first time, laid open to the eye of civilized Europe. The greater part of America was found to be thinly peopled by a single race of men, different in many respects from the inhabitants of the eastern hemisphere. A large part of the new world was inhabited by tribes, not only not civilized, but not even barbarous; the nations were eminently savage, though most of them were far removed from the lowest stage of human life, still represented by the Esquimaux, the New Hollanders, and the Bushmans of South Africa. The French, the English, and the Dutch, in their North American settlements, came in contact with the barbarous portion of the nations, who had a little agriculture, it is true, but subsisted chiefly on the spontaneous products of the forest and the flood. But some tribes had advanced far beyond this state: some had ceased to be barbarous. There was an indigenous and original civilization in America. Attempts have often been made to trace this civilization to the old world; to connect it now with the Tyrians, now with the Egyptians, and then with the Hebrews or roving Tartars. Sometimes the attempt has been guided by philology, which makes language the basis of comparison; sometimes by physiology, and scientific men have sought in the bodies of the red Americans to discover some trace of the stock they sprung from; sometimes by theology, which seeks the affinity indicated by kindred forms of religion. But commonly inquirers have started with the theological prejudice that all men are descended from the single primitive pair mentioned in the Hebrew myth, and have bent philology, physiology, and theology to conform to their gratuitous assumption. Hitherto these attempts have been in vain. Even the lamented Mr. Prichard, who had this theological prejudice in the heroic degree, - small for an English theologian, indeed, but great for a philosopher, as he certainly was, a prejudice which appears throughout his researches into the physical history of mankind, fails to connect the American civilization with that of any other race. We therefore take

it for granted, in the present stage of the inquiry, that it was original and indigenous. Geologists inform us that the western continent appears older than the eastern. If it be so, perhaps the American aborigines are the oldest race now in existence, and may look down on the bearded and pale Caucasians as upstarts in the world. If this be true, the red man

*Massachusetts Quarterly Review, No. VI., Article III.

has not advanced so rapidly in civilization as the white: this seems owing to the inferior organization of the former, and also to the absence of swine, sheep, horses, oxen, and large animals capable of being tamed, which in the eastern continent have so powerfully aided the progress of civilization. The man who would tame the sheep and the ox, must tame also himself. The domestication of animals, those living machines of an earlier age, once promoted the progress of civilization as much as the invention of machinery at this day. The camel, the ship of the desert, and the steamboat, the ship of the sea, have each something to do in ferrying man out of barbarism.

After the discovery of America, the Spaniard soon came in contact with the more advanced tribes of red men, contended with and overcame them, partly in virtue of his superior development, but partly also through the aboriginal and organic superiority which marks the Caucasian race in all historical stages of their progress, and appears in every conflict with any kindred race. This indigenous American civilization had two centres, or mother-cities, mainly independent of one another, if not entirely so- Mexico and Peru. The chief seats thereof were soon reached by the Spaniards, and conquered; the advanced tribes reduced to subjection, to slavery, or to death. The European brought there two things, wholly unheard of before the doctrines of Christianity and a sword of steel, each thought to be the ally of the other in the conqueror's hand.

Here is a theme more important, and therefore more profoundly interesting, than the Lives of Columbus and his followers, or the Reign of Charles the Fifth, though both of those bring great events before the thinker's eye;-certainly the biography of Columbus, of Amerigo, Cabot, and Verrazzani, would offer an attractive field to a thinking man. A philosophic historian would delight in a land newly discovered. Its geography, botany, and zoology were all new to the eastern world; there were tribes unheard of before, with a peculiar physical structure, language, literature, manners, arts, laws, institutions, and forms of religion unlike the old. It were a noble task for the naturalist to describe this virgin America, as she appeared in the fifteenth century, when she first stood unveiled before the European eye.

In ages before the historical period, the Caucasian race had taken possession of the fairest portions of the ancient

world. Now, for the first time during many ages, on a grand scale it encounters another race. For the first time in human history, the white man and the red man fairly meet. These two families so dissimilar in natural character, so unlike in their development, now join in war, in wedlock, and at length mingle in political union. Ethnographers of this day somewhat obscurely maintain that the mingling of tribes, if not races, is an essential condition of progress. It would be instructive to pause over the facts, and consider what influence in this case each race has had on the other, and their union on the world. Never before in the historical age had two races thus met, nor two independent civilizations, with modes of religion so dissimilar, thus come together. In the great wars which the classic nations engaged in, the two parties were commonly of the same stock. Even in the expeditions of Sesostris, of Xerxes, and of Alexander, it was Caucasian that met Caucasian. The same is true, perhaps in its full extent, of the expeditions of Hannibal and of the Moors. In all the wars from that of Troy to the Crusades, the heroes on both sides were of the same stock. The nations that we meet in history, from Thule to the "fabulous Hydaspes," all are Caucasians-differing indeed in development and specific character, but alike in their great, general peculiarities. Other races appear only in the background of history, among the classic, the Shemitish, or the East-Indian nations; but seldom even there, and not as actors in the great drama of human civilization.

The Spanish colonies afford the best known example of the mingling of men of different races. The Anglo-Saxon is eminently Caucasian: he also met the red men. But the Saxon, though like other conquerors forgetting his dignity in loose amours, will not mix his proud blood, in stable wedlock, with another race. There seems a national antipathy to such unions with the black, or even the red, or yellow races of men - an antipathy almost peculiar to this remarkable tribe, the exterminator of other races. In New England more pains were taken than elsewhere in America to spare, to civilize, and to convert the sons of the wilderness; but yet here the distinction of race was always sharply observed. Even community of religion and liturgical rites, elsewhere so powerful a bond of union, was unable to soften the Englishman's repug nance to the Indian. The Puritan hoped to meet the Pequods in heaven, but wished to keep apart from them on earth, nay, to exterminate them from the land. Besides, the English met

with no civilized tribe in America, and for them to unite in wedlock with such children of the forest as they found in North America would have been contrary, not only to the Anglo-Saxon prejudice of race, but to the general usage of the world-a usage to which even the French in Canada afford but a trifling exception. The Spaniards had less of this exclusiveness of race, perhaps none at all. They met with civilized tribes of red men, met and mingled in honorable and permanent connection. In Peru and Mexico, at this day, there are few men of pure Spanish blood.

All the historical forms of religion which have prevailed in Europe, and the parts of Asia inhabited by the Caucasians, seem to have sprung from a common stock. Perhaps this is not true, but at least their resemblances may often be accounted for by reference to some actual union, to their historical genealogy; not wholly by reference to Human Nature; their agreement is specific, not merely generic. But the forms of religion that prevailed in America seem to have no historical element in common with those of the eastern world. When they agree, as they often do, and in their most important features, the agreement is generic, referrible to the iden tity of Human Nature acting under similar conditions; it is not specific, or to be explained by reference to history, to community of tradition. It is the same Human Nature which appears in all races, and accordingly many, especially religious, institutions have a marked likeness all over the world, but the individual peculiarity of each race appears also in those institutions. The civilization of the Caucasian tribes in the eastern world, powerfully affected by their religious institutions, seems to have been propagated by offsets and cuttings from some primeval tree, and only modified by circumstances and degrees of development; so there is an historical element common to all those nations. It appears in their manners, dress, and military weapons; in their agriculture, from the east to the west, where the same staple articles of culture appear, and the same animals-the cereal grasses, the sheep, the goat, the swine, the horse, and the ox; in their arts, useful and beautiful; in their politics, their morals, their forms of religion; in their literature, and even in the structure of their language itself, so deep-rooted is the idiosyncrasy of race. In America, to judge from the present state of ethnographic investigation, it seems that another seed, independent and likewise aboriginal, got planted, came up, grew, and bore fruit

after its kind. This also was propagated by cuttings and offsets, so to say; its descendants had spread from the land of the Esquimaux to Patagonia. Here, as in the other hemisphere, the race became specifically modified by external cir- . cumstances, and the degree of development. Still there is a generic element common to all the tribes of America, running through their civilization, and apparent in their institutions. The idiosyncrasy of race appears here also, conspicuous and powerful as there.

This diversity of race and the analogous difference between the two civilizations brought into such close connection, renders the history of the Spanish settlements in America exceedingly interesting to a philosophical inquirer: the English colonies are interesting on account of the Ideas they brought hither and developed, and the influence those ideas have had on the world; the Spanish settlements are chiefly interesting on account of the Facts they bring to light. Under these circumstances, it becomes the duty of the historian, who will write a book worthy of his theme, to note the effect of this mingling of races and of civilizations; he is not merely to tell who was killed, and who wounded, on which side of the river each one fought, and how deep the water was between them, or how bloody it ran; he is to describe the civilization of the nations, giving, however briefly, all the important features thereof, and then show the effect of the meeting of the two.

More than three centuries have passed by since the Mexican conquest was complete. During that time great revolutions have taken place in the world,-theological, political, and social. A great progress has been made in the arts, in science, in morals and religion, in the subjective development thereof as piety, the objective application to life in the form of practical morality. But the Spanish-Americans have but a small share in that progress; they seem to have done nothing to promote it. They have not kept pace with the AngloAmerican colonies; not even with the French. It is pretty clear that the population of Spanish North America-continental and insular-is less numerous now than when Columbus first crossed the sea. The condition of the Americans in many respects is improved. Still it may be reasonably doubted if the population of Mexico is happier to day than four hundred years ago. What is the cause of this: have the two races been weakened by their union; were the Mexicans incapable of further advance; or were the Spaniards unable to aid them?