THE RACES OF MANKIND.

THE FAMILIES OF MEN.

T has been usual to divide the human race into the following families:-1. The Caucasian, comprehending most of the European and some of the Asiatic peoples. 2. The Mongolian, such as the Chinese, Tartars, &c. 3. The Malay, or natives of the Oceanic and Indian Islands. 4. The American; and, 5, the Ethiopian or African races. This classification, though widely adopted, is open to many objections. Other classifications have been based on the formation of the skull, and particularly on the languages. The latter is especially apt to be fallacious, many races which have an almost identical language being of widely different origin, while others have dropped their original language and taken that of the people among whom they are placed. An ingenious philologist may unite the most distant families, but all this only points to the pristine unity of man. It is, however, immaterial on what basis we classify the different races of men, especially in a work of this nature, the chief object of which is to describe them as they at present exist upon the earth. On the whole, a more or less geographical arrangement will prove to be not only the most convenient, but in many respects the most correct also. It will be found in the course of our travels among the uncivilised nations of men that the peoples living together are in a vast number of instances of the same origin, and with customs very similar, whatever their source. The fact that they have to contend against similar physical circumstances and are surrounded by like conditions of life, by intermarriage, the institution of slavery, &c., has often had the effect of moulding their ways of life and their language into a similar shape. Therefore, without vouching for the strictness of its philological or anatomical accuracy, we shall find it at least convenient to adopt the classification of mankind, with Latham, into the following groups, which the reader may term races, families, or species, just as his particular views or conscientiousness as to the "something in a name" may lead him:-1. Americans. 2. The Oceanic group. 3. Turanians. 4. The Persian group. 5. The Indian stock. 6. The Africans. 7. The Caucasians. 8. The Europeans. Under these heads we shall be able to sketch in greater or less detail the chief types of the human race.

CHAPTER I.

THE AMERICANS.

WHEN Columbus discovered the New World, he considered that he had come upon a part of India; and accordingly he called the natives of the American continent "Indians,” a name by which they are familiarly known to this day. The name is of course geographically incorrect, America having nothing to do with India; still, as long use has rendered it difficult to lay the name altogether aside, and as everybody knows what is meant by the "American Indians," I shall continue to use it in the following pages. The American race, take them as a whole, is a very homogeneous one, occupying the whole continent from the Arctic Ocean to Cape Horn, and though differing much in language, yet presenting many general characteristics. They are as a rule robust, well made, strong, active specimens of humanity, and, with the exception of the Eskimo branch, rather tall. The skull, when unaltered, is of an oval shape, but the forehead is in general low and sloping. Many tribes, we shall by-and-by see, flatten the forehead by artificial means; but other tribes, like the ancient Mexicans, are naturally so formed. Indeed, the Aztecs used to represent their gods as possessing flattened foreheads, which they thought a mark of great beauty; probably it was this idea that led them to produce the same effect by artificial means. The nose in the greater number at least of the North American tribes is long, aquiline, and well defined; the mouth is not of great size, the eyes are rather sloping in many of them, the teeth set vertically in the gums, while the lips do not differ much from those of Europeans. Their eyes are brown, and the hair long, straight, and black. When any beard is present, it is but scanty, though it is generally plucked out. The colour of the skin varies from a light brown to a coppery brown, in some tribes being almost black. The race is rather high in intelligence and in physical appearance, but is entirely a nation of hunters and fishers, living, with few exceptions, in a state of savagedom, and only in rare instances cultivating any portion of the soil.

That the American Indians originally came from the Asiatic coast, there can, I think, be but little doubt. The Mongol appearance is very marked among the tribes nearest that coast—that is, on the shores of the Pacific, but gets less noticeable as we go eastward, until it is very little observed among the Indians north of the Atlantic sea-board. Indeed, the traditions of the Western American Indians all point to the still further westward as the land they came from, while the Eastern Indians say they came from the west: "A great medicineman went before them, and every night planted a red pole where they were to encamp."

A vast amount of speculation has been spent on the interesting question, as to the origin of the Indian, from the Topsy-like hypothesis of the extreme German and French school, that they "growed," or sprung into existence just where they are, and did not come by migration from any other place, to the theory that they are the lost ten tribes of Israel. On this charming Semitic hypothesis the Book of Mormon was founded; but there seems no ground for it

Then

whatever, except in some semi-Jewish customs-customs, however, that are common to various other nations as well, and may be only part of the common property of the human race. the Phoenicians are supposed to have aided in the colonisation of America, and there is a legend that a Welsh prince (Madoc), about a thousand years ago, landed and colonised the country. All these are mere vague traditions, and though it is just barely possible that there may have been an admixture of Europeans in America long before Columbus or even his predecessors, the old Norsemen, discovered the continent (for instance, the Mandans of the Missouri, a tribe now extinct, had the Welsh coracle, and many words said to be of Welsh origin among them), yet there is nothing certain, or even reasonable, in support of these ideas.* On the contrary, not only are the Western Indians in appearance very like their nearest neighbours, the Northeastern Asiatics, but in language and tradition, it is confidently affirmed there is also a blending of the people. The Eskimo on the American, and the Tchuktchis on the Asiatic side of Behring Strait, understand each other perfectly. Finally, if more proof was required, we have only to point out that several canoes and junks from the opposite coast have been landed on the American coast, and that in the winter the natives will cross from either side of Behring Strait with their skin canoes on their heads. Mr. Dall, who lived for some time in that district of country, and paid particular attention to the question, unhesitatingly declares his belief that the North-western Indians—at least those of Alaska-are recent immigrants from Asia, and that indeed they are still coming over. They carry on extensive commerce across Behring Strait in skins, frames for boats, hunting and fishing equipments, &c. The Asiatic immigrants are, however, confined to a few leagues of country along the coast and large rivers, while another people, or at least an earlier arrived one, inhabits the interior. The boundary line between the two races is very marked, and encroachments on each other's territory are never tolerated. If a hunter passes the line in the chase and kills any game, he can take the carcase away, but must leave the skin at the nearest village. The coast people and the interior ones never intermarry.

Probably Japan, the Kuriles, and the region thereabouts must be looked upon as the original home of the American race, or at least the greater portion of it. In 1834 a Japanese junk was wrecked at Queen-hâith, to the south of Cape Flattery, and the three survivors were sent back to Japan. They had been driven off the Island of Yesi, and losing their reckoning, had drifted about for several months, during which time the crew, which had been originally forty in number, had dwindled down, by hardship and hunger, to three. Again, on the 21st of April, 1847, in lat. 35° north, long. 156° east, a Japanese junk was fallen in with which had lost her rudder, and been driven to sea in a gale in November, 1846. She had on board a crew of nine men, and about 2,000 lbs. of beeswax, and other cargo. On another occasion an American whaler, in May, 1847, fell in with a large junk of 200 tons burden, dismantled, with her rudder gone, and otherwise injured in a typhoon, which had occurred seven months previously. The crew, originally consisting of seventeen persons, was reduced to fourteen, who were in a most pitiable condition from famine, and all scarred with dirk and knife wounds, for fearful scenes seemed to have been enacted on board during the struggle for existence and amid the paroxysms of hunger and despair.† The Indians

* In a humorous form Washington Irving, in the introduction to "Knickerbocker's History of New York," gives a summary of these various hypotheses.

† Anderson, in the New York Historical Magazine for 1863, p. 81, quoting Honolulu Polynesian of 1847.