Rambles by Land and Water Part 10

It is one of the prominent errors of most of the writers on this subject, that, with the exception of the Esquimaux, they aim to find a common origin for all the American tribes. True, there is a common type to all the North American Indians, and there is good reason to suppose that they sprung from a common stock. But it is not so with the nations of Central and South America, or rather with those of them whose mighty works have given rise to these discussions. I think it cannot be questioned, that there were among them, the representatives of many different nations or races. Of this the sculptured heads we have exhibited from among the ruins of their ancient cities, bear witness. Compare the outlines and features of the heads represented on pages 128, 130, 136, and 178, of the present work, first with each other, then with the different representations of the human head, as found among these ancient relics by other travellers, and then again with the types of the four great divisions of the human family. The comparison exhibits this curious result, that the American, or Indian type, has no representative among these sculptured figures; while almost every variety of the Caucasian and Mongolian is found there. If the portrait of Montezuma, in the second volume of Prescott's Conquest of Mexico, be taken as a genuine likeness, it is plain that he did not belong to the American race. There is no mark of the Indian about it.

It will be admitted, I suppose, that Art, in all ages, and among all nations, is but a humble imitator of Nature. The Sculptor, and the Painter, works always by a model. His _beau ideal_ is the highest form of living beauty which he sees around him. He may select and combine the features of several subjects, to make a perfect whole. But these features are all those of the living beings with whom he is conversant, and represent the race to which he belongs. And whenever he departs from the living model, except to select and combine, his figures become invariably grotesque, ridiculous and disgusting.

Was it because the ancient American artists, at the time when their works of art were executed, had never seen a specimen of what we call the American race, that there is no good representation of the Indian head among their works? We are not surprised that the African is wanting there; for, notwithstanding the "Giant's Causeway" above alluded to, no individual of that race seems ever to have visited the sh.o.r.es of America, except by compulsion. They were unknown to the Aborigines, till they were introduced by the whites, as slaves. Shall I venture to infer, from the absence of the Indian type, that that race was also unknown here, at the time when these artists flourished on the American soil? Were all these great works constructed and finished before the present races of Indians found their way into that part of the Continent? How old, then, are the works? Who were the builders? From what part of the great human family did they spring?

In treating banteringly of the "Talismanic Penates," in my tenth chapter, I presumed to draw from them some evidence of the Asiatic origin of the people by whom they were cherished. The figures on the 178th page are representatives of originals found only in that part of the world. The solitary tradition referred to above, points in the same direction. Did Tartary, China, or j.a.pan, furnish to America, ages ago, a race of sculptors and palace-builders?

In the early ages of the world's history, the families of men were far more unsettled, and migratory in their habits, than they now are. It was not an uncommon thing for whole nations to change their abodes at once. The north of Europe, and the adjacent regions of Asia, like an over-populous hive, sent out many swarms of restless adventurers, to overrun and occupy the fairer fields of the south. Goths, Vandals, Huns, swept over the land, in successive deluges, that threatened to overturn every vestige of ancient civilization. But the mighty flood rolled back from the walls of Rome, and carried with it the arts and sciences, and the enervating luxuries of the south. In all these desperate encounters of barbarism with civilization, there was an extensive interchange, and blending of nations and races. Each melted into each, like the glaciers of the mountain, and the lakes of the valley, blended and lost in the stream that bears them both to the ocean.

The same irruptions, the same amalgamations of conquerors with the conquered, took place in earlier ages, in the far east. And there is no violent improbability in supposing, that the overcharged fountain of humanity, in the central regions, sometimes overleaped its eastern barriers, as well as its western, and, meeting with no resistance, as in the south, spread itself quite to the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific, and thence into the neighboring continent of America. This may have been done at many different and distant periods, even back to the dispersion of Babel. Who shall say it was not so? We know almost as little of ancient eastern Asia, as of ancient America. But we _do_ know that it _might_ have furnished all the races that are known, or supposed, to have existed here. If we had not authentic records for the irruptions of the northern hordes, and for the great crusades of the Middle Ages, the Old World would furnish enigmas, as difficult to be solved, as those of the New.