reckon the Greenlanders and Esquimaux.

Thirdly, the BLACK man, whose proper residence is in the regions south of the Mediterranean, particularly towards the interior of Africa. The people of Papua and Van Dieman's Land, seem to be of this class.

It is generally supposed, and by many able and ingenious men too, that external physical causes, and the combination of circumstances which they call climate, have wrought all these changes in the human form. I do not, however, think them capable of explaining the differences which exist among the nations. There is an internal physical cause of the greatest moment, which has scarcely been mentioned. This is the generative influence. If by the act of modelling the constitution in the embryo and foetus, a predisposition to gout, madness, scrofula, and consumption, may be engendered, we may rationally conclude, with the sagacious D'Azara, that the procreative power may also shape the features, tinge the skin, and give other peculiarities to man.

Yours truly,

SAMUEL L. MITCHILL.

(Notes—not by professor M.)

* As to colour it may be said, there are more than 'slight shades of difference.'—We have seen some western Indians of North America nearly as fair as the whites. Humboldt speaks of the Guayquerias at Cumana, as of 'very tall stature,' of 'great muscular strength,' and adds, 'the colour of their skin was something between a brown and a copper colour. Seen at a distance, motionless in their attitudes, and projected on the horizon, they might have been taken for statues of bronze.' This is one of the noblest races of men in Terra Firma. They assume a superiority over the Chaymas and other copper coloured tribes, because their blood is uncontaminated by a mixture which they consider base and ignoble: Notwithstanding the intimate ties which appear to unite the whole of the American nations as belonging to the same race, several tribes do not the less differ from each other in the height of their stature, and their complexion more or less tawny,' &c.—Personal Narrative, pp. 255 and 365.

Are there not stronger reasons for believing that three distinct varieties of our species have existed ever since the creation of the human race?