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 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 POLYNESIAN NATION: 
 
 DEMONSTRATING 
 
 THEIR ORIGINAL DISCOVERY AND PROGRESSIVE 
 SETTLEMENT OF THE 
 
 CONTINENT OF AMERICA. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN DUNMORE LANG, D.D., A.M. 
 
 SENIOR MINISTER OF THE SCOTS CHURCH, SYDNEY, ETC. 
 
 SECOND EDITION, GREATLY EXTENDED AND IMPROVED. 
 
 GEORGE ROBERTSON, 
 
 SYDNEY. MELBOURNE, AND ADELAIDE 
 
 MBCCCLXXVII. 
 
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CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Introduction ... ... ... ... ... ... vii. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 /^How the Polynesian Nation came to be spread 
 over the numberless islands of the Pacific 
 
 V/CCcbli ••• •■• ... •.« ... .•• J- 
 
 Chapter II. 
 
 ?( From what part of the world has the Poly- 
 nesian Nation originally sprung ; and with 
 what part of the human family does it 
 bear the stroncjest relations ? ... ... 25 
 
 '^o^ 
 
 Chapter III. 
 
 X At what period in the history of mankind did 
 the separation of the P(jlynesian from the 
 Malayan nation take place ? ... ... 54 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 
 X Wliat course the forefathers of the Polynesian 
 Nation must, in all likelihood, have taken, 
 in their voyages to the eastward, across 
 the Pacific Ocean ... ... ... ... 74 
 
 58728G 
 
IV. 
 
 Chapter V, 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 1^ The westerly winds that had propelled the fore- 
 fathers of the Polpiesian Nation from their 
 original starting point, in the Philippine 
 Islands, to their farthest east, in Easter 
 Island — a distance of upwards of seven 
 thousand miles, across the broadest itart 
 of the Pacific Ocean — must have carried 
 them across the remaining narrow tract of 
 ocean to the American land, and given its 
 first inhabitants to America 94 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 
 Unity or identity of the Indo-American race 
 from Labrador and the Lakes of Canada 
 to Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn ... Ill 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 
 }C The Indo-Americans and Polynesians are one 
 and the same peoi)le, spning from the same 
 primitive stock, and connected ^\T.th each 
 other by the mutual ties of parentage and 
 descent «.. ... ... .,, ... ... xotf 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 
 K There is no evidence, and not the slightest 
 probability, of any emigration having ever 
 taken place from Asia to America by Behring's 
 Straits ... ... ... ... ... ... 187 
 
Chapter IX. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 ;C There is no valid objection against the theory 
 of this work, from t]ie phenomena of lan- 
 guage in America 224 
 
 Chapter X. 
 
 / The Indcj-Americans are not Aborigines in the 
 sense of being a distinct creation from the 
 rest of mankind, Init are related, in the 
 way of natural descent, to another large 
 division of the family of man 266 
 
 Chapter XI. 
 Resume' — Plagiarism extraordinary — Conclusion 298 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 My attention happened to be strongly directed 
 to the investigations which the subject of this 
 volume implies, shortly after my arrival in 
 New South Wales for the first time, upwards of 
 fifty years ago, and I pursued them from time to 
 time, as I had opportunity, both in the colony 
 and more especially on my repeated voyages 
 across the Southern Pacific Ocean, from Sydney 
 to London, by Cape Horn. My enquiries were 
 directed chiefly to ascertain the manner in which 
 the islands of the South Seas had been origi- 
 nally peopled, and whether there was any aflinity 
 between the languages and the institutions and 
 customs of their singular inhabitants and those 
 o any other known division of the family of 
 man. 
 
 I was induced to enter on this particular 
 branch ol literary and philosophical enquiry 
 
viii. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 partly from a natural fondness for such investi- 
 gations, but chiefly from the growing importance 
 of the South Sea Islands, both as a field for 
 missionary labour and for mercantile speculation, 
 from the rapidly-extending connexion between 
 several of the groups of these islands and the 
 colony of New South Wales, and from the pro- 
 gress that was making at a comparatively early 
 period in the colonization of the southernmost 
 of the Polynesian groups — the island of New 
 Zealand — by adventurers from that colony. 
 
 In pursuing these investigations, especially at 
 sea, I had little else to refer to than the result 
 of my own previous reading and observations, in 
 the shape of a variety of unconnected notanda 
 which I had made in the colonv, some of which 
 were extracts of works which I had previously 
 read, while others were merely the details of facts 
 relative to the South Sea Islands, of which I 
 had been incidentally apprised during my resi- 
 dence in New South Wales. 
 
 In these investigations I had satisfied myself, 
 after ten years residence in that colony, that the 
 
INTRODUCTION. iX. 
 
 Polynesians, or South Sea Islanders, were of 
 Asiatic Qi'i^i^ cind Malayan rac e, a nd that, in the 
 earliest period in the history of mankind, their 
 foref athers had crossed, or rat her bee n driven 
 across by adverse winds, from the Indian Archi- 
 pelago into the Western Pacific ; and that from 
 thence they had, in numberless ages past, not 
 only peopled the multitude of the isles of that 
 vast ocean, but had actually traversed almost its 
 whole extent, to Easter Island, the farthest eastern 
 limit of Captain Cook's discoveries in the Southern 
 Pacific, that is, upwards of 7000 miles from their 
 supposed point of departure, the Indian Archi- 
 pelago. 
 
 This, I conceived at the time, was a great and im- 
 portant discovery ; for no previous effort had ever 
 been made, either to identify the Polynesians 
 with the Malays, or to trace their subsequent 
 history and migrations. In pursuing my inves- 
 tigations I found that the great difficulty that 
 uniformly presented itself to writers of emi- 
 nence on the Pacific Ocean and the Poly- 
 nesians was the uniform prevalence of the 
 
X. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 easterly trade winds in the intertropical regions 
 of that ocean ; and as these winds, as was strongly 
 maintained, would effectually prevent the South 
 Sea Islanders from traversing the Pacific to the 
 eastward, a learned Spaniard, the author of a 
 liistory of the Philippine Islands, had advanced 
 the singular theory — which Mr. Ellis, the author 
 of a well-known and very able work, entitled 
 " Polynesian Researches," had advocated and 
 long maintained — that the South Sea Islands were 
 originally discovered and settled from the West 
 Coast of America. At length, however, I dis- 
 covered, in continuation of my enquiries, that, 
 from the testimony of that illustrious navigator, 
 La Perouse, and another eminent English navi- 
 gator — Captain, afterwards Admiral Hunter, the 
 second Grovernor of New South Wales — there was 
 a belt of ocean in the Pacific in which it wag 
 quite as practicable, at certain seasons, to sail 
 to the eastward as to the westward. This dis- 
 covery, which I afterwards announced, as I shall 
 shew presently, was immediately adopted as the 
 solution of this great problem by Mr. Ellis, 
 
INTRODIK-TION. Xl. 
 
 who from that period renounced his own theory 
 of the discovery and settlement of the South Sea 
 Islands from the West Coast of America. 
 
 There was yet, however, a still greater dis- 
 coverv which Divine Providence had enabled me 
 to make in the boundless Pacific Ocean — that 
 of the way in which America had been originally 
 discovered and progressively settled, by Poly- 
 nesians from Easter Island crossing the inter- 
 vening tract of ocean, of about 2000 miles, 
 under a sudden and violent tempest of westerly 
 wind, such as are frequent in the Southern 
 Pacific, and such as I had experienced myself 
 in one of my voyages across that ocean, and 
 being at length landed, doubtless to their great 
 astonishment and joy, on the American land ; 
 but the reader will find the account of this 
 remarkable, and I may say intensely interesting, 
 discovery, with its details, in the continuation 
 of my investigations in Indo-America to verify 
 it and to prove its reality in the sequel. 
 
 It was in the year 1833, at the close of the first 
 decade of my colonial life, that I hit upon this 
 
Xll. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 * 
 
 great discovery, during ray third voyage across the 
 Southern Pacific Ocean to Cape Horn ; and in the 
 year 1834 I published in London, with nearly the 
 same title as this volume, a work of upwards of 
 two hundred pages, in which I gave an account of 
 it, as well as of my two previous discoveries, as to 
 the identification of the Malays and Polynesians, 
 and their subsequent history and migrations, and 
 also as to the practicability of crossing the 
 Pacific from the westward. 
 
 That volume was published not only to inform 
 the public of the important facts I had discovered' 
 but to prevent the piracy of my discoveries, which 
 I conceived was not at all unlikely, by unscrupu- 
 lous, or rather unprincipled, persons. That object, 
 however, it did not prevent. For scarcely was 
 my work published when the important disco- 
 veries I had effected were first depreciated, and 
 then appropriated wholesale, by persons whom I 
 could never have supposed capable of such iniquity. 
 Having in the meantime returned to the colony 
 myself, I was not aware of the circumstance till 
 the very popular work in which the shameless 
 
INTRODLTCTIOX. Xiii. 
 
 piracy had been committed was in its sixth 
 thousand. I was then again at sea, on another 
 voyage to England, in the year 1839, when I 
 happened to borrow the book I refer to from the 
 captain of our good ship, who, as an old ship- 
 master, whaling and trading among the islands, 
 had got a copy of it from a South Sea friend in 
 Sydney. I read the book, I confess, with profound 
 indignation ; for by propagating the idea that 
 America was originally discovered and settled from 
 Polynesia, without one syllable of explanation as 
 to how such an idea had originated in my fortu- 
 nate discovery of 1833, the perpetration of the 
 wrong has in great measure robbed me for forty 
 years past of the credit and the honour of my pre- 
 vious discoveries for ten years in the Pacific Ocean, 
 including, of course, what I consider my great dis- 
 covery of the way in which the Polynesians had 
 originally crossed over from Easter Island into 
 America. The reader will find the details in the 
 sequel ; but, as I had intended from the first to 
 publish a second edition of my book of 1834 at 
 some time or other, with all the additional facts 
 
XiV. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and illustrations I could collect in the meantime 
 in proof of my theory, I have never complained 
 before of the literary piracy through the Press, as I 
 thought I should have a better opportunity of 
 doing so in a second edition. 
 
 I could scarcely have been surprised that the 
 evidence adduced to prove the original discovery 
 of America from Polynesia in my very imperfect 
 work of 1834 should have been deemed insuffi- 
 cient and unsatisfactory. But I trust the large 
 additional amount of evidence of all kinds I have 
 adduced in the present volume, in proof of the 
 original discovery and settlement of America by 
 the course and in the way I have indicated from 
 the Pacific, will now be deemed by all candid 
 persons both sufficient and satisfactory. Hun- 
 dreds of additional proofs of the identity of the 
 Polynesians and the Indo-Americans might easily 
 be collected, if required ; but those I have given 
 will, I presume, be sufficient. 
 
 During a visit I paid to the United States in the 
 year 1840 I delivered a few lectures on the dis 
 covery of America from the Pacific, and as tlie 
 
INTRODUCTION. XV. 
 
 subject was both novel and attractive, although 
 rather recondite for the American mind, they 
 excited considerable interest, especially in Charles- 
 ton, in South Carolina, where I had the eminent 
 American ornithologist, Audubon, and a Grer- 
 man litterateur, who had shortly before been lis 
 tening to a learned disquisition on the Aztecks 
 in the Grerman university of Freiburg, as my 
 hearers. They were both greatly interested with 
 the whole subject. 
 
 I also delivered occasional lectures on the same 
 subject many years since in New South Wales, 
 and in recent years I have repeatedly delivered 
 a series of such lectures before the Eoyal Society 
 of this colony. But I have never completed my 
 subject till now. 
 
 I shall now conclude in the words of the 
 
 Christian Father, Lactantius, which I would take 
 
 the liberty to accommodate to the grand question 
 
 which, I conceive, is now happily solved in this 
 
 volume — 
 
 Omissis ergo hnjusce terrenae philosophic authoribus, nihil 
 certi asserentibus, aggrediamur viam rectam. 
 
 Lactantius de Falsa Eeligione, lib. i., c. 1. 
 
XVI. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Let US, therefore, have done with those uncertain,^ 
 unsatisfactory and futile attempts of men to people 
 America by Behring's Straits, and let us follow on 
 the right way, which is Grod's own way, by the 
 Isles of the Southern Pacific Ocean. 
 
VIEW OF THE ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS 
 OF THE POLYNESIAN NATION, &c. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HOW THE POLYNESIAN NATION CA3IE TO BE SPREAD 
 OVER THE NUMBERLESS ISLANDS OF THE PACIFIC 
 OCEAN. 
 
 The singular phenomenon which the South Sea 
 Islands present to the eye of a philosophical 
 observer is, perhaps, one of the most difficult to 
 account for that has ever exercised the ingenuity 
 of man. From the Sandwich Islands in the 
 Northern, to New Zealand in the Southern Hemi- 
 sphere ; from the Indian Archipelago to Easter 
 Island, adjoining the continent of America — an 
 extent of ocean, comprising sixty degrees of lati- 
 tude, and a hundred and twenty of longitude 
 {i. e., exactly twice the extent of the ancient 
 Roman Empire in its greatest glory) — the same 
 primitive language is spoken, the same singular 
 

 2 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 customs prevail, the same semi-barbarous nation 
 inhabits the multitude of the isles. 
 
 In using this language, however, I would not 
 be understood to include the numerous islands, 
 and groups of islands, of the Western Pacific, the 
 inhabitants of which are all remarkably different 
 from those of the other South Sea Islands, and 
 are evidently derived from the same primitive 
 stock as the aborigines of Australia, and the 
 Papuans of New Gruinea. These islanders are all 
 of a much darker hue than those of Polynesia 
 Proper, or the islands to the eastward, many of 
 them being jet black ; and there is this remark- 
 able distinction between the two races, that while 
 the languages of Eastern Polynesia are all mere 
 dialects of the same primitive tongue, there is an 
 infinity of languages in the islands of Western 
 Polynesia, .and all remarkably different from each 
 other ; every island of any size having one of its 
 own, and the larger islands three or four. 
 
 Confining our attention, therefore, to the 
 lighter-coloured Polynesian race, and leaving out 
 of view for the present the question as to their 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 3 
 
 original point of departure from the other habit- 
 ations of mankind, the first question that presents 
 itself for our consideration is by what means, or in 
 what way, has that very remarkable race spread 
 itself over the vast Pacific Ocean — reacliing, as 
 they hav^e done, the remotest inhabited islands 
 of both hemispheres, from the Sandwich Islands 
 in the Northern, to New Zealand in the South- 
 ern Hemisphere, and stretching across the broadest 
 part of the Pacific in the equatorial regions. 
 
 Without condescending, therefore, to notice the 
 theories that have been sometimes advanced on 
 the subject — viz., that the South Sea Islanders 
 are indigenous,! or that their islands are merely 
 the summits of tlie mountains of a submerged 
 continent or continents that once existed in that 
 part of the terraqueous globe* — the remarkable 
 
 t La plupart de ces isles ne sont en effet que des pointes de 
 montagnes; et la mer, qui est au-dela, est une vraie mer 
 Mediterranee. — Buffon, This obsei'vatiou refers to the islands 
 of the West Indies ; but it has also been repeatedly made in 
 regard to the numerous groups of Polynesia, 
 
 * Ipsos Germanos indigenas crediderim— quia nee terra olim, 
 sed classibus, advehebautur, qui mutare sedes volebant. Tacit. 
 
4 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean being the 
 creation rather than the disappearance of land^ 
 in the numberless coral islands that are constantly 
 rising up from the depths of the ocean, and at 
 length becoming solid land — without noticing 
 any further either of these theories, I would ob- 
 serve that the Polynesians, like all other islanders, 
 are a maritime people, very frequently if not 
 constantly at sea, and ever and anon making 
 short voyages from island to island in their respec- 
 tive groups. Now, although the trade- winds that 
 blow from the eastward in both hemispheres are 
 remarkably regular, they are not uniformly so ; 
 and in such exceptional cases as do occur, the 
 islanders are occasionally overtaken by storms 
 blowing in a contrary direction to that of the 
 
 de Morib. German. — " I am inclined to believe the Germans 
 indigenous ; for, in ancient times, those who were desirous of 
 changing their settlements did not usually travel by land, but 
 by sea." By the way, Tacitus would have found no difl&culty 
 in peopling the South Sea Islands ; for if their inhabitants had 
 not been allowed to have been indigence, i.e., to have sprung up 
 out of the sea like the islands themselves, he would have 
 said, olim classihus adiiehe'bantur, i.e., " they arrived in canoes 
 along time ago." 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 5 
 
 usual trade-winds, and are carried out perhaps 
 hundreds of miles into the boundless ocean. 
 There are numerous instances on record of this 
 calamitous occurrence having been experienced in 
 the Pacific Ocean ; of which I shall mention the 
 few following, for which it will be seen we have 
 the very best authority. 
 
 Schoiden (a Dutch navigator), who traversed 
 the south part of the Pacific Ocean in the year 
 1615, met with a large double canoe full of people, 
 at about a thousand leagues distance from the 
 Ladrone Islands, towards the south-east.* 
 
 In 1696, two canoes, having on board thirty 
 persons of both sexes, were driven by contrary 
 winds and tempestuous weather, on the Island of 
 Samal, one of the Philippines, after being tossed 
 about at sea seventy days, and having performed 
 a voyage from an island called by them Amorsot 
 (otherwise Ancorsa), 300 leagues to the east of 
 Samal. Five of the number wlio had embarked 
 died of the hardships suffered during this extra- 
 
 * Lord Anson''s Voyage Bound the World, page 343, Lon- 
 don, 1748. 
 
6 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 oi'dinary passage.* 
 
 About the time of the commencement of the 
 London Society's Mission (says the Kev. Mr. 
 Ellis), an American seaman, of the name of 
 Rctbert, accompanied by a number of natives, un- 
 dertook to convey some books from Rurutu to 
 Rimatara, a distance of about seventy miles. He 
 reached Rimatara in safety ; but, on returning, 
 was driven out of his course, and perished with 
 several of his companions. The day after his 
 death the boat was picked up by a vessel, about 
 two hundred miles distant from the island ; and 
 by proper treatment, such of the crew as were 
 still alive recovered from the weakness and ex- 
 haustion which famine had induced.f 
 
 The English missionary from Tahiti was the 
 first foreigner that ever landed on the Island of 
 Rapa; but many years before his arrival, an 
 inliabitant of some other island, the only surviror 
 of the party with whom he sailed from his native 
 shores, had been by tempestuous weather drifted 
 
 * Lettres Edijiantes and Guriense, torn xv., p. 196. 
 I Polynesian Researches, vol. III., p. 192. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 7 
 
 to the island, and was found there by the native 
 teachers who first went from Tahiti. His name 
 was Mapuagua, and that of his country Manga- 
 neva, which he stated was much larger than Kapa, 
 and situated in a south-easterly direction. The 
 people he described as numerous, and much tat- 
 tooed : the name of one of their gods was the 
 same as that of one formerly worshipped by the 
 Tahitians.* 
 
 About twenty persons in number, of both sexes, 
 had embarked on board a canoe, at Otaheite, to 
 cross over to the neighbouring island, Ulietea. 
 A violent contrary wind arising, they could 
 neither reach the latter island, nor get back to the 
 former. Their intended passage being a very 
 short one, their stock of provisions was scanty, and 
 soon exhausted. The hardships they suffered 
 while driven along by the storm, they knew not 
 whither, are not to be conceived. They passed 
 many days without having anything to eat or 
 drink. Their numbers gradually diminished — 
 worn out by famine and iatigue. P^our men only 
 
 * Polynesian Besearches, vol. III., p. 374. 
 
8 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 survived, when the canoe overset, and then the 
 perdition of the small remnant seemed inevitable . 
 However, they kept hanging by the side of their 
 vessel during some of the last days, till Providence 
 brought them in sight of the people of this island, 
 who immediately sent out canoes, took them off 
 their wreck, and brought them ashore. Of the 
 four who were thus saved, one has since died. 
 This Island is called Wateeoo, by the natives. It 
 lies in lat. 20 degrees 1 minute south, and longi- 
 tude 201 degrees 45 minutes east. It is 200 
 leagues from the native Island (Otaheite), of the 
 shipwrecked mariners.* 
 
 Captain Beechy, E.N., fell in, in the course of 
 one of his voyages in the Pacific, with a party of 
 South Sea Islanders from Tahiti, who had been 
 driven six hundred miles from their native isle, 
 by a gale of westerly wind. 
 vi Captain Duke, an old whaling captain, well 
 known in his time in Sydney, with whom I made 
 a voyage to England in the year 1839, told me 
 that he had also fallen in, in one of his whaling 
 
 * Cook's Voyages, vol. I., page 202 (11th April, 1779). 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 9 
 
 voyages, with a large canoe filled with South Sea 
 Islanders, with their provisions all bat expended, 
 and distant many hundred miles from their native 
 isle. He very kindly took them all on board his 
 ship, and kept them there till he could land them, 
 as he did at length, on their own island. 
 
 Another old whaling captain, equally well 
 known in Sydney, in the olden time — I mean Mr. 
 Joseph Thomson, with whom I also made a 
 voyage to England in the year 1824 — told me 
 that he had fallen in, in one of his whaling 
 voyages, with a large Tahitian canoe, with a party 
 of natives on board, all but exhausted, and several 
 hundred miles from their native island. He took 
 them on board his vessel and supplied them with 
 all that was requisite for their restoration and 
 refreshment. But, as Tahiti was greatly out of 
 his course at the time, he gave the islanders a 
 compass, and showed them how to steer in order 
 to reach it. The natives, as he afterwards learned, 
 watched their silent guide with intense interest 
 during the whole course of their homeward voyage ; 
 and when the summits of the well known moun- 
 
10 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 tains of their native isle hove in sight, they 
 leaped up in their canoe and danced for joy. Then 
 looking wistfully first at the hind and then at the 
 compass, they said, " The cunning little thing, 
 it saw it all the time." 
 
 In the only other case of the kind which I shall 
 mention, and which occurred about thirty-five 
 years since, a whaling captain out of this port, 
 fell in with a canoe drifting about many hundred 
 miles from the nearest land. There were two 
 dead bodies in the canoe, while those who remained 
 alive were in the last stage of exhaustion. 
 V These accidents, arising from sudden squalls 
 have, doubtless, been often aggravated and rend- 
 ered unnecessarily fatal by the mental character 
 and disposition of the South Sea Islanders them- 
 selves; for, conjoining a remarkable proneness to 
 despondency with their spirit of adventure, 
 whenever the wind blows strong and adverse, in 
 their short and frequent voyages from island to 
 island, instead of redoubling their exertions, they 
 generally pull clown all sail, and extend themselves 
 in sullen despair along the bottom of their canoes. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 11 
 
 abandoning themselves and their tiny vessel to 
 the mercy of the wind and waves. 
 
 In addition to these cases of accident from 
 squalls and tempests, maritime enterprise, which 
 is the characteristic of islanders, has also led, 
 doubtless in numberless instances, to voyages of 
 discovery on the part of the South Sea Islanders, 
 as Quixotic as that of Columbus must have ap- 
 peared to most of his contemporaries. For example, 
 a solitary native of the Fiji Islands had been 
 driven to sea by a sudden storm towards the close 
 of last century, when fishing off the shore in his 
 canoe, and had landed at length on the Friendly 
 Islands, 360 miles from his native isle. In such 
 circumstances, no European unacquainted with 
 the science and art of navigation, would have 
 ventured to put to sea in search of the distant 
 island from which the stranger had been acci- 
 dentally driven. But the thoughtless Polynesian, 
 fired by the spirit of adventure, often disregards 
 the suggestions of prudence in such cases. Stimu- 
 lated, accordingly, by tlie intelligence he had 
 thus received from the stranger, of the existence 
 
12 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 of other islands in a particular direction, Tooi 
 Hata Fatal, a chief of the Friendly Islands, set 
 sail for the Fiji Islands some time afterwards, with 
 two hundred and fifty followers, in three large 
 canoes, each of which must have carried upwards 
 of eighty men, with provisions and water for 
 the voyage. In such voyages, however, the un- 
 skilfulness of the pilot, or the unexpected change 
 of the wind, would often carry the adventurous 
 islanders far beyond their reckoning ; and in 
 such circumstances they would either founder at 
 sea or perish of hunger, or be driven they knew 
 not whither, till they reached some unknown and 
 previously undiscovered island. In the latter 
 case they would gladly settle on the new-found 
 land, fearful of again trusting themselves to the 
 ocean, and entirely ignorant as to what course 
 they should steer for their native isle. Since the 
 commencement of the present century, and the 
 formation of missionary settlements in certain 
 of the more prominent Polynesian groups, there 
 have been repeated and well authenticated instances 
 of adventurers having left their native islands on 
 
^ 
 
 THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 13 
 
 such hazardous voyages as the one I have just 
 referred to, and of having never been heard of 
 afterwards. 
 
 But the state of society that has liitherto 
 subsisted, from time immemorial, in the South 
 Sea Islands, affords an additional means of ac- 
 counting for the distribution of man over the 
 vast plain of the Pacific. The South Sea Islands 
 have, in all past time, been, like the ancient 
 Greek democracies, the scene of frequent, if not 
 perpetual, civil war;* and the cruel practice of 
 the victors has generally, if not uniformly, been 
 to exterminate the vanquished, if possible, either 
 by putting them to death as soon as they caught 
 them on land, or by forcing them out to sea. 
 
 * During the fifteen years the Eev. Mr, Nott spent in the 
 (Society) Islands, the island of Tahiti was involved in actual 
 war ten different times. — Polynesian Researches, I., 275. 
 
 At the battle of Hooroto, in which the people of Huahine 
 were engaged with those of Eaiatea, the fleet of Huahine con- 
 sisted of ninety ships, or war-canoes, each about 100 feet long, 
 filled with men. 
 
 In this war, the greater part of the chiefs and warriors of 
 the Seaward or Society Islands were destroyed. The island 
 of Huahine never recovered from the effects of this murderous 
 conflict.— Jtic?, 284, 285. 
 
14 OKIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 In the year 1799, when Finow, a Friendly 
 Island chief, acquired the supreme power in that 
 group of islands, after a bloody and calamitous 
 civil war, in which his enemies were completely 
 overpowered, the barbarian forced a number of 
 the vanquished to embark in their canoes and put 
 to sea ; and during the revolution that issued in 
 the subversion of paganism in Tahiti, the rebel 
 chiefs threatened to treat the English missionaries 
 and their families in a similar way. 
 
 On glancing at the chart of the Pacific Ocean, 
 it would seem probable that the first inhabitants 
 of New Zealand had reached that island from the 
 Friendly Islands, the nearest to New Zealand of 
 all the other Polynesian groups, and distant 
 about nine hundred and fifty miles to the north- 
 ward. The internal evidence afforded by the 
 dialect of New Zealand confirms this presump- 
 tion, as it bears a much closer resemblance to 
 that of the Friendly than to that of the more 
 distant Society Islands ; while the tradition of 
 the natives is that the first inliabitants of the 
 island arrived from the northward. Supposing, 
 
i 
 
 THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 15 
 
 then, that New Zealand had been originally dis- 
 covered and taken possession of by a party that 
 had sailed, perhaps, on some short voyage, from 
 the island of Tonga, the principal island in the 
 Friendly Islands group, and been accidentally 
 driven to sea, or by a party of vanquished islanders, 
 who had been driven out to sea by their ruthless 
 conquerors, it is evident that, coming from within 
 the Tropics, there would be no word in their 
 language to denote such a substance as snou\ 
 On seeing the strange substance, therefore, for 
 the first time after their arrival in New Zealand, 
 and ascertaining its coldness and insipidity, it 
 would be quite natural for them to exclaim, 
 when sorrowfully recollecting the comfortable 
 country they had left for ever, ''Tonga diro f ^^ 
 Tonga lost I This is the singular phrase in the 
 New Zealand dialect for snow. 
 
 In further illustration of the manner in which 
 the South Sea Islands, and especially the solitary 
 and remoter islands have been peopled in the 
 course of ages past, I may state that it has been 
 ascertained that the dialect of the Chatham Islands, 
 
16 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 situated only a few hundred miles to the eastward 
 of New Zealand, has a much greater resemblance 
 to that of Tahiti or the Society Islands than to 
 that of New Zealand ; but that the dialect of 
 Aitutaki, or the Hervey Islands group, and much 
 nearer Tahiti, is identical with that of New Zea- 
 land. The only explanation that can be given of 
 these remarkable facts is that some canoe with a 
 ](.^ party of natives on board had been blown off the 
 coast of Tahiti by some sudden tempest, and had, 
 after a voyage of upwards of a thousand miles, 
 reached the Chatham Islands ; and that, in pre- 
 ciselv similar circumstances, a canoe with a party 
 of New Zealanders on board had been blown off 
 their own island, and had, after a voyage of 
 perhaps still greater length, been driven upon 
 the remote island of Aitutaki. 
 
 Whether the first inhabitants of New Zealand 
 Imd been driven from their native island by acci- 
 ^ dent, or by the fortune of war, it is impossible 
 to ascertain. There is one singular feature, how- 
 ever, in the political aspect of that portion of 
 the Polynesian nation which I conceive throws 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 17 
 
 some light on the history of their original migra- 
 tion, as well as on the origin of a horrible practice 
 which has certainly been extensively prevalent in 
 that island, as well as in most of tlie other islands 
 of the Pacific Ocean. The practice I allude to 
 is that of cannibalism ; and the feature in tlie 
 political aspect of the island that serves to account 
 in some measure for the origin and prevalence 
 of that practice in New Zealand, is the absence 
 of everything like a distinction of caste in that 
 group of islands. 
 
 The Asiatic distinction of caste, as we shall see 
 presently, has been developed with greater exact- 
 ness in the Friendly Islands than in most of the 
 other groups. But in the islands of New Zealand, 
 whose first inhabitants were in all likelihood 
 Friendly Islanders, there is no distinction of 
 caste whatever ; every New Zealander who is not 
 a prisoner of war, i.e. a slave, professing himself 
 a rangatira, or gentleman. We cannot suppose, 
 however, that a large canoe filled with natives, 
 either hastily collected after a defeat in time of 
 war, or proceeding on a voyage to some neigh- 
 
18 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 boiiring island in time of peace — for it must 
 have been by a party of natives in such circum- 
 stances that New Zealand was first discovered, — 
 we cannot suppose that such a party of natives 
 should have left the Friendly Islands in which a 
 distinction of caste prevails without having per- 
 sons on board of various castes. But if the 
 wretched inmates of such a vessel had by any 
 accident been kept so long at sea (as they must 
 necessarily have been ere they reached New 
 Zealand) as to have expended all their stock of 
 provisions, their only and miserable resource (one 
 shudders to think of it) would have been to kill 
 and eat one of their own number. Such a thing, 
 we know, has been done again and again even 
 by Europeans. Now in such a case of direful emer- 
 gency, the first victim among a party of South 
 Sea Islanders would, doubtless, be the man of 
 lowest caste ; for the idea of putting a person 
 of inferior caste on the same level with a noble 
 or chief in any circumstances, would never occur 
 to a Polynesian. It is, therefore, highly probable, 
 from the present state of native society in New 
 
\ 
 
 THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 19 
 
 Zealand, that the miserable wretches who first 
 landed on that island had previously been so long 
 at sea, that they had successively killed and eaten 
 every person of inferior caste on board their vessel ; 
 and that ere they reached the unknown land, • 
 they had become, through absolute necessity, 
 ferocious cannibals. That the taste for human 
 flesh, which had been acquired in this manner 
 by the fathers of the New Zealand nation, should 
 afterwards have been found to minister to 
 the desire of vengeance or been indulged in 
 for its own sake, is not at all extraordinary. 
 We read in the book of Job, chapter xxxi. 31, 
 " Oh that we had of his flesh ! we cannot be satis- 
 fied." And in Burckhardt's " Travels in Nubia," 
 we find the fiollowing trait of brutality given as 
 an illustration of the vindictive cliaracter of a 
 Nubian tribe — "Among the Hallenga, who draw 
 their origin from AVjyssinia, a horrible custom is 
 ndid to attend tlie revenge of blood : when the 
 slayer has been seized by the relations of the de- 
 ceased, a family feast is proclaimed, at wliich the 
 murderer is brought into the midst of them, 
 
y 
 
 20 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 bound upon an angareyg (or sofa), and while his 
 throat is slowly cut with a razor the blood is 
 caught in a bowl and handed round among the 
 guests; every one of whom is bound to drink 
 of it at the moment the victim breathes his last."* 
 
 Unknown in Europe, the horrible practice of 
 cannibalism has never obtained in Asia, and is scar- 
 cely heard of even in Africa : but its existence and 
 prevalence among the Polynesians was the natural 
 and necessary accompaniment of the discovery 
 and settlement of many of the remotest isles of 
 the vast Pacific Ocean. Cannibalism, in such 
 cases, was the national, the characteristic, the 
 original sin of the race ; for it was indispensable 
 to the very existence of the first discoverers of 
 manv of the remotest islands that thev should 
 liave learnt on their passage thither to drink the 
 tepid blood, to devour the quivering sinews, and 
 to gnaw, like a starved hyena, the bones of their 
 fellow-men. 
 
 When Shunghee (E Ongi), a New Zealand chief, 
 who had been in England, where he was taken 
 * Bnrckhardt's Travels in Nubia, p. 356. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 21 
 
 much notice of in certain high quarters in the 
 earlier years of the present century returned to 
 New South Wales, he happened to see Inacki, 
 another chief with whom he had had an ancient 
 feud, in the town of Sydney. He there told his 
 adversary, that when they got back to New Zea- 
 land he would fight him. Inacki accepted the 
 challenge ; and Shunghee accordingly assembled? 
 on his return to New Zealand, no fewer than two 
 thousand men to attack Inacki. The latter was 
 prepared to receive him, and for some time the 
 event of the ba.ttle that ensued was doubtful. At 
 length Shunghee, who had the greatest number of 
 muskets, and who had arranged his men in the 
 form called in Roman tactics the cioneus or wedge, 
 placing himself at the apex and directing those 
 behind him to wheel round on the enemy from 
 the right and left, or to fall back into their ori- 
 ginal position as opportunity offered, shot Inacki. 
 On perceiving his enemy mortally wounded, tlie 
 sav^age immediately sprung forward, scooped out 
 the eye of the dying man with his English knife, 
 and instantly swallowed it ; and then holding his 
 
22 ORIGIN AND MIGEATIONS OF 
 
 hands to bis throat, into which he had afterwards 
 plunged the knife, and from which the blood 
 flowed copiously, drank as much of the horrid 
 beverage as they could hold. On his return to 
 the Bay of Islands he had about twenty captives 
 bound hand and foot in his war-canoe, whom he 
 intended to retain as slaves. But his daughter, 
 hearing of his arrival, and learning at the same 
 time that her own husband had been killed in tlie 
 battle, came down to the beach to upbraid her 
 father with being accessory to his death. To pa- 
 cify her, and to make her some amends for the 
 loss of her husband, Shunghee immediately caused 
 the captives to be laid with their heads over the 
 gunwale of the canoe, and with a sword, which he 
 had received as a present in a high quarter in 
 England, smote off the heads of sixteen of them 
 successivelv in cold blood. 
 
 The heart sickens at such recitals. But these 
 recitals enable us to estimate at what a prodigious 
 expense of human life, and at what a prodigious 
 amount of human suffering, the islands of the 
 South Seas, situated as some of them are at vast 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 23 
 
 distances from the nearest islands, must have ])een 
 originally peopled. Where one canoe, in the cir- 
 cumstances I have described, was fortunate 
 enough to reach some unknown land in the vast 
 ocean, we may conclude that many must have 
 been lost, after scenes of bloodshed and cannibal- 
 ism had been transacted on board them, at the 
 very idea of which the imagination revolts with 
 horror. When, however, I find so obvious, so 
 sufficient, and so satisfactory an explanation of 
 the origin and the general prevalence of cannibal- 
 ism in the South Sea Islands, I feel inclined to be 
 somewhat sceptical in regard to its being a reli- 
 gious observance — bearing a sort of symbolical 
 \ resemblance, forsooth, to the doctrine of the 
 atonement — as certain wise men of the east have 
 supposed. But there are missionaries, as well as 
 philosophers, who are nerer satisfied with a plain 
 and obvious reason for any thing, if they can 
 only allege one that is either incredible or recon- 
 dite. 
 
 That cannibalism is practised in various islands 
 of the South Seas, where neither necessitv nor 
 
24 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 the desire of vengeance can be urged in palliation 
 of the revolting practice, cannot be doubted. 
 About forty years since, a respectable Scotchman, 
 who had been long in command of a Government 
 vessel out of this port, at a time when it was cus- 
 tomary to resort to certain of the South Sea 
 Islands for supplies of pork for the King's stores, 
 told me that when he was lying at the Marquesas, 
 in one of his voyages to these islands, he had seen 
 human viscera hung up for use in the same way 
 as those of a sheep or bullock are frequently seen 
 in England ; and that, on inquiring on one occa- 
 sion of an elderly woman what had become of a 
 little orphan boy she seemed to be rearing, and 
 to whom he had himself got somewhat attached, 
 he was horrified to learn that the boy had been 
 killed and eaten. Nay, he assured me that he 
 was once offered a human finger himself as a pecu- 
 liar delicacy. 
 
THK POLYNESIAN NATION. 25 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 From what part of the world has the Poly- 
 nesian Nation originally sprung ; and with 
 
 WHAT portion OF THE HUMAN FAMILY DOES IT 
 BE.AR THE STRONGEST RELATIONS ? 
 
 I have no hesitation in expressing my own 
 decided opinion that the Polynesian nation is of 
 Asiatic origin and Malayan race. Before at- 
 tempting, however, to prove this point, I would 
 observe that there are certain writers who main- 
 tain that the Polynesians could not possibly have 
 come from the westward or the continent of Asia, 
 in consequence of the prevalence of the easterly 
 or trade winds of both hemispheres in the Pacific 
 Ocean. 
 
 De Zuniga, a Spanish writer of some celebrity 
 and the author of a History of the Philippine 
 Islands, presuming on the uniform prevalence of 
 easterly winds within the tropics, very preposter- 
 ously combats the idea of the Asiatic origin of 
 the Polynesian nation, and maintains the singular 
 

 26 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 hypothesis that the South Sea Islanders have oi'igi- 
 nally come from the continent of America — cross- 
 ing the Pacific within the tropics to the islands 
 nearest the American land, and passing successively 
 from island to island till they landed at length 
 on Java, Sumatra, and Madagascar. This amaz- 
 ingly preposterous supposition he endeavours to 
 maintain, moreover, by alleging certain affinities 
 which he conceives subsist between the languages 
 of the Indians of Chili and of the native inhabit- 
 ants of the Philippine Islands. It is proper, how- 
 ever, to allow the Spaniard to speak for himself. 
 
 "Many will urge the absurdity of this supposi- 
 tion, on the plea that the more immediate vicinity 
 of the Philippines to Malacca must have occa- 
 sioned them to be colonized by the Malays, as our 
 historians generally assert. I do not deny that 
 these islands could easily have been peopled by 
 the Malays ; but how could they colonize the Has 
 de Palaos and the Marianas, which are distant 
 more than three hundred leagues ? And it is still 
 more improbable that they colonized the islands 
 of San Duisk (the Sandwich Islands) and Otaheite, 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 27 
 
 which are distant two thousand leagues from the 
 Philippines. All these people, however, have the 
 same language, the same manners and customs, 
 and consequently the same origin, as our Indians. 
 There is, in my opinion, this other reason for 
 supposing these latter islands could not be peopled 
 from the westward, viz., that in all the torrid 
 zone the east wind generally prevails, which, 
 being in direct opposition to the course from 
 Malacca and the adjacent islands, it is fair to 
 conclude that the inhabitants of all the islands of 
 the South Sea came from the east, sailing before 
 the wind : for we have seen it often happen that 
 the Indians from the Palaos have arrived at the 
 Philippines precisely under these circumstances. 
 On the contrary, we have no instance on record 
 of any of the Philippine Indians having been, even 
 by accident, carried by the winds to the islands 
 to the eastward.* Here, therefore, we appear to 
 have found the most probable solution of our diffi- 
 culties ; that is, that the first settlers came out of 
 the east (we may presume from the coast of South 
 * This is incorrect, as will be seen from the sequel. 
 
28 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 America), and proceeding gradually to the west- 
 ward, through the Pacific Ocean, studded as we 
 find it with islands at no very great distance 
 from each other, and, of course, of easy access 
 before the wind, it follows that to whatever point 
 in an eastern direction we can trace the Tagalic 
 language, we may conclude that at that point 
 emigration must have commenced."* 
 
 Preposterous, however, as the theory of De 
 Zuniga may appear to all intelligent and candid 
 persons, we learn, from a work published in Lon- 
 don during the present year j that so far from the 
 hypothesis of De Zuniga having been exploded, 
 the Japanese Consul in San Francisco, a Mr. 
 Charles Wolcott Brooks, a gentleman of high 
 character and superior attainments, actually deli- 
 vered a lecture in advocacy of De Zuniga's theory, 
 before the California Academy of Science in that 
 city, so recently as the 4th of May, 1875. 
 
 But the testimony of the illustrious French 
 
 *" Historia de las Islas Philipiuas, por Martinez de Zuniga." 
 i. 2. Manila, 1803. 
 
 t" The Native Races of the Pacitic States of North America," 
 by Hubert Howe Bancroft, of San Francisco. London, 1876. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 29 
 
 navigator, La Perouse, is decisive as to the in- 
 validity of De Zuniga's theory. "Westerly winds,'' 
 says La Perouse, " are at least as frequent as 
 those from the eastward, in the vicinity of the 
 equator, in a zone of seven or eight degrees, north 
 and south; and they, that is the winds in the 
 equatorial regions, are so variable, that it is very 
 little more difficult to make a voyage to the east- 
 ward than to the westward."* Again, " It was 
 very clear to me," says Captain (afterwards Admi- 
 ral) Hunter, the second governor of New South 
 Wales, in the narrative of his voyage from Port 
 Jackson to Batavia, in the year 1791, " from tlie 
 winds we experienced since we came to thenortli- 
 ward of the Line, that at this time of the vear, 
 the month of July, and generally during the 
 height of the south-west monsoon in the China 
 seas, these (westerlyj winds do sometimes extend 
 far to the eastward of the Philippine Islands^, 
 and frequently blow in very heavy gales." At 
 the time he made this observation. Captain Hun- 
 ter adds, "We Wcre in latitude 13^ 25' nortl-, 
 * La Perouse's Voyages, chapter 2;!). 
 
30 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 longitude 12P, 37' east, Cape Espiritu Santo bear- 
 ing south 75^ west, fifty-eight leagues distant." 
 
 In addition to these evidences in favour of the 
 practicability of navigating to the eastward 
 within the equatorial belt of La Perouse, and 
 considerably farther north even, I am happy to 
 be able to appeal to the personal experience of 
 Mr. Edward S. Hill, a well-known and esteemed 
 member of the Royal Society of New South 
 Wales, who, having himself traversed the Pacific 
 <3cean in all directions, but chiefly in the equa- 
 torial regions of both hemispheres, for four years of 
 yi his earlier life, assures me that for three months dur- 
 ing the westerly monsoon the prevalent winds 
 in these regions are westerly, while a strong 
 current under their influence sets to the eastward 
 at the rate of two and a half knots an hour. 
 
 Besides, with one solitary exception — that of 
 the party of islanders arriving in tlie Philippine 
 Islands from the eastward, as related in the quo- 
 tation from the Lettres Edijiantes et Curieuses, all 
 the other cases of similar calamitous relations 
 above, were evidently those of vessels driven 
 
\ 
 
 THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 31 
 
 far out of their course to the westward by strong, 
 sudden, and violent westerly gales. It is highly 
 probable, from the distance traversed, that the 
 group of islands from which the unfortunate party 
 had started, in that particular case, must have 
 been the Marianas or Ladrone Islands. For, if 
 v such a gale as I have supposed had carried the 
 unfortunate party far to the eastward of these 
 islands, as soon as it had spent its fury the regular 
 south-east trade wind would return, and carry 
 them direct to the Philippines. This idea, which 
 I cannot but think is a right one, would explain 
 the extraordinary length of their voyage. 
 
 There is, therefore, sufficient reason to believe 
 tliat the westerly winds of the Indian Archipelago, 
 which often blow in heavy gales, having once caught 
 some unfortunate canoe full of Malays and driven 
 \, lier upon some unknown island in the Western 
 Pacific Ocean, where they would have no hope of 
 ever regaining their native isle ; the hapless 
 islanders and tlieir descendants in succeedinir 
 generations subsefpiently passed from island to 
 island to the eastward till they peopled in the 
 
32 OE^.GIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 course of ages the numerous equatorial islands of 
 that extensive ocean. And continuing the process 
 from age to age parties of the same maritime and 
 adventurous race, driven from their native isles, 
 whether accidentally or through the fortune of 
 war, were carried in a similar way, as far to the 
 eastward as Easter Island in the south temperate 
 zone, and within about two thousand miles of the 
 American land — as also to the Sandwich Islands 
 in the Northern, and New Zealand in the South- 
 ern hemisphere. 
 
 Having thus met and disposed of the prelimi- 
 nary objection of De Zuniga and the Japanese 
 Consul of San Francisco, I now proceed to prove 
 my position that the Polynesians are unquestion- 
 ably of Asiatic origin and Malayan race. I 
 submit, therefore, in the first place, that the dis- 
 tinction of caste, the most ancient and most 
 remarkable feature of Asiatic society, prevails in 
 certain of the more developed groups of the 
 South Sea Islands as fully and formally as in 
 India itself; for in certain other groups it is not 
 observable, for a reason which I have stated above. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 33 
 
 I. Distinction of Caste. — The King, of course, 
 was supreme ; and in Tahiti, or the Society Islands, 
 devotion to royalty was carried to so ridiculous 
 an extent in the case of the royal family, all the 
 members of which were regarded as sacred in the 
 highest Tahitian sense of the word, that whatever 
 any of the princes of the blood happened to 
 touch became sacred also. If the king entered 
 a house the owner had to abandon it forthwith. 
 If he walked on a footpath it was death for a 
 plebeian to walk on it afterwards. In benevolent 
 consideration, therefore, of the welfare and con- 
 venience of his subjects, his Tahitian Majesty, 
 having no state carriage, was graciously pleased 
 to be carried on men's shoulders whenever he 
 wished to see the world, lest he should otherwise 
 consecrate his own highways, and render them 
 unavailable in future for his subjects. In certain 
 of the groups of Polynesia, in which there was a 
 regular government established, and the Poly- 
 nesian system more fully developed, as in the 
 Friendly Islands, the kingly office partook of a 
 dual character, as it still does in Siam, and did 
 
34 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 till very recently in Japan — there being not only 
 a sort of spiritual sovereign, supposed to be de- 
 scended from the gods, but a civil and military 
 chief, of the order of nobles, but greatly inferior 
 in rank to the other. But, in the year 1799, 
 when Finow, the dominant chief of the Friendly 
 Islands, had subjected the other chiefs of the 
 group to his authority, he abolished the office 
 of the spiritual chief or Tool Tonga, as was 
 done a few years ago in Japan, and com- 
 bining all authority in himself, became like the 
 king the poet speaks of^— "Rex Anius, — rex idem, 
 idemque sacerdos." In the Friendly Islands the 
 several castes were well defined ; and, as in 
 India the Brahmin, or priestly caste, ranks highest, 
 insomuch that the Grand Lama of these Islands 
 — the Tool Tonga as he was called — took prece- 
 dence even of the king. 
 
 The castes in India are : — 
 
 1. The Brahmin, or priestly caste, whose office 
 is to offer sacrifices, to teach the Veda, to offer 
 gifts, and to receive presents. 
 
 2. The Kshutriya, or soldier caste, whose office 
 is to protect the country and the Brahmins. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 35 
 
 3. The Vishya, or merchant caste, whose office 
 is to keep cattle, to carry on trade, to cultivate the 
 land. 
 
 4. The Shoodra, or servile caste, whose office 
 is to serve the Brahmins. And any persons of 
 the hio-her castes must not communicate with the 
 lower in marriage, in eating, or in family friend- 
 ship, on pain of degradation and the loss of all 
 earthly connexions. 
 
 In the Friendly Islands, in which the Polynesian 
 system seems to have retained much more of its 
 ancient features than in most of the other groups, 
 a similar, if not the same, division of society 
 obtains. In these islands the highest caste is in 
 like manner : — 
 
 1. The priestly caste, the heads of which are 
 supposed to be descended from the gods : they 
 receive presents from the lower castes, and enjoy 
 peculiar privileges : and the other islanders testify 
 their respect towards them by addressing them 
 in a sort of Sanscrit or sacred language, whicli is 
 not used on inferior subjects. 
 
 2. The egi, or nobles, whose office is to preside 
 
36 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 in war, and to be the rulers of the country ; the 
 king himself being of this caste. 
 
 3. The matabooles, or gentlemen, whose office 
 it is to act as companions and counsellors to the 
 nobles, to be masters of ceremonies, and orators 
 at public assemblies. The cadets, or younger 
 brothers and sons of this caste, practise mechanical 
 arts under the name of mooas. 
 
 4. The tooas, or lowest caste, consisting of 
 common labourers, cooks, servants ; and, in like 
 manner as in India, the repugnance towards any 
 intermingling of the castes is so strong, that if 
 an individual of one of the higher castes has 
 children by a wife or concubine of one of the 
 lower, the children must be put to death to prevent 
 the degradation of the family. 
 
 II. The singular institution of taboo, which 
 obtains universally in the South Sea Islands, is 
 evidently also of Asiatic origin. The word taboo 
 is nearly equivalent to the Latin sacer and the 
 G-reek anathema, signifying either sacred or 
 accursed, holy or unclean. Under the Levitical 
 law, the show-bread was taboo, or forbidden to all 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 37 
 
 but the priests. The leper was also taboo, for 
 his touch communicated ceremouial pollution. 
 The Jews pronounced the former holy — the Komans 
 Avould have said Sacer diis coelestlhus ; the latter 
 they pronounced unclean — tlie Romans would 
 have said sacev diis infernis. In short, the 
 Polynesian taboo extends to persons, places, and 
 things ; and whatever is subjected either to its 
 temporary or to its permanent operation thereby 
 acquires a character of sacredness in the eye of 
 the South Sea Islanders, which it were death to 
 disregard. In New Zealand, for instance, a woman 
 engaged in nursing is taboo, and forbidden, under 
 pain of death, to touch the food which she eats 
 with her own hands ; and I recollect the case of 
 a woman who had violated this prohibition about 
 fifty years since, by eating a piece of fern root, in 
 the mode forbidden by the law, being killed and 
 eaten. 
 
 In some cases, indeed, the taboo appears to have 
 been a wise and politic institution. After those 
 national festivals that are so frequent in the South 
 Sea Islands, and at which such vast quantities of 
 
38 OEIGIX AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 provisions are consumed as to threaten a general 
 famine, the taboo is laid upon certain articles 
 of food, perhaps for a period of six months, and a 
 supply is thus reserved for the future. In the 
 islands towards the North, certain fruit-bearing 
 trees, and in New Zealand certain plats of kuriiara 
 or sweet potatoes are tabooed every season. The 
 produce of these trees or plats is gathered in the 
 time of harvest, and distributed among the people^ 
 And in New Zealand, evidently to guard against 
 the events of war and the pressure of famine 
 the seed potatoes are always separated from the 
 rest of the stock at the time of ingathering, and 
 placed in a storehouse which is tabooed ; and 
 any person found stealing from such a house in 
 punished with death. 
 
 Something analogous to this practice prevailed 
 in ancient times so far to the westward as the 
 territory of Attica ; and the circumstance may 
 perhaps induce us to believe, that the supersticions 
 of the ancient Pelasgi had a similar origin with 
 those of the Oriental nations. Throughout the 
 Athenian territory, both on the public lands and 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 39 
 
 on those belonging to private individuals, there 
 were numerous olive trees sacred to the goddess 
 jNIinerva, of which the fruit was annually collected 
 under the inspection of the magistrates, and after- 
 wards sold by auction ; the price being deposited 
 in the public treasury. These trees would have 
 been called taboo by the South Sea Islanders ; 
 and the punishment of death, as in the case of 
 the violation of the Polynesian taboo, was awarded 
 by the laws of Athens to the individual who either 
 cut them down or appropriated their fruit. An 
 , Athenian citizen, we are told by one of the Grecian 
 historians, was actually tried for his life before the 
 court of Areopagus, for removing the useless 
 stump of one of these trees from his field ; and 
 had the fact been proved against him, he would 
 have suffered the sentence of the law. 
 
 It may doubtless be difficult to account tor so 
 singular an institution as the Polynesian taboo ; 
 but its Asiatic origin is evident and indubitable. 
 < Its influence and operation may be traced from 
 the Straits of Malacca, across the whole continent 
 of Asia, to the sea of Tiberias and the isles of 
 
40 ORIGIX AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 Grreece. In Ionia, in Hindostan, and in Otaheite, 
 the person, the place, or the thing, that was sub- 
 jected to the influence of the mysterious taboo, was 
 thenceforth, in the words of the poet, auguriis 
 patrum et prlsca forinidine sacrutn, — " ab- 
 stracted from the common usages of life by a 
 superstitious dread, the result of ancient religious 
 observances." * 
 
 III. Numerous Asiatic customs and observances 
 
 are practised in the South Sea Islands, as well as in 
 
 w the Indian Archipelago, which closely adjoins the 
 
 continent of Asia, and must therefore have been 
 
 originally peopled from it. 
 
 To instance only a few of these — in Tahiti, 
 
 as in Bengal, women are not allowed to eat with 
 
 "^ their husbands, or to partake of certain articles 
 
 of food which are indiscriminately eaten by their 
 
 lords and masters. The general posture in sitting 
 
 * Duiiug the prevalence of a strict taboo in some of the South 
 Sea Islands not an individual was allowed to move from his 
 place, nor a sound of any kind to be emitted by man or beast. 
 The very pigs had bandages applied to their snouts, and the 
 poultry to their bills, to prevent them from disturbing the 
 solemn stillness of the scene. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 41 
 
 is that of the Asiatics — on the ground, cross- 
 legged ; and in the Friendly Islands, as in the 
 kingdom of Siam and in other Eastern countries, 
 it is deemed most respectful to sit in the presence 
 of the sovereign. The New Zealanders and Friendly 
 Islanders salute each other by touching noses 
 — a ceremony which is not unknown in Eastern 
 Asia ; and in the island of Tonga there is a game 
 called hico, which consists in throwiug up and 
 keeping in the air a number of balls, as is still 
 practised by the Indian and Chinese jugglers. 
 
 Nay, similar modes of thinking, and corres- 
 ponding peculiarities of action, are found to pre- 
 vail both in Asia and in the South Sea Islands. 
 The New Zealanders, for example, uniformly ascribe 
 internal maladies to the anger of some atua or 
 divinity, who is supposed to be gnawing the 
 patient's viscera. In such cases, therefore, instead 
 of administering anything in the shape of medi- 
 cine, tlie priest or soothsayer is consulted, who, 
 after certain divinations, probably pronounces the 
 patient given over to the anger of the gods, and 
 then tabooes or excommunicates him ; after which 
 
42 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 he is removed to a solitary house in the neigh- 
 bourhood, and left to die, like the aged or sick 
 Hindoo on the banks of the Ganges ; no person 
 being permitted to hold further communication 
 with him, or to supply him with provisions. It 
 is singular, indeed, that a similar idea, and a 
 somewhat similar practice, in regard to the treat- 
 ment of diseases, should have obtained even among 
 the ancient Grreeks. We learn from Homer that 
 when the Grecian army under the walls of Troy 
 was afflicted with an epidemical disease, Machaon 
 and Podalirius, the surgeons-general of the forces, 
 were not asked their opinion in the council of the 
 chiefs, either as to its cause or to the treatment 
 to be adopted for its cure. Chalcas, the sooth- 
 sayer, was the only person consulted respecting it; 
 and, like a genuine New Zealand ariki, that very 
 sensible person ascribed the disease to the ven- 
 geance of the far-darting Apollo. 
 
 In the Fiji Islands, the principal wife must be 
 strangled at the husband's death, and buried 
 along with him— a practice evidently borrowed 
 from the suttees of Hindostan. The same practice 
 
x 
 
 THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 43 
 
 obtained also in the Friendly Islands, in reg'ard 
 to the principal wife of the Tooi-Tonga, or chief 
 priest of these islands. 
 
 It is observed by Mr. Marsden in his History 
 of Sumatra (page 43), " That the original clothing 
 ot the Sumatrans is the same with that found 
 by navigators in the South Sea Islands, and in 
 Europe generally, called Otaheitan cloth." And 
 in the account of his voyage from Port Jackson to 
 Batavia, in the year 1791, Captain Hunter ob- 
 serves, in regard to the Duke of York's Island, 
 situated to the eastward of Xew Ireland, " that 
 most of the natives chew the beetle (betel), and 
 with it used the chenam and a leaf, as "practised 
 in the East Indies^ by which the mouth appeared 
 very red, and their teeth, after a time, became 
 black." " It may be allowed me to remark," says 
 Mr. Marsden, when speaking of the inhabitants 
 of the Pelew Islands. " that these are the most 
 eastern people of whom the practice of chewing 
 betel has been mentioned ; nor indeed does it 
 appear that either the nut (areca) or the leaf 
 {jpiper betel) is the produce of the South Sea 
 
44 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 Islands."* The island, however, in which the 
 practice has been observed by Captain Hunter, the 
 highly-competent observer I have just cited, is 
 situated 20 degrees of longitude, or about 1400 
 miles to the eastward of the Pelew Islands — a 
 most remarkable and instructive fact, as it shows 
 us, beyond tlie possibility of doubt, from whence 
 those peculiar customs and observances of the 
 South Sea Islanders, which they practice in 
 common with the inhabitants of Eastern Asia and 
 the Indian Archipelago, have been derived, and 
 how they have travelled to the eastward in ages 
 past. 
 
 Captain Hovell, late of the Young Australian, 
 one of the Queensland labour vessels, well known 
 in Sydney, has told me that he had observed the 
 practice of chewing the betel root in Banks' Islands, 
 situated in 170* W. longitude, and in 13* S. lati- 
 tude, that is considerably farther east than the 
 island mentioned by Admiral Hunter. 
 
 The general tradition of the South Sea Islanders, 
 I mean of those inhabiting the groups of the 
 
 Marsden's Miscellaneous Works. London, 1834. 
 
N, 
 
 THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 45 
 
 Southern Pacific, is tliat the first inhabitants of 
 the islands came from the northward ; Bolotoo 
 the Paradise of the Friendly Islands, being 
 supposed to be in that direction. In confirmation 
 of this remark, it may be observed that the word 
 Tonga, the name of the principal island of that 
 group — signifies east both in the Polynesian and 
 Chinese languages ; for that designation will 
 doubtless appear peculiarly appropriate as the 
 name of an island which its first discoverers and 
 inhabitants bad reacbed from tbe westward. 
 
 IV. But the evidence afforded by the Polynesian 
 language, in regard to the Asiatic origin of the 
 South Sea Islanders, is still stronger, and less 
 open to objection. " Language," says the cele- 
 brated Home Tooke, " cannot lie ; and from the 
 language of every nation we may wdth certainty 
 collect its origin." " The similitude and deriva- 
 tion of languages," observes Dr. Johnson, " afford 
 the most indubitable proof of the traduction of 
 nations and the genealogy of mankind ; they 
 add physical certainty to historical evidence, and 
 often supply the only evidences of ancient emi- 
 
46 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 grations and of the revolutions of ages, which 
 have left no written monuments behind them." 
 
 The identity of the languages spoken in the 
 different groups of the South Sea Islands was 
 observed by Captain Cook and his fellow voyagers ; 
 and the remarkable resemblance between these 
 languages and those of the Indian Archipelago 
 was also remarked. " In the general character, 
 particular form, and genius of the innumerable 
 languages spoken within the limits of the Indian 
 Islands," observes Mr. Marsden, " there is a re- 
 markable resemblance, while all of them differ 
 widely from those of every other portion of the 
 world. This observation extends to every country, 
 from the north-west extremity of Sumatra to the 
 western shores of New Gruinea, and may be even 
 carried to Madagascar on the west, the Philippines 
 to the east, and the remotest of Cook's discoveries 
 to the south."* 
 
 " One original language," observes Sir Stamford 
 Raffle^;, " seems, in a very remote period, to have 
 
 * " Archseologia,"' vol. vi. , page 154. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 47 
 
 pervaded the whole (Indian) Archipelago, and to 
 liave spread (perhaps with the population) towards 
 Madagascar on one side and the islands in the 
 South Sea on the other ; but in the proportion 
 that we find any of these tribes more highly ad- 
 vanced in the arts of civilised life than the others, 
 in nearly the same proportion do we find the 
 language enriched by a corresponding accession 
 of Sanscrit terms, directing us at once to the 
 source whence civilisation flowed towards these 
 regions."* 
 
 '• At first," says the unfortunate La Perouse, 
 ^' we perceived no difference between the language 
 of the people of the Navigators' Islands and tliat 
 of the people of the Society and Friendly Islands, 
 the vocabularies of which we had with us ; but a 
 closer examination taught us that they spoke a 
 dialect of the same tongue, A fact which may 
 tend to prove this, and which confirms the 
 opinion of the English respecting the origin of 
 these people is, that a young Manilese servant, 
 
 * History of Java, by Sir Stamford Baffles, p. 360. 
 
48 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 who was born in the province of Tagayan, on the 
 K north of Manila, understood and irderpreted to 
 us most of their words. Now it is known that 
 the Tagayan, Talgal, and all the dialects of the 
 Philippine Islands in general, are derived from 
 the Malay ; and this language, more widely spread 
 than those of the Greeks and Komans were, is 
 common to the numerous tribes that inhabit the 
 islands of the South Sea. To me it appears de- 
 monstrated, that these different nations aie 
 derived from Malay colonies who conquered these 
 islands at very remote periods ; and perhaps even 
 the Chinese and Egyptians, whose antiquity is 
 so much vaunted, are modern compared with 
 these.* 
 
 In confirmation of this idea of the great French 
 navigator, Mr. Marsden informs us that "upon 
 analysing the list of thirty-five Malayan words, 
 of the simplest and most genuine character, twenty 
 will be found to correspond with the Polynesian 
 generally, seven with a small portion of the dia- 
 lects, and seven, as far as our present knowledge 
 * La Perouse's Voyages, chap. xxv. 
 
THE POLYNESIAX NATION. 49 
 
 extends, seem to be peculiar to tlie Malayan 
 
 itself."* 
 
 The following are a few instances, such as Mr. 
 Marsden refers to, of the unmistakable affinity of 
 the Malayan and Polynesian languages : — 
 
 EngHsh. Malay. PoljTiesian. 
 
 The eye Matta(imiyersally) Mata (universally) 
 
 To eat Macan (Javanese Maa (strong guttural, 
 
 Mangan) marking the sup- 
 
 pression of conso- 
 nantal sound) 
 
 To kiU Matte' Matte' 
 
 A bhd Manu (Princes Is- Manu 
 
 land Manuck) 
 Fish Ika (Javanese Iwa) Ika 
 
 * As a. specimen of the manner in which the dialectic differ- 
 ences of the Polynesian language are developed, take the New 
 Zealand word Tangata, signifying man, which, I conceive, is 
 the oldest or original form of the word ; in the Tahitian 
 dialect, however, it becomes Taa'ta, with a strong guttural 
 intonation, supplying the omission of the nasal sound. But 
 in the Hawaiian dialect of the Sandwich Islands, in which the 
 letter k is substituted for the t of the Southern groups, it be- 
 comes kanaka — a word with which we are rather familiar in 
 these colonies at present, as it is the well-known synonym for 
 what is euphemistically called labour by our northern neigh- 
 bours in Queensland. 
 
50 
 
 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 English. 
 A louse 
 Water 
 The foot 
 A mosquito 
 To scratch 
 Coccos roots 
 A hog 
 Inland 
 Name 
 Hair 
 Fire 
 
 IMan 
 
 Gentleman 
 
 Two 
 
 IVIalay. Polynesian. 
 
 Coutou Outou 
 
 Vai (Amboynese) Wai, or Vai 
 
 Tapaan 
 Gnammuck 
 Gara 
 Talar 
 
 Tapao 
 
 Nammou 
 
 Hearu 
 
 Tara, and Tale 
 
 Orang 
 
 Three 
 
 Tolu 
 
 Five 
 
 Sima 
 
 Six 
 
 Annam 
 
 Seven ' 
 
 Pitu (Javanese) 
 
 Eight 
 
 Wolo (Javanese 
 
 Nine 
 
 Buai (Achinese) Buaa 
 Utan Uta 
 
 Ingoa Ingoa 
 
 Ru (Island of Savu) Hiu-u 
 Apaui (Achinese) Auai, obsolete Apauai, 
 
 Tahitian 
 Ora(guttural ) Tahitian 
 Rangatira (New Zea- 
 land) 
 Rua, Dua (New Zea- 
 land) 
 Torn, Tolu 
 Dima, Rima(Tahitian) 
 Ono (New Zealand) 
 Hitu,Witu(NewZea- 
 
 1 and) 
 Wara, Wadu (New 
 Zealand) 
 Si wall (Lampong) Iva 
 
 Dua 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 51 
 
 There is, therefore, abundant reason to believe 
 that the South Sea Islanders, and the various 
 tribes of Malays inhabiting the islands of the 
 Indian Archipehigo, are of kindred origin, and 
 that the languages of all these islanders are 
 merely dialects of the same ancient and primitive 
 tongue. The Polynesian brandies of that ancient 
 language doubtless bear a closer resemblance to 
 each other than to the dialects of the Indian 
 Arcliipelago ; but this is just what might have 
 been expected, from the comparative isolation of 
 the South Sea Islands on ths one hand, and from 
 the vicinity of the Indian Archipelago to tlie 
 vast continent of Asia on the other. 
 
 But before dismissing the item of language, I 
 would observe that there is one remarkable pe- 
 culiarity in the liabitudes of thought among tlie 
 Indo-Chinese nations, wliich is also observable 
 among the jMalayan and Polynesian tribes, but 
 which, as far as my own knowledge extends, is 
 altogether unknown among the nations — whether 
 Asiatic or European — to the westward of tlie 
 Oange?. That remarkable peculiarity consists 
 
52 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 iD their having a language of ceremony or defer- 
 ence distinct from the language of common life* 
 " In addition to these simple pronouns," says Dr. 
 Leyden, in the essay referred to above, " there 
 are various others which indicate rank and situa- 
 tion, as in Malayu, Chinese, and the monosyllabic 
 languages in general, which have all of them paid 
 peculiar attention to the language of ceremony, 
 in addressing superiors, inferiors, and equals." 
 "The distinction of an ordinary language and one 
 of ceremony," observes Mr. Marsden, " exists to 
 a certain degree, among the Malays in practice, 
 although not systematically or compulsorily, as 
 we find it to be the usage among the Javanese."* 
 " Among the latter," observes Sir Stamford 
 Kaffles, in a passage quoted by Mr. Marsden, 
 " nearly one half of the words in the vernacular 
 language have their corresponding term in the 
 polite language, without a knowledge of which 
 no one dare address a superior." " This dis- 
 tinction," observes Mr. Crawford, in a passage 
 quoted by Mr. Marsden, " by no means implies 
 * Miscellaneous Works, page 21. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 53 
 
 a court or polished language, opposed to a vulgar 
 or popular one ; for both are equally polite and 
 cultivated, and all depends on the relations in 
 ^Yhich the speakers stand to each other, as they 
 happen to be inferior or superior. A servant 
 addresses his master in the language of deference, 
 a child his parent, a wife her husband (if there 
 be much disparity in their ages), and the courtier 
 his prince. The superior replies in the ordinary 
 dialect."* But this remarkable peculiarity is 
 equally observable in those of the South Sea 
 Islands, in which there is anything like a regular 
 government or a distinction of ranks. I have 
 already alluded to it in enumerating the various 
 castes into which society is divided in the Friendly 
 Islands ; it was also prevalent in Tahiti, and it 
 doubtless affords a strong presumptive evidence of 
 an ancient affinity between the Polynesian and 
 Chinese, or Indo-Chinese nations. 
 
 Miscellaneous "Works, page 23. 
 
54 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 AT WHAT PERIOD IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND^ 
 DID THE SEPARATION OF THE POLYNESIAN FROM 
 
 THE Malayan Nation take place? 
 
 Althougli there are no historical records to 
 enable us to give a direct answer to this question, 
 there are still certain notes of time recognizable, 
 of which we can avail ourselves, to guide us to 
 a probable conclusion. Oriental scholars, whom 
 I have quoted above, inform us, therefore, that 
 there have been two distinct foreign infusions 
 into the Malayan language ; first the Arabic, or 
 comparatively recent, as also the Sanscrit, or 
 ancient infusion. The Arabic infusion was 
 doubtless coeval witli the era of Mahomet and 
 the Saracen invasion and conquest of the East. 
 The Sanscrit infusion was of a much earlier date. 
 Now, as there are no Arabic words in the Poly- 
 nesian language, the separation of the two, on 
 the departure of the first Malayan vessel from 
 some part of the Indian Archipelago into the 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 55 
 
 Pacific, must have taken place long before the era 
 of Moliamet. But, as there is no Sanscrit element 
 either in that language, the separation of the 
 two nations must necessarily be thrown back to 
 a period of the remotest antiquity. 
 
 The modern language of the Malays abounds, 
 therefore, in Arabic words, introduced, along with 
 the Mahometan delusion, by the Moors of the 
 Mogul Empire. It abounds also in Sanscrit voc- 
 ables — the evidences and remains of the ancient 
 intercourse of the nation with the Hindoos of 
 Western India. The former or more recent of 
 these foreign admixtures, compared with the rest 
 of the language, presents the appearance of a 
 number of quartz pebbles embedded in a sheet 
 of ice- -their edges rough and broken, and their 
 general aspect exhibiting nothing in common with 
 the homogeneous mass into which they have been 
 frozen. The result of the latter or more ancient 
 of these admixtures, in consequence of the more 
 liquid character of the Sanscrit language, re- 
 sembles a compound fluid, homogeneous in ap- 
 pearance, but differing essentially however, from 
 
56 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 each of the simple ingredients of which it is 
 composed. But the skeleton of the language — 
 its bones and sinews, so to speak — consists of the 
 ancient Malayan or Polynesian tongue. The - 
 comparatively consonantal character of the Arabic 
 admixture has introduced into the language a 
 tendency to discard the final vowels of the ancient 
 Polynesian ; the polysyllabic character of the 
 Sanscrit infusion has divested it in great measure 
 of its primitive monosyllabic form. But, in getting 
 beyond the influence of these foreign admixtures 
 from the westward, we find the modern language 
 of the Archipelago gradually assimilating to those 
 of Polynesia Proper : for, " in this dialect," ob- 
 serves Mr. Marsden, in reference to the language 
 spoken in the island of Celebes, which is situated 
 at the eastern extremity of the Archipelago, " we 
 observe one feature that assimilates it to the lan- 
 guages of Further Polynesia, the words being 
 invariably made to terminate with a vowel." * 
 
 Inattention to these important facts in the 
 history of the Malayan language has led to a series 
 
 * (( 
 
 Marsden's Miscellaneous Works," p. 46. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 57 
 
 of erroneous views on tlie part of individuals 
 otherwise distinguished for their Oriental scholar- 
 ship, or for their means of acquiring information 
 on the subject, in tlieir endeavours to ascertain 
 the origin and affinities of the Polynesian langu- 
 age, which liave served to involve in still greater 
 obscurity a subject already more than sufficiently 
 obscure. For example, the Eev. Mr. Ellis, the 
 author of that very interesting work, " Polynesian 
 Researches," having embraced the theory of De 
 Zuniga, that the Polynesians are of American 
 origin, has given a list of ten words from Mars- Y 
 den's Malayan Dictionary, the striking dissimi- 
 larity of some of which to the corresponding 
 words in the Hawaiian dialect of the Polynesian 
 language induces him to question the identity of 
 the ^Malayan and Polynesian tongues, although 
 lie admits that " there is a striking resemblance 
 in other words," and that " great part of the 
 (Malayan) language was doubtless derived from 
 the same source " as the Polynesian. One of the 
 Malayan words adduced by Mr. E. is the word 
 ■sJtems, signifying the sun, which has certainly no 
 
58 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 resemblance to the Polynesian word ra or la. But 
 sJiems is a pure Arabic word, the same as the 
 Hebrew word shemesh, and was doubtless never 
 heard of in the Indian Archipelago until after 
 the irruption of the Saracens into India from the 
 west. Orang, another of the Malay words ad- 
 duced by Mr. Ellis, and signifying man, has its 
 coDfnates in the dialects of Otaheite and New 
 Zealand ; and so also has the Malay word inacan, 
 to eat. It will not be thought singular that the 
 Polynesian word marama or mala^ma, the onooUy 
 which is actually found in Mr. Ellis's own list of 
 Malayan words in the form of 'malam, should 
 signify night in that language ; or that the Mala- 
 yan poetical name for the sun, mata-ari, the eye 
 of day, should not be used in that sense in the 
 Polynesian dialects, in which, however, its com- 
 ponent parts exist separately in the words mata, 
 eye — and ao, day. 
 
 Again, that distinguislied Orientalist, Sir 
 William Jones, has fallen into a somewhat dif- 
 ferent mistake in regard to the origin and affin- 
 ities of the Malayan and Polynesian languages. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 59 
 
 Observing* that many words in the Malayan 
 language were of Sanscrit origin, and that many 
 words in the dialects of the South Sea Islands 
 coincided with Malayan words of similar sound 
 and signification, Sir William concluded, doubtless 
 rather prematurely, that the Sanscrit of Western 
 India was the common parent of both these eastern 
 tongues. That eminent Orientalist was perhaps 
 overfond of referring everything to the Sanscrit. 
 This ancient mother-tongue was, in his estimation, 
 the key that would open every lock in the laby- 
 rinth of language ; but it has proved a false key 
 for the equally ancient Polynesian. It was the 
 horse (I will not call it the hobby) on which the 
 great Persian scholar could ride in triumph, like 
 his own Eustan, through all the ancient provinces 
 of Europe — whether Celtic, Teutonic, or Pelasgic 
 — but he was not aware of its inability to force 
 its way through the jungles to the eastward of 
 the Granges, or to cross over from the continent 
 of Asia to the multitude of the isles. 
 
 For that equally eminent Orientalist, Dr. 
 Leyden, whose acquaintance with the languages 
 
60 OEIGIX AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 of Eastern India was much more extensive than 
 that of Sir W. Jones, and whose premature death 
 was one of the greatest calamities that has ever 
 befallen the literature of the East, acknowledges 
 that there are many hundreds, nay thousands, of 
 Sanscrit words in the modern Malayan language, 
 — a circumstance that undoubtedly proves the 
 intimate intercourse that must have subsisted at 
 an early period in the history of the world between 
 the inhabitants of the Archipelago and those of 
 India to the westward of the Ganges, — but dis- 
 tinctly states his conviction that the mass of 
 words in the Malayan language is not derivable 
 from the Sanscrit.* 
 
 In endeavouring, however, to account for the 
 origin and affinities of the dialects of the Indian 
 Archipelago and of Polynesia, Dr. Leyden, in a 
 most interesting essay " On the Languages and 
 Literature of the Indo-Chinese nations," pub- 
 lished in the 10th volume of the " Asiatic Re- 
 searches," and after him Mr. Crawfurd, in his 
 
 * On the Languages and Literature of the Indo-Chinese 
 Nation, a Paper by Dr. Leyden, in the 10th volume of the 
 ""Asiatic Kesearches." 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 61 
 
 " History of the Indian Archipelago," have 
 
 advanced an hypothesis which has been very 
 
 judiciously controverted by Mr. Marsden, and 
 
 which is equally gratuitous and unnecessary. 
 
 Forgetful of the axiom, 
 
 Nee Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus, 
 Incident, 
 
 these gentlemen have supposed that there must 
 have been some general language more ancient 
 and more widely diffused than either the Poly- 
 nesian, the Malayan, or any of the other dialects 
 of the isles ; and that these dialects are merely 
 the modifications of that more ancient language, 
 produced by conquest and immigration, just as 
 the French, the Italian, and the Spanish, are the 
 modifications of the Latin or Eoman language — 
 the ancient general language of Europe. In 
 short, there is no reason whatever for supposing 
 that the Polynesian, the Malayan, and the other 
 insular dialects, have any such relationship to 
 a common mother-tongue. These dialects are 
 themselves the mother-tongue, or rather its genuine 
 representatives ; and Mr. Marsden, therefore. 
 
62 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 very properly asks, " What evidence is there of 
 any language having been used by this race of 
 people antecedently to that which now so widely 
 prevails ? "* 
 
 The voice of history informs us that at a period 
 of time very shortly posterior to the deluge, the 
 eastern parts of Asia towards the Yellow Sea 
 were occupied by a people comparatively civilised. 
 " Chinese authors," says the Jesuit Du Halde, in 
 his History of China, " consider Fo hi as the 
 founder of their monarchy, who, about two hundred 
 years after the deluge, reigned at first in the 
 confines of the province of Chen si, and afterwards 
 in the province of Ho nan., which is situated 
 almost in the heart of the empire, where he 
 employed himself in clearing all that tract of land 
 that extends to the eastern ocean. However, this 
 is certain, that China was inhabited above 2155 
 years before the birth of Christ, which is de- 
 monstrable by an eclipse that happened that year, 
 as may be seen in the Astronomical Observations 
 
 * " Marsden's Miscellaneous Works," page 13. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 63 
 
 extracted from the Chinese history and other books 
 in that language, and published in 1729."* 
 
 And tliere is reason to believe, that at a period 
 not less ancient, or at least shortly thereafter, the 
 foundations of the Malayan state were laid, in 
 the regions to the southward, and in the isles 
 of the Indian Archipelago, by a people acknow- 
 ledging the same parentage, and speaking the 
 same primitive tongue. Centuries before the 
 Portuguese ensign had been unfurled in the east, 
 the ancient Malayan empire in the island of 
 Sumatra had declined and fallen ; the tributary 
 Rajahs had made themselves independent; and 
 the state of Achin, which was governed by one 
 of their number, had become a first-rate maritime 
 power. But there were other powerful maritime 
 states, at the same period, of Malayan origin in 
 the east ; and the last fitful struggles of these 
 states with the overwhelming power of Europeans 
 were not unworthy of a people who had maintained 
 without a rival from time immemorial the empire 
 of the eastern seas. 
 
 * Du Halde, vol. ii., page 2. 
 
64 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 A glance at the Malayan empire in the east — 
 not indeed in the period of its rise and progress- 
 and vigorous existence, (for history affords us no 
 information on that subject), but in the state it 
 first exhibited to Europeans, that of its decline 
 and fall, may not be uninteresting in this stage of 
 our progress, in showing us what sort of people 
 they were from whom the forefathers of the Poly- 
 nesian nation originally sprung. It is generally 
 allow^ed that the islands of Java and Sumatra 
 were the earliest settled by the INIalayan nation : 
 these fertile islands may therefore be considered 
 as the head-quarters and the nurseries of their 
 race. There the Malays founded, at an early 
 period, the flourishing and powerful kingdoms of 
 Menangkabau, Acheen, Majapahit, and Japara ; 
 the second and the last of which were still so 
 formidable from their maritime force, at a com- 
 paratively recent period, as to have almost annihi- 
 lated the Portuguese empire in the east. Of 
 the first of these ancient kingdoms, Mr. Marsden, 
 who was for some time resident in the island 
 of Sumatra, of which he has given a very in- 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 65 
 
 teresting' account, relates the following parti- 
 culars : — 
 
 " In ancient times the empire of Menangkabau, 
 whose capital of the same name is situated in the 
 interior of Sumatra, on the equinoctial line, seems 
 to have comprehended the whole of that large 
 island ; the independent chiefs or rajahs, who 
 have seized upon its divided members and assumed 
 sovereign authority along the coast, still ac- 
 knowledging the claims of the royal family of 
 ]\Ienangkabau as the lords paramount of the 
 island, and still giving them nominal deference. 
 From their possession of a written language, and 
 the general diffusion of the knowledge of reading" 
 and writing throughout the island, as well as from 
 the state of the arts, which at present seem to have 
 declined from their former condition, it would 
 seem that in former times this empire had been 
 much more advanced in civilization than it is at 
 present. One of the great districts into which 
 the island was anciently divided, was denominated 
 Malayo, and its inhabitants orang 3Ialayo, or 
 JMalays — a name which has since become synony- 
 
66 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 mous with orang Menangkabau, or Sumatran 
 Mahometan ; the other inhabitants of the ishmd 
 being, for the most part, idolaters. The district 
 so denominated is situated in the south-eastern 
 extremity of Sumatra, on the river Malayo, which 
 flows into the river of Palembang. About the 
 year 1160, the people of this district emigrated 
 under their rajah, Sri Turi Briwana, to the south- 
 eastern extremity of the opposite peninsula ; and, 
 from their settlement there, the peninsula came 
 to be distinguished by the name of Tanah Malayo, 
 or Malayan land. 
 
 " On this coast the Malays built their first city, 
 Singapura, where they were much harassed for a 
 long time by the kings of Majapahit, a flourishing 
 and powerful state in the neighbouring island of 
 Java. In consequence of this annoyance, tlie 
 Malayan rajah retired to the western coast of the 
 peninsula, and built the city of Malacca, so called 
 from a fruit-bearing tree of that name which 
 abounds in its vicinity, in the year 1252. In 
 this new settlement the Malays increased rapidly 
 both in numbers and importance, and successfully 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 67 
 
 resisted repeated attacks from the king of Siam, 
 who, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, had 
 become jealous of their power. In 1511 Malacca 
 was taken by the Portuguese, in the reign of 
 Sultan Mahmud Shah, the twelfth king of the 
 Malays, and the seventh of Malacca. In confir- 
 mation of these statements, the Malays of tlie 
 peninsula uniformly assert that they all came from 
 Sumatra." 
 
 The state of the art of navigation among the 
 Malayan nations of the Indian Archipelago in 
 former times may be inferred from the following 
 facts. Shortly after the establishment of the 
 Portuguese in Malacca, in the year 1511, the king 
 of Acheen, a state of very considerable power in 
 the north of Sumatra, waged a long and bloody 
 war against them. In the course of this war 
 " Francesco de Mello being sent in an armed vessel, 
 in the year 1527, from Malacca, with despatches 
 to Groa, met near Acheen Head with a ship of 
 that nation just arrived from Mecca, and supposed 
 to be richly laden. As she had on board three 
 hundred Achinese and forty Arabs, he dared n(it 
 
68 ORIGIX AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 venture to board her, but battered her at a dis- 
 tance, when suddenly she filled and sank, to the 
 extreme disappointment of the Portuguese, who 
 thereby lost their prize ; but they wreaked their 
 vengeance on the unfortunate crew, as they en- 
 deavoured to save tliemselves by swimming, and 
 boasted that they did not suffer a man to escape."* 
 
 " In the year 1573, after forming an alliance 
 with the queen of Japara, the object of which was 
 the destruction of the European power, the king 
 of Acheen appeared again before Malacca with 
 ninety vessels, twenty-five of them large galleys, 
 with seven thousand men, and great store of 
 artillery. In the year following Malacca was in- 
 vested with an armada from the queen of Japara 
 of three hundred sail, eighty of which were junks 
 of four hundred tons burden. After besieHuo- 
 the place for three months, till the very air became 
 corrupted by their stay, the fleet retired with little 
 more than five thousand men of fifteen thousand 
 that embarked on the expedition. 
 
 " Scarcely was the Javanese force departed, 
 
 * Marsdens "Hist, of Sumatra," p. 423-424. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 69 
 
 when the king of Acheen once more appeared 
 with a fleet that^is described as covering the Straits. 
 He ordered an attack upon three Portuguese 
 frigates that were in the road protecting some 
 provision-vessels ; which was executed with such 
 a furious discharge of artillery, that they were 
 presently destroyed with all their crews."* 
 
 " In 1582, the king appeared again before 
 Malacca with a fleet of a hundred and fifty sail, 
 and a few years afterwards with three hundred 
 sail. In 1615, he again attacked the settlement 
 with a fleet of five hundred sail and sixty thou- 
 sand men."t 
 
 It would thus appear that on the first opening 
 of the East to Europeans, there were extensive, 
 powerful, and flourishing maritime states of 
 ancient standing established in the Indian Archi- 
 pelago ; the enterprising and warlike population 
 of which had made no inconsiderable progress in 
 the arts of civilization. The conquests of the 
 Arabs, and the voyages of their seafaring converts 
 
 * Marsclen's "Hist, of Sumatra," p. 431. 
 t Marsden, passim. 
 
70 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 in the east to the sepulchre of the Arabian prophet, 
 may, doubtless, account for the prevalence of the 
 Malayan language in the island of Madagascar, 
 although it is much more probable that the 
 settlement of that island had been effected long 
 anterior to the era of Maliomet or the rise of the 
 
 Saracen power ; but the earl}' discovery and the 
 successive settlement of all the islands of the 
 Indian Archipelago were the natural and the 
 necessary result of the existence of an ancient 
 maritime power in that galaxy of isles. Some of 
 these discoveries were, doubtless, the result of 
 accident ; others the reward of enterprise. With 
 the islands more favourably situated, a precarious 
 communication would doubtless be maintained 
 for a longer period with the mother country ; but 
 as the discovery and settlement of the more 
 distant and isolated isles would in all likelihood 
 be effected by the crews of vessels that had lost 
 their way on the deep sea, their future inhabitants 
 would necessarily remain completely isolated from 
 the rest of mankind. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 71 
 
 There is still another and unexceptionable 
 means of ascertaining the period at which the 
 forefathers of the Polynesian nation were finally 
 separated from the rest of mankind, in one or 
 other of the ways I have indicated above. I 
 mean from the character and style of their archi- 
 tectural remains. From the Pyramids of Egypt 
 and the other enormous remains of antiquity in 
 that country, it is evident that the character and 
 style of its architecture, at least for all public or 
 national buildings, was pyramidal and colossal.* 
 jN"ow it appears to me that that style of the earlier 
 postdiluvian architecture must have been derived 
 from the reminiscences of the antediluvian period, 
 by thos8 eight persons who survived the deluge, 
 »and who, we know, were unquestionably not bar- 
 barians, but in a comparatively advanced state of 
 civilization. For, as emigrants from the old 
 
 * As the Eoman poet says of his countrymen in their best 
 
 days — 
 
 " Privatus illis census erat brevis ; 
 
 Commune magnum." 
 Which I may be permitted to translate : — Their private build- 
 ings were comparatively humble, their public magnificent ; so 
 it seems to have been with the ancient Egyptians. 
 
72 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 world to auy colonial field beyond seas uniformly 
 reproduce, in their new settlements, the whole 
 framework of society as it exists in their father- 
 land, and in particular its style and character of 
 building, so would the survivors of the deluge 
 reproduce in the world after the flood the whole 
 framework of society, and especially the style of 
 buildings among the antediluvians.* And in a 
 state of tilings in which the term of human life 
 extended to nearly a thousand years, it was natu- 
 ral that its architecture, for public buildings at 
 all events, should be of a gigantic and colossal 
 character ; as time, on the one hand, would be no 
 object to the antediluvian architect, while it would 
 be absolutely necessary, on the other, that build- 
 ings, designed to last for generations, should be 
 of such a character as to endure for ages. At all 
 
 * The original colonists of Eio de Janeiro, in the Brazils, 
 had emigrated from the city of Oporto in Portugal, and those 
 of the Cape of Good Hope from Rotterdam and the other 
 cities of Holland. In both eases the mother-country is strongly 
 reproduced in the style of their buildings. And it has often 
 been observed that the English colonists uniformly build after 
 the pattern of the old country, however unsuitably for the 
 climate. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 73 
 
 » 
 
 •events, it is unquestionable that the character and 
 style of the architecture prevalent in the world 
 when the forefathers of the Polynesian nation 
 came to be separated from the rest of mankind 
 must have been of the earlier postdilurian charac- 
 ter. For, strange and unaccountable as it may 
 seem, it is nevertheless the fact that the style and 
 character of the architecture for all public build- 
 ings throughout the Pacific is pyramidal and colos- 
 sal. But as I shall have a fitter opportunity in 
 the sequel for referring to this very remarkable 
 fact, I shall merely mention it for the present as 
 a satisfactory proof of the great antiquity of the 
 Polynesian race. 
 
74 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 
 What Course the Forefathers of the Poly- 
 nesian Nation must, in all Likelihood, 
 have taken in their Voyages to the 
 Eastward across the Pacific Ocean. 
 
 Although I had felt confident, from a compara- 
 tively early period, that the forefathers of the 
 Polynesian nation must have started on tlieir east- 
 erly migration across the Pacific Ocean from the 
 Indian Archipelago ; I was long uncertain, chiefly 
 from my inacquaintanceat the time with the course 
 of tlie winds and currents of the Pacific, as to what 
 particular part of the Archipelago could be fixed 
 on with any degree of probability as their point of 
 departure. But from the information I have since 
 obtained, in addition to my own experience and 
 observation on these subjects, from my Australian 
 friend, Edward S. Hill, Esq., I have been led to 
 conclude with that gentleman that the original 
 starting point of the Polynesians from the Indian 
 %v Archipelago was the Philippine Islands. A sudden 
 
/ 
 
 THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 75 
 
 and violent westerly gale, such as often occurs in 
 these regions during the westerly monsoon, in the 
 months of January, February, and March, may 
 have seized some unfortunate Malayan vessel when 
 passing from island to island among the Philip- 
 pines, and carried her out so far to sea in an 
 easterly direction as to preclude the possibility of 
 her ever regaining the native isle of her crew. In 
 such circumstances they would gladly settle on the 
 first habitable land to which the adverse gale had 
 driven them, in the Western Pacific, and thus 
 give their first inhabitants to the multitude of the 
 isles. 
 
 There are two groups of Islands in the Western 
 Pacific, to either of which a vessel caught sud- 
 denly by a north-westerly gale off the east coast of 
 the Philippines might be driven, viz., the Palaos 
 or Pelew Islands, in latitude 7*^ 30' N., and the 
 ^larian or Ladrone Islands, in latitude 19*^ N. ; 
 the former of these groups being five hundred and 
 twenty-five and the latter from a thousand to 
 twelve hundred miles from the Philippines. The 
 ship Antelope, Captain Wilson, of the late Hon. 
 
76 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 East India Company's service, having* been wrecked 
 on the Pelew Islands, in the year 1782, an inter- 
 esting account of them was afterwards published 
 by Captain Wilson, in which we recognise in the 
 natives of these islands, and especially in the style 
 of their buildings, a people of the regular Poly- 
 nesian type. The Island of Tinian, of the other 
 or Marian group, was visited and described by 
 Lord Anson in his famous voyage round the world 
 in the years 1740-4 ; and it is worthy of remark 
 that in that island we find numerous colossal 
 remains of a hoary antiquity, such as are found scat- 
 tered over the whole face of fhe Pacific, often even 
 in the smallest islands. The following is an extract 
 from Lord Anson's description of this island, 
 which we may doubtless regard as the iirst stage 
 in the progress of the Polynesian race from their 
 point of departure in the Philippines to the Far 
 East. The island is twelve miles by six, and is 
 situated in latitude 15'^ 28' N. It is a beautiful 
 island, and wonderfully fertile. 
 
 "There are, in all parts of the island, a great 
 number of ruins of a very particular kind. They 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 77 
 
 usually consist of two rows of square pyramidal 
 pillars, each pillar being about six feet from the 
 next, and the distance between the rows being 
 about twelve feet. The pillars themselves are 
 about five feet square at the base, and about thir- 
 teen feet high, and on the top of each of them 
 there is a semi-globe, with the flat part upwards. 
 The whole of the pillars and semi -globes are solid, 
 being composed of sand and stone cemented toge- 
 ther and plaistered over."* 
 
 Taking it for granted, therefore, that the point 
 of departure for the forefathers of the Polynesian 
 nation from the Indian Archipelago was the Phi- 
 lippine Islands, Mr. Hill — to whose opinions on 
 such subjects I attach the highest value, as being 
 the result of long personal experience and highly- 
 discriminating observation! — supposes that their 
 
 * A Voyage Eoiind the World, in the years 1740-4, hj George 
 Anson, Esq., Commander-in-Chief of a Squadron of His 
 Majesty's ships, sent upon an Expedition to the South Seas. 
 London, 1748. Page 312. 
 
 + Mr. Hill spent four years of his earlier life in traversing 
 the inter-tropical regions of the Pacific Ocean in both hemis- 
 pheres. 
 
78 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 further progress to the eastward was along the 
 J_ chain of the Caroline Islands, which extends in 
 latitude 7° 30' N., the latitude of the Pelew Islands, 
 twenty degrees of longitude, or twelve hundred 
 miles due east. During their progress in this 
 direction they would have both a westerly wind 
 and a strong easterly current during the westerly 
 monsoon months, and they would probably leave 
 part of their number from time to time, as they 
 had evidently done at Tinian, to occupy and settle 
 the more eligible islands on their way. From the 
 eastern extremity of the Caroline chain, the dis- 
 tance eastward to the Radack Islands, the next 
 point of occupation, is four hundred miles. 
 
 It is, of course, to be understood that, as the 
 Polynesians had no compass or chart to guide 
 them in their migrations, the discovery and 
 settlement of each successive island or group of 
 islands would be purely accidental ; from their 
 being driven off unexpectedly from their proper 
 course by foul winds, if not from the fortune of 
 f^ war or the spirit of adventure, and left either 
 to find some previously unknown island or to 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 79 
 
 perish in the waters. Now as there would doubt- 
 less be dififerent, independent, and simultaneous 
 streams of emigration, in different directions 
 and in both hemispheres, in the progress of tlie 
 discovery and settlement of the numerous islands 
 and groups of islands in the Pacific, Mr. Hill 
 suggests the following as being the probable lines 
 of movement, with the distances in each 
 case.* 
 
 From the Radack Islands, as a centre of move- 
 ment, to the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands, which 
 there is reason to believe were an early or primi- 
 tive discovery, the distance is 1900 miles. But, 
 supposing that the Fanning, Washington, Pal- 
 myra, and Christmas Islands, to the eastward, had 
 been previously discovered, the distance from 
 thence to Hawaii would be only 1200 miles. 
 
 From the Sandwich Islands to the Marquesas, 
 which must also have been a very ancient disco- 
 very, the distance is 1800 miles ; but from Fan- 
 
 * Any person desirous of verifying or testing Mr. Hill's 
 suggestions, can easily do so for himself by glancing at a map 
 of the Pacific Ocean. 
 
80 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 ning's Island and the Washington group it is only 
 1200 miles. 
 
 From the Marquesas to the Powmotoo Island?^ 
 the distance is 350 miles, and from these islands 
 to Tahiti, 350 also. 
 
 From thence (that is, from Tahiti), observes 
 Mr. Hill, there is a continuous range of islands 
 towards Easter Island, the farthest east of Cap- 
 tain Cook's discoveries in the Pacific ; the last 
 island in the range being distant from Easter 
 Island 800 miles. 
 
 Mr. Hill is of opinion that, after reaching 
 Tahiti, Polynesian emigration took a westerly 
 direction to Aitutaki or the Hervey group, 
 distant 500 miles ; thence to the Navigators' 
 Islands 700 miles ; and thence by a continuous 
 chain to Tonga or the Friendly Islands. The dis- 
 tance from Tonga, to which tradition points as 
 its mother country, to New Zealand, is 950 miles. 
 
 Simultaneously with the emigration to the 
 southward, Mr. Hill supposes that there must have 
 been a north-westerly emigration from Tonga, or 
 the Friendly Islands, to Wallis and Home Islands, 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 81 
 
 distant 350 miles ; thence, running with the south- 
 east trades, by Mitchell, Ellice, and Depeyster 
 islands up to the Kingsmills group, the northern 
 parts of which are within 300 miles of the Radack 
 and Rollick chain. From the Sandwich Islands and 
 the Marquesas, the language is identical through- 
 out this route to the Kingsmills. There the line of 
 continuity in language ends — the Papuan or 
 Western Polynesians having for their eastern limit 
 the Fiji Islands. 
 
 Such, then, in all probability, is the manner in 
 which the multitude of the isles of the vast Pacific 
 Ocean have been progressively discovered and 
 settled during the past four thousand years ; for 
 I cannot, for the reasons I have stated above, assign 
 a shorter period for the process. And considering 
 the very imperfect means of navigation possessed 
 by the Polynesian race, and their previous entire 
 ignorance of the vast ocean on which their lot was 
 originally cast, one cannot think without horror of 
 the scenes of bloodshed and cannibalism that must 
 have been enacted on that vast ocean before this 
 wonderful result could have been achieved. 
 
82 OKIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Polyne- 
 sian life is the aspect with which we are everywhere 
 presented in the South Sea Islands of an ancient but 
 extinct civilization. If the people are barbarians 
 now, it is abundantly evident that they were not 
 always so, but that they are the descendants of 
 a race of men who were once in a comparatively 
 high state of civilization. The monuments of that 
 civilization are to be found all over the Pacific, 
 and there is no possibility of alleging, as is done 
 in another case of a similar kind, to which I shall 
 have to refer in the sequel, that these monuments 
 of ancient but extinct civilization were the produc- 
 tions of a different race from that which now 
 inhabits these islands ; for there is no probability 
 of any other race than the present having ever 
 existed in the South Seas. 
 
 The Malays, from time immemorial, have 
 always been a maritime people, and there are not 
 wanting evidences of superior skill in maritime 
 affairs even among the Polynesians of the present 
 day. In the Gilbert Islands, on the Equator, they 
 still construct vessels — immense canoes, raised 
 
X 
 
 I 
 
 THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 83 
 
 upon and decked, and having their planks bound 
 together with sinnet or the cordage made from the 
 husks of the cocoanut — capable of holding 150 men. 
 Nay, these islanders can not only make voyages of 
 considerable length in such vessels, but can pilot 
 themselves and steer their course by the stars. And 
 while in some islands the natives cannot count 
 more than five, these islanders can reckon up 
 thousands with perfect facility. In the Island 
 of Tonga, one of the Friendly Islands, there is 
 an ancient monument called the Tomb of Toobo- 
 Tooi, consisting of immense blocks of stone, 
 which the present inhabitants of the island 
 are quite unable to move. But these blocks 
 must not only have been moved and fixed in 
 their places, but rafted across the sea in such 
 vessels for the purpose as I have just described, 
 as there is no stone of the kind to be found in 
 Tonga ; the island being of coral formation and 
 perfectly level, and without a stone of any kind 
 larger than a pigeon's egg. All this implies such 
 a degree of architectural skill and mechanical 
 power as the present inhabitants can only conceive 
 of as having been the work of the atuas or gods. 
 
84 ORTGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 There is also abundant evidence in the South 
 Sea Islands of these islands generally having at 
 one time been inhabited by a much larger popu- 
 lation than there is now; and in some cases — as in 
 Fanning's Island, when first discovered by Euro- 
 peans — there were no inhabitants on the island at 
 all, although there was abundant evidence of its 
 having been at some past time inhabited by a 
 people of Polynesian race. Whether the inhabi- 
 tants had all been cut off by some epidemic, or had 
 put off to sea in a body in search of some happier 
 isle, can never of course be known. But there are 
 peculiar sources of depopulation in the South Sea 
 Islands, of which internecine war and infanticide 
 are doubtless the chief. One can have no idea, 
 from the war practices of European nations, of the 
 frightful character and atrocities of wars in the 
 South Sea Islands. I once visited a Grolgotha, or 
 place of skulls, at some distance from the town of 
 Auckland, in the Northern Island of New Zealand. 
 The natives of the place having a mortal feud with 
 a tribe in the Bay of Islands, the latter took the 
 unusual course of making a long journey by night; 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 85 
 
 and finding their enemies asleep, massacred the 
 whole tribe, with the exception of a girl who 
 escaped — the wdiole affair being succeeded by a 
 cannibal feast on the bodies of the dead.* 
 
 But there is a practice in Polynesian warfare per- 
 haps still more atrocious. The word Tiputa in the 
 Tahitian language signifies what the Spaniards 
 call a poncho, being a square mat with a hole in 
 the centre, through which the head is thrust ; tlie 
 mat falling down gracefully both before and be- 
 hind. Now, the practice I allude to among the 
 Tahitian braves was, for the warrior who had slain 
 his enemy in battle to stretch his dead body on 
 the ground, and after scooping out the viscera, to 
 make a hole through the back, large enough to 
 
 * The total extermination of tlieir enemies, and the utter 
 desolation of their country, was often the avowed object of 
 the native wars. And this design, horrid as it is, has often 
 been literally accomplished. Every inhabitant of the hostile 
 island, with the exception of the few who had perhaps escaped 
 by flight in their canoes, has again and again been massacred. 
 The bread-fruit trees, the principal source of subsistence for 
 the inhabitants, have been cut down and left to rot ; the cocoa- 
 nut trees have been killed by cutting off the tops or crown, 
 leaving the stems in desolate leafless ranks, as if they had been 
 struck by lightning. — "Polynesian Researches," I., 293. 
 
86 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 admit his head, with a stone hatchet. The hor- 
 rible garment being thus prepared, the savage 
 thrusts his head through the hole in the dead man's 
 body, so arranging the dead body that the head 
 and arms should hang down in front, and the 
 trunk and limbs behind. In this horrific guise 
 the savage marched in triumph among his friends. 
 Nay, the practice was so common among the blood- 
 thirsty savages that they had actually a particular 
 name for it, viz. — TipiUa-Taata, or Man-poncho. 
 Infanticide, or child-murder, has also been a 
 fruitful source of depopulation among the more 
 advanced groups of the South Sea Islands. The 
 Areoi Society of Tahiti — an infamous association, 
 the principle of which was to murder all the 
 offspring of its members — contributed greatly 
 during the prevalence of heathenism in the islands 
 towards this lamentable issue ; and since the con- 
 version of the Society Islands to Christianity, 
 tliere have been many distressing cases of parents 
 wlio had murdered their children under the reign 
 of heathenism stating the fact, and expressing 
 tlieir sincere repentance and deep regret at public 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 87 
 
 meetings held in the islands. The following is a 
 very interesting case of the kind : — 
 
 " At a public meeting held in the Island of 
 Eaiatea, one of the Society Islands, and tlie one 
 which is regarded by the native tradition as the 
 first settled of the group, a venerable chief rose, 
 and addressed the assembly with impulsive action 
 and strongly excited feeling. Comparing the past 
 with the (then) present state of the people, he 
 said "I was a mighty chief — the spot on which we 
 are now assembled was by me made sacred for 
 myself and family : large was my family, but I 
 alone remain — all have died in the service of 
 Satan — they knew not this Grood Word which I 
 am spared to see ; my heart is longing for them, 
 and often says, within me, ' Oh, that they had 
 not died so soon.' G-reat are my crimes ; I am 
 the father of nineteen children — all of tJiem 1 
 have murder eel — now my heart beats for them. 
 Had they been spared they would have been men 
 and women, learning and knowing the Word of 
 the true God ; but, while I was thus destroying 
 them, no one, not even my own cousin (pointing 
 
88 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 toTamatoa,tlie King, who presided at the meeting) 
 
 stayed my hand, or said ' spare them.' No one said 
 
 the good Word, the true Word, is coming, spare 
 your children ; and now my heart is repenting, is 
 
 weeping for them."* 
 
 Independently, however, of all assignable causes, 
 it would seem to be a mysterious arrangement of 
 Divine Providence that the inferior races of man- 
 kind, with the exception, perhaps, of the African 
 negro, should die out when they come in contact 
 with Europeans. Not only the civilization, but 
 the vital principle of the nation seems to become 
 gradually feebler and feebler till, at length, it 
 becomes extinct. This is evidently the process 
 now in rapid progress, notwithstanding every effort 
 to counteract it, among the Polynesian tribes 
 from the Sandwich Islands in the North to New 
 Zealand in the South. 
 
 To sum up the argument of this chapter, ]Mr. 
 Hill's opinion, in which I entirely concur, is that 
 the forefathers of the Polynesian nation, with 
 
 * Polynesian Eesearclies, II., 329. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 89 
 
 tlieir descendants, perhaps for many successive 
 generations, crossed the Pacific to their farthest 
 east, in the Northern Hemisphere ; and that, after- 
 wards crossing the Line, their emigration thence- 
 forth took, successively, a westerly, southerly, and 
 north-westerly direction. 
 
 I infer, moreover, from the lights of the past, 
 that the persons who effected these extensive 
 'emigrations were not barbarians, but in a com- 
 paratively high state of civilization, and that 
 they brought with them, to the farthest east, 
 their maritime skill, and their extraordinary 
 knowledge and control of the mechanical powers. 
 Look at Easter Island, the farthest east of the 
 Polynesian race, and say whether the colossal 
 remains of a hoary antiquity, which Captain Cook 
 and his fellow-voyagers found there, could ]iave 
 been the workmanship of a barbarous people ? 
 
 The following is Captain Cook's account of liis 
 visit to Easter Island, in March, 1774, upwards 
 of a hundred years since. The island, I may 
 observe, is in latitude 27° 6', and is only ten or 
 twelve leagues in circuit. It has no harbour of 
 
90 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 any value to maritime powers of the present day^ 
 and yet how populous it must have been in those 
 days of a hoary antiquity, of which it presents us 
 with such remarkable remains. 
 Easter Island, visited by Captain Cook, March, 
 
 1774. 
 
 " On the east side, near the sea, they met with 
 three platforms of stone-work, or rather the ruins 
 of them. On each had stood four of those large 
 statues ; but they were all fallen down from two 
 of them, and also one from the third ; all except 
 one were broken by the fall, or in some measure 
 defaced. Mr. Wales measured this one, and 
 found it to be fifteen feet in length, and six feet 
 broad over the shoulders. Each statue had on 
 its head a large cylindric stone of a red colour, 
 wrought perfectly round. The one they measured, 
 which was not by far the largest, was fifty-two 
 inches high, and sixty-six in diameter. In some 
 the upper corner of the cylinder was taken off, 
 in a sort of concave quarter-round, but in others 
 the cylinder was entire. 
 
 " They observed that this side of the island was 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 91 
 
 full of those gigantic statues so often mentioned ;. 
 some placed in groups on platforms of masonry ; 
 others single, fixed only in the earth, and that 
 not deep ; and these latter are in general much 
 larger than the others. Having measured one 
 which had fallen down, they found it near twenty- 
 seven feet long, and upwards of eight feet over 
 the breast and shoulders ; and yet this appeared 
 considerably short of the size of one they saw 
 standing ; its shade, a little past two o'clock, being 
 sufficient to shelter all the party, consisting of 
 near thirty persons, from the rays of the sun. 
 
 " The gigantic statues so often mentioned, are 
 not, in my opinion, looked upon as idols by the 
 present inhabitants. On the contrary, I rather 
 suppose that they are burying places for certain 
 tribes or families. I, as well as some others, saw 
 a human skeleton lying on one of the platforms, 
 just covered with stones. Some of these platforms 
 of masonry are thirty or forty feet long, twelve 
 or sixteen broad, and from three to twelve in 
 height, which last in some measure depends on 
 the nature of the ground, for they are generally 
 
92 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 at the brink of the bank facing the sea, so that 
 their face may be ten or twelve feet, or more, 
 high, and the other may not be above three or 
 ' four. They are built, or rather faced, with hewn 
 stones of a very large size, and the workmanship 
 is not inferior to the best masonry we have in 
 England. They use no sort of cement, yet the 
 joints are exceedingly close, and the stones mor> 
 ticed and tenanted one into another in a very 
 artful manner. The side walls are not perpen- 
 dicular, but inclining a little inwards, in the 
 same manner that breastworks, &c., are built in 
 Europe ; yet had not all this care, pains, and 
 sagacity been able to preserve these curious 
 structures from the ravages of all -devouring time. 
 " The statues, or at least many of them, are 
 erected on these platforms, which serve as 
 foundations. They are, as near as we could judge, 
 about half length, ending in a sore of stump at 
 the bottom, on which they stand. The work- 
 manship is rude, but not bad, nor are the features 
 of the face ill-formed, the nose and chin in 
 particular ; but the ears are long beyond proper- 
 
THE POLYNESIANS^ NATION. 93 
 
 tioii, and, as to the bodies, there is scarcely any- 
 thing like a human figure about them. 
 
 " We could hardly conceive how these islanders, 
 wholly unacquainted with any mechanical power, 
 could raise such stupendous figures, and afterwards 
 place the large cylindrical stones, before men- 
 tioned, upon their heads."* 
 
 When Commander Powell, of H.M.S. Topaze, 
 visited Easter Island, in the year 1868, and 
 carried home one of the colossal statues, or idols, 
 for the British Museum, there were not fewer 
 than thirty-six of these statues on the highest 
 ridge of the island. The one Captain Powell 
 carried home actually weighed five tons, and the 
 average weight of the others was from one to 
 five tons. The natives demurred, at first, to the 
 removal of the statue; but, when the object of 
 doing so was explained to them, so far from 
 throwing any obstacle in the way, they even 
 assisted in rolling down the statue from the 
 heights to the shipping. 
 
 *" Captain Cook's Voyages," vol. III., page 288. London: 
 182L 
 
^4 ORIGIN AXD MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Westerly Winds that mvD Propelled the 
 Forefathers of the Polynesian Nation, 
 from their original starting point in 
 THE Philippine Islands, to their farthest 
 East, in Easter Island — a Distance of 
 UPWARDS of Seven Thousand Miles, across 
 
 THE BROADEST PART OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN — 
 
 MUST HAVE Carried them across the re- 
 maining Narrow Tract of Ocean to the 
 American Land, and given its first Inha- 
 bitants TO America. 
 
 It is evident, from the cases recorded in tlie 
 •first chapter of this work, that westerly winds 
 were generally foul winds in the Western Pacific ; 
 the trade winds of both hemispheres being east 
 winds. They were therefore unexpected, sudden, 
 and violent ; and they often caught the unfortu- 
 nate canoe when a sliort way off the land for any 
 purpose, and carried its crew hopelessly and for 
 ever away to tlie eastward, either to find some 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 95 
 
 previously unknown island in that direction, or 
 to perish in the waters. 
 
 It is equally evident that the easterly migra- 
 tions of the Polynesian nation must all have 
 occurred during the existence of that ancient and 
 long- extinct civilization of which we have just been 
 observing the colossal remains in Easter Island. 
 The people who constructed those terraces, or 
 platforms, and erected those statues we have been 
 contemplating in that island, were not barbarians, 
 but people in a comparatively high state of civili- 
 zation. But that civilization would certainly not 
 have ensured them against one at least of the 
 peculiar perils of Polynesian life in all past ages, 
 their being caught in a sudden and violent wes- 
 terly gale and carried far beyond reckoning 
 to the eastward. One of these accidents that 
 have been occurring in Polynesia for all time 
 past, may therefore have occurred in the case of 
 some unfortunate native vessel off Easter Island, 
 and carried her across the intervening tract of 
 ocean to the continent of America. 
 
 I had been led to this idea by the information 
 
96 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 bearing- on the subject which I had gained from 
 mj own personal experience in regard to the 
 winds of the Southern Pacific Ocean ; for on a 
 voyage to England by Cape Horn, in the year 
 1830, we had, after doubling tlie North-East Cape 
 of New Zealand, encountered a violent south-east 
 gale of seven days ; the wind right ahead, and the 
 mountains of New Zealand in sight far to the 
 westward. When this adverse gale had spent its 
 fury, it was succeeded, to our great joy, almost 
 instantaneously by a strong westerly gale, which 
 carried us, with close-reefed topsails, and without 
 intermission, at the rate of ten or eleven knots an 
 hour, right across the Pacific to Cape Horn. Now, 
 if such a westerly gale as I had thus experienced 
 myself would extend considerably to the north- 
 ward of Easter Island,* it was perfectly warrantable 
 to suppose that if there had occurred one of those 
 accidents that have been of constant occurrence 
 in the Pacific from time immemorial — that of a 
 
 * Mr. Hill, in his paper, penes me, thus writes : — " In winter 
 the west winds south of the Equator frequently extend north 
 of the latitude of Easter Island." 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 97 
 
 large canoe or other coasting vessel, such as would 
 be used by the natives of Easter Island during 
 the period of their ancient but long-extinct civili- 
 zation, being caught off that Island in such a 
 westerly gale as I have described, she would be 
 carried without fail across the intervening tract 
 of ocean to the American land. In short, my 
 theory, or rather my firm belief and conviction, 
 is, that the American continent was originally 
 discovered by a party of famished Polynesians 
 who had been caught suddenly in a violent gale 
 of westerly wind off the coast of Easter Island, 
 and driven across the intervening tract of ocean 
 to America. 
 
 The reader will perceive that there is nothing 
 forced or strained in the supposition I have thus 
 submitted. It is only another supposed case of 
 what we know has occurred thousands of times in 
 the Pacific Ocean — that of an unfortunate vessel 
 being driven far out of her proper course or place 
 by some sudden and violent gale of westerly wind. 
 The distance, also, which Mr. Hill estimates at 
 2200 miles, is not greater than a Polynesian 
 
98 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 vessel, especially in the period of the ancient 
 civilization of the islands, might be supposed to 
 traverse with perfect safety, under a strong wes- 
 terly gale of three or four weeks' duration. 
 
 The strength of the gale supposed would neces- 
 sarily preclude any divergence, either northward 
 or southward, from the direct line of the latitude 
 of Easter Island ; and consequently the original 
 landing place of the Polynesians in America would 
 be somewhere near Copiapo, in Chili, in the lati- 
 tude of that Island. 
 
 My theory, therefore, which I am confident I 
 shall succeed in establishing in the following 
 pages, is, that the continent of America was first 
 i-eached at a period of the highest antiquity in 
 the history of mankind, somewhere near Copiapo, 
 in Chili, by a handful of Polynesians, who had 
 been caught in a sudden and violent gale of 
 westerly wind off Easter Island, in the Southern 
 Pacific, and had crossed the intervening tract of 
 ocean to the American land ; and that from these 
 islanders and their descendants the whole Indo- 
 American race of both continents is derived. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 99 
 
 Taking it for granted, therefore, for the present, 
 that my theory is well founded, and leaving the 
 proofs and illustrations I shall submit on the 
 subject for the sequel, I would only make the few 
 following preliminary observations. 
 
 What, then, I would ask, would be the first 
 object of this handful of Polynesians and their 
 immediate descendants in the unknown land on 
 which they had thus been cast ? Why, it would 
 doubtless be to reproduce in their new settle- 
 ments the whole framework of society, as it 
 existed in Easter Island when they left it, never 
 to return. And considering the evidences of a 
 comparatively high state of civilization, and espe- 
 cially of a wonderful knowledge and control of 
 the mechanical powers which the colossal remains 
 of that island still present on the part of its 
 ancient inhabitants, they would certainly leave 
 evidences of a similar kind, as we shall see in the 
 sequel they have actually done, in the places of 
 their earlier migrations in the unknown land. In 
 process of time, also, parties and individuals of an 
 adventurous spirit would push out into the great 
 
100 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 American wilderness and form settlements, from 
 time to time, in all suitable localities, to be 
 afterwards developed in the more eligible into 
 cities and towns. In short, they would just da 
 what Englishmen have been doing in all these 
 Australian colonies from their first settlement ta 
 the present day. 
 
 And what direction would these explorers be 
 likely to take in their earlier migrations in their 
 new land ? Why, the long line of the Andes or 
 Cordilleras, and their vicinity to the Pacific 
 coast, would effectually prevent them from getting 
 to the East, and their lines of migration would 
 therefore be limited to the north and to the south. 
 As islanders and mariners they would probably 
 take possession of such places along the Peruvian 
 coast, to the northward, as would be suitable for 
 the settlement of such a people ; and, ascending 
 afterwards to the elevated plains along the base of 
 the mountains, they would form villages and towns, 
 to be afterwards developed, in the course of ages, 
 into the cities of Cuzco and Quito, in Peru. The 
 language, on this subject, of the illustrious 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 101 
 
 philosopher and traveller, Baron Alexander Hum- 
 boldt, is very remarkable : " In the New World," 
 says that great writer, " at the beginning of its 
 conquest, the natives were collected into great 
 societies only on the rid":e of the Cordilleras and 
 the coasts opposite to Asia."* It would be a hope- 
 less task, I conceive, for any of the numerous 
 theorists who refer the original peopling of 
 America to an ancient immigration across Beh- 
 ring's Straits, to explain this extraordinary fact, 
 and to show how these ancient immigrants could 
 ever have got to South America at all. But, on my 
 theory that the forefathers of the Indo-American 
 race passed across the broadest part of the Pacific 
 to America, it is the very necessity of the case 
 that their descendants should be found collected 
 into great societies in the very places where the 
 great philosopher finds and describes them. 
 
 The historians of America, Dr. Robertson and 
 
 Mr. Prescott, both inform us that the Incas of 
 
 Peru had, among other great works, constructed 
 
 a public road of upwards of 1500 miles, from 
 
 * "Humboldt's Travels," vol. ni., page 209. 
 
 X. 
 
102 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 Cuzco to Quito, their two chief cities ; and that, 
 every ten or twelve miles along this road, they 
 had erected storehouses to hold provisions and 
 other requisites for the use of the Inca or his 
 officers, and that these storehouses were called 
 Tambos. Now, who can doubt but that this word 
 is merely the Polynesian word taboo, with a 
 Spanish pronunciation ? Taboo was the word 
 used by the New Zealanders to designate the 
 storehouses they erected for the preservation of 
 their seed potatoes or other provisions for any 
 particular district. They were taboo, or conse- 
 crated, and it was death to touch or steal from 
 them. Nay, I am strongly of opinion that 
 my theory will explain the hitherto inex- 
 plicable fact of the appearance of the famous 
 Peruvian reformer, Manco Capac, and his wife, 
 A7ho are said to have arrived, somewhere from the 
 westward, in America ; for as that which has 
 once occurred may, in similar circumstances, 
 occur again, a similar accident to that which we 
 suppose carried the first party of Polynesians 
 from Easter Island to America, may, after an 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 103 
 
 interval of five hundred, or even a thousand years, 
 have been repeated in the case of another party 
 of unfortunates, including Manco Capac and 
 his wife, when the Polynesian system had developed 
 itself more fully in the island than on the main- 
 land. Neither would it be necessary, on this 
 supposition, that these unfortunates should have 
 landed at Copiapo ; for, as the westerly winds of 
 the higher latitudes of the Southern Pacific Ocean 
 are diverted, in more northern latitudes, into 
 southerly winds, through the influence of the Cor- 
 dilleras, within a hundred leagues of the coast, 
 the second party may have been carried, by these 
 winds, much farther north, towards the Equator. 
 I have only one other preliminary remark to make 
 on this part of our subject, in regard to the general 
 character of the Indo-American languages spoken 
 in South America down to the Equator. They 
 are all, therefore, as I shall show in the sequel, of 
 a remarkably vocalic character, like those of the 
 Polynesian dialects generally. I have never had 
 an opportunity of seeingthe list of words of the lan- 
 guage of the Araucanian Indians of Chili, exhibited 
 
104 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 in the work of Eryilla, the Spanish historian of 
 that country ; but the four words of that lan- 
 guage, quoted by De Zuniga, viz., ytayta, biohio, 
 lemolemo, colocolo, are decidedly Polynesian in 
 their character and aspect, whatever may be their 
 signification. Let the reader compare them with 
 such Polynesian words as " udiudi, korakora, 
 nohinohi, rekereke," and he will doubtless feel 
 it difficult to avoid the conclusion that these lan- 
 guages are derived from the same source, and 
 were originally the same primitive tongue. 
 
 With such presumptive evidence of a general 
 affinity between the Polynesian and the Indo- 
 American languages of South America, we can 
 only regard the following assertions of Mr. 
 Marsden, in reference to the langua^^e of the South 
 Sea Islands, as entirely gratuitous and contrary 
 to the fact. "To the languages that prev^ail on 
 the western coast of South America, from whence 
 Easter Island (the ' ultima Thule ' of Polynesia) 
 is not greatly remote, the slightest affinity does 
 not appear."* And, again, " Having now attained 
 *Marsden's " Miscell. Works," page 5. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 105 
 
 to that extremity of Polynesia which lies the 
 nearest to the western coast of South America, it 
 becomes a natural subject of curiosity to ascertain 
 whether any similarity exists between our great 
 insular language, and those which prevail on the 
 opposite continent. For this purpose specimens 
 are introduced of the Araucanian of Chili, and 
 Kichuan of Peru ; upon the slightest comparison 
 of which it will be seen, that neither of these 
 {which are totally different from each other) have 
 even the most remote affinity to the Polynesian ; 
 and the same may be asserted with respect to the 
 languages spoken on the more northern parts of 
 that extensive region, which I have examined for 
 this object, as far as Nootka Sound and Oona- 
 laska."* And again, " In the Historia de las 
 Islas Fhilipinas, por Martinez de Zicniga, it is 
 stated that, upon examining the words of the 
 language of Chili, which Er^illa mentions in his 
 ^ Araucana,' he finds them hastante conformes to 
 the Tagala language. It is surprising that, for 
 the sake of supporting a favourite hypothesis, a 
 
 *n 
 
 Miscell. Works," page 61. 
 
106 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 respectable writer should venture to assert what 
 is directly contrary to the fact."* De Zuniga's 
 assertion is by no means " contrary to the fact ;" 
 and it is only sur'prising that Mr. Marsden 
 should have represented it in that light. The 
 Spaniard does not say that the Araucanian words 
 are the same in sound and in signification as 
 Tagalic words — he merely asserts that the former 
 are bastante confomies, " strikingly conformable 
 in their character and structure to the latter,'* 
 an assertion which is somewhat different, and 
 which Mr. Marsden himself would scarcely call in 
 question. 
 
 I have quoted Mr. Marsden so frequently and 
 at such length in these pages, that the reader will 
 naturally desire to know who and what he was^ 
 I therefore subjoin the following short notice of 
 his history, which I extract from the number of 
 the Amei'ican Quarterly Revieiv, published in 
 Philadelphia, for Sept., 1836:— "Mr. Marsden 
 was born in 1754, in Ireland; and was first 
 employed in the service of the East India Com- 
 
 mit 
 
 Miscell. Works," page 61. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 107 
 
 pany, at Bencoolen, so long ago as the year 
 1771. While in that employment (about nine 
 years), he began his investigations into the history 
 of the Malay nation, the most important people 
 of the eastern archipelago. His History of Suma- 
 tra, already mentioned, has been translated into 
 other languages ; and we have now before us the 
 third edition of the English original. This pub- 
 lication immediately brought the author into 
 notice, and he was soon appointed chief secretary 
 to the Board of Admiralty in England. In 1807, 
 he retired from office, with the usual pension of 
 £1500 a year; and — what is particularly worthy 
 of notice, when disinterestedness and public spirit 
 are not the predominant virtues of the age — this 
 enlightened scholar and patriot most liberally 
 relinquished the pension, which he had so well 
 earned by his substantial services to his country. 
 The English journals of that day characterized 
 this noble act as ' a good example which would 
 not be imitated ; ' a prediction which has been 
 almost literally verified." 
 
 To return to our proper subject from this di- 
 
108 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 gression — there are other means of ascertaining 
 the affinities of languages besides identity of sound 
 and signification in the corresponding vocables of 
 each. " Languages," says Baron Humboldt, 
 " are much more strongly characterized by their 
 structure and grammatical forms, than by the 
 analogy of their sounds and of their roots ; and 
 this analogy of sounds is sometimes so disfigured 
 in the different dialects of the same tongue, as not 
 to be distinguishable ; for the tribes into which 
 a nation is divided often designate the same 
 objects by words altogether heterogeneous. Hence 
 it follows, that we are easily mistaken if, neg- 
 lecting the study of the inflexions, and consulting 
 only the roots — for instance, the words which 
 designate the moon, sky, water, and earth — we 
 decide on the absolute difference of two idioms 
 from the simple want of resemblance in sounds."* 
 " In America," says the eminent traveller — 
 " and this result of the more modern researches is 
 extremely important, with respect to the history of 
 our species, — from the country of the Esquimaux 
 * " Humboldt's Personal Narrative,'' vol. iii. p. 252. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 109 
 
 to the banks of the Oroonoko, and again from 
 these torrid banks to the frozen climate of the 
 Straits of Magellan, mother-tongues, entirely 
 different with regard to their roots, have, if we 
 may use the expression, the same physiognomy. 
 Striking analogies of grammatical construction 
 are acknowledged, not only in the more perfect 
 languages, as that of the Incas, the Aymara, the 
 Gruarani, the Mexican, and the Cora, but also in 
 languages extremely rude. Idioms, the roots of 
 which do not resemble each other more than the 
 roots of the Sclavonian and the Biscayan, have 
 those resemblances of internal mechanism which 
 are found in the Sanscrit, the Persian, the Grreek, 
 and the Grerman languages. It is on account of 
 this general analogy of structure — it is because 
 American languages, which have no word in com- 
 mon (the Mexican, for instance, and the Quichua), 
 resemble each other by their organization, and 
 form complete contrasts with the languages of 
 Latin Europe — that the Indians of the missions 
 familiarize themselves more easily with an Ameri- 
 can idiom, than with that of the metropolis. In 
 
110 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 the forests of tlie Oroonoko, I have heard the 
 rudest Indians speak two or three tongues. 
 Savafyes of different nations often communicate 
 their ideas to each other by an idiom which is 
 not their own."* 
 
 * li 
 
 PerBonal Narrative," vol. iii. p. 247. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. Ill 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Unity or Identity of the Indo-American 
 Race, from Labrador and the Lakes of 
 Canada, to Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn. 
 
 My authorities for adopting the heading of this 
 <5hapter, which certain persons may perhaps think 
 unwarranted, are : — 
 
 1. The illustrious philosopher and traveller, 
 Humboldt, a man of world-wide fame, especially 
 in all matters connected with America and its 
 native inhabitants. 
 
 2. Dr. Von Martins, an eminent Professor in the 
 University of Munich, who, with his colleague 
 Dr. Spix, was sent out to travel in the Brazils 
 early in the present century, in the suite of a 
 Bavarian Princess, the consort elect of Don Pedro, 
 Emperor of the Brazils. 
 
 3. Dr. Samuel George Morton, M.D., of Phila- 
 delphia, the eminent author of a very learned and 
 scientific work, entitled, " Crania Americana," 
 Philadelpliia, 1839. 
 
112 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 Humboldt treats his subject — the Indo- Ameri- 
 cans, their character and their works — con amove. 
 He has evidently a high opinion of the capabili- 
 ties of the Indo-American people. He pourtrays 
 them in the period of their greatest glory, and 
 describes with much interest and animation the 
 nature and extent of their governments, the 
 magnificent buildings they had erected many ages 
 ago, — of which the stupendous ruins are still the 
 admiration of the world — and the wonderful 
 achievements they had made, with the most 
 inadequate means, in science and art. 
 
 Dr. Von Martins views his subject under a very 
 different light. He has evidently imbibed a 
 strong prejudice against the whole Indo-American 
 race, and he follows them, accordingly, into the 
 gloomy forests of the Brazils, where, only, he 
 seems to have seen, or come in contact with them, 
 and where, in entire isolation from the rest of man- 
 kind, they seem, from his description, to have lost 
 the essential characteristics of humanity, and to 
 be hastening, by a sort of living death, to their 
 own utter extinction. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 113 
 
 Dr. Morton, with wonderful diligence and the 
 highest scientific attainments, collects the skulls 
 of all the tribes of the Indo-American race that 
 have ever inhabited their great continent ; both 
 from the receptacles of the dead in the present 
 age, and from the mummy pits of past genera- 
 tions, describing and comparing them with those of 
 the other tribes of mankind, and submitting to his 
 readers the conclusions which his enquiries suggest. 
 
 But all these three eminent and highly com- 
 petent men, however they may differ from each 
 other in certain minor points, agree in this, that 
 they consider the whole Indo-American race one 
 people, and without mixture, from the farthest 
 north to the farthest south of that great continent 
 over which they have been roaming for thousands 
 of years.* 
 
 * In the article on America, in the Encyclopaidia Britannica, 
 I find the following passage, which enables me to add to the 
 great names I have given above, in favour of the unity or 
 identity of the Indo-American race, that of Blumenbach, a 
 philosopher who, it is well known, occupies the first rank in 
 the scientific world. " Physiologists are not at one in their 
 accounts of the characteristics of the aborigines of the new 
 world, nor are they agreed as to whether they should be con- 
 sidered one race, or several. Blumenbach places them all 
 under one class, except the Esquimaux." 
 
114 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 " The nations of America," says the illustrious 
 traveller, Humboldt — thereby deciding the ques- 
 tion as to the unity and identity of the Indo- 
 American race, authoritatively and at once — " the 
 nations of America, except those which border on 
 the polar circle, form a single race, characterized 
 by the formation of the skull, the colour of the 
 skin, the extreme thinness of the beard, and 
 straight and glossy hair." And again, — " We 
 shall be surprised to find, towards the end of the 
 fifteenth century, in a world which we call new, 
 those ancient institutions, those religious notions, 
 and that style of building, which seem in Asia 
 to indicate the very dawn of civilization. The 
 characteristic features of nations, like the internal 
 construction of plants, spread over the surface of 
 the globe, wear the impression of a primitive 
 type, notwithstanding the variety produced by 
 the difference of climates, the nature of the 
 soil, and the concurrence of many accidental 
 causes. 
 
 A small number of nations, far different from 
 each other, — the Etruscans, the Egyptians, the 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 115 
 
 people of Thibet, and the Aztecs or Mexicans — 
 exhibit striking analogies in their buildings, their 
 religious institutions, their division of time, 
 their cycles of regeneration, and their mystic 
 notions.* 
 
 Again, — " It cannot be doubted that the greater 
 part of the nations of America belong to a race 
 of men, who, isolated ever since the infancy of the 
 world from the rest of mankind, exhibit in 
 the nature and diversity of language, in their 
 features and the conformation of their skull, 
 incontestible proofs of an early and complete 
 separation."! 
 
 And again, — " I think I discover in the myth- 
 ology of the Americans, in the style of their 
 paintings, in their languages, and especially in 
 their external conformation,- -the descendants of 
 a race of men, which, early separated from the 
 rest of mankind, has followed for a lengthened 
 series of ages a peculiar road in the unfolding of 
 
 * "Humboldt's Eesearches," vol. i, p. 2. 
 t "Humboldt's Eesearches," vol. i, p. 250. 
 
116 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 its intellectual faculties, and in its tendency to- 
 wards civilization."* 
 
 Such, then, are the matured opinions of that 
 illustrious writer, Baron Alexander Humboldt, in 
 regard to the unity or identity of the Indo- 
 
 * "Humboldt's Researches," vol. i, p. 200, 
 With respect to Humboldt's observation as to the "external 
 conformation" of the Indo-Americans being one of the 
 grounds of his opinion as to the identity of the race and their 
 early separation from the rest of mankind, I would observe 
 that in a work published towards the close of last century, 
 by the elder Blumenbach [TJeher die Verschiedenheiten im 
 Menschengeschlecht, On the Radical Distinctions inthe Human 
 Species), that eminent naturalist observes: — "Philosophers 
 are now agreed that the character of the hair and the 
 colour of the skin are not sufficient grounds for establishing 
 a radical distinction between different tribes of men." Blumen- 
 bach supposes, however, with Dr. Morton, that the conforma- 
 tion of the skull, in the different divisions of the human 
 family, affords the requisite ground for such distinctions, and 
 accordingly divides the family of man into five grand divisions 
 or races, which he considers radically and essentially distinct, 
 viz., the Caucasian or European, the Ethiopic or Negro, the 
 INIongolian or Chinese, the Malayan, and the American. But 
 this division is rather arbitrary, and has not been acquiesced 
 in by ethnologists generally. For my own part, I am strongly 
 of opinion that the Malayan and American should not con- 
 stitute two distinct divisions of the human family, and Dr. 
 Morton seems to me to be of that opinion himself. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 117 
 
 American race. They are all, in his estimation, 
 the same people, sprung from the same source, and 
 separated from the rest of mankind in the very 
 earliest period of the history of man. 
 
 The accomplished Bavarian traveller to whom I 
 have already alluded, finding the existence, and 
 
 « 
 
 the past and present condition, of man in the 
 forests of America a problem too difficult for his 
 own philosophy to solve, has adopted the un- 
 philosophical hypothesis which the Eoman histo- 
 rian, Tacitus, had advanced so long before, in 
 regard to the existence of his own German fore- 
 fathers in the ancient Hercynian forest. Dr. Von 
 Martins believes the Indo-Americans indigenous. 
 He regards them as a race peculiar to the conti- 
 nent they inhabit — an inferior and unfinished 
 specimen of humanity — the abortive effort, per- 
 chance, of some ancient Demiurgus, emulous, but 
 yet utterly unable, to copy the noblest work of 
 the Supreme Creator — the Caucasian, or Euro- 
 pean, man. The German philosopher's descrip- 
 tion of his unhappy subject is highly interesting, 
 highly eloquent; and, as it serves to form the 
 
118 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 groundwork of one of the most recently erected 
 superstructures of infidelity, in maintaining that 
 the Indo- American is indigenous, and has no rela- 
 tionship to any other portion of the human race, 
 it may not be unprofitable for the reader to 
 find that that superstructure has no foundation in 
 fact, and that the unhappy objects of the philoso- 
 pher's commiseration are intimately related in the 
 way of natural descent with another large portion 
 of the family of man. 
 
 " The indigenous race of the New World," ob- 
 serves Dr. Von Martins, " is distinguished from 
 all the other nations of the earth, externally by 
 peculiarities of make, but still more, internally, 
 by their state of mind and intellect. The abori- 
 ginal American is at once in the incapacity of in- 
 fancy and unpliancy of old age ; he unites the 
 opposite poles of intellectual life. This strange 
 and inexplicable condition has hitherto frustrated 
 almost every attempt to reconcile him completely 
 with the European, to whom he gives way, so as 
 to make him a cheerful and happy member of the 
 community ; and it is this, his double nature,- 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 119 
 
 which presents tlie greatest difficulty to science, 
 when she endeavours to investigate his origin and 
 those earlier epochs of his history in which he has, 
 for thousands of years, moved indeed, but made 
 no improvement in his condition. But this is 
 far removed from that natural state of childlike 
 serenity which marked fas an inward voice 
 declares to us, and as the most ancient written 
 documents affirm) the first and purest period of 
 the history of mankind. The men of the red race, 
 on the contrary, it must be confessed, do not 
 appear to feel the blessing of a Divine descent, but 
 to have been led by merely animal instinct and 
 tardy steps through a dark Past to their actual 
 cheerless Present. Much, therefore, seems to in- 
 timate that the native Americans are not in the 
 first stage of that simple — we might say, physical 
 — development, that they are in a secondary re- 
 generated state. 
 
 " We behold in Brazil a thinly scattered popu- 
 lation of aboriginal natives, who agree in bodily 
 make, temperament, disposition, manners, cus- 
 toms, and mode of living ; but their languages 
 
120 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 present a truly astonishing discordance. We often 
 meet with one used only by a few individuals 
 connected with each other by relationship who 
 are thus completely, isolated, and can hold no 
 communication with any of their other country- 
 men far and near. Out of the twenty Indians 
 employed as rowers in the boat in which we navi- 
 gated the streams of the interior, there were often 
 not more than three or four who understood any 
 common language; and we had, before our eyes, 
 the melancholy spectacle of individuals labouring 
 jointly, though entirely isolated with respect to 
 everything which contributes to the satisfaction 
 of the first wants of life. In gloomy silence did 
 these Indians ply the oar together, and join in 
 managing the boat, or in taking their frugal 
 meals ; but no common voice or common interest 
 cheered them as they sat beside each other during 
 a journey of several hundred miles, which their 
 various fortunes had called them to perform toge- 
 ther." 
 
 After mentioning the fact that one hundred 
 and fifty different languages and dialects are 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 121 
 
 spoken in Brazil,* and that more than two hundred 
 and fifty different names of nations, hordes, or 
 tribes, are at present found in that country. Dr. 
 Von Martins observes : " To guide the inquirer 
 through the intricacies of this labyrinth, there is 
 not a vestige of history to afford any clue. Not 
 a ray of tradition, not a war-song nor a funeral- 
 lay can be found to clear away the dark night in 
 which the earlier ages of America are involved." 
 And again, " To the north of the river of Ama- 
 zons there is an extraordinary number of small 
 
 * The case of the Indo-Brazilians, in being broken up into 
 30 many different tribes, speaking so many different languages, 
 is not quite so unprecedented as the Bavarian philosopher sup- 
 poses, as the following quotation will show : — " The negro 
 races who inhabit the mountains of the Malayan peninsula, in 
 the lowest and most abject state of social existence, though 
 numerically few, are divided into a great many distinct tribes, 
 speaking as many different languages. Among the rude and 
 scattered population of the island of Timor, it is believed that 
 not less than forty languages are spoken. On Ende and Flores 
 we have also a multiplicity of languages ; and among the can- 
 nibal population of Borneo, it is not improbable many hundreds 
 are spoken. Civilization advances as we proceed westward; 
 and in the considerable island of Sambawa there are but five 
 tongues ; in the civilized portion of Celebes not more than 
 four ; in the great island of Sumatra not above six, and iu 
 Java but two." — Crawford's Hist. Ind. Archip., vol. ii., p. 79. 
 
122 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 hordes and tribes bearing the most dissimilar ap- 
 pellations, as if the original population, displaced 
 by still morp. frequent emigrations, wars, and 
 other unknown catastrophes, had here been broken 
 up and split into feebler aggregations. These 
 hordes are found consisting of only one, or at 
 most a few families, entirely cut off from all com- 
 munication with their neighbours ; cautiously 
 concealed in the gloom of their primeval forests, 
 from which they can never issue except when 
 terrified by some external cause ; and speaking a 
 highly impoverished and crippled language — the 
 afflicting image of that hapless state in which 
 man oppressed with the curse of his existence, as 
 if striving to fly from himself, shuns the approach 
 of his brother. 
 
 "While, in other parts of the world, we see 
 various degrees of intellectual development and 
 retardation simultaneously and proximately oc- 
 curring — the ever-varying consequences of the 
 changing course of events — the whole aboriginal 
 population of America, on the contrary, exhibits 
 one monotonous poverty of intellect and mental 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 123 
 
 torpor; as if neither internal emotions, nor the 
 impression of external objects, had been able to 
 rouse and release them from their moral inflexi- 
 bility. This is the more astonishing, as it appears 
 to extend from pole to pole, and applies to the 
 inhabitants of the tropics as well as to the natives 
 of the frozen zones. Yet, this rude and melan- 
 choly condition is beyond a doubt, not the first 
 in which the American was placed ; it is a dege- 
 nerate and debased state. Far beyond it, and 
 separated by the obscurity of ages, lies a nobler 
 ' past, which he once enjoyed, but which can now 
 be only inferred from a few relics. Colossal 
 works of architecture, comparable in extent to 
 the monuments of ancient Egypt (as those of 
 Tiahuanacu on the lake Titicaca, which the Peru- 
 vians, as far back as the time of the Spanish con- 
 quest, beheld with wonder as the remains of a 
 much more ancient people, — raised, according to 
 tradition, as if by magic, in a single night ; and 
 similar creations, scattered in enigmatic frag- 
 ments, here and there, over both the Americas), 
 bear witness that their inhabitants had, in remote 
 
124 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 ages, developed a moral power and mental culti- 
 vation which have now entirely vanished. A 
 mere semblance of them — an attempt to bring 
 back a period which had long passed by — seems 
 perceptible in the kingdom and institutions of 
 the Incas. In Brazil no such trace of an earlier 
 civilization has yet been discovered ; and if it 
 ever existed here, it must have been in a very 
 remotely distant period ; yet still, e^en the con- 
 dition of the Brazilians, as of every other American 
 people, furnishes proofs that the inhabitants of 
 this New Continent, as it is called, are by no. 
 means a modern race, even supposing lue could 
 assume our Christian chronology as a measure 
 for the age and historical development of their 
 country. This irrefragable evidence is furnished 
 by Nature herself, in the domestic animals and 
 esculent plants by which the aboriginal American 
 is surrounded, and which trace an essential fea- 
 ture in the history of his mental culture. The 
 present state of these productions of nature is a 
 documentary proof, that in America she has been 
 already, for many thousands of years, influenced 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 125 
 
 by the improving and transforming hand of man." 
 After pursuing this idea at considerable length. 
 Dr. Von Martius states his " conviction, that the 
 first germs of development of the human race in 
 America can be sought noivhere except in that 
 quarter of the globe.'' 
 
 " Besides the traces of a primeval, and, in like 
 manner, ante-historic culture of the human race 
 in "America, as well as a very early influence on 
 the productions of nature, we may also adduce 
 as a ground for these views, the basis of the pre- 
 sent state of natural and civil rights among the 
 aboriginal Americans ; I mean precisely, as before 
 observed, that enigmatical subdivision of the 
 natives into an almost countless multitude of 
 greater and smaller groups, and that almost 
 entire exclusion and excommunication with regard 
 to each other, in w^hich mankind presents its 
 different families to us in America, like the frag- 
 ments of a vast ruin. The historv of the other 
 nations inhabiting the earth furnishes nothing 
 which has any analogy to this. 
 
 " This disruptare of all the bands by which 
 
126 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 society was anciently held together, accompanied 
 by a Babylonish confusion of tongues multiplied 
 by it — the rude right of force, the never-ending 
 tacit warfare of all against all, springing from 
 that very disrupture — appear to me the most 
 essential, and, as far as history is concerned, the 
 most significant points in the civil condition of 
 the Brazilians, and, in general, of the whole 
 aboriginal population of America. Such a state 
 of society cannot be the consequence of modern 
 revolutions. It indicates, by marks which cannot 
 be overlooked or disputed, the lapse of many ages. 
 " Long-continued migrations of single nations 
 and tribes have doubtless taken place from a very 
 early period throughout the whole continent of 
 America, and they may have been especially tlie 
 causes of dismemberment and corruption in tlie 
 languages, and of a corresponding demoralization 
 of the people. By assuming that only a few lead- 
 ing nations were at first, as was the case with tlie 
 Tupi people, dispersed like so many rays of light, 
 mingled together, and dissolved, as it were, into 
 each other by mutual collision ; and that these 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 127 
 
 migrations, divisions, and subsequent combina- 
 tions have been continued for countless ages, the 
 present state of mankind in America may assuredly 
 be accounted for ; but the cause of this singular 
 misdevelopment remains, no less on that account, 
 unknown and enigmatical. Can it be conjectured 
 that some extensive convulsion of nature — some 
 earthquake rending asunder sea and land, such as 
 is reported to have swallowed up the far-famed 
 island of Atalantis — has there swept away the 
 inhabitants in its vortex r Has such a calamity 
 filled the survivors with a terror so monstrous as, 
 handed down from race to race, must have 
 darkened and perplexed their intellects, hardened 
 their hearts, and driven them, as if flying at 
 random from each other, far from the blessings 
 of social life ? Have, perchance, burning and des- 
 tructive suns, or overwhelming floods, threatened 
 the man of the red race with a horrible death by 
 famine, and armed him with a rude and unholy 
 liostility, so that, maddened against himself by 
 atrocious and bloody acts of cannibalism, he has 
 fallen from the godlike dignity for which he was 
 
128 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 designed, to his present degraded state of dark- 
 ness ? Or is this inhumanness the consequence 
 of deeply-rooted preternatural vices, inflicted by 
 the genius of our race Cwith a severity whicli, to 
 the eye of a short-sighted observer, appears^ 
 throughout all nature, like cruelty) on the inno- 
 cent as well as the guilty ?" 
 
 The conclusion which the learned Bavarian 
 draws from these premises is, " that it is impos- 
 sible entirely to discard the idea of some general 
 defect in the organization of the red race of 
 men, for it is manifest, that it already bears 
 witliin itself the germ of an early extinction. 
 The Americans, it cannot be doubted, exhibit 
 symptoms of approaching dissolution. Other 
 nations will live, when these unblessed children 
 of the New World have all gone to their final 
 rest in the long sleep of death. Their songs have 
 lonof ceased to resound ; the immortalitv of their 
 edifices has long been mouldering, and no elevated 
 spirit has revealed itself in any noble effusions 
 from tliat quarter of the globe. Without being 
 reconciled with the nations of the East, or with 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 129 
 
 their own fortunes, they are already vanishing 
 away : yes, it almost appears as if no other intel- 
 lectual life were allotted to them, than that of 
 calling forth our painful compassion, as if they 
 existed only for the negative purpose of awakening 
 our astonishment by the spectacle of a whole race 
 of men, the inhabitants of a large portion of the 
 globe, in a state of living decay. 
 
 " In fact, the present and future condition of 
 this red race of men, who wander about in their 
 native land, without house or covering — whom 
 the most benevolent and brotherly love despairs 
 of ever providing with a home — is a monstrous 
 and tragical drama, such as no fiction of the poet 
 ever yet presented to our contemplation. A whole 
 race of men is wasting away before the eyes of 
 its commiserating contemporaries ; no power of 
 princes, philosophy, or Christianity, can arrest its 
 proudly gloomy progress towards a certain and 
 utter destruction."* 
 
 * " Von dem Rechtzustande unter der Ureinwohnern Brasi- 
 liens." Eine Abhandlung Von Dr. C. F. Ph. Von Martius. — 
 " On the State of Civil and Natural Rights among the Abori- 
 gines of the Brazils." Translated by the Rev. G. C. Renouard, 
 B.D. — ' Journal of the Royal Geog. Society, vol. ii.' " 
 
130 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 In regard to that peculiarity of make, which, 
 in the estimation of Dr. Von Martins, establishes 
 a radical distinction between the Indo- Americans 
 and all the other divisions of the human family, 
 the difference in external appearance between 
 the aborigines of America and the Polynesians 
 is not greater than might have been expected 
 between tribes of mankind derived from the 
 same common source, but placed in circumstances 
 so rery different as to climate and modes of life, 
 during a long succession of ages. Captain Basil 
 Hall detected the Malay fi.e., the Polynesian) 
 cast of countenance in the Indians of Acapulco ; 
 and I am confident the Bavarian philosopher 
 would have acknowledged the striking resem- 
 blance that subsists between the Indo-Brazilian 
 and the New Zealander, if he had ever had an 
 opportunity of instituting the comparison.* At 
 
 * I once saw eight Indo-Braziliaus, in the harbour of Rio 
 Janeiro, in the month of February, 1823, immediately after the 
 proclamation of the independence of the Brazils. They were 
 the crew of the Emperor Don Pedro's boat ; and I am quite 
 sure that if they could have been seen in the streets of Sydney, 
 without knowing beforehand who or what they were, everyone 
 who saw them would have said they were a party of New 
 Zealanders. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 131 
 
 the same time it it^ a well-known fact, that the 
 common domestic animals do not improve, but 
 ratlier degenerate, in America : and the same 
 unfavourable influence may have had some effect 
 also on the human form. 
 
 As an instance of the influence and effect of 
 climate on the human frame, the phenomenon ob- 
 served by Burckhardt, in his " Travels in Xubia,'' 
 is deserving of particular attention. That accu- 
 rate traveller speaks of a tribe of Arabs, called 
 tlie Shegyia tribe, inhabiting the north of Africa, 
 who retain the Arab features, speak the Arabic 
 language, and trace their descent from the purest 
 Arabian blood, but who are nevertheless as black 
 as negroes. Black Jews are met with in Morocco 
 and in the East Indies; and the genuine descend- 
 ants of the old Portuguese settlers on the coast 
 of Coromandel are as dark as the Hindoos. In 
 short, there is nothing in the Indo-American 
 peculiarity of make that may not have arisen from 
 the influence of climate and modes of life ; and 
 when the absolute identity of that great division 
 of the human race with the South Sea Islanders 
 
132 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 can be satisfactorily established on so many inde- 
 pendent grounds, it is not inconsistent with true 
 philosophy to ascribe the difference in external 
 form and mental character to that influence alone. 
 There is no such difference, however, as we shall 
 afterwards find, between the Polynesians and the 
 Indo-Americans as we have iust seen there is 
 between the different tribes of Arabs in the old 
 world. The peculiarity of the Polynesian and 
 Indo-American races is that they retain their 
 peculiar colour in all climates alike, from Labrador 
 to Cape Horn. 
 
 But Dr. Von Martins prefers a still graver 
 charge against the Indo-Americans. He regards 
 them as a radically inferior race — inferior in point 
 of intellect to the rest of mankind, and hopelessly 
 irreclaimable. This idea but ill accords with the 
 state of things among the ancient Mexicans and 
 Peruvians at the era of the Spanish conquest, or 
 with the evidences of a still higher state of 
 civilization with which, on his own showing, the 
 American continent still abounds. What other 
 division of the human race would, in similar cir- 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 133 
 
 cumstances, have attained a higher level than 
 the Indo-Americans appear at one time to have 
 actually reached ? Had Europe, for instance, 
 been inhabited exclusively either by the Celtic 
 or the Teutonic race for the last three thousand 
 years ; had that race been shut out from all 
 communication with the rest of mankind; had 
 they been equally ignorant of letters and of the 
 use of iron ; had their only domestic animals 
 been the dog, the turkey, the llama, and the 
 duck, and their only species of grain Indian 
 corn, — I question whether Europe itself would 
 have vied at this moment with ancient Mexico 
 and Peru. But the manifestations of Indian 
 intellect were not confined to central America. 
 The Indian, Philip, who headed a coalition of 
 Indian nations to expel the colonists of New 
 England, about the middle of the seventeenth 
 century, was a hero of the highest accomplish- 
 ments, and as worthy of a poet as any of the 
 famous warriors of the Iliad : and for a long 
 period after the occupation of their country, the 
 P^rench Canadians had abundant experience of 
 
134 ORIGIN AND MIGRATION^; OF 
 
 tlie superior intelligence of the warlike Iroquois. 
 But the atrocities of Cortez, and the robberies 
 of Pizarro, the auto-da-fe that was practised on 
 the brave Gruatimozin, and the condemnation of 
 his unhappy subjects to the Spanish mines — these 
 and a thousand other acts of injustice, villainy, 
 and oppression, on the part of numerous European 
 intruders, gradually broke the spirit of the Indo- 
 Americans, and reduced them to that state of 
 intellectual debasement and national decay which 
 they now almost uniformly exhibit. 
 
 To satisfy ourselves that there was no such 
 mental incapacity and incompetency on the part 
 of the Indo-American race, as the Bavarian 
 philosopher alleges, whatever may have been the 
 causes of their present depression, we have only 
 to consider what they had actually accomplished 
 when they had the whole American continent 
 to themselves. When America was first dis- 
 covered and colonized by Europeans, the western 
 ec[uatorial regions of that continent were the 
 seat of extensive, flourishing, and powerful 
 empires, the inhabitants of which were well 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 135 
 
 acquainted with the science of government, and 
 liad made no inconsiderable progress in the arts 
 of civilization. At a time when the institution 
 of posts was unknown in Europe, it was in full 
 operation in the empire of Mexico ; at a time 
 when a public highway was either a relic of 
 Roman greatness, or a sort of nonentity even in 
 England, there were roads of fifteen hundred 
 miles in length in the empire of Peru. The 
 feudal system was as firmly established in these 
 transatlantic kingdoms as in France, and the 
 system of etiquette that regulated the intercourse 
 of the different ranks of society was as com- 
 plete and as much respected as in the court of 
 Philip the Second. The Peruvians were ignorant 
 of the art of forming an arch, but they had 
 constructed suspension-bridges across frightful 
 ravines ; they had no implement of iron, but 
 their forefathers could move blocks of stone as 
 huge as the sphinxes and the Memnons of Egypt. 
 The Mexicans were unacquainted with the art 
 of forming cast-metal pipes, but they had con- 
 structed dikes or causeways as compact as those 
 
136 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 of Holland ; and their capital, which was situated 
 in the centre of a salt-water lake, was supplied 
 with a copious stream of fresh water, brought 
 from beyond the lake in an aqueduct of baked 
 clay. They had had no Cadmus to give them an 
 alphabet ; but their picture-writing enabled them 
 to preserve the memory of past events, and to 
 transmit it to posterity. 
 
 The third of the three eminent authorities to 
 whom I have appealed on the subject of the 
 unity or identity of the Indo-American race is 
 the late Samuel Greorge Morton, Esq., M.D., of 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 In the preface of that writer's great work, 
 entitled Crania Aoneo'icaiia, he thus states the 
 object of the work : — 
 
 "Particular attention has been bestowed on the 
 crania from the mounds of this country, which 
 have been compared with similar relics derived 
 both from ancient and modern tribes, in order to 
 examine, by the evidence of osteological facts, 
 whether the American aborigines of all epochs 
 have belonged to one race, or a plurality of races." 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 137 
 
 And the following is the result he gives of his 
 learned and scientific labours : — 
 
 " In conclusion, the author is of the opinion 
 that the facts mentioned in this work tend to 
 sustain the following propositions : — 
 
 " 1st. That the American race differs essentially 
 from all others, not excepting the Mongolians ; 
 nor do the feeble analogies of language, and the 
 more obvious ones in civil and religious institu- 
 tions and the arts, denote anything beyond casual 
 or colonial communication with the Asiatic 
 nations ; and even these analogies may perhaps 
 be accounted for, as Humboldt has suggested, in 
 the mere coincidence arising from similar wants 
 and impulses in nations inhabiting similar lati- 
 tudes. 
 
 " 2nd. That the American nations, excepting 
 the Polar tribes, are of one race and one species, 
 but of two great families, which resemble each 
 other in physical, but differ in intellectual cha- 
 racter. 
 
 " 3rd. That the cranial remains discovered in 
 the mounds, from Peru to Wisconsin, belong to 
 
138 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 the same race, and probably to the Toltecan 
 family."* 
 
 I had the honour of becoming' acquainted with 
 Dr. Morton during a visit I paid to the United 
 States in the year 1840, and in the course of that 
 visit I spent an evening with him in his own 
 house in Philadelphia. Our conversation turned 
 very much on the subject of his own labours, the 
 Indo-American race ; and being apprised of his 
 own conclusion on the subject, viz., that the Indo- 
 Americans were all of one race and one species, I 
 took the liberty to ask him wha,t portion of the 
 human race did the Indo-Americans most resemble 
 in their craniological development, when he re- 
 plied at once and decidedly. The Polynesian. 
 
 * Crania Americana ; or, a Comparative View of the Skulls 
 of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America, 
 Bv Samuel George Morton, M.D. , London, 1889. Page 260. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 139 
 
 CHAPTER VI [. 
 
 The Indo-Americans and Polynesians are one 
 
 AND THE same PEOPLE, SPRUNG FROM THE 
 SAME PRIMITIVE STOCK, AND CONNECTED WITH 
 EACH : MUTUAL TIES OF PARENTAGE 
 
 AND DESCENT. 
 
 I HAVE shown, I think satisfactorily, in a pre- 
 vious chapter, that the separation of the fore- 
 fathers of the Polynesian nation from the rest of 
 mankind must have taken place in the earliest 
 period of the history of our race, while the earth, 
 so to speak, was still wet with the waters of the 
 deluge. 
 
 Various circumstances in the aspect and his- 
 tory of the earlier postdiluvian nations warrant 
 the conclusion that these nations generally had 
 attained a high degree of civilization, and had 
 derived that civilization from one common source.* 
 
 * The five boolcs of IMoses abound witli biglily interesting 
 and instructive indications of the state of the arts and sciences 
 among the earher postdiluvian nations. From these, as well 
 as from existing monuments, it appears that the Egyptians n 
 
140 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 In Etruria and in Egypt, in India and in China, 
 and I will add even in the South Sea Islands and 
 in both Americas, we behold the evidences of a 
 primitive civilization, which in some instances had 
 run its course anterior to the age of Homer, but 
 which, at all events, acknowledged no obligation 
 to the wisdom or refinement of the Greeks. The 
 poet Lucretius inquires why there are no poems 
 of an earlier date than the siege of Troy, and 
 infers that as no poems of an earlier period have 
 been preserved, it has been because none were 
 
 particular had made very great progress in civilization at an 
 early period after the deluge ; but the aspect of things ex- 
 hibited in the books of Moses indicates a general, and by no 
 means inconsiderable, advance in civilization. The use of 
 money, for instance, was well known in the days of Abraham ; 
 and caravans of merchants already traversed the Arabian 
 desert, exchanging the productions of one country for those 
 of another. Chariots armed with scythes were used in the 
 Canaanitish wars. Walled cities with locks and keys were 
 numerous. There were surveyors in Joshua's army, who 
 prepared a general chart of the land of Canaan ; and the city 
 of Kirjathscpher, (the city of the book,) which was anciently 
 called Debir, (a word of similar import,) was in all likelihood 
 the seat of an academy or college. In short, the general 
 aspect of society in these primitive times indicates great pro- 
 gress in civilization. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 141 
 
 written. But we may rest assured that poetry 
 was not the invention of Orpheus, or of Hesiod, 
 or of Homer. If the harp and the organ — these 
 antediluvian inventions of Jubal — were made to 
 " discourse sweet music " in the cities of Cain, 
 we may conclude with absolute certainty, that the 
 daughters of men would link with their dulcet 
 sounds the inspirations of poetry and the sym- 
 phonies of song. 
 
 But if the antediluvians were not barbarians, 
 neither were those eight persons that survived the 
 deluge, and landed on the mountains ot Armenia 
 from that ancient vessel which was destined to 
 preserve the relics of one world and the germ of 
 another. Antecedently to all historical evidence 
 of the fact, we should be warranted in supposing 
 that Noah and his sons would preserve a know- 
 ledge of the arts that flourished, and of the 
 sciences that were cultivated, in the antediluvian 
 world ; and that they would exhibit in their 
 earliest postdiluvian settlements the forms and 
 features of antediluvian civilization. But we are 
 not left to the uncertainty of mere conjecture on 
 
142 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 this Doint ; for the first act of the liberated oceu- 
 pant of the ark was to cultivate the vine, and the 
 earliest effort of the combined labour of his 
 offspring was to hiv'tld a city and a toivev luhose 
 top should reach the heavens, " The wisdom of 
 the Egyptians "—-the most ancient and the most 
 famous of the postdiluvian nations, and " the 
 excellency of the Chaldees " — the illustrious con- 
 temporaries of the Pharaohs — were, doubtless, the 
 transcript of antediluvian science and of ante- 
 diluvian refinement ; for as surely as the fore- 
 fathers of the New Zealand nation would import 
 the arts and the institutions of their native isle 
 into that distant island, in whatever manner they 
 had reached its solitary shore, and would erect 
 in their new settlement a framework of society 
 and of civilization exactlv similar to the one 
 which was still fresh in their recollection, so 
 surely would the earliest of the postdiluvian 
 nations endeavour to remodel society, in all its 
 parts and in all its relations, agreeably to the 
 fashion of the woi'ld that had passed so recently 
 away. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 143 
 
 In short, as emigration tended greatly to the 
 eastward in these primitive times, there is reason 
 to believe that the forefathers of the great 
 Malayan nation had arrived and settled in 
 Eastern Asia and the isles adjacent, at a period 
 coeval with the origin and establishment of the 
 Egyptian empire in the west : and that the 
 numerous islands of the Indian Archipelago were 
 traversed in all directions by the beautifully- 
 carved galleys of that maritime people long 
 before Agamemnon and his brother chiefs had 
 conducted their hordes of semi-barbarous Grreeks 
 to the siege and pillage of Troy. 
 
 I have already observed, that the earliest effort 
 of the combined labour of the postdiluvian 
 inhabitants of the earth was to build a city and 
 <i tower tvhose top should reach the heavens. 
 
 Whether the ostensible object of the architects 
 of the tower of Babel — which it is allow^ed on 
 all hands was a pyramid — was to prepare a suit- 
 able mausoleum for the mouldering remains of 
 departed greatness, or to rear a liiglt place for 
 the worship of the Divinity, the real object of 
 
144 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 its projector is sufficiently obvious from the 
 sacred narrative. The building was evidently 
 intended to subserve the purposes of personal 
 ambition — to concentrate and to enslave the 
 rapidly increasing and extending population 
 of the recently deluged world ; in short, to 
 pave the way for the establishment of a 
 universal and despotic monarchy. And what 
 could possibly have suggested so singular a 
 method of effecting such an object, but that the 
 plan had been adopted and been found success- 
 ful before ? In short, there is reason to believe 
 that such towers as the tower of Babel were the 
 proud distinctions of the metropolitan cities of 
 the antediluvian world, — the favourite appendages 
 of antediluvian royalty — the usual evidences and 
 effects of antediluvian despotism. For there ivere 
 giants, i.e., men of prodigious ambition — inen of 
 renoivn in those clays — doubtless the Napoleons 
 and the Alexanders of the antediluvian world. 
 
 But whether the tower of Babel was itself the 
 transcript of antediluvian architecture or not, 
 there is no question as to its having set the fashion 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 145 
 
 to all those postdiluvian tribes that diverged to 
 the eastward and westward from the plain of 
 Shinar — for the fashion in architecture in the 
 earlier postdiluvian ages was certainly pyramidal 
 and colossal ; and the prevalence of that style of 
 building in the architectural remains of any 
 country is accordingly a sure indication of the 
 remotest antiquity. The pyramids of Egypt 
 have been so famous in all past ages, and the 
 durable materials of which they have been con- 
 structed have so long resisted the ravages of 
 time, that we are apt to forget that Egypt is 
 not the only country in which such stupen- 
 dous and apparently useless structures have been 
 reared. The ancient Etrurians, whose elegantly 
 formed vases were occasionally dug up in the 
 neighbourhood of Rome in the age of Augustus, 
 and were then esteemed as precious a relic of 
 antiquity as a Grrecian statue in the present age, 
 had evidently imbibed their civilization at the 
 same fountain as the ancient Egyptians ; for they 
 also constructed pyramids, though of less durable 
 materials than the pyramids of Egypt. Varro 
 
146 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 speaks of four Etrurian pyramids in the city of 
 Clusium — the burial place of King Porsenna, 
 one of the earliest and most formidable of the 
 enemies of the Eomans — of upwards of eighty 
 French metres, or about two hundred and fifty 
 English feet, in perpendicular height. Pyramids 
 of a remote antiquity have also been found in 
 India and in China ; and the Indian pagoda and 
 the pyramidal forms which the Chinese and the 
 Indo-Chinese nations — those determined sticklers 
 for the fashions of bygone time — still affect in 
 their public buildings, are doubtless to be referred 
 to the same primitive source. 
 
 Before proceeding with the proof of my case, 
 as stated in the title of this chapter, I shall now 
 present the reader with the remarkable account 
 not only of a house, but of a city of the pyramidal 
 and colossal period, still standing exactly as it 
 did four thousand years ago. 
 
 The Rev. Dr. Porter, formerly a missionary 
 from the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, in 
 Damascus, and now a Professor in the G-eneral 
 Assembly's College, in ^Belfast, having visited, 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 147 
 
 duriDg bis stay in the East, the Giant Cities of 
 Bashan, gives us the followiug account of one 
 in which he spent a night, as illustrative of the 
 ■colossal style of architecture prevalent in these 
 cities four thousand years ago. 
 
 " The house seemed to have undergone little 
 change from the time its old master had left it ; 
 and yet the thick nitrous crust on the floor 
 showed that it had been deserted for long ages. 
 The walls were perfect, nearly five feet thick, 
 built of large blocks of hewn stones, lulthout 
 lime or cement of any kind. The roof was 
 formed of large slabs of the same black basalt, 
 lying as regularly, and jointed as closely, as if 
 the workman had only just completed them. 
 They measured twelve feet in length, eighteen 
 inches in breadth, and six inches in thickness. 
 The end rested on a plain stone cornice, projecting 
 about a foot from each side wall. The chamber 
 was twenty feet long, twelve wide, and ten high. 
 The outer door was a slab of stone four and a 
 half feet high, four wide, and eight inches thick. 
 It hung upon pivots, formed of projecting parts 
 
148 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 of the slab, working in sockets in the lintel and 
 threshold ; and though so massive, I was able 
 to open and shut it with ease. At one end of 
 the room was a small window, with a stone 
 shutter. An inner door, also of stone, but of 
 finer workmanship, and not quite so heavy as 
 the other, admitted to a chamber of the same size 
 and appearance. From it a much larger door 
 communicated with a third chamber, to which 
 there was a descent by a flight of stone steps^ 
 This was a spacious hall, equal in width to the 
 two rooms, and about twenty -five feet long by 
 twenty high. A semicircular arch was thrown 
 across it, supporting the stone roof; and a gate, 
 so large that camels could pass in and out, 
 opened on the street. The gate was of stone^ 
 and in its place ; but some rubbish had accu- 
 mulated on tlie threshold, and it appeared to 
 have been open for ages. Here our horses were 
 comfortably installed. Such were the internal 
 arrangements of this old mansion. It had only 
 one story ; and its ample, massive style of archi- 
 tecture gave evidence of a very remote antiquity. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 149 
 
 On a large stone which formed the lintel of the 
 gateway, there was a Grreek inscription, but it 
 was so high up, and my light so faint, that I 
 was unable to decipher it, though I could see 
 that the letters were of the old style. It is 
 probably the same which was copied by Burck- 
 hardt, and which bears a date apparently equi- 
 valent to the year before Christ 306 ! 
 
 " Owing to the darkness of the night, and the 
 shortness of our stay, I was unable to ascertain, 
 from personal observation, the extent of Burak, 
 or the character of its buildings ; but the men 
 who gathered round me, when I returned to 
 my chamber, had often visited it. They said 
 the houses were all like the one we occupied, 
 only some smaller, and a few larger, but there 
 Avere no great buildings. Burak stands on the 
 north-east corner of the Lejah, and was therefore 
 •one of the frontier towns of ancient Argob. It is 
 built upon rocks, and encompassed by rocks so 
 wild and rugged as to render it a natural for- 
 tress."* 
 
 * The Giant Cities of Bashan. London, 1868. Pages 26, 27. 
 
150 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 Such was the state of things as to domestie 
 architecture in the earlier ages of the post- 
 diluvian world, when the forefathers of the Poly- 
 nesian nation were separated for ever from the 
 rest of mankind, and their long migrations in 
 all parts of the Pacific Ocean commenced. Some 
 unfortunate Malayan galley, passing in all pro- 
 bability from one island to another of the Philip- 
 pine group, being caught suddenly by a violent 
 westerly gale, and carried, without the slightest 
 hope of ever finding its way back, to some remote 
 island in tlie Western Pacific, would there form 
 its tiny settlement, and thereby give its first 
 population to that vast ocean. 
 
 I have also shewn, in the previous chapters 
 of this volume, how these unfortunates and 
 their descendants have, during the long series 
 of past ages, spread themselves over the multi- 
 tude of the isles of the vast Pacific Ocean, and 
 at last reached the west coast of South America, 
 somewhere near Copiapo, in the Eepublic of 
 Chili. And I am now to show that the Indo- 
 American race in both continents of America 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 151 
 
 are the lineal descendants of the handful of 
 famished Polynesians who landed so many ages 
 ago from their ancient vessel on that solitary shore. 
 
 I do so, therefore, in the first place, from the 
 identity of their architectural remains, many of 
 which exhibit the evidences of the highest 
 antiquity. The very remarkable remains of 
 this kind which we find both in Polynesi i and 
 in Indo-America consist of temples, as they 
 are called, pyramids, terraces or platforms, and 
 colossal statues. 
 
 1st. — Temples. Dr. Eobertson, the historian 
 of America, had evidently formed a very un- 
 favourable opinion both of the Indo-Americans, 
 and of their works and remains, probably from his 
 comparative inacquaintance with the subject; for 
 the noble volumes of Humboldt — his Personal 
 Narrative and Eesearches — were not published 
 till after Dr. Eobertson's death, which took place 
 in 1793. 
 
 The following is Dr. Robertson's somewhat dis 
 paraging description of the great Temple of 
 Mexico. 
 
152 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 "The great Temple (or Teocalli) of Mexico, 
 the most famous in New Spain, which has been 
 represented as a magnificent building, raised to 
 such a height that the ascent to it was by a 
 flight of a hundred and fourteen steps, was a 
 solid mass of earth, of a square form, faced 
 partly with stone. Its base on each side extended 
 ninety feet, and decreasing gradually as it 
 advanced in height, it terminated in a quadrangle 
 of about thirty feet, where were placed a shrine 
 of the deity, and two altars on which the victims 
 were sacrificed. All the other celebrated temples 
 of New Spain exactly resembled that of Mexico."* 
 
 Perfectly identical in its plan, and in the style 
 of its arcliitecture with the Temple of Mexico, 
 is that of Copan, one of the recently discovered 
 ludo-American cities of Yucatan, in central 
 America. The following is the description of that 
 building, by Mr. Stephens, the American Traveller. 
 
 " COPAN. 
 " This temple is an oblong enclosure. The 
 front or river wall extends in a right line north 
 * Robertson's History of America. Book VII., 228. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 153 
 
 and south six hundred and twenty-four feet, and 
 it is from sixty to ninety feet in height. It is 
 made of cut stones, from three to six feet in 
 length, and a foot and a half in breadth. In 
 many phices the stones have been thrown down 
 by bushes growing out of the crevices, and in one 
 place there is a small opening, from which the 
 luins are sometimes called by the Indians Las 
 Ventanas, or the windows. The other three sides 
 <?onsi&t of ranges of steps and pyramidal struc- 
 tures, rising from thirty to one hundred and 
 forty feet on the slope. The whole line of survey 
 is two thousand eight hundred and sixty-six feet, 
 which though gigantic and extraordinary for a 
 ruined structure of the aborigines, that the 
 reader's imagination may not mislead him, I 
 consider it necessary to say, it is not so large as 
 the base of the great pyramid of Ghizeh."'* 
 
 But the reader will, doubtless, be astonished 
 to find that these two ancient Indo-American 
 temples are exactly on the same plan as that of 
 
 * Stepheu's Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas 
 and Yucatan. Vol. I. 133. 
 
154 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 the Temple ^or Marae) of Atehuru, in Tahiti, of 
 which I subjoin the following description. 
 
 TEMPLE (or marae) OF ATEHURU, IN TAHITI. 
 
 " The form of the interior or area of these 
 temples was frequently that of a square, or paral- 
 lelogram, the sides of which extend to forty 
 or fifty feet. Two sides of this space were en- 
 closed by a high stone wall ; the front was pro- 
 tected by a low fence, and opposite a solid 
 pyramidal structure was raised, in front of which 
 the images were kept, and the altars fixed. 
 These piles were often immense. That which 
 formed one side of the square of the large temple 
 in Atehuru was two hundred and seventy feet 
 long, ninety feet wide at the base, and fifty feet 
 high, being at the summit one hundred and 
 eighty feet long, and six wide. A flight of steps 
 led to its summit, the bottom step was six feet 
 high. The outer stones of the pyramid, com- 
 posed of coral and basalt, were laid with great 
 care, and hewn or squared with immense labour, 
 especially the tiava or corner stones. Within 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 155 
 
 the enclosure, the houses of the priests and the 
 temples of the idols were erected. Ruins of 
 temples are found in every situation. On the 
 summit of a hill, as at Maeva, where the ruins 
 of Tane's temple, one hundred and twenty feet 
 square, enclosed with high walls, is still standing, 
 almost entire."* 
 
 We have a somewhat similar account of the 
 temples, or heiaus, as they were there called, of 
 the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands. 
 
 "Temples, or heiatts, were commonly erected 
 upon hills, or near the sea, and formed con- 
 spicuous objects in the landscapes. They were 
 works of great labour, built of loose stones, with 
 sufficient skill to form compact walls. The 
 usual form was an irregular parallelogram. That 
 of Kawaikai or Hawaii, was 224 feet long, and 
 100 feet wide, with walls twelve feet thick at 
 tlie base, from eight to twenty feet high, and two 
 to six feet wide at the top, which being well 
 paved with smooth stones, formed, when in 
 repair, a pleasant walk. The entrance was nar- 
 * Polyuesiau Pieseaches. I. , 340, 341. 
 
156 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 row, between two high walls. The interior was 
 divided into terraces, the upper one paved with 
 flat stones. The south end constituted an inner 
 court, and was the most sacred place. The 
 sacrificial altar was near the entrance to this 
 court. Only the high cliiefs and priests were 
 allowed to reside within the precincts of the 
 temple."* 
 
 Here then we have specimen temples of the 
 Polynesians on the one hacd, and the Indo- 
 Americans on the otlier, perfectly identical in 
 their plans and details, but altogether unlike 
 any religious edifices that had ever been seen or 
 heard of in the old world for two or three 
 thousand years past. A parallelogram, of 
 larger or smaller dimensions, as it suited the 
 particular case, with a low fence in front, a 
 strong wall to the right and left, enclosing the 
 area of the temple, and a long flight of steps 
 to the summit or platform of a truncated 
 pyramidal building, right opposite, but without 
 
 * Jarvis's History of the Hawaiian Islands. Chapter II., 
 page 50. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 157 
 
 a roof — such was the Marai of the Polynesians^ 
 and the Teocalli of the Indo-x\mericans. It is 
 scarcely proper to call these structures temples ; 
 })ut they were each like a parish church in our 
 own country — the place of worship, and especially 
 the place of sacrifice, for the surroundiug district. 
 But we are not altogether without the means 
 of identifying the Polynesian Marai and the 
 Indo-American Teocalli with the places of wor- 
 ship, and especially the places of sacrifice, of 
 the earlier postdiluvian nations. It is matter 
 of history that there was some kind of worship, 
 some religious observances, celebrated on what 
 were called Idgh places in the earliest post- 
 diluvian times. Mr. Mitford, in his history of 
 Greece, observes that the great antiquity of the 
 writings of Homer may be inferred from the fact 
 that he makes no mention either of temples or 
 of images. So early, indeed, was . this kind 
 of worship practised in the postdiluvian ages, 
 that it were not uureasonable to suppose that 
 it had been practised in the antediluvian 
 world, and reproduced in the earlier postdiluvian 
 
158 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 ages, from the reminiscences of the eight sur- 
 vivors of the deluge. Originally the worship 
 celebrated on these " high places " was in honour 
 of the one living and true Grod ; afterwards, how- 
 ever, and at a very early period, it was offered 
 to numberless heathen divinities, and was accom- 
 panied with all manner of abominable practices. 
 
 So late as the times of Samuel, and even of 
 Solomon, we read of such " high places " being 
 devoted to the worship of the true God. " And 
 Samuel answered Saul, and said, I am the Seer, 
 go up before me unto the ' high place,' for ye shall 
 eat with me to-day."* And again. " And 
 Solomon, and all the congregation with him, 
 went to the ' high place ' that was at Gribeon."t 
 
 But so infamous had the "high places" of Pales- 
 tine become at an early period that the Israelites 
 were divinely commanded, on their taking posses- 
 sion of the Holy Land, utterly to destroy them. 
 *' Then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of 
 the land from before you, and destroy all their 
 pictures, and destroy all their molten images, 
 * 1 Samuel ix. 19. f 2 Samuel i. 3. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 159 
 
 and quite pluck down all their ' high places.'* 
 *' For they provoked Him to anger with their 
 high places, and moved Him to jealousy luith 
 their graven images.^'' t 
 
 Notwithstanding this prohibition, however, 
 the people of Israel were so strongly attached to 
 the worship of the " high places " that even their 
 reforming monarch s were quite unsuccessful in 
 their efforts to put it down. Thus in the case 
 of King Asa. "But the 'high places' were not 
 taken away out of Israel ; nevertheless, the heart 
 of Asa was perfect all his days."{ 
 
 We have no information, either in sacred or 
 profane history, as to the form and character 
 of these " high places " of the ancients ; but I have 
 no doubt whatever that they were exactly of 
 the form and character represented to us in 
 the Polynesian Marai, and the Indo-American 
 Teocalli. Taking it for granted, therefore, for 
 the reasons I have stated above, that the emigra- 
 tion to the eastward from the plain of Shinar 
 
 * Numbers xxxiii. 52. f Psalm Ixxviii. 58. 
 
 I 2 Chronicles xv. 17. 
 
160 OEIGIN AND MIGEATIONS OF 
 
 took place at a very early period after tbe deluge^ 
 when the knowledge and worship of the true 
 Cfod was still cherished and taught by the- 
 preachers of righteousness who succeeded Noah 
 and his sons, it is natural to suppose that these 
 emigrants would, from time to time, erect high 
 places exactly similar to those in use among their 
 fathers, in all their places of settlement on their 
 way across the continent of Asia, till they reached 
 the Indian Archipelago and the Philippine Islands. 
 And as the handful of Malays who, we suppose, were 
 accidentally driven by a strong westerly gale into 
 the boundless Pacific, were not barbarians, but 
 in a comparatively high state of civilization, 
 and well acquainted with the use of the mechani- 
 cal powers, the form and character of the "high 
 places" of their time would be deeply photographed 
 upon their minds, and the sublime idea of one 
 great Spirit, all powerful, but invisible to men, 
 would be impressed upon their hearts ; the re- 
 ligious edifice to be reproduced from time to time 
 in buildings of a precisely similar form and charac- 
 ter, first in the multitude of the isles of the vast 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 16 I 
 
 Pacific Ocean, and afterwards in the continent of 
 America ; and the spiritual idea to be treasured 
 up in their hearts and taught to their posterity. 
 To suppose that the North American Indian could 
 have excogitated for himself the idea of one Great 
 Spirit, controlling the universe, but invisible 
 to men, is something I cannot believe ; especially 
 as such an idea had never been attained by the 
 sages of Greece and of Rome. But I can easily 
 conceive of it as a fragment of Divine Revelation 
 impressed upon the minds of the forefathers of 
 the Polynesian nation, and carried by them and 
 their descendants across the Pacific and to both 
 continents of America. At all events, there is 
 no question as to the fact of there being such 
 an impression on the American mind. '* The 
 Indians of the forest," says Baron Humboldt, 
 " when they visit occasionally the missions, con- 
 ceive with difficulty the idea of a temple or an 
 image. ' These good people,' said the missionary, 
 ' like only processions in the open air.' Wlien I 
 last celebrated the patron festival of my vilUige, 
 that of San Antonio, the Indians of luirida were 
 
162 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 present at mass . ' Your Grod,' said they to me, 
 ' keeps himself shut up in a house, as if he were 
 old and infirm : ours is in the forest, in the fields, 
 and on the mountains of Sipapu, whence the rains 
 come. * 
 
 The frontispiece of this work is a copy of the 
 painting of a Mexican Teocalli, or patriarchal 
 " high place," painted by a M. Dupaix, an eminent 
 French artist, by command of the King of Spain, 
 and contained in Volume IV. of Lord Kings- 
 borough's " Monuments of Mexico," a copy of 
 which is in the Sydney University Library. 
 
 The otl^er items in which the architectural 
 remains of the Polynesians and Indo- Americans 
 indicate and prove the identity of these 
 two nations, are terraces, colossal statues, and 
 pyramids. 
 
 Perhaps the most remarkable, as it is doubt- 
 less the most ancient, instance of the terraces of 
 the Polynesians, is that of the Marquesas group, 
 in the Southern Pacific, of which the following 
 account is given us by Herman Melville, an 
 * Humboldt's Narrative, vol. v. p. 273. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 163 
 
 intelligent and trustworthy American, who resided 
 for some time in the Marquesas. 
 
 " At the base of one of the mountains, and 
 surrounded on all sides by dense groves, a series 
 of vast terraces of stone rises step by step for a 
 considerable distance up the hill side. These 
 terraces cannot be less than 100 yards in length, 
 and 20 in width. Their magnitude, however, is 
 less striking than the immense size of the blocks 
 composing them. Some of the stones, of an 
 oblong shape, are from ten to fifteen feet in 
 length, and five or six feet thick. Their sides are 
 quite smooth, but though square, and of pretty 
 regular formation, they bear no mark of the 
 chisel. They are laid together without cement, 
 and here and there show gaps between. The 
 topmost terrace and the lower one are somewhat 
 peculiar in their construction. They have both 
 a quadrangular depression in the centre, leaving 
 the rest of the terrace elevated several feet above 
 it. In the intervals of the stones immense trees 
 have taken root, and their broad boughs stretch 
 far over, and, interlacing together, support a 
 
164 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 canopy almost impenetrable to the sun. Over- 
 growing a greater part of them, and climbing 
 from one to another, is a wilderness of vines, in 
 whose sinewy embrace many of the stones lie 
 half hidden, while in some places a thick growth 
 of bushes entirely covers them. There is a wild 
 pathway which obliquely crosses two of these 
 terraces ; and so profound is the shade, so dense 
 the vegetation, that a stranger to the place might 
 pass along it without being aware of their 
 existence. As I gazed upon this monument, 
 doubtless the work of an extinct and forgotten 
 race, thus buried in the green nook of an island 
 at the end of the earth, the existence of which 
 was yesterday unknown, a stronger feeling of 
 awe came over me than if I had stood musing 
 at the mighty base of the Pyramid of Cheops. 
 There are no inscriptions, no sculpture, no clue 
 by which to conjecture its history — nothing but 
 dumb stones. How many generations of those 
 majestic trees which now overshadow them have 
 grown and flourished and decayed since they were 
 first erected."* 
 
 * Melville's Marquesas Islands, chapter 21, 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 165 
 
 Captain Cook describes a somewhat similar 
 terrace in Easter Island, of which he regards the 
 workmanship as equal to that of any English 
 workman.* And in his description of the ruins 
 of the ancient city of Copan, in Central America, 
 Mr. Stephens informs us that there " is a con- 
 fused range of terraces running all into tlie 
 forest, ornamented with death's heads, some of 
 which are still in position, and others lying about, 
 as they have fallen or been thrown down.''t And 
 as to the colossal statues, consisting of immense 
 blocks of stone, and standing either singly or in 
 groups, there is precisely the same thing to be 
 seen in Easter Island, in Polynesia, as in Copan, 
 Palenque, and Uxmal, in Central America. The 
 only difference is, that while in Easter Island 
 these colossal statues are rough-hewn from the 
 quarry, and the sculpture of an inferior character, 
 those of the cities of Central America are polished 
 
 * Page 90. 
 
 t Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and 
 Yucatan, Vol. I., 138. By John L. Stephens, Author of Inci- 
 dents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land. 
 London, 1846. 
 
166 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 and sculptured m the highest style of art. Of 
 this difference, however, there is the easiest expla- 
 nation ; for while in Easter Island the statues 
 are rough and unpolished, as one would antici- 
 pate in so limited a space for development, and 
 in the infancy of the nation, those of the cities 
 of Central America were erected in the midst of 
 large communities, and in the highest style of art 
 of which their peculiar civilization was suscep- 
 tible. For I quite agree with Mr. Stephens in 
 regarding the ruined cities of Central America 
 as comparatively modern erections ; some of 
 them, as Uxmal for instance, having been, in all 
 likelihood, inhabited down to the era of the 
 Spanish conquest. For there are actually wooden 
 lintels still remaining in the palace of Uxmal, 
 while the use of cement and stucco, compara- 
 tively recent inventions, which are used in these 
 })uildings, was imheard of and unknown in the 
 era of the more ancient erections, both of Poly- 
 nesia and of Indo-America. As in the Giant 
 Cities of Bashan, described by Dr. Porter, there 
 was no cement of any kind used in the colossal 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 167 
 
 terraces of the Marquesas Islands, or in the 
 colossal and pyramidal buildings at the Lake of 
 Titicaca, in Peru, both of which must therefore 
 be referred to a period of the remotest antiquity. 
 In these Peruvian buildings there are stones which 
 have been polished and placed by the ancient 
 architect of upwards of thirty feet in length ; the 
 protuberances of one stone having been fitted 
 with incredible labour into the natural hollows 
 of the other. 
 
 The pyramidal erections of the Polynesians 
 were confined almost exclusively to their temples, 
 although from what Lord Anson or his historio- 
 grapher relates of the island of Tinian, it would 
 seem that they sometimes erected rows of small 
 pyramids, like those we shall find presently in 
 the valleys of Mexico. Humboldt's remarks on 
 this subject are profoundly interesting, and con- 
 trasted with what we find recorded of the Poly- 
 nesian temples, strongly prove the identity of 
 the two nations. 
 
 " Among those swarms of nations, which, from 
 the seventh to the twelfth century of the 
 
168 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 Christian era, successively inhabited the country 
 of Mexico, five are enumerated, — the Toltecks, 
 the Cicimecks, the Acolhuans, the Tlascaltecks, 
 and the Aztecks, — who, notwithstanding their 
 political divisions, spoke the same language, 
 followed the same worship, and built pyramidal 
 edifices, which they regarded as Teocallis, that 
 is to say, the houses of their gods. These edifices 
 were all of the same form, though of very different 
 dimensions ; they were pyramids, with several 
 terraces, and the sides of which stood exactlv in 
 the direction of the meridian, and the parallel 
 of the place. The teocalli was raised in the 
 midst of a square and walled enclosure, which, 
 somewhat like the TrEpi[5o\og of the G-reeks, con- 
 tained gardens, fountains, the dwellings of the 
 priests, and sometimes arsenals ; since each house 
 of a Mexican divinity, like the ancient temple 
 of Baal-Berith, built by Abimelech, was a strong 
 place. A great staircase led to the top of the 
 truncated pyramid ; and on the summit of the 
 platform were one or two chapels, built like 
 towers, which contained the colossal idols of the 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 169 
 
 divinity to whom the teocalli was dedicated. 
 This part of the edifice must be considered as 
 the most consecrated place ; like the tooc? or 
 rather the ariyog, of the Grecian temples : it 
 was there also that tlie priests kept up the sacred 
 fire. From the peculiar construction of the 
 edifice we have just described, the priest who 
 offered the sacrifice was seen by a great mass of 
 the people at the same time : the procession of 
 the teopixqui, ascending or descending the stair- 
 case of the pyramid, was beheld at a considerable 
 distance. The inside of the edifice was the burial- 
 place of the kings and principal personages of 
 Mexico. It is impossible to read the descrip- 
 tions which Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus 
 have left us of the temple of Jupiter Belus, 
 without being struck with the resemblance of 
 that Babylonian monument to the teocallis of 
 Anahuac."* 
 
 " At the period when the Mexicans, or Aztecks, 
 took possession, in the year 1190, of the equi- 
 noctial region of New Spain, they already found 
 
 * II 
 
 Humboldt's Eesearches," vol. L, p. 82. 
 
170 ORIGIX AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 the pyramidal monuments of Teotihuacan, of 
 Cholula, or Cholollan, and of Papantla. They 
 attributed these great edifices to the Toltecks, 
 a powerful and civilized nation, who inhabited 
 Mexico five hundred years earlier, who made use 
 of hierogiyphical characters, who computed the 
 year more precisely, and had a more exact chro- 
 nology than the greater part of the people of the 
 old continent. The Aztecks knew not with cer- 
 tainty what tribe had inhabited the country of 
 Anahuac before the Toltecks ; and consequently 
 the belief that the houses of the deity of Teoti- 
 huacan and of Cholollan was the work of the 
 Toltecks, assigned them the highest antiquity 
 they could conceive."* 
 
 " The group of the pyramids of Teotihuacan is 
 in the valley of Mexico, eight leagues north-east 
 from the capital, in a plain that bears the name 
 of Micoatl, or the jpath of the dead. There are 
 two large pyramids dedicated to the sun (Tona- 
 tiuh) and to the moon (Meztli) ; and these are 
 surrounded by several hundreds of small pyramids, 
 * *' Humboldt's Eesearches," vol. i., p. 83. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 171 
 
 whicli form streets in exact lines from north to 
 south, and from east to west. Of these two great 
 teocallis, one is fifty-five metres (or one hundred 
 and eighty feet), the other forty-four metres (or 
 one hundred and forty-five feet^ in perpendicular 
 height. The basis of the first is two hundred and 
 eight metres for six hundred and seventy-six feet) 
 in length ; whence it results that it is higher than 
 the Mycerinus, or third of the three great pyra- 
 mids of G-hiza in Egypt, and the length of its 
 base nearly equal to that of Cephrenes. The 
 small pyramids, which surround the great houses 
 of the Sun and the Moon, are scarcely nine or ten 
 metres high ; and served, according to the tradi- 
 tion of the natives, as burial-places for the 
 chiefs of the tribes. Around the Cheops and the 
 Mycerinus in Egypt there are eight small pyra- 
 mids, placed with symmetry, and parallel to the 
 fronts of the greater. The two teocallis of Teoti- 
 huacan had four principal stories, each of which 
 was subdivided into steps, the edges of which 
 are still to be distinguished. The nucleus is com- 
 posed of clay mixed with small stones ; and it 
 
172 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 is encased by a thick wall of tezoiitli, or porous 
 amygdaloid. This construction recalls to mind 
 that of one of the Egyptian pyramids of Sak- 
 harab, which has six stories ; and which, according 
 to Pocock, is a mass of pebbles and yellow 
 mortar, covered on the outside with rough stones. 
 On the top of the great Mexican teocallis were 
 two colossal statues of the Sun and Moon ; they 
 were of stone, and covered with plates of gold, of 
 which they were stripped by the soldiers of 
 Cortez." 
 
 The pyramid of Papantla is of much smaller 
 dimensions, but " is built entirely with hewn 
 stones of an extraordinary size, and very beau- 
 tifully and regularly shaped : three staircases lead 
 to the top. The covering of its steps is decorated 
 with hieroglyphical sculptures and small niches, 
 which are arranged with great symmetry. "' 
 
 But " the greatest, most ancient, and most 
 celebrated of the whole of the pyramidal monu- 
 ments of Anahuac is the teocalli of Cholula. It 
 is called in the present day the onountain made 
 by the hand of man (monte hecho a manos). At 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 173 
 
 a distance it has the aspect of a natural hill 
 covered with vegetation. The teocalli of Cholula 
 has four stories, all of equal height. It appears 
 to have been constructed exactly in the direction 
 of the four cardinal points ; but as the edges of the 
 stories are not very distinct, it is difficult to ascer- 
 tain their primitive direction. This pyramid! cal 
 monument has a broader basis than that of any 
 other edifice of the same kind in the old conti- 
 nent. I measured it carefully, and ascertained 
 that its perpendicular height is only fifty metres 
 (or one hundred and sixty-two feet), but that each 
 side of its basis is four hundred and thirty-nine 
 metres (or fourteen hundred and twenty-six feet) 
 in length. The basis of the pyramid of Cholula 
 is twice as broad as that of Cheops ; but its height 
 is very little more than that of the pyramid of 
 Mycerinus."* 
 
 "We have above remarked the great similarity 
 
 of construction between the Mexican teocallis and 
 
 the temple of Bel, or Belus, at Babylon. This 
 
 analogy had already struck Mr. Zoega, though he 
 
 * Humboldt's Researches,'' vol. i., p. 89. 
 
174 OllIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 had been unable to procure but very incomplete 
 descriptions of the group of the pyramids of Teo- 
 tihuacan. According to Herodotus, who visited 
 Babylon, and saw the temple of Belus, this pyra- 
 midal monument had eight stories. It was a 
 stadium (one hundred and eighty-three metres, or 
 five hundred and ninety-five feet) high, and the 
 breadth of the basis was equal to its height. The 
 outer wall, which surrounded it, was two stadia 
 square. The pyramid was built of brick and 
 asphaltum. A temple was erected on its top, and 
 another at its basis." " In the Mexican teocallis, 
 as in the temple of Belus, the lower temple was 
 distinguished from the one on the platform of the 
 
 pyramid."* 
 
 I cannot refrain from inserting, in tliis part of 
 
 our subject, in connection with Humboldt's very 
 
 interesting description of the pyramids of Mexico, 
 
 the following account of a "Pyramidal Monument 
 
 in China," from " Ochterlony's Account of the 
 
 War in that country," page 458, as illustrative of 
 
 the identity of the style and character of the 
 
 * •' Humboldt's Researches," vol. i., p. 99. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 175 
 
 architecture of all the earlier postdiluvian nations 
 in all parts of the world. 
 
 PYRAMIDAL MONUMENT IN CHINA. 
 
 " The road (from Nanking) runs parallel with 
 the walls of the Tartar city, until it reaches a 
 rising ground opposite the principal gate, where is 
 situated a magnificent Chinese tomb, representing 
 the raised Cenotaph, usually seen in their burial 
 places. The style of the architecture is mas- 
 sive and striking. It is situated at the extremity 
 of a fine broad road, enclosed between the ram- 
 parts, which is paved with large smooth slabs of a 
 dark-coloured limestone, of which material the 
 building itself is constructed. Its form is that 
 of a truncated quadrangular pyramid, about 250 
 feet long, 180 high, and 160 broad, bearing on its 
 summit an enclosed, but roofless building, in each 
 of whose four walls a handsome arch is twined, 
 opening to the cardinal points ; the whole forming 
 a monument so decidedly Egyptian in its style 
 and outline that the traveller, were he able to 
 exclude from his view the surrounding objects, 
 
176 ORIGIX AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 might fancy himself wandering among the ruins 
 of Luxor or Thebes. 
 
 There are various customs and practices un- 
 known among other nations, but common alike 
 to the Polynesians and Indo-Americans that 
 proclaim them to be one people. 
 
 The first of these is the horrible practice of 
 offerino; human sacrifices — the victims, who were 
 generally indicated by the priests, if not prisoners 
 of war, being sacrificed on the altar on the sum- 
 mit of their Marais or Teocallis. This horrid 
 practice doubtless obtained in many extinct 
 nations. Tacitus informs us that it was in use 
 among the ancient Grermans,* while its prevalence 
 among the ancient Celts, under the reign of the 
 Druids, is matter of notoriety.f The question of 
 
 * Stato tempore, in silvam, auguriis patnim et prisca formi- 
 dine sacram, omnes ejusdem sauguims populi legatioDibus 
 coeuut, caesoque publice homine celebrant barbari ritus horrenda 
 primordia." — Tacit, de Morib, Germ. 
 
 t The stated time alluded to by Tacitus was called Beltonhy 
 the ancient Celtic inhabitants of Scotland, by whom a similar 
 practice was annually observed. The word, which is still used 
 in Scotland to signify a term in the year, is a corruption, I have 
 been given to understand, cf the Celtic -words Bel-teyn, " the 
 fire of Bel, Baal, or Belus," the victim being first killed and 
 then consumed by fire. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 177 
 
 the king of Moab, " Shall I give my first-born for 
 my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin 
 of my soul ?" and the whole hecatombs of victims* 
 that were offered up in Sicily after the battle of 
 Himera by the Carthaginian general, Hannibal 
 the elder, to the manes of his grandfather Hamil- 
 car, who had been defeated and slain by the Sici- 
 lians under Grelon about fifty years before, attest 
 its frequency among the ancient Phoenicians; 
 while the story of Iphigenia perhaps indicates its 
 prevalence among the ancient Pelasgi in the isles 
 of Greece. But in no other part of the world was 
 the practice ever so prevalent, or characterised by 
 such multitudes of victims, as in the South Sea 
 Islands and among the Indo- Americans of Mexico. 
 On the death of the Incas, and of other eminent 
 persons in Peru, a considerable number of their 
 attendants were put to death, and interred around 
 their graves (or tombs) that they might appear in 
 the next world with their former dignity, and 
 be served with the same respect. On the death 
 of Huana Capac, the most powerful of their mon- 
 * The number sacrificed was 3000. B.C. 410. 
 
178 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 archs, or Incas, above a thousand victims were 
 doomed to accompany him to the tomb.* And 
 during the siege of Mexico, which was bravely 
 defended by the natives, two or three of the sol- 
 diers of Cortez, having been taken prisoners by 
 the Mexicans, were sacrificed on the summit of 
 the great Temple of Mexico, in sight of their sor- 
 rowing countrymen. 
 
 2. The second of the singular customs that 
 
 obtain equally among Polynesians and Indo-Ame- 
 
 ricans is their mode of disposing of the dead. 
 
 During my first visit to New Zealand, in the year 
 
 1839, I happened to visit the cemetery of the 
 
 native village of Kororadika, in the Bay of Islands, 
 
 in which, instead of graves and tumuli, I found a 
 
 number of stages or trestles, from two to three 
 
 feet high, on which the -bodies of the dead, which 
 
 had been wrapped up in mats, were left to putrefy 
 
 in the open air. I happened to visit the United 
 
 States during the following year, and became 
 
 acquainted in New York with the family of a Mr. 
 
 Catlin, who had spent many years among the 
 
 * Robertson's History of America. Book VII., p. 237. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 179 
 
 iDdian tribes of North America, and who was then 
 in England, exhibiting the collections he had made 
 among these tribes, in the Egyptian Hall in Lon- 
 don. On my return to England, I made it my 
 business to see Mr. Catlin's exhibition ; and 
 among the paintings he had drawn of Indian 
 scenes, there was one of a Mandan village in Upper 
 Missouri, a tribe which was two thousand strong 
 at his first visit to that part of the country, but 
 had been quite annihilated by small pox during 
 the interval. There was nothing remarkable in 
 the appearance of the village ; but that of the 
 cemetery attached to it struck me exceedingly at 
 the moment, for it was exactly similar to what I 
 had seen so shortly before in the village of Koro- 
 radika, in New Zealand — a series of trestles or 
 stages, on which the bodies of the dead, wrapped 
 up in the skins of wild beasts, had been left to 
 putrefy in the open air. 
 
 This mode of disposing of the dead seems to 
 have been extensively prevalent among the Indo- 
 Americans.* 
 
 * " On the following morning I saw an Indian corpse 
 staged, or put upon a few cross sticks, about ten feet from the 
 
180 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 3. The practice of tattooing, or imprinting in- 
 delible marks upon the skin, — a singular practice 
 which appears to have prevailed at one time over 
 all the islands of the Pacific, but of the origin of 
 which no satisfactory account is given by the 
 islanders themselves — is found also among certain 
 of the native tribes of North America. It was 
 observed, for instance, by Captain Vancouver 
 among the Indians of Nootka Sound ; and the Kev. 
 Mr. West informs us, in his " Journal of a Eesi- 
 dence in the Eed Eiver Colony," that it is occa- 
 sionally observed among the Indians of Hudson's 
 Bay. From a passage in the Book of Leviticus it 
 would appear to have obtained among the ancient 
 Egyptians, for we find a precept expressly prohi- 
 biting it in the Levitical law, conjoined with 
 other precepts prohibiting other practices appa- 
 
 ground, at a short distance from the fort. The property of 
 the dead, which may consist of a kettle, axe, and a few addi- 
 tional articles, is generally put into the case, or wrapped in the 
 buffalo skin with the body, under the idea that the deceased 
 will want them, or that the spirit of these articles will accom- 
 pany the departed spirit in travelling to another world." — 
 Journal of a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North 
 America ; by the Rev. John West, A.M. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 181 
 
 rently indifferent ; but which, it has been ascer- 
 tained, were religious, or rather heathenish, 
 observances of that ancient people. " Ye shall 
 not eat anything with the blood : neither shall ye 
 use enchantment, nor observe times. Ye shall not 
 round the corners of your heads ; neither shalt 
 thou mar the corners of thy beard. Ye shall not 
 make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead,* 
 NOR PRINT ANY MARKS UPON YOU : I am the Lord." 
 Levit. xix., 26, 28. On my second visit to New 
 Zealand, in 1873, I had the honour of being intro- 
 duced to a Maori chief, a member of the colonial 
 Parliament, which was then in session in the city 
 of Wellington, whose face was tattooed all over. 
 
 * Cuttings for the dead are also frequent in the South Sea 
 Islands. On the occasion of my visit to the cemetery of the 
 native village of Kororadika, in the Bay of Islands, in New Zea- 
 land, in 1839, the celebration of the anniversary of the death 
 of a native chief who had died years before, and whose body 
 had been wrapped up in native mats and deposited on the 
 trestles, was held at the cemetery by a number of natives, both 
 men and women. The body had been unwrapped from its 
 casements, and the mere skeleton -all that remained — was 
 exposed on the ground. Ever and anon unearthly bowlings 
 were uttered by both men and women, the latter cutting their 
 faces with mussel shells till the blood flowed copiously down 
 their cheeks. 
 
182 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 4. I have already mentioned the horrible prac- 
 tice of the Polynesians of the olden time in Tahiti 
 — that of Tiputa Taata,2is they called it, or parad- 
 ing in triumph over a fallen enemy, with his body 
 converted into a poncho for the victor.* This is 
 one of the last points of identification that one 
 could have expected to realise among the Indo- 
 Americans. And yet we do find it, as is evident 
 from the following extract from Dr. Robertson's 
 History of America. Speaking of warfare in 
 Mexico, Dr. Eobertson remarks: — "No captive 
 was ever ransomed or spared. All were sacrificed 
 without mercy, and their flesh devoured with as 
 much barbarous joy as among the fiercest savages. 
 On some occasions it rose to even wilder excesses. 
 Their principal warriors covered themselves with 
 the skins of the unhappy victims, and danced 
 about the streets, boasting of their own valour, 
 and exulting over their enemies. f" 
 
 5. The fifth and last of the proofs I shall offer 
 of the identity of the Polynesian and Indo-Ameri- 
 
 * Page 85. 
 
 t Kobertson's History of America. Book VII., 226. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 183 
 
 can races is the remarkable fact, to which I have 
 already adverted at considerable length, of there 
 being a language of deference or ceremony among 
 the more developed groups of Polynesia, as 
 there is among the Indo-Chinese nations of Asia 
 and the Indian Archipelago.* For, strange and 
 unaccountable as it may seem, the very same thing 
 obtained in Mexico — there being there also, as in 
 Polynesia, a language of deference and ceremony 
 distinct from the language of common life. 
 
 " The distinction of ranks," says Dr. Eobertson, 
 " was completely established, in a regular line 
 of subordination, reaching from the highest to 
 the lowest members of the community. Each 
 of these knew what he could claim, and what he 
 owed. The people, who were not allowed to wear 
 a dress of the same fashion, or to dwell in houses 
 of a form similar to those of the nobles, accepted 
 them with the utmost submissive reverence. In 
 the presence of their sovereign, they durst not lift 
 their eyes from the ground, or look him in the 
 face. The nobles themselves, when admitted to 
 
 * 
 
 Pages 51, 53. 
 
184 OEIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 an audience of their sovereign, entered barefoot, 
 in mean garments, and, as his slaves, paid him 
 homage approaching to adoration." This respect, 
 due from inferiors to those above them in rank, 
 was prescribed with such ceremonious accuracy 
 that it incorporated with the language, and influ- 
 enced its genius and idiom. The Mexican tongue 
 abounded in expressions of reverence, and cour- 
 tesy. The style and appellations used in the inter- 
 course between equals would have been so unbe- 
 coming in the mouth of one in a lower sphere, 
 when he accosted a person of higher rank, as to be 
 deemed an insult. " The Mexicans had not only 
 reverential nouns, but reverential verbs."* 
 
 In regard to the period in which America was 
 originally discovered and settled by mankind, I 
 am happy to find that the Honourable Albert 
 Grallatin, LL.D., a distinguished Statesman, and 
 one of the ablest philologists of North America, 
 who has written very learnedly on the Indo-Ame- 
 rican tribes of the northern continent, and espe- 
 cially on their languages and migrations, is pre- 
 * Robertson's History of America. Book VII., p. 222. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 185 
 
 cisely of the same opinion with myself not only 
 as to the great antiquity of the Indo-American 
 race, but also as to the period at which the easterly 
 emigration commenced from the plain of Shinar, 
 as well as to when that emigration may have 
 reached America. Adopting the Hebrew chrono- 
 logy of Holy Scripture, as I have done, Mr. 
 G-allatin thus writes : — 
 
 " Whilst the unity of structure and of gram- 
 matical forms proves a common origin, it may be 
 inferred from this, combined with the great diver- 
 sity and entire difference in the words of the 
 several languages of America, that this continent 
 received its first inhabitants at a very remote 
 epoch, probably not much posterior to that of 
 the dispersion of mankind." "After making every 
 allowance, I cannot see any possible reason that 
 should have prevented those who, after the dis- 
 persion of mankind, moved towards the east and 
 north-east from having reached the extremities 
 of Asia, and passed over to America, luithin five 
 hundred years after the flood. However small 
 may have been the number of those first emigrants. 
 
186 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 an equal number of years would have been more 
 than sufficient to occupy in their own way every 
 part of America."* 
 
 Mr. Grallatin doubtless conducts his first batch 
 of emigrants to America by a somewhat different 
 route from the one I have indicated in this volume, 
 viz., by that well-known macadamised royal road 
 from the Old World to America, that has been 
 traversed in imagination by literary men of all 
 classes and of all nations for three hundred years 
 past. But whether he passes these emigrants 
 across Behring's Straits, on the ice or in canoes, 
 and how they happened to have left all their live 
 stock behind them, the deponent saith not. I shall 
 have something to say about the said Behring's 
 Straits road to America in the sequel. 
 
 * A Synopis of the Indian tribes within the United States 
 east of the Rocky Mountains, and in the British and Eussiau 
 possessions in North America. By the Hon. Albert Gallatin, 
 Archaeologia Americana, vol. ii., Boston, 1836. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 187 
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 There is no evidence, and not the slightest 
 probability, of any emigration having 
 ever taken place from asia to america 
 BY Behring's Stratts. 
 
 "Though it be possible," observes Dr. Kobert- 
 son, " that America may have received its first 
 inhabitants from our continent, either by the 
 north-west of Europe, or the north-east of Asia, 
 there seems to be good reason for supposing that 
 the progenitors of all the American nations, from 
 Cape Horn to the southern confines of Labrador, 
 migrated from the latter rather than the former. 
 The Esquimaux are the only people in America, 
 who, in their aspect or character, bear any resem- 
 blance to the northern Europeans. They are 
 manifestly a race of men distinct from all the 
 nations of the American continent, in language, 
 in disposition, and in habits of life. Their 
 original, then, may warrantably be traced up to 
 that source which I have pointed out. But 
 
188 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 among all the other inhabitants of America there 
 is such a striking similitude in the form of their 
 bodies, and the qualities of their minds, that not- 
 withstanding the diversities occasioned by the 
 influence of climate, or unequal progress in im- 
 provement, we must pronounce them to be des- 
 cended from one source. There may be a variety 
 in the shades, but we can everywhere trace the 
 same original colour. Each tribe has something 
 peculiar which distinguishes it, but in all of 
 them we discern certain features common to the 
 whole race. It is remarkable, that in every 
 peculiarity, whether in their persons or disposi- 
 tions, which characterises the Americans, they 
 have some resemblance to the rude tribes scattered 
 over the north-east of Asia, but almost none to 
 the nations settled in the northern extremities 
 of Europe. We may therefore refer them to 
 the former origin, and conclude that their Asiatic 
 progenitors, having settled in those parts of 
 America, where the Kussians had discovered the 
 proximity of the two continents, spread gradually 
 over its various regions."* 
 
 * Robertson's History of America, Book V., page 90. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 189 
 
 In this passage, Dr. Kobertson lays down the 
 three following points : — First, that the Esqui- 
 maux are the only aboriginal people in America 
 entirely distinct from all the Indo-American 
 tribes, and probably of European origin ; secondly, 
 that all the Indo-American tribes are one people, 
 and sprung from the same source; and thirdly, 
 that in all probability their progenitors arrived in 
 America by Behring's Straits. 
 
 As we shall have but little occasion, in the 
 sequel, to refer to the Esquimaux, we may dispose 
 of what Dr. Kobertson says of them at once. 
 " They are of a middle size," that eminent his- 
 torian adds, " and robust ; with heads of a dis- 
 proportioned bulk, and feet as remarkably small. 
 Their complexions though swarthy, by being con- 
 tinually exposed to the rigour of a cold climate, 
 inclines to the European white, rather than to 
 the copper colour of America, and the men have 
 beards, which are sometimes bushy and long. 
 From these marks of distinction, as well as from 
 one still less equivocal, the affinity of their lan- 
 guage to that of the G-reenlanders, we may con- 
 
190 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 elude, with some degree of confidence, that the 
 Esquimaux are a race different from the rest of 
 the Americans."* 
 
 " As early as the ninth century (A.D. 830.)" 
 Dr. Eobertson continues, " the "N'orwegians dis- 
 covered Greenland, and planted colonies there. 
 The communication with that country, after a 
 long interruption, was renewed in the seventeenth 
 century. Some Lutheran and Moravian mission- 
 aries, prompted by zeal for propagating the 
 Christian faith, ventured to settle in this frozen 
 and uncultivated region. To them we are 
 indebted for much curious information with res- 
 pect to its nature and inhabitants. We learn 
 that the north-west coast of Greenland is separated 
 from America by a very narrow strait ; that, at 
 the bottom of the bay into which this strait con- 
 ducts, it is highly probable that they are united ; 
 that the inhabitants of the two countries have 
 some intercourse with one another; that the 
 Esquimaux of America perfectly resemble the 
 Greenlanders in their aspect, dress, and mode of 
 
 * Ibid, page 97. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 191 
 
 living ; that some sailors who had acquired tlie 
 knowledge of a few words in the Grreenlandish 
 language, reported that these were understood by 
 the Esquimaux; that, at length, (A.D. 1764) a 
 Moravian missionary, well acquainted with the 
 language of Grreenland, having visited the country 
 of the Esquimaux, found, to his astonishment, 
 that they spoke the same language with the 
 Greenlanders ; that they were in every respect 
 the same people, and he was accordingly received 
 and entertained by them as a friend and a 
 brother."* 
 
 The long interruption of all communication 
 between Norway and Grreenland, of which Dr. 
 Robertson speaks, is supposed by some authori- 
 ties to have arisen from an extraordinary irrup- 
 tion of icebergs from the north along the east 
 coast of Grreenland, thereby intensifying the 
 rigour of the climate, and cutting off all com- 
 munication with the mother country. It is 
 
 alleged, however, by others that there had been a 
 
 * Ibid, page 89. Dr. Eobertson's informant was the Eev. 
 Hans Egede, the zealous and devoted Moravian missionary 
 of last century, in Greenland. 
 
192 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 great sinking of the land along the east coast of 
 Grreenland ; the houses of the old colonists being 
 still visible in the deep water off the coast. At all 
 events it is more than merely probable, and may be 
 assumed as an ascertained fact, that certain of the 
 G-reenlanders had crossed over the narrow strait 
 that separates Grreenland from America, and there 
 developed themselves in the course of ages into 
 the people called the Esquimaux. 
 
 "Not having had access," observes Mr. Grallatin, 
 in the Paper quoted above, " to Egede's Grrammar 
 and Dictionary of the Grreenlandish language, a 
 specimen only could be given, taken from his and 
 from Crantz's accounts of Grreenland. There is 
 not, it is believed, any extant vocabulary of the 
 Western Coast of Labrador. It differs so far from 
 that of Greenland that the Moravian Missionaries 
 were obliged to make a new translation of the 
 Grospels for the use of the Labrador-Esquimaux, 
 the one previously made for that of Greenland not 
 being sufficiently intelligible to the other tribe. 
 An examination of both has, however, enabled the 
 learned authors of the 'Mithri dates' to ascertain 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 193 
 
 the gTeat affinity of the two dialects, in reference 
 both to words and to grammatical forms."* 
 
 It is not at all remarkable that the language of 
 the Eastern Grreenlanders should have become 
 unintelligible to the Western, in the long series 
 of ages that had elapsed from the discovery and 
 settlement of G-reenland by the Norwegians in the 
 year 830, to the middle of the 18th century, 
 when the Moravian Mission was established. How 
 greatly has our own language changed in much 
 less time than this ! But it is very remarkable 
 indeed that the Esquimaux, who thus represent the 
 Grreenlanders, should have occupied a narrow strip 
 of land along the Polar circle in America, as Mr. 
 Grallatin informs us they have actually done from 
 the East Coast of Grreenland to Behring's Straits 
 — a distance of not less than five thousand four 
 hundred miles, following the convolutions of the 
 land — along the whole of which line the Esqui- 
 maux language prevails, and the Esquimaux 
 people practice the same customs and wear the 
 same sort of dress. 
 
 * Mr. Gallatin, ubi supra. 
 
194 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF • 
 
 Nay, there is something more remarkable still 
 in this Esquimaux case ; for while there is no 
 evidence of any North Asian tribe having ever 
 crossed Behring's Straits into America, there is 
 unquestionable evidence of the Esquimaux having 
 found their way, somewhere near the Polar circle 
 from America into Asia, in the existence of a 
 small tribe called the Tchucktchi, on the north- 
 western shore of Behring's Straits, who speak the 
 Esquimaux language, and practice the customs, and 
 use the dress of the Esquimaux people. " They 
 are as yet," says Mr. Grallatin, "The only well 
 ascertained instance of an Asiatic tribe, belonging 
 to the same race as any of the natives of North 
 America."* 
 
 With the single exception, therefore, of the 
 
 Esquimaux, Dr. Eobertson regards the Indo- 
 
 Americans as one people, sprung from the same 
 
 source; and he further represents their forefathers 
 
 as having reached America by Behring's Straits 
 
 many ages ago. In short, it has been the general 
 
 opinion of the learned for the last three hun- 
 
 * Gallatin, ubi supra, 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 195 
 
 dred years that America was originally peopled 
 from North-eastern Asia, and, ever since the 
 discovery of Behring's Straits, by that par- 
 ticular route: the great immigrations from which 
 the Indo-Americans are supposed to be descended 
 consisting of the Tartar hordes of North-eastern 
 Asia, who had been defeated by Zenghis Khan 
 in the thirteenth century, and had somehow 
 found their way, in flying for some place of refuge 
 from their ruthless conqueror, to America. 
 
 Now, it is somewhat remarkable, as an instance 
 of the blindfold manner in which even the learned 
 of all nations adopt conclusions in matters of im- 
 portance, without either the slightest evidence or 
 the slightest probability to support them, that 
 ever since the first proposer of this particular route 
 for the discovery and settlement of America an- 
 nounced his great idea to the world, the learned of 
 all nations, including even such names as those of 
 Humboldt and Dr. Robertson, have caught at and 
 adopted that idea and followed in his wake — as 
 blindly, indeed, and as unintelligently as a flock 
 of sheep follows its leader. 
 
196 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 Id one word, Man's thoughts for three hundred 
 years past, as to the discovery and peopling of 
 America, have been that it must have taken place, 
 at a comparatively recent period, from North- 
 eastern Asia, by way of the farthest North, or 
 Behring's Straits; but God's thoughts — discernible 
 as they are very clearly from the event — were un- 
 questionably that America should be discovered 
 and settled in the infancy of our race by a party of 
 Polynesians, whose forefathers had previously 
 crossed the vast Pacific Ocean from the Indian 
 Archipelago to Easter Island, and from thence to 
 America. 
 
 " My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither 
 are your ways 3Iy ways, saith the Lord. For as 
 the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My 
 ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts 
 than your thoughts."* Now, there is perhaps no 
 other instance in the history of mankind in which 
 the thoughts, even of the wisest of men, have been 
 more notably and more remarkably turned into 
 folly than in this very case of the original disco- 
 
 * Isaiah Iv. 8, 9. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 197 
 
 very and progressive settlement of the Continent 
 of America. " Grod Himself, that formed the earth 
 and made it, He hath established it; He created 
 it not in vain ; He formed it to be inhabited."* 
 Now, as the continents of Asia and America 
 approach each other very closely in the far north, 
 it was certainly the only natural inference imagin- 
 able by men of intelligence that certain of the 
 inhabitants of the one continent should have passed 
 over the narrow strait that divides them, to inhabit 
 the other. And this has accordingly been man's 
 thought on the subject these three centuries past. 
 But G-od's thoughts — discoverable only, as I have 
 already observed, from the event — was as different 
 from all this as the heavens are from the earth. 
 Grod's thought, I repeat it, was that America 
 should be discovered and settled far south in the 
 southern continent by a party of Polynesians, the 
 descendants of men who had previously been 
 driven by adverse westerly gales across the vast 
 
 Pacific Ocean to the American land. Who could 
 
 s 
 ever have imagined beforehand that such a course 
 
 * Isaiah xlv. 18. 
 
198 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 should ever have been adopted, as we have seen 
 it has, for the carrying out of the Divine purpose 
 that America should be inhabited ? And all the 
 ridicule that has hitherto been thrown upon the 
 idea— and there has been not a little since I first 
 announced it, more than forty years since — by 
 able editors and reviewers, only confirms the fact 
 that God's thoughts in such matters are not our 
 thoughts, nor His ways our ways. 
 
 There is nothing enthusiastic, there is nothing 
 fanatical, as it will doubtless be alleged that 
 there is, in this idea. It is simply the plain 
 philosophical deduction from the reasoning I have 
 
 • adduced above, and the facts I have establislied. 
 
 For I maintain, without fear of contradiction, 
 that there is neither the shadow of evidence nor 
 
 * the slightest probability of any emigration having 
 ever taken place either on a small or on a large 
 scale from north-eastern Asia to America by way 
 of Behring's Straits. 
 
 First, then, as to the want of evidence. Had 
 there ever been such an emigration, it would 
 surely have left behind it some evidence of the 
 
I 
 
 THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 199 
 
 fact in the existence of a third community in 
 Aboriginal America, besides those of Indo-Ameri- 
 cans on the one hand, and of Esquimaux on the 
 other. We can easily account for the mere hand- 
 ful of Grreenlanders who had crossed over the 
 narrow strait that divides their country from 
 America at some early period within the last 
 thousand years, in the existence of the Esquimaux 
 in America ; but where is there any such evidence 
 of any other emigration of any kind having taken 
 place to America by Behring's Straits, or by any 
 other conceivable land route ? Supposing, there- 
 fore, for the moment, that there had been such 
 an emigration to America, whether from Europe 
 or Asia, it is evident that it must have 
 perished on the spot, leaving no seed and no sign ; 
 for there is no such third aboriginal people in 
 America, as in such a case there must have been. 
 I shall be told, doubtless, that the emigrants from 
 Asia generally, and particularly the large body 
 of emigrants who are supposed to have fled from 
 the conquering hosts of Zenghis Khan, were 
 gradually amalgamated with the Indc-American 
 
200 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 nations, and ceased to maintain their separate 
 national existence. But I reply, that it has 
 never been either the policy or the practice of 
 the Indo-Americans to amalgamate with people 
 of a different race. Like the Jews, they have 
 ever dwelt alone and been separate from the rest 
 of the nations. And, consequently, as no such 
 amalgamated communities have ever been dis- 
 covered, there is reason to believe that none have 
 ever existed. 
 
 There is a favourite idea on this subject that 
 was long entertained, although now generally 
 exploded, both in England and America, viz., 
 that the Indians of America are the lineal 
 descendants and representatives of the ten lost 
 tribes of ancient Israel. 
 
 The principal advocates of this theory, which 
 is supported only by feeble, fanciful, and far- 
 fetched analogies, are Lord Kingsborough, a 
 British peer, and a Dr. Boudinot, of America. 
 Mr. Bancroft, of San Francisco, has, in his own 
 learned work, given the following sketch of Lord 
 Kingsborough and his writings on this subject : — 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 201 
 
 '' KiDgsborougli has a theory to prove, and to 
 accomplish his object he drafts every shadow of 
 an analogy into his service. But though his 
 theory is as wild as the wildest, and his proofs 
 are as vague as the vaguest, yet Lord Kings- 
 borough cannot be classed with such writers as 
 Jones, Banking, Cabrera, Adair, and the host of 
 other dogmatists who have fought tooth and nail, 
 each for his particular hobby. Kingsborough 
 was an enthusiast, a fanatic if you choose — 
 but his enthusiasm is never offensive. There 
 is a scholarly dignity about his work which 
 has never been attained by those who have 
 jeered and railed at him ; and though we 
 may smile at his credulity, and regret that such 
 strong zeal was so strangely misplaced, yet we 
 should speak and think with respect of one who 
 spent his lifetime and his fortune, if not his 
 reason, in an honest endeavour to cast light upon 
 one of the most obscure spots in the history of 
 man." 
 
 The more prominent of the analogies adduced 
 by Lord Kingsborough may be briefly enumerated 
 as follows : — 
 
202 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 " The religion of the Mexicans strongly resem- 
 bled that of the Jews in many minor details, as 
 will be presently seen, and the two were prac- 
 tically alike to a certain extent in their very 
 foundation ; for as the Jews acknowledged a 
 multitude of angels, archangels, principalities, 
 thrones, dominions, and powers, as the subordi- 
 nate personages of their hierarchy, so did the 
 Mexicans acknowledge the unity of the Deity in 
 the person of Tezcatlipoca, and at the same 
 time worship a great number of other imaginary 
 beings. Both believed in a plurality of devils 
 subordinate to one head, who was called by the 
 Mexicans Mictlantliopochtli, and by the Jews 
 Satan. Indeed, it seems that the Jews actually 
 worshipped and made offerings to Satan, as the 
 Mexicans did to their god of hell. It is probable 
 that the Toltecs were acquainted with the sin 
 of the first man, committed at the suggestion of 
 the woman, herself deceived by the serpent, who 
 tempted her with the fruit of the forbidden tree, 
 who was the origin of all our calamities, and by 
 whom death came into the world. We have seen 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 203 
 
 in this chapter that Kingsborough supposes the 
 Messiah and His story to have been familiar to 
 the Mexicans." 
 
 " There is reason to believe that the Mexicans? 
 like the Jews, offered meat and drink offerings 
 to stones. There are striking similarities between 
 the Babel, flood, and creation myths of the 
 Hebre-ws and the Americans. Both Jews and 
 Mexicans were fond of appealing in their adjura- 
 tions to the heavens and the earth. Both were 
 extremely superstitious, and firm believers in 
 prodigies. The character and history of Christ 
 and Huitzilopochtli present certain analogies. 
 It is very probable that the Sabbath of the 
 seventh day was known in some parts of America. 
 The Mexicans applied the blood of sacrifices to 
 the same uses as the Jews ; they poured it upon 
 the earth, they sprinkled it, they marked persons 
 with it, and they smeared it upon walls and 
 other inanimate things. No one but the Jewish 
 High-priest might enter the Holy of Holies. A 
 similar custom obtained in Peru. Both Mexicans 
 and Jews regarded certain animals as unclean 
 
204 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 and unfit for food. Some of the Americans 
 believed, with the Talmudists, in a plurality of 
 soals. That man was created in the image of 
 Grod yvas a part of the Mexican belief. It was 
 customary among the Mexicans to eat the flesh 
 of sacrifices of atonement. There are many 
 points of resemblance between Tezcatlipoca and 
 Jehovah. Ablutions formed an essential part of 
 the ceremonial law of the Jews and Mexicans. 
 The opinions of the Mexicans with regard to 
 the resurrection of the body accorded with those 
 of the Jews. The Mexican temple, like the 
 Jewish, faced the east. ' As amongst the Jews 
 the ark was a sort of portable temple, in which 
 the Deity was supposed to be continually present, 
 and which was accordingly borne on the shoulders 
 of the priests, as a sure refuge and defence from 
 their enemies, so amongst the Mexicans and the 
 Indians of Michoacan and Honduras an ark was 
 held in the highest veneration, and was considered 
 an object too sacred to be touched by any but 
 the priests. The same religious reverence for 
 the ark is stated by Adair to have existed among 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 205 
 
 the Cherokee and other Indian tribes inhabiting 
 the banks of the Mississippi ; and his testimony 
 is corroborated by the accounts of Spanish authors 
 of the greatest veracity. The nature and use of 
 the ark having been explained, it is needless to 
 observe that its form might have been various, 
 although Scripture declares that the Hebrew ark 
 was of the simplest construction.' " And again. 
 " It would appear from many passages of the 
 Old Testament that the .Tews believed in the 
 real presence of G-od in the ark, as the Roman 
 Catholics believe in the real presence of Christ 
 in the sacrament, from whom it is probable the 
 Mexicans borrowed the notion that He, whom 
 the heaven of heavens cannot contain, and whose 
 glory fills all space, could be confined within the 
 precincts of a narrow ark, and be borne by a set 
 of weak and frail priests. If the belief of the 
 Mexicans had not been analoo'ous to that of the 
 ancient Jews, the early Spanish missionaries 
 would certainly have expressed their indignation 
 at the absurd credulity of those who believed 
 that their omnipresent god, Huitzilopochtli, was 
 
206 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 carried in an ark on priests' shoulders ; but of 
 the ark of the Mexicans they say but little, 
 fearing, as it would appear, to tread too boldly on 
 the burning ashes of Mount Sinai." 
 
 "The Yucatec conception of a Trinity resembles 
 the Hebrew. It is probable that Quetzalcoatl, 
 whose proper name signifies, " feathered ser- 
 pent," was so called after the brazen serpent 
 which Moses lifted up in the Wilderness ; the 
 feathers, perhaps, alluding to the Rabbinical tra- 
 dition that the fiery serpents which God sent 
 against the Israelites were of a winged species."* 
 
 After the specimen we have just had of Lord 
 Kingsborough's zealous but futile efforts to iden- 
 tify the Indo-Americans with the Ten Lost Tribes 
 of Ancient Israel, the reader will doubtless think, 
 with Mr. Bancroft, that we have had quite enough 
 of his Lordship's " unreadable book !" 
 
 The following account of tlie opinions enter- 
 tained on the subject, of the alleged identity of 
 the Indo-Americans and the Lost Ten Tribes of 
 
 *" The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America." 
 By Hubert Howe Bancroft, vol. v. London— Pages 84 to 87. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 207 
 
 Israel, by the learned in America, and especially 
 by an eminent American advocate of that hypo- 
 thesis. Dr. Elias Boudinot, is taken from the 
 Princeton Revieiu, a very, able and influential 
 American journal, for the month of January, 1841, 
 thirty-five years ago : — 
 
 "We have yet said nothing of a theory widely 
 circulated in this country, and embracing among 
 its advocates some very distinguished men. We 
 refer to the opinion that the Indians of North 
 America, at least, are the descendants of Abraham, 
 and a portion of the long lost ten tribes carried 
 away from the land of Israel by the King of 
 Assyria, and their place filled up by other people 
 sent to take their place. This event, according 
 to Ussher's chronology, occurred about 720 years 
 before the Christian era. (See 2 Kings, xvii.) 
 That which invests this opinion — otherwise very 
 improbable — with some plausibility and interest, 
 is, that most of those who have been its advocates 
 have either resided among the American Indians, 
 or have received their information from those 
 who had lived among them, and were well 
 
208 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 acquainted with their customs and religious 
 
 ceremonies." 
 
 " A distinguished statesman and philanthropist 
 of our own country, Elias Boudinot, LLD., has 
 entered zealously into the defence of this opinion, 
 in a work entitled ' The Star in the West,' which, 
 when first published, attracted considerable atten- 
 tion, and probably made some converts to the 
 opinion of the learned author. As the work is 
 readily accessible to any one who desires to peruse 
 it, we decline entering into any detail respecting 
 the arguments and facts depended on to sustain 
 the hypothesis. Both of these authors refer the 
 emigration to a period when the first temple was 
 yet standing, when Shalmaneser carried captive 
 the ten tribes, as before mentioned. This theory 
 does not propose a new method of reaching the 
 American continent, but takes it for granted that 
 the emigrants passed into America from the north- 
 east of Asia. Our reasons for dissenting from 
 this opinion are, that the aborigines of America 
 have not the obscurest tradition of any such 
 descent, or of any of the remarkable facts recorded 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 209 
 
 ill the Mosaic history, which could no more have 
 been utterly lost than their language ; and this 
 a^'ain furnishes another strono- ar'^.'ument a^'ainst 
 the hypothesis in question ; for, as far as we 
 know, it has never been alleged by any Hebraist 
 that the languages of our Indian tribes have any 
 aflfinity, or the least resemblance to the ancient 
 Hebrew. We have, indeed, seen a collection of 
 words from the language of the Carribees, which 
 had a resemblance to Hebrew words of the same 
 signification : but the hypothesis under consider- 
 ation relates to our wandering tribes in North 
 America, from whose religious ceremonies all the 
 arguments are derived. But the entire diversity 
 of languages among these tribes, already men- 
 tioned, is inconsistent with the idea that, origin- 
 ally, they all used one tongue ; for, living in the 
 same country, such an entire diversity could never 
 have occurred ; but the most conclusive aro-u- 
 ment is the universal defect of the covenant seal 
 of circumcision, by which all the descendants of 
 Abraham, in every line, are distinguished, and 
 which is of itself sufficient to overthrow the theory; 
 
210 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 and as to the pcroTiments derived from certain 
 religions observances and ceremonies, they are 
 such as that something similar may be found 
 in many nations who certainly cannot claim any 
 kindred with Abraham. This similarity of reli- 
 gious rites among different nations rather goes to 
 prove that the religions of the heathen nations 
 had a common origin, and that they were derived 
 from institutions of divine appointment, which, 
 however, were greatly perverted from their 
 original design. 
 
 " That remarkable man, Joseph Wolf, has spent 
 many years in travelling over the earth, to see if 
 he could find the habitation of the Ten Tribes ; 
 and with the view, it is said, of ascertaining 
 whether there was any foundation for the opinion 
 which we have been considering, came to this 
 countrv, intendinof to visit the several tribes in the 
 United States ; but, when he was at Washington 
 city, he had the opportunity of seeing a number 
 of Indian chiefs, from several tribes, and whether 
 from these specimens he was satisfied that they 
 bad no claim to be considered the seed of Abra- 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 211 
 
 Tiam, or whether other reasons induced him to 
 decline, we cannot tell, but he relinquished his 
 purpose of going among the Indian tribes, and, 
 we have understood, had no belief that they had 
 any connexion with the tribes of Israel. And, 
 although on many subjects we should be unwilling 
 to confide in the judgment of this benevolent 
 enthusiast, yet, in regard to this point, we know 
 no one whose opinion should be more decisive, 
 especially when it is found on the negative of the 
 question.*' 
 
 There is one remarkable peculiarity character- 
 istic of the Indo-Americans in all parts of that 
 continent, and in all climates, that precludes the 
 possibility of their having originated in any other 
 than one source — the Indo-Americans, therefore, 
 are all red, or, rather brown men. On this point 
 the very able American journal from which I have 
 just been (juoting a long extract, makes the fol- 
 lowing observations : — 
 
 " There is only one circumstance in the case of 
 the aborigines of America which seems to have 
 no analoo'v to the other nations of the earth. 
 
212 ORIGIX AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 and that is the uniformity of their complexion^ 
 from Labrador to Cape Horn. We confess that^ 
 considering the many climates which they occupy, 
 it seems somewhat unaccountable tliptt there should 
 be such a uniformity of colour. The Spanish 
 writers who gave an account of the first discovery 
 of America, mention this fact with great surprise. 
 They expected to find the inhabitants of the 
 countries within the tropics of as dark a colour as in 
 Asia or Africa, but they found little or no change 
 of complexion from that of the higher latitudes." 
 
 I have stated above that there is not only no 
 evidence, but not the slightest probability of anj 
 emigration having ever taken place from north- 
 eastern Asia to America, by Behring's Straits ; 
 and I now proceed to state my reasons for holding 
 this opinion. 
 
 " The actual vicinity of the two continents 
 is," says Dr. Robertson, " so clearly established 
 by modern discoveries that the chief difficulty 
 with respect to the peopling of America is re- 
 moved. While those immense regions whicli 
 stretch eastward from the river Oby to the 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 213 
 
 •sea of Kamtscbatka were unknown or imper- 
 fectly explored, the north-east extremities of our 
 hemisphere were supposed to be so far distant 
 •from any part of the Xew World that it was not 
 easy to conceive liow any communication should 
 liave been carried on between them ; but the 
 Eussians, havino^ subjected the western part of 
 Siberia to their empire, gradually extended their 
 knowledge o^ that vast country by advancing 
 towards the east into unknown provinces. These 
 were discovered by hunters in their excursions 
 after game, or by soldiers employed in levying 
 the taxes ; and the Court of Moscow estimated 
 the importance of those countries only by the 
 small addition which they made to its revenue. 
 At length Peter the Cfreat ascended the Russian 
 throne ; his enlightened, comprehensive mind, 
 intent upon every circumstance that could aggran- 
 dize his empire, or render his reign illustrious, 
 -discerned consequences of those discoveries which 
 had escaped the observation of his ignorant prede- 
 •<jessors ; he perceived that, in proportion as the 
 regions of Asia extended towards the east, they 
 
214 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 must approach nearer to America : that the com- 
 munication between the two continents, which 
 had long been searched for in vain, would pro- 
 bably be found in this quarter ; and that, by 
 opening it, some part of the wealth and com- 
 merce of the western world might be made to 
 flow into his dominions by a new channel. Such 
 an object suited a genius that delighted in grand 
 schemes. Peter drew up instructions with his 
 own hand for prosecuting this design, and gave 
 orders for carrying it into execution."* 
 
 The following is a copy of the Instructions- 
 which the Czar, Peter the Great, left for his 
 successors on the throne of Russia, for the dis- 
 covery of America from the west. 
 
 1728. 
 " 1. You shall cause one or two convenient 
 vessels to be built at Kamtschatka, or elsewhere ; 
 2. You shall endeavour to discovei', by coasting 
 with these vessels, wliether the country towards 
 the north, of which we have no distinct know- 
 ledge, is a part of America or not ; 3. If it joins 
 * Robertson, Book IV., 87. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 215 
 
 the continent of America, you shall endeavour, if 
 possible, to reach some colony belonging* to some 
 European power ; or, in case you meet with any 
 European ship, you shall diligently enquire the 
 name of the coasts, and such other circumstances 
 as it is in your power to learn, and these you 
 shall commit to writing, so that we may have 
 some certain memoirs by which a chart may be 
 constructed."* 
 
 Peter's instructions were, in due time, carried 
 into effect by his successors, and especially by 
 the famous Eussian Empress Catherine ; for, in 
 1741 — 
 
 " Orders were issued to build two vessels at 
 the small village of Ochotz, situated on the sea 
 of Kamtschatka, to sail on a voyage of discovery. 
 Though that dreary uncultivated region furnished 
 nothing that could be of use in constructing 
 them, but some larch trees ; though not only the 
 iron, the cordage, the sails, and all the numerous 
 articles requisite for their equipment, but the 
 
 * Account of the Eussian Discoveries between Asia and 
 America. By William Coxe, A.M., London, 1803. 
 
216 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 provisions for victualling them, were to be carried 
 through the immense deserts of Siberia, down 
 rivers of difficult navigation, and along roads 
 almost impassable, the mandate of the sovereign, 
 and the perseverance of the people, at last sur- 
 mounted every obstacle. Two vessels were finished, 
 and, under the command of the captains Behring 
 and Tschirikow, sailed from Kamtschatka, in quest 
 of the New World, in a quarter where it had never 
 been approached. They shaped their course 
 towards the east ; and though a storm soon sepa- 
 rated the vessels, which never rejoined, and many 
 disasters befel them, the expectations from the 
 voyage were not altogetlier frustrated. Each of 
 the commanders discovered land, which to them 
 appeared to be part of the American continent."* 
 Tliough the islands (discovered by Behring 
 and Tschirikow) were frequented from that time 
 by Russian lumters, the Court of St. Petersburgh, 
 during a period of more than thirty years, seems 
 to have relinquished every thought of prosecuting 
 discoveries in that quarter. " But, in the year 
 • * Robertson, Book IV., page 88. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 217 
 
 1768 it was unexpectedly resumed. The sove- 
 reign who had then been lately seated on the 
 throne of Peter the Great, possessed the genius and 
 talents of her illustrious predecessor. During 
 the operations of the most arduous and extensive 
 war in which the Eussian empire was ever 
 engaged, she formed schemes and executed 
 undertakings to which more limited abilities 
 would have been incapable of attending, but 
 amidst the leisure of pacific times. A new 
 voyage of discovery from the eastern extremity 
 of Asia was planned, and Captain Krenitzin 
 and Lieutenant Levasheflf were appointed to 
 command the two vessels fitted out for that 
 purpose. In their voyage outward they held 
 nearly the same course with th^ former navigators, 
 "they touched at the same islands, observed their 
 situation and productions more carefully, and dis- 
 covered several new islands, with which Behring 
 and Tschirikow had not fallen in. Though they 
 did not proceed so far to the east as to revisit the 
 country which Behring and Tschirikow supposed 
 to be part of the American continent, yet, by 
 
218 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 returning in a course considerably to the north of 
 theirs, they corrected some capital mistakes into 
 which their predecessors had fallen, and have con- 
 tributed to facilitate the progress of future navi- 
 gators in those seas."* 
 
 It was, therefore, Captain Vitus Behring, a 
 German officer in the Kussian naval service, who 
 discovered the strait that bears his name, and 
 that divides the continent of Asia from America, 
 in the year 1741. "When Behring discovered 
 America," says a recent American traveller, " he 
 sailed a short distance along its coast, and then 
 steered for Kamtschatka. The commander was 
 confined to his cabin by illness, and the crew 
 suffered severely from scurvy. ' At one period,' 
 says Steller, the historian of the voyage, 'only 
 ten persons were capable of duty, and they were 
 too weak to furl the sails, so that the ship was 
 left to the elements. Not only the sick died, but 
 those who pretended to be healthy fainted and 
 fell down dead when relieved from their posts. 
 In this condition the navigators were drifted upon 
 
 * Robertson, ubi supra. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 219 
 
 a rocky island, where their ship went to pieces, 
 but not until all had landed. Many of the crew 
 died soon after going on shore ; but the transfer 
 from the ship appeared to diminish the ravages 
 of the scurvy. Captain Behring died on the 
 eighth of December, and was buried in the trench 
 where he lay. The island where he perished 
 bears his name, but his grave is unmarked. An 
 iron monument to his memory was recently 
 erected at Petropaulovsk."* 
 
 And yet the perilous navigation of this Strait 
 of Behring, which was fraught with so much 
 hardship, suffering, and death to its first dis- 
 coverers — although all the while in ships of war, 
 and possessed of all the appliances of modern 
 navigation, including plenty of provisions — is 
 regarded by the able editors and reviewers who 
 sit and write their imaginary histories in their 
 warm parlours in London, as plain and simple a 
 process as the crossing of the British Channel ; 
 insomuch that even the rude, poverty-stricken 
 
 * Overland through Asia : Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and 
 Tartar Life. By Thomas W. Knox. London, 1871., page 65. 
 
220 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 savEtges of Kamtscliatka are supposed to be quite 
 able to cross the strait between Asia and America 
 in their skin coracles, and as easily as a water- 
 man of our time can pass from Dover to Calais. 
 Nay, so plain and simple does the passage seem to 
 these authorities, that myriads of Tartars, flying 
 after tlieir defeat from the ruthless conqueror 
 Zenghis Khan, are supposed to have been able 
 to find their way across it, after a long previous 
 journey of four or five thousand miles on land, 
 and without compass, without chart, and without 
 provisions of any kind — and yet this is the 
 general creed on the subject ! Surely credulity 
 can no farther go I 
 
 At its narrowest point, in latitude 66° N., 
 Behring's Strait is only about forty-seven miles 
 wide ; but as the aborigines of that part of the 
 Asiatic continent (who must originally have 
 readied their actual settlements overland from 
 Siberia, and who belong to a tribe called Tchuk- 
 tchis) are in the lowest state of social debase- 
 ment, we cannot surely give them the credit 
 of at once transforming themselves into able 
 
THE POLYXESLIN NATION. 221 
 
 mariners, and crossing the strait, for no object 
 whatever, to America. They could never have 
 known of the existence of that continent till its 
 discovery by Captain Behring ; and it is altogether 
 out of the question to suppose that they could 
 have gone in search of it. For my own part — 
 from what I know of sea life — I cannot believe 
 that Behrino-'s Strait was ever crossed bv mortal 
 man till after its discovery by Captain Behring. 
 
 But the grand event to which, it seems, we are 
 to look for the peopling of America in past ages 
 is the defeat of a large host of his enemies by 
 the great Tartar conqueror, Zenghis Khan, some- 
 where in Central Asia, and the flight of the van- 
 quished in one vast body to some place of safety 
 and of settlement from the ruthless conqueror. 
 For it is alleged that the vanquished myriads on 
 that occasion crossed over the intervening tract 
 of country to the north-eastern extremity of 
 Asia, and from thence across Behring's Strait to 
 America. 
 
 Zenghis Khan was born in the year 1160, and 
 died in 1227. Now, supposing for the moment 
 
222 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 that the supposition of that vast emigration of 
 thousands and tens of thousands of his vanquished 
 enemies from Central Asia to America is well 
 founded, it must have occurred in the first place 
 at least two hundred and fifty years before America 
 was discovered ; that great achievement of Colum- 
 bus having taken place in the year 1492, in the 
 case of St. Domingo, and in 1498, in that of the 
 mainland of America. 
 
 Again, supposing that the alleged emigration 
 to America did take place, it must have been 
 either from Bochara, one of Zenghis Khan's 
 centres of movement, or from Pekin in China; 
 for the great Tartar conqueror had great battles 
 at both places. In tlie one case, the distance to be 
 travelled over would have exceeded four thousand 
 miles, and in the other it would have exceeded two. 
 Besides, how were provisions to be found for tlie 
 mighty host in the frightful Siberian deserts of 
 which Eobertson speaks in a passage already 
 quoted? Finally, where were they to find ship- 
 ping to carry them across to America when they 
 had actually readied tlie farthest east in Asia ? In 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 223 
 
 •one word, of all the schemes for the discovery 
 and settlement of America that have been sug- 
 gested at various times, and by different persons, 
 there is none so pre-eminently absurd as the one 
 that refers the peopling of America to the 
 emigration of a host of the vanquished foes of 
 the great Tartar, Zenghis Khan. I maintain 
 therefore, without the slightest fear of contradic- 
 tion, that there uever has been, either on a large 
 or on a small scale, any emigration from north-^ 
 eastern Asia to America. 
 
224 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 There is no Valid Objection against the 
 Theory of this Work from the Phe- 
 nomena OF Language in America. 
 
 It is a frequently expressed and seemingly reason- 
 able idea that the aborigines of America must 
 have been derived from various independent 
 sources, and that those of the northern continent 
 especially could not have had the same origin 
 with those of the southern. The phenomena of 
 lano'uaofe in America have often been trium- 
 phantly appealed to in support of this conclu- 
 sion ; for the languages of the two American 
 continents are remarkably different from each 
 other in their general aspect and character, and 
 that of Mexico in particular from tliat of Peru. 
 Without entering for the present into the 
 (juestion as to whether the languages of North 
 America could ever have originated in the same 
 common source with those of the southern con- 
 tinent, I would simply ask, How the multifarious 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 225 
 
 lano'iiao'es of the other three o-rand divisions of 
 the habitable world were originated ? Surely 
 there are as great differences in the languages 
 of Europe, Asia, and Africa respectively as 
 there are in those of North and South America : 
 and yet we have no hesitation in aduiitting 
 that the multitude of tongues that are spoken 
 in the three continents of the old world either 
 originated with those eight persons who sur- 
 vived the deluo'e, or are traceable directlv to 
 that source. The question, therefore, resolves 
 itself into a sort of rule-of-three question after 
 all. For if the eight persons who survived the 
 deluge originated all the languages that ai'e 
 spoken in all the three continents of the old 
 world, how many might not other eight persons, 
 supposing there were no more, who landed at 
 Copiapo, in Soutli America, in the infancy of 
 our race, have originated, in much about the same 
 period, in the new world ? In short, if there are 
 difficulties in the one case, there are difficulties 
 equally great in the other : and I am not called 
 on to show how the multitude of languages came 
 
226 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 to be developed from one common source in either 
 case. The fact is obvious that it was so, but how 
 it came to be so we cannot tell. 
 
 I cannot, therefore, admit for the reasons given 
 at length in the previous chapters of this work, 
 that the Indo-Americans have been derived from 
 a variety of sources. On the contrary, I liold 
 with those great men, Humboldt, Blumenbach, 
 Kobertson, the historian, Von Martins, of Bavaria, 
 and Dr. Morton, of Philadelphia, that the Indo- 
 Americans are all one people, of one origin, and 
 derived from one common stock. And I hold 
 also that in that one stock all the languages of 
 both continents of America, how diverse soever 
 from each other, originated. 
 
 After these preliminary observations, I now 
 proceed to show that there is nothing in the 
 phenomena of language in America to militate 
 against the theory I have submitted in this work 
 to all who feel interested in the subject, viz., 
 that the Indo-Americans are of Polynesian origin, 
 and that the forefatliers of their nation consisted 
 of a mere handful of South Sea Islanders, who. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 227 
 
 with their descendants in successive generations, 
 had been driven by violent westerly gales from 
 their native island in the Indian Archipelago, 
 across the vast Pacific Ocean, first to Easter 
 Island, near the American land, and from thence 
 to some where near Copiapo in South America. 
 
 Taking it for granted then, for the moment, 
 that this was the point of disembarkation for 
 the forefathers of the Indo-American nation from 
 their long voyages, or rather series of voyages, 
 across the Pacific Ocean, it stands to reason that 
 their descendants, in migrating to the northwards, 
 as they certainly would along the slope of the 
 Cordilleras, would leave behind them evidences 
 of their language, as well as of their manners and 
 customs, and especially of their architecture, in 
 the regions through which they passed succes- 
 sively. Humboldt raises this probability to a 
 certainty in the passage quoted above, in which 
 he tells us that the only places in America in 
 which the aborigines were gathered into large 
 communities at the era of the Spanish con- 
 quest, were the western slope of the Cordilleras 
 
228 0KIC4IN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 and the coast towards Asia ; this remarkable 
 testimony being confirmed by the fact which 
 I have already mentioned, that along the royal 
 highway of fifteen hundred miles which the 
 Incas of Peru had formed between the royal 
 cities of Cazco and Quito, they had erected 
 store houses for provisions at every ten or 
 twelve miles, which they designated by tlie 
 Polynesian name for such buildings Taboo, or 
 (Tambo, as the Spaniards pronounced the word) 
 meaning that these buildings were consecrated 
 for a particular purpose by the sanctions of 
 
 religion. 
 
 On one of my voyages to England, I happened 
 to meet in London with a highly intelligent 
 gentleman who had just then returned from 
 British Guiana and the Demerara River, where 
 he had been residing for a series of years. Desir- 
 ous as I was at the time of ascertaining how far 
 north the influence of tlie Polynesian character of 
 the South American dialects might be felt, T 
 requested the gentleman I allude to to give me a 
 few specimens of words of the language of the 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 229 
 
 Indo-Americans in the interior of that colonv, as 
 also a few names of places and objects on the 
 I)emerara Eiver. The following, therefore, is a 
 specimen of the language of the Warows, an Indo- 
 American tribe of British Gruiana, which I am 
 confident the intelligent reader will admit bears 
 a striking resemblance to the language of Poly- 
 nesia. Like that language, the language of the 
 Indians of Guiana is essentially vocalic ; that is, 
 it abounds in vowel sounds, while every word ter- 
 minates with a vowel. The same guttural aspira- 
 rations, indicating the suppression of consonantal 
 sounds, appear to prevail, as in the dialect of 
 Tahiti ; the same nasal sound occurs as in that of 
 New Zealand ; and in the formation of compound 
 words, or the embodying of complex ideas, the 
 same mental process that characterises the lan- 
 guages of the Indian Archipelago and of China 
 is strikingly exhibited. In short, a scholar, whose 
 eye and ear had been accustomed to trace the 
 affinities or to detect the radical dissimilarity of 
 different languages, would at once unhesitatingly 
 assert that the following words of the dialect of 
 
230 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 the Warows of British Gruiana were just so many 
 
 words of the Polynesian tongue : — 
 
 Head Maquah. 
 
 Eyes Maamu, 
 
 Mouth Maroho. 
 
 Hair Maaheo. 
 
 Ears Mahohoko. 
 
 Arms Mahaara. 
 
 Skin Mahoro.* 
 
 * I apprehend the commencing syllable in all these words is 
 merely a prefix. The same prefix occurs in the composition of 
 many New Zealand words of exactly similar external appear- 
 ance ; as, for instance, 
 
 Mahana Day- 
 
 Marama The Moon. 
 
 Maripi A sword. 
 
 Madino Smooth. 
 
 Maha Much. 
 
 Matapo Blind. 
 
 Blood Hotuh. 
 
 Water Ho. 
 
 Earth Hotah. 
 
 I apprehend the first syllable in the New Zealand words, 
 Hotuh and Hotah, is the Polynesian article e, which in the 
 New Zealand dialect is generally aspirated. Hotuh resembles 
 the Tahitian word to-to, also signifying blood ; and hotah is 
 probably the remains of the Malayan word tanah, signifying 
 land or country, with the Polynesian aspirated article. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 231 
 
 Sun Yah.f 
 
 Moon Waanehah. 
 
 Stars Keorah. 
 
 Thunder Nahaa. 
 
 Eaiu Naahaa. 
 
 Paddle Haahah. 
 
 Tobacco Aoha. 
 
 Examples of compound words. 
 
 Grandmother Naatu, 
 
 Grandchild Naatuseuga. 
 
 Hands Yenarry. 
 
 Hand-appendages, (fingers) Y^enarry eteedeh. 
 
 Arrow' Semaara. 
 
 Arrow-discharger (bow) Semaara haaba. 
 
 Arrow discharger-cord ) 
 
 ,, ^ . , / Semaara haaba teemy. 
 
 (bow-string) ) •' 
 
 The following Indian names on the Demerara 
 River very evidently also exhibit a Polynesian 
 aspect : viz. Arigaraboe, loerawea, Hiagua, Haboe, 
 Boera-boera-wa, Wara-warau, Maraka, Mamua, 
 Moenetari, Mari-mari, Winipio, Mamikoeroa, 
 Toematamatia, Motoka, Akyma, Kaiwalia, Kama- 
 kaiaha, Dalawila. 
 
 + The Polynesian word for the sun is ra or la ; and it is quite 
 accordant with the genius of that language for the semivowel 
 ta be completely liquided, as in the Indo-American word ]iah. 
 
232 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 The Indian names of several of the creeks c<r 
 tributary streams that empty themselves into the 
 Demerara River commence with the svUable vja. 
 as Waridu, Waratiii, Walaba. Wai or Vai is th<" 
 Polynesian word for ivater. 
 
 Akuri, Marudi, Himara, Koekeruni, Tibikuri, 
 are Indian words descriptive of objects of natm'al 
 history in British Gruiana. They exhibit the same 
 Polj'nesian character and aspect. 
 
 Bauia, KokareUi, Kabakali, Kanuniibali, Kara- 
 hm"i, Kutabali, Diikali, Piikalibali, Gomaro, Hia- 
 bali, Hakia, Itikiburabali, Kiirara, Kurakurara, 
 Mora, Simarupa, Siwaro, Tiiraneara, Tataba, Wa~ 
 mara, Wadaduri, Yerura, Yurabali, are the Indian 
 names of various species of forest-trees in Britisii 
 Gruiana, with which I have also been favoured 
 through the kindness of the friend already 
 alluded to. 
 
 Many of the names of places in the equatorial 
 regions of America are decidedly Polynesian in 
 their sound and appearance. Of this description 
 are such words as Peru, Quito (Kito), Gruatimala 
 (Katimala), Arica, Loa,Titicaca, Panama, Huayna, 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 233 
 
 Chili, Caicara, Atahualpa, Tiabuanacu, Arequipa 
 (Arekipa), Guaroliiri (Karobiri), Huanuco, Lima, 
 Tarapaca, Griianaxato (Kanabatoj, Guanabaiii 
 (Kanabaui), tbe island lirst discovered by Colum- 
 bus, Cuba, Huarina, Grua,canabari (Kakauabari), 
 Auacoana, Hatuey (^a Haitian Cbief j, probably Ka 
 Tooi. 
 
 One of tbe two numerals tbat Baron Humboldt 
 gives in a list of words of tbe Cbayma and Tama- 
 nack languages of Central America is oroi or 
 orua, two. In all probability it is merely tbe 
 Polynesian dua or rua with tbe Tab itian prefix or 
 article. 
 
 Tlie Mexican reverential affix, tzin or azin, 
 Avbicb was always added to tbe names of princes, 
 is in all likelibood tbe Eukbeng or Indo-Chinese 
 affix, asyang, signifying lord, if not the Chinese 
 word tsiii. In the list of Mexican kings who 
 reigned previous to the era of the Spanish con- 
 quest, we find the names of Nopal-tzin, Ho-tzin, 
 Quina-tzin (Kina-tzin), Cacama-tzin, Cuicuitzca- 
 tzin, Coanaco-tzin, Montezuma-tziu, Gruatimo-tzin 
 ( Ka-Tima-tzin ). Several of these proper names 
 
234 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 have a remarkable resbmblance to modern Poly- 
 nesian names ; the last, especially — the name of 
 the unfortunate prince whom the Spaniards ex- 
 tended over a fire of coals to compel him to inform 
 them where he had hidden his treasures — is, when 
 stripped of its Spanish doublet and its reverential 
 affix, a pure New Zealand name. 
 
 British Gruiana is in latitude 6^ 58' N., but 
 there is another Indo-American language, called 
 the Cora, which is spoken at the isthmus of Darien, 
 in latitude 9*^ N., and which exhibits a still more 
 striking resemblance to the Polynesian dialects, 
 although I have unfortunately mislaid the speci- 
 mens of it which I had copied out some years since* 
 It is quite evident, therefore, that the vocalic 
 character of the Polynesian languages has influ- 
 enced and left its mark upon the Indo-American 
 languages as far north as the ninth degree of 
 north latitude. 
 
 The languages of South America have undoubt- 
 edly a much closer resemblance to the Polynesian 
 dialects than those of the northern continent. It 
 was evidently, however, by a race that spoke a 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 235 
 
 language bearing a much closer resemblance to the 
 Polynesian tongue than the present language of 
 Mexico, that the largest and the most ancient of 
 the pyramids of that country was erected — at least 
 if we may judge from its decidedly Polynesian 
 name, Teotihuacan, which is evidently a word of 
 a very different family from such modern Mexican 
 words as Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, and 
 Mictlancihuatl, the goddess of hell. The Aztecks, 
 or modern Mexicans, who had overrun the Mexican 
 territory from the northward, and whose tenth 
 king was the reigning monarch at the era of the 
 Spanish invasion, ascribed the erection of the 
 pyramid to the Toltecks, a tribe of kindred origin 
 and language, who had also overrun Mexico five 
 hundred years previous to the era of the Azteck 
 conquest ; but they did so simply because their 
 chronology, which, like that of many other con- 
 quering tribes, overlooked the records and tradi- 
 tions of the vanquished people, did not extend any 
 higher than the era of the emigration and con- 
 quests of the northern tribes. But the probability 
 is that the pyramid of Teotihuacan was erected 
 
236 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 long before the Toltecks had emerged from the 
 forests of the north, and that that warlike 
 but less polished race retained the ancient Poly- 
 nesian name of the stupendous edifice, while 
 they worshipped their own national divinities, 
 within its sacred precincts, under their own north- 
 ern appellations. In short, the Mexican language, 
 in all probability, received its birth in the forests 
 of the northern continent, to which numerous 
 tribes had doubtless emigrated from the south- 
 ward many ages before the Azteck conquest of 
 Mexico or the reflux of the northern tribes on the 
 countries to the southward. 
 
 Humboldt seems to have been of a somewhat 
 similar opinion himself, when he writes as follows 
 in regard to the multiplicity of languages that 
 were spoken in the northern continent :— 
 
 "The number of languages which distinguish 
 the different native tribes appears still more con- 
 siderable in the Xew Continent than in Africa, 
 where, according to the late researches of Messrs. 
 Seetzen aud Vater, there are above one hundred 
 and forty. In this respect tlie whole of America 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 237 
 
 resembles Caucasus, Italy before the conquest of 
 the Eomans, Asia Minor when that country con- 
 tained on a small extent of territory the Cilicians 
 of Semitic race, the Phrygians of ThraciptU origin, 
 the Lydians, and the Celts. The configuration of 
 the soil, the strength of vegetation, the apprehen- 
 sions of the mountaineers under the tropics of 
 exposing themselves to the burning heat of the 
 plains, are obstacles to communication, and contri- 
 bute to the amazing variety of American dialects. 
 This variety, it is observed, is more restrained in 
 the savannahs and forests of the north, which are 
 easily traversed by the hunter, on the banks of 
 great rivers, along the coast of the ocean, and in 
 every country where the Incas had established 
 their theocracy by the force of arms."* 
 
 Humboldt's assertion, however, that "the civili- 
 zation of Mexico emanated from a country situated 
 towards the north," is doubtless, in accordance with 
 his preconceived opinion that America was origi- 
 nally peopled from the continent of Asia, across 
 Behring's Straits ; but, as that opinion is at least 
 * Humboldt's Researches, vol. i., p. 17. 
 
238 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 extremely problematical, the assertion is altogether 
 gratuitous. It is much more probable that Mexico 
 itself was the centre, or starting-point, of the more 
 recent American civilization ; from whence, in suc- 
 cessive ages, the stream continued to flow both 
 no.'thward and southward, although a portion of 
 that stream may in still later ages have returned 
 again in the shape of a comparatively civilized and 
 conquering tribe upon the Mexican territory. 
 When Humboldt asserts, however, that " the prob- 
 lem of the first population of America is no more 
 the province of history, than the question on the 
 origin of plants and animals, and on the distribu- 
 tion of organic germs, are that of natural science," 
 he merely cuts the knot which he is unable to untie. 
 ^' It has hitherto been impossible," adds the accom- 
 plished traveller, " to ascertain the period when 
 the communication between the inhabitants of the 
 two worlds took place." I have attempted how- 
 ever to ascertain that period — with what success 
 the reader will determine. " How rash," con- 
 tinues the Baron, " would be the attempt to point 
 out the group of nations of the Old Continent, 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 239 
 
 with which the Toltecks, the Aztecks, the Muyscas, 
 and the Peruvians present the nearest analogies ; 
 since these analogies are apparent in the tradi- 
 tions, the monuments, and customs, which, per- 
 haps, preceded the present division of Asiatics 
 into Chinese, Moguls, Hindoos, and Tungooses."* 
 
 I have nevertheless made this attempt, and have 
 shown that, independently of those more remote 
 analogies to which the learned traveller alludes, 
 there are other and far closer analogies subsisting 
 between the Indo-Americans and the race that in- 
 habits the South Sea Islands, and demonstrating 
 that America was originally peopled across the 
 broadest part of the vast Pacific Ocean by indivi- 
 duals of that ancient Asiatic and primitive race. 
 Whether the attempt may have been characterised 
 by rashness, or attended with success, it is for 
 others to decide. 
 
 In a passage quoted above, Humboldt admits 
 
 that the Aztecks, who liad held the empire of 
 
 Mexico for five hundred years previous to the 
 
 Spanish conquest, referred the construction of the 
 
 * Humboldt's Eesearches, vol. i., p. 25. 
 
240 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 pyramids of that country to the Toltecks, anotlier 
 Indo-Araerican nation, who had previously held the 
 country for other five liundred years merely as 
 representing the highest antiquity they could 
 conceive of. But there is reason to believe that 
 both the pyramids of Peru — Teotihuacan on 
 Lake Titicaca — and those of Mexico, described 
 by the learned Baron, had been in ruins for at 
 least a thousand years before either Aztecks or 
 Toltecks were heard of in America. The earliest 
 emioTation of the Indo-American race, from 
 their first settlement in South America, was 
 necessarily, as I have shown above, along the 
 western slopes of the Andes ; and tlie p3n'amidal 
 and colossal buildings, both of Mexico and Peru, 
 are undoubtedly referable only to the men 
 of that original emigration. I am happy to be 
 confirmed in this opinion, as well as in the 
 strictures I have just taken the liberty to pass 
 on certain assertions of Humboldt, by tlie observa- 
 tions of a recent and accomplished traveller in 
 Peru. The gentleman I refer to is E. G. Squier, 
 Esq., M.A., Fellow of tlie Society of Antiqua- 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 241 
 
 ries of London, whose paper, which is contained 
 in the " American Naturalist," vol. iv. 1870, 
 as also in "The Academy" of June 1st, 1871, is 
 entitled The Primcevcd Momtments of Peru com- 
 pared luith those in other parts of the luorld. 
 
 Having quoted so largely from Humboldt's 
 description of the pyramids of Mexico, I would 
 limit my quotations from Mr. Squier to his 
 observations on another form of Peruvian anti- 
 quities, viz., the Chulpas or burying places and 
 mummy pits of that country. 
 
 The monuments Mr. Squier describes form a 
 somewhat conspicuous part in Peruvian land- 
 scapes, since their height varies from one to forty 
 feet above the ground ; but the various travellers 
 who have visited Peru since Pizarro's days did not 
 care to enquire into the motives of their construc- 
 tion. This Mr. Squier has done, and, by compar- 
 ing their style and character with those of the 
 stone structures in the Old World, he has disco- 
 vered that they belong to the early monumental 
 period of American history, and that they are the 
 exact counterparts of the so-called cromlechs. 
 
242 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 dolmens, " Tini," or Druidical circles of West 
 Europe and Central Asia. 
 
 The simplest and most numerous of these monu- 
 ments are, of course, the chidpas, in which the 
 Andean tribes of yore buried their dead. There 
 are, according to Mr. Squiers siatement, several 
 sorts of chulpas. 
 
 1. The first kind consists of flat unhewn stones, 
 projecting from one to two feet above the ground, 
 so as to form a circle about thi'ee feet in diameter. 
 The inner space sometimes remains uncovered, and 
 sometimes is roofed by a few flat slabs laid across 
 the upright ones. 
 
 2. The stones rise from four to six feet above 
 the ground ; the diameter of the circle varies 
 from six to sixteen feet. The upper stories, instead 
 of lying flat across the upright ones, overlap each 
 other inwardly, thus describing a kind of primi- 
 tive vault. The entrance is provided for by omit- 
 ting one of the upright stones. 
 
 3. Around the burial chamber a tower is built, 
 varying in height from ten to thirty feet. The 
 tower walls are often narrower at their base than 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 243 
 
 at their summit. The exterior stones are usually 
 broken to conform to the outer curve of the 
 tower, and the whole is more or less cemented 
 together with a very tenacious clay. 
 
 4. The towers, raised or square, are built of 
 square blocks of limestone, and stand on a plat- 
 form regularly shaped ; the inner parts, vaulted 
 after the manner described in No. 2, have each 
 four niches, placed at right angles to each other. 
 The sides of the chiUpas, whether round or square, 
 are perfectly vertical, and have a projecting cor- 
 nice near the summit. In the square ones the 
 top is flat, and in the round ones there is a sort of 
 rude cupola. 
 
 5. The towers are built of great blocks of tra- 
 chyte, and other hard stones, accurately fitted 
 together. A few are formed of rough stones, 
 plastered and stuccoed, and painted all over, 
 with inner chambers also painted and stuccoed. 
 Some have double vaults in them, one above the 
 other ; the single vaulted ones have a double row 
 of mitres in a single chamber. 
 
 Mr. Squier inclines to the opinion that these 
 
244 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 various forms of the chulpa point to different 
 eras. ..." The chulpa probably marks the 
 graves of distinguished individuals upon which 
 contemporaneous skill and effort were expended." 
 . . " I am convinced, speaking for the 
 present only of sepulchral monuments, that their 
 development in Peru may be traced from their 
 first and modest form up to that which prevailed 
 at the time of the Conquest, and that it preserved, 
 throughout, the same essential features." 
 
 Side by side with the chulpas, we find remains 
 of religious monuments which have also escaped 
 the notice of travellers : the iniihuatayias, or 
 sun-circles, stretch in many places their long 
 lines, defined by rude upright stones, and sur- 
 rounding one or more larger upright stones, placed 
 sometimes in the centre of the circle, but oftener 
 at one third of the diameter of the circle, apart, 
 and on a line at right angles to another line 
 through the centre of the gateway or entrance on 
 the east. I have seen such a circle myself in the 
 Orkney Islands, in Scotland. They are there 
 called Druidical circles. From this, and the 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 245 
 
 examination of the Pitcaras, or Pre-Incassic 
 strongholds, Mr. Squier feels justified in infer- 
 ring that "there exists in Peru and Bolivia, 
 high up among the snowy Andes, the oldest 
 forms of sepulchral monuments known to man- 
 kind, exact counterparts, in character, of those 
 of the old world, pervaded by a common design, 
 and illustrating similar conceptions. All of 
 these are the work of the same peoples found 
 in occupation of the country at the time of the 
 Conquest, whose later monuments are mainly, if 
 not wholly, the developed forms of those raised 
 by their ancestors ; they seem to have been the 
 spontaneous productions of the primitive man in 
 all parts of the world, and they are not, neces- 
 sarily, nor even probably, derivative. 
 
 The conclusion to which Mr. Squier was thus 
 led from his personal examination of the sepulchral 
 monuments and mummy pits of Peru was, that 
 the erection of these structures was referable only 
 to the highest antiquity, and that the people who 
 erected them derived their knowledge and skill 
 from the same common source as the other most 
 ancient nations on the face of the earth. 
 
246 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 In regard to the period at which the continent 
 of America was originally discovered by some 
 heaven-directed wanderers of the Polynesian 
 nation, it is evident that a long series of ages 
 must have rolled over the heads of its aboriginal 
 nations ere such a state of things as America 
 exhibited at the era of the Spanish conquest, in 
 regard to the wide dispersion of its Indian popu- 
 lation, could possibly have been arrived at. It 
 follows, therefore, that even on this ground alone, 
 independently of every other consideration, we 
 must utterly reject the crude and irrational 
 hypotheses of those fanciful philosophers who 
 derive the Indo-American race either from a 
 colony of shipwrecked Britons of the tenth or 
 eleventh century, or from a tribe of Tartars 
 driven eastward across Behring's Straits by the 
 Aleoutski Islands, during the tyranny of Zengis 
 Khan ; the state of things exhibited by the 
 Indian nations and the Indian lano^uao^es of 
 America, on the discovery of that continent by 
 Europeans, being altogether irreconcileable with 
 the supposition of so recent an origin. America 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 247 
 
 was undoubtedly peopled many ages before Julius 
 Caesar landed in Britain ; and the colossal struc- 
 tures of bis forefathers, that still excite the 
 wonder of the wandering Indian of Peru, were in 
 all likelihood in ruins long before the great 
 grandfather of the Tartar conqueror was born. 
 
 I have shown above that the original dis- 
 coverers of America must have landed on the 
 west coast of that continent, somewhere near 
 Copiapo, in the State of Chili, in the very earliest 
 period of the history of mankind. Their imme- 
 diate descendants travelling northward and south- 
 ward, along the western slope of the Cordilleras, 
 formed powerful and flourishing empires in both 
 continents, far surpassing in point of civilization 
 the more recent empires of Montezuma and the 
 Incas of Peru. In these empires, all the know- 
 ledge and civilization that had survived the 
 immense voyage across the Pacific Ocean were 
 preserved and turned to account; but it seems 
 doubtful whether the scion from the tree of 
 knowledge which had thus been transplanted 
 from Eastern Asia, and which evidently main- 
 
248 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 tained its Asiatic life for many centuries, ever 
 shot forth any additional branches in the Ameri- 
 can soil, with the exception perhaps of the 
 astronomical attainments and picture writings of 
 the ancient Mexicans. The Mississippi — the 
 gathering of the luaters, as the word is said to 
 signify in the Indian language — would serve as 
 the grand conductor of civilization to the tribes 
 that in successive ages advanced to the north- 
 ward ; and hence we find the remains of Indian 
 tumuli and of Indian forts along the banks of 
 the Ohio, and in the immediate vicinity of the 
 lakes of Canada. But the dense forests of the 
 Brazils, the pampas of La Plata, and the wilds 
 of Patagonia were evidently less favourable for 
 the preservation of the habitudes of Indian 
 civilization ; and hence we observe a gradual 
 deterioration of the Indian race among the 
 tribes that diverged into these regions from the 
 parent settlements of the southern continent, till 
 at length the wretched Brazilian cannibal, or 
 the miserable inhabitant of Tierra del Fuego — 
 paddling in his rude canoe in search of whale- 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 249 
 
 blubber along the stormy headlands of his iuhos- 
 pitable isle — scarcely exhibits any evidence of 
 his ancient descent from the bold adventurous 
 Malay, who had steered his beautifally carved 
 galley from island to island across the vast 
 Pacific, carrying along with him the knowledge 
 and the primitive civilization of the East. 
 
 The aborigines of America were found, at the 
 era of its discovery by the Spaniards, scattered 
 over the length and breadth of a vast conti- 
 nent, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
 from Hudson's Bay to the Straits of Le Maire ; 
 and they were broken up, moreover, into an 
 infinity of tribes speaking an infinity of tongues. 
 To effect this wide dispersion, and to give rise to 
 this wonderful diversity of languages, America, 
 as I have just observed, must have been dis- 
 covered and settled by its aboriginal inhabitants 
 at the very earliest period in the history of the 
 world. That a period, however, of from three to 
 four thousand years is quite sufficient to explain 
 .the phenomena to which I have just alluded, I 
 have no doubt whatever. I have already observed 
 
250 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 that that eminent American statesman and phi- 
 lologist, the Hon. Albert Grallatin, a native of 
 Greneva, but a naturalized subject of the American 
 Union from the days of Washington, is entirely 
 of the same opinion. 
 
 Before proceeding with the discussion of the 
 question as to whether there is anything in the 
 phenomena of language in North America to 
 form an insuperable objection to the theory of this 
 work, viz., that the Indo- Americans are all origin- 
 ally of one race, and that they all came from 
 Polynesia, I would observe that the great Poly- 
 nesian language exhibits the strongest relations, 
 not only with the Malayan language of the 
 Indian Archipelago, as we have seen above, but 
 with the Chinese and Indo-Chinese languages of 
 Eastern Asia. 
 
 The Chinese and Polynesian languages there- 
 fore are in great measure monosyllabic, i.e., a 
 great proportion of the primitive words or units 
 of thought in both languages are monosyllables. 
 In the Polynesian dialects every word ends in a 
 vowel : this, it is true, is not the case in the 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 251 
 
 Chinese ; but it would seem that in the latter, 
 which is the language of the more civilized people, 
 the final vowel has, in many cases, been dropped, 
 just as the final e of the Saxon or Teutonic 
 language has become mute in modern English. 
 Thus the word tong^ which in Chinese signifies 
 east^ is in the language of New Zealand tonga^ 
 which, I apprehend, is its more ancient form. 
 
 Mr. Marsden uniformly represents the Poly- 
 nesian dialects as being radically polysyllabic. 
 A slight inspection of any of their vocabularies 
 will be sufficient to convince the intelligent 
 reader, that a large proportion of the words of 
 these dialects consists either of monosyllables, or 
 of polysyllables, each of the component parts of 
 which forms a distinct word. The Chinese lan- 
 guage itself by no means abhors such compounds. 
 
 In both languages words are susceptible of no 
 change whatever to denote diversity of gender, 
 number, case, or what is understood in European 
 languages by declension and conjugation. Every 
 possible increment of thought must be expressed 
 by a separate word — in no instance by a mere 
 
252 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 change of termination. Thus nyan, a man 
 (Chinese, Canton dialect) ; nu nyan, a woman ; 
 to JiUiiga, a priest (Xew Zealand;) e tane to 
 hicnga, a male priest; e ivaMne to hunga, a female 
 priest or priestess. The plural in the New Zea- 
 land dialect is formed by prefixing nga ; as ika, 
 a fish ; nga ika, fishes ; in Chinese it is formed 
 by adding men (probably meiia originally) as ta, 
 he ; ta '/nen, they. Nay, in both languages the 
 same word is either a noun or a verb, according 
 to the particles it has conjoined with it ; as ngo 
 slang, I think (Chinese) ; ngo ti slang, my 
 thought. 
 
 Eelationship is expressed, and compound words 
 or ideas are formed, in both languages, by the 
 mere juxta-position of primitive words. Thus : — 
 
 Chinese. 
 
 Malay 
 
 AXD Polynesian. 
 
 
 
 i Ka-too ] 
 
 
 Tao 
 
 Head 
 
 (Island > 
 ( of Savu) ) 
 
 Head. 
 
 Tao-faa 
 
 Hair of the head. 
 
 Eu-katoo 
 
 Hair of the head. 
 
 Sao 
 
 Hand. 
 
 Mata 
 
 Eye. 
 
 Sao-tchee 
 
 Finger. 
 
 Mata orang 
 
 Man's eye. 
 
 Sao-tchee- 
 
 ong Thumb. 
 
 Orang timor 
 
 Men of the east. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 253 
 
 Particles are used in both languages in a 
 similar way ; and these particles are in many 
 instances not merely similar, but absolutely iden- 
 tical. The particle e or y (which in Chinese 
 signifies one) is prefixed to nouns both in the 
 Chinese and Polynesian languages ; so also is the 
 particle ko or ha ; thus : — 
 
 Chinese. 
 
 
 Polynesian. 
 
 
 Y ko nyan 
 
 A man. 
 
 E manu 
 
 A bird. 
 
 Y ko nu-nyan 
 
 A woman. 
 
 E dima 
 
 Five. 
 
 Y ko chu 
 
 A tree. 
 
 E ko nai 
 
 The chin. 
 
 Y ko mi 
 
 A grain of rice. 
 
 E kohu 
 
 A fog. 
 
 Ko tyan 
 
 The heel. 
 
 Ko tiro 
 
 A girl. 
 
 Ko tyee 
 
 The toes. 
 
 Ko ta 
 
 A shell. 
 
 Ko tsau 
 
 The blood. 
 
 Ko taha 
 
 A war instrument. 
 
 It is not allowable, however, either in the lan- 
 guage of China or in that of the South Sea 
 Islands, to use the same particle in conjunction 
 with any noun. On the contrary, the particle is 
 varied according to the signification of the noun 
 with which it is conjoined. Thus it would be 
 improper to say, although in apparent accordance 
 with the examples already given, y ko tao, a 
 sword ; y ko ma, a horse ; y ko hoa, a flower. 
 
254 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 In accordance with the recommendation of our 
 own great master of languages in a somewhat 
 similar case. " He who would speak the lan- 
 guage of the celestial empire with the requisite 
 propriety, and acquire a Chinese style classical 
 without pedantry, and copious without redund- 
 ance, must say, y pa tao ; y pi ma ; y to hoa.^^ 
 All these three particles, however, (viz., pa, pe, 
 or pi to) are used in exactly the same manner in 
 the Polynesian dialects ; as, for instance, e pa di 
 (New Zealand dialect), a precipice ; e pa keha* 
 a white man or European; e po or pe tiki, a 
 younger brother ; e pe pe, a butterfly ; e to ki, 
 an axe; e to hunga, a priest. Such coincidences 
 cannot possibly be accidental ; they are far less 
 equivocal than coincidences in the meaning of 
 particular words in the two languages. In both 
 languages, also, the same particles are used in 
 the formation of what may be termed the moods 
 
 * The New Zealanders allege that the flea, which, it seems, 
 is not an indigenous inhabitant of their island, but a sort of 
 free emigrant intruder, was introduced by the English, and 
 they consequently designate it e pa keha )iohi nol/i, the little 
 European. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 255 
 
 and tenses of the verb ; such as jpa^ pe, te. Hoei, 
 which in Chinese forms the future tense, appears 
 in the form of gooa in the dialect of the Friendly 
 Islands, of hoi in that of the Society Islands, and 
 of koa in that of New Zealand. The very aspect 
 of the Chinese and Polynesian verbs is sufficient 
 of itself to afford a presumption of affinity in 
 their languages : thus : — 
 
 CHINESE. POLYNESIAN (nEW ZEALAND). 
 
 Pa pou te ngo that I might Koa kai ke pe I might have 
 
 ngai love. oki au eaten. 
 
 Ngo pi ta I am loved by E kai ana koe Thou eastest. 
 ngai him. 
 
 It were quite impossible for us Westerns to 
 ascertain the particular increment of thought 
 these particles individually express or represent ; 
 but this is not peculiar to the case of the eastern 
 languages. It would be somewhat difficult for 
 us to ascertain what Homer meant by the Greek 
 particle pa, which lie uses so frequently when 
 we think he might have done as well without it. 
 I have heard of a learned member of one of the 
 English universities, who was ratlier puzzled with 
 
256 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 that particle, translating Homer's phrase Tpwec 
 pa, — The Trojans, God bless them ! 
 
 Similar, and these remarkably peculiar, sounds 
 abound in both languages. Consonantal sounds 
 are much less numerous in the Chinese and Poly- 
 nesian languages than in those of Europe and 
 Western Asia ; and the number of vowel sounds 
 is consequently much greater. Words which in 
 Roman characters would be represented by the 
 very same combinations of letters, are found to 
 have the most opposite significations ; the accen- 
 tuation, and the depth, strength, or weakness of 
 the intonation of the vowel sound, rendering 
 what appears to a European the same word, 
 susceptible of a variety of meanings, or, rather, 
 originating a whole series of different words. 
 This peculiarity, the reader will doubtless per- 
 ceive, is much more likely to originate endless 
 varieties of dialect than the consonantal lan- 
 guages of Europe, in which the landmarks or 
 consonants are not so easily got over or worn 
 down. Hence it has actually happened that, 
 while the written language of China is univer- 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 
 
 257 
 
 sally intelligible, not only in China Proper and in 
 the provinces of Chinese Tartary, but also in Japan 
 and in Cochin-China — every province, every city, 
 nay, almost every village of the Celestial Empire, 
 has its own peculiar dialect, which, according to the 
 Jesuits of the Propaganda mission, is often 
 scarcely intelligible beyond its own narrow limits. 
 On the other hand, while the tendency in the 
 Chinese language seems to have been to get rid 
 of final vowels, the tendency in some of the 
 Polynesian dialects has been to get rid of con- 
 sonants, and to reduce the language to a series 
 of endless combinations of vowel sounds. The 
 nasal sound, ng, is remarkably^prevalent, both in 
 the beginning and at the end of words, in the 
 
 ^XAiJUL, ^ 1_*K-Vi^ y~' >-» 
 
 
 "^ 
 
 CHINESE 
 
 • 
 
 POLYNESIAN (NEW ZEALAND). 
 
 Ngaa* 
 
 Teeth. 
 
 Nganga Skull. 
 
 Ngaan 
 
 Eyes. 
 
 Ngako Fat. 
 
 Kgo 
 
 I. 
 
 Ngutu rUtu, Tabit.) Lip. 
 
 Tcliuong 
 
 Long. 
 
 Eangi Heaven 
 
 Tung 
 
 Brass. 
 
 Tangi Cry. 
 
 * In the Tahitian dialect, in which the nasal sound becomes 
 a guttural intonation, the word for teeth is niho. I conceive it 
 is the same as the Chinese word. 
 
258 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 In the Polynesian dialects, t and h are con- 
 vertible, and so also are ^, r, and d. Ariki, a 
 conjuror, in the New Zealand dialect, becomes 
 Arii, with a guttural intonation, in the dialect 
 of Otaheite ; while Tangata, a man, becomes 
 Taata, with a similar intonation, marking the 
 place of the lost consonantal sound. This into- 
 nation is so peculiar as to impress the person 
 who hears it for the first time with the idea 
 that the vowel sound has stuck in the speaker's 
 throat. 
 
 6. Various words are of the same signification 
 in both languages. Thus : — 
 
 CHINESE. POLYNESIAN. 
 
 T'hai The sea. Tai The sea. 
 
 I'll* Fish. I'yu (Tahitian)* Fish. 
 
 Yu Rain. Ua Raiu. 
 
 Tong East. Tonga East. 
 
 Ngau Bite. Ngau Bite (gnaw). 
 
 Nga-dow Brow. Nga-du Wavejq.d.Brow of the sea. 
 
 How Mouth. Vaha (Tahitian) Mouth. 
 
 Ko tsau Blood. To To (Tahitian) Blood. 
 
 * The guttural intonation is the same in both cases. In 
 the Malayan and New Zealand dialects the consonant is pre- 
 served, and the word is pronounced ika. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 259 
 
 These coincidences occur in a comparatively 
 small number of words, from each of the two 
 languages under review. I am confident, how- 
 ever, that if the investigation were pursued, 
 hundreds of words might be found in the Chinese 
 language nearly, if not entirely, coincident in 
 signification with words of exactly similar sound 
 in one or other of the numerous dialects of the 
 Polynesian tongue. At all events, I conceive 
 there is reason to conclude, that both the nations 
 and the languages of China and Polynesia have 
 sprung from the same ancient and prolific source ; 
 and that the line of demarcation which Professor 
 Blumenbach has attempted to draw between the 
 Mongolian and the Malayan races of mankind, is 
 purely imaginary. 
 
 In a very learned, but unfortunately posthu- 
 mous work of the late Baron William Humboldt, 
 a brother of the illustrious traveller, entitled 
 " Ueber die Kawi Sprache im inseln Java," " on 
 the Kauri language in the island of Java," copies 
 of which are to be found in our Parliamentary 
 and University libraries, that eminent philologist 
 
260 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 informs us how polysyllabic are formed from 
 monosyllabic languages by the mere process of 
 aggregation — a process which can be much more 
 easily carried out in a vocalic than in a conso- 
 nantal tongue ; as seems to have been the case 
 in great measure with the Polynesian language. 
 
 It may not be out of place to remark in passing 
 that we have a large monosyllabic element in our 
 own English language, and that the process of 
 of converting that monosyllabic into a polysil- 
 labic element is effected in the very way Baron 
 William Humboldt informs us characterises the 
 process in the East, viz., by mere aggregation, 
 without any change in either of the words com- 
 bined. Thus, from the English monosyllable eye^ 
 we have the dissyllables eye-lid^ eye-lash., eye- 
 hroi'J, eye-sore, by the simple process of aggrega- 
 tion. From nose, we have nosegay ; from cheek, 
 cheekbone ; from mouth, onouthpiece ; from head, 
 head-dress and headache; from hair, Jiair-brush, 
 hair-comb, hair-oil, &c., &c., &c. In short, we 
 do a large business in English with our monosyl- 
 lables ; and we often excite the envy of our French 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 261 
 
 cousins of literary taste who have no such facili- 
 ties in that way. The Grerman language has 
 doubtless great powers in the way of combination, 
 and presents us ever and anon with as formidable 
 compounds as the sesquipedalian words of the 
 North American Indians. To instance only two 
 of these — there is religions-verhesserung, the 
 betterino- of relia'ion or reformation ; and schnei- 
 dersgesellschaft, Journeymen Tailors' Society. 
 But our English monosyllabic combinations are 
 far simpler and far more suitable. 
 
 To return to our proper subject from this 
 digression — which, however, we shall find of some 
 practical use in the sequel — the American literati 
 had concluded, I believe universally, that their 
 two continents had been originally discovered and 
 occupied, at different times and at different points, 
 by totally different people, and that there was not 
 even the shadow of a community of language be- 
 tween them. But, to use a sea phrase, they were 
 ^' taken all aback" at once when it was ascertained, 
 about forty or fifty years since, that there was actu- 
 ally an Indo-American tribe or nation inhabiting 
 
262 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 tlie mountains of Mexico — the veritable Indo- 
 American capital of North America — and speaking 
 a language unquestionably monosyllabic, and pre- 
 senting the same relations to the Chinese and Indo- 
 Chinese languages of Eastern Asia as I have shown 
 the Polynesian dialects do generally. The people I 
 allude to are the Ottomies, and their language is 
 called the Ottomie language. An account both of 
 the people and their language is contained in a 
 paper in Latin, published at Philadelphia, in the 
 Journal of the American Philosophical Society for 
 1835, of which a copy was sent me so early as the 
 year 1836, by my late friend, John Pickering, 
 Esq., of Boston, one of the most distinguished 
 philologists of North America. It is entitled, 
 De Lingua Othomitorum Dissertatio ; Auctore 
 Emmamiele Naxera, 31exicano^ Academice Litte- 
 rarioe Zacatecarum Socio — A Dissertation on the 
 Language of the Ottomies ; by Emaauel Naxera, a 
 Mexican, Fellow of the Literary Academy of 
 Zacatecas. The Ottomies are not a numerous 
 people, but they have always been in a state of 
 antagonism or hostility, both towards the native 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 263 
 
 Grovernment before the Conquest, and ever since 
 to the Spaniards, by whom they allege the}" have 
 been much persecuted. 
 
 The learned Spaniard who published this Dis- 
 sertation in Philadelphia, I may observe in pass- 
 ing, was a refugee or political exile at the time 
 from his unhappy country, to which, however, he 
 appears to have been devotedly attached. He gives 
 us first, as a specimen of the language, the Lord's 
 Prayer, as follows, in the Ottomie dialect : — 
 
 1. Ma tha he ni buy malietsi 1. Noster pater habitas ccelum 
 
 2. Da ne ansu ui buhu 2, Vocabunt sanctum tuum 
 
 nomen, 
 
 3. Da ehe ga he ni buy 3. Veniet erga nostua habitatio, 
 
 4. Da kha ni hnee 4. Facient tua voluntas 
 
 5. Ngu wa na hay 5. Et ita hie terra 
 
 6. Te ngu mahetsi 6. Sicut ccelum 
 
 7. Ma hme he ta na pa 7. Nosterpanis qufeque dies (cu- 
 
 jusque diei) 
 
 8. Ea he na ra pa ya 8. Danes unus dies nova (hodie) 
 
 9. Ha puni he 9. Et parce nos. 
 
 10. Ma dupate he 10. Nostra debita 
 
 11. Tengii di puni he 11. Sicut nos parcimus 
 
 12. U ma ndupate he 12, Nunc debitores nostri 
 
 13. Ha yo wi he he 13. Et cave ne permittere nos 
 
264 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 14. Ga he kha na tz6 cadi 14. Labemur in turpis actio 
 
 15. Ma na pehe he hin nhd 15. Sed salva nos non bonum (a 
 
 non bono) 
 
 16. Dak ha. 16, Facient (hoc est Amen.) 
 Signor Naxera next points out, from repeated 
 
 references to the Chinese grammar of the great 
 French Oriental scholar, M. Eemusat (as I have 
 done in the case of the Polynesian language gene- 
 rally) a whole series of points in which the Otto- 
 mie dialect coincides with the Chinese ; and last, 
 but not least, he shows us that, in common with 
 the Indo-Chinese nations, the Polynesian and the 
 Mexican portion of the Indo-American race, the 
 Ottomies have a language of ceremony or reve- 
 rence distinct from the language of common life. 
 For example, instead of saying in the common lan- 
 guage, as one would do to an equal, " You are 
 asleep," if addressing a superior, either in Church 
 or State, the phraseology must be — 
 
 Ezu ki i a 
 
 Altitudo venerabilis dormit 
 
 The venerable altitude (or Highness) sleeps. 
 In one word, I consider this case of the Ottomies 
 the strongest imaginable to prove the identity of 
 
^ 
 
 THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 265 
 
 the Polynesian and Indo-American nations. That 
 such a people , with such a language as that of 
 the Ottomies, could ever have come from the 
 northern portion of North America is altogether 
 inconceivable. The only way of accounting both 
 for their place and their tongue is that they had 
 passed over to America from one of the islands of 
 the Southern Pacific. It follows, therefore, that 
 instead of there being any insuperable objections to 
 my theory in the phenomena of language in North 
 America, there is the very strongest evidence in 
 its favour. 
 
266 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 The Indo-Americans are not Aborigines, in 
 
 THE sense of being A DISTINCT CREATION 
 FROM THE REST OF MANKIND, BUT ARE 
 related, IN THE WAY OF NATURAL DESCENT, 
 TO ANOTHER LARGE DIVISION OF THE FAMILY 
 OF MAN. 
 
 During the past fifty years it has been a 
 growing opinion among literary and scientific 
 men, and especially among travellers in America, 
 if at all predisposed to scepticism, that the Indo- 
 Americans are indigenous, or a separate creation, 
 altogether distinct from the rest of mankind. 
 The following are a few specimens of this cha- 
 racter ! " I am compelled," says Mr. Catlin, the 
 author of two interesting volumes of travels 
 among the Indians of North America, " I am 
 compelled to believe that the continent of 
 America, and each of the other continents, have 
 had their aboriginal stocks, peculiar in colour 
 and in character, and that each of these native 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 267 
 
 » 
 
 stocks has undergone repeated mutations by 
 erratic colonies from abroad."* " We can never 
 know the origin of the Americans," says M. 
 Morlet, a French writer ; " the theory that they 
 are aborigines is contradicted by no fact, and is 
 plausible enough."t " The supposition," says 
 another American traveller, " that the Eed Man 
 is a primitive type of a human family originally 
 planted in the Western Continent, presents the 
 most natural solution of this problem. The 
 researches of physiologists, antiquaries, philolo- 
 gists, tend this way. The hypothesis of an immi- 
 gration, when followed out, is embarrassed with 
 great difficulties, and leads to interminable and 
 unsatisfying speculations."^ " The unsuccessful 
 search after traces of an ante-Columbian inter- 
 course with the New World suffices to confirm 
 the belief that, for unnumbered centuries through- 
 out that ancient era, the western hemisphere was 
 the exclusive heritage of nations native to its 
 
 *Catlm, " North American Indians," vol. II., page 232. 
 
 t "Morlet's, Voyages," torn. 1, page 177. 
 
 I " Norman's Eambles in Yucatan," page 251. 
 
268 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 soil."* Dr. Morton concludes " that the American 
 race differs essentially from all others, not except- 
 ing the Mongolian ; nor do the feeble analogies 
 of language, and the more obvious ones in civil 
 and religious institutions, and the arts, denote 
 anything beyond casual and colonial communi- 
 cation with the Asiatic nations ; and even these 
 analogies may perhaps be accounted for, as Hum- 
 boldt has suggested, in the mere coincidence 
 arising from similar wants and impulses in nations 
 inhabiting similar latitudes."! 
 
 " Altemirano, the best Aztec scholar living, 
 claims that the proof is conclusive that the 
 Aztecs did not conie here from Asia, as has been 
 almost universally believed, but were a race 
 originated in America, and as old as the Chinese 
 themselves, and that China may even have been 
 peopled from America."^ Swan, in his work 
 entitled " The North-West Coast," believes "that 
 whatever was the origin of different tribes or 
 
 * " Wilson's Prehistoric Man," page 421. 
 
 t " Crania Americana," page 260. 
 
 I Evans, " Our Sister Republics," page 333. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 269 
 
 families, the whole race of American Indians are 
 native and indigenous to the soil.* 
 
 Mr. Bancroft, to whom I am indebted for 
 certain of these references, and who virtually 
 adopts the theory of the Americans being indi- 
 genous, observes as follows : " The preceding 
 resume shews pretty conclusively that the Ameri- 
 can people, and the American civilization, if not 
 indigenous to the New World, were introduced 
 from the Old at a period long preceding any to 
 which we are carried by the traditional or monu- 
 mental annals of either continent. We have 
 found no evidence of any populating or civil- 
 izing migration across the ocean, from east to 
 west, north or south, within historic times. 
 Nothing approaching identity has been discovered 
 between any two nations separated by the Atlantic 
 or Pacific. No positive record appears even of 
 communication between America and the Old 
 World — intentional by commercial, exploring, or 
 warlike expeditions, or by shipwreck — previous 
 to the voyages of the Northmen of the tenth 
 
 * Page 206. 
 
270 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 century ; yet that such communication did take 
 place in many instances, and at different 
 periods, is extremely prohahle.^^ Begging Mr. 
 Bancroft's pardon, I cannot think such communi- 
 cation probable at all, and no person who has 
 trav^ersed both of the largest oceans in the world — 
 the Pacific and Atlantic — very much, like myself, 
 could ever think so. When the forefathers of the 
 Indo-American race were separated from the rest 
 of mankind, they were so, for themselves and 
 their descendants, for ever ; the idea of any com- 
 munication having ever existed between them 
 and the old world, across either of these vast 
 oceans, is, in my humble opinion, utterly impro- 
 bable, and entirely unwarranted. 
 
 Such, then, are man's thoughts in regard to the 
 origin of the Indo-American nations, and their 
 dispersion over the great continent which it is 
 admitted they have inhabited for so many past 
 generations. They are indigenous, and were 
 either created, or, to use the current phraseology of 
 the new philosophy, developed from some inferior 
 specimen of the animal creation. But such are 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 271 
 
 evidently not G-od's thoughts in this matter — He 
 made the earth to be inhabited, and, in order to 
 carry out that purpose, He brought inhabitants to 
 occupy the American part of it across the broadest 
 part of the Pacific Ocean, in a way that would 
 never have been thought of by any of the sons 
 of men : for His thoughts are not our thoughts, 
 nor His ways our ways. There is, happily, there- 
 fore, no necessity for searching for another Adam, 
 to give inhabitants to America. This great desi- 
 deratum has been provided by Infinite Wisdom, 
 in the way I have indicated ; for the Polynesians 
 and the Indo-Americans are the same people, 
 and the same Grod made them both. 
 
 Mr. Bancroft mentions a singular circumstance, 
 strongly confirmatory of my theory in this 
 matter : " Three traditions," he observes, " are 
 especially prevalent, in some form, in nearly 
 every section of America — that of a Deluge — 
 that of an Aboriginal migration, and that of 
 giants having dwelt upon the earth at some time 
 in the remote past ;"* for, if the emigration of 
 
 *" The Native Eaces of the Pacific States of North America." 
 By Hubert Howe Bancroft, London, 1876. — Vol. V., page 138. 
 
272 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 the forefathers of the Polynesian race from the 
 Plains of Shinar, to the eastward, took place, as 
 we have supposed it did, very shortly after the 
 Deluge, the story of that great catastrophe, as 
 well as of their own subsequent migration, would 
 be indelibly impressed upon their minds, and 
 carried with them as their most cherished tradi- 
 tion, wherever they went. We have already 
 seen, from their carrying with them, through all 
 their wanderings, the idea of a great Spirit, 
 invisible to men, that they had taken their 
 departure from the rest of mankind before the ' 
 knowledge and worship of one living and true 
 God had disappeared and perished from amongst 
 men. And that the form and character of the 
 earliest post-diluvian religious edifices should 
 have been so strongly photographed upon the 
 national mind as, after a whole series of succes- 
 sive voyages across the Pacific, to be reproduced 
 in the Marais of Tahiti, and the Teocallis of 
 Mexico, is one of the most remarkable facts in 
 the history of mankind. But as to the third of 
 the universally prevalent traditions of the Indo- 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 273 
 
 American people, viz., that a race of giants 
 existed on the earth in the earlier post-dilu- 
 vian ages, I would not offer any decided opinion 
 on the subject, as there is something, doubtless, 
 to be said on both sides. 
 
 There are a few points, however, in reference 
 to the facts and history of Polynesian and Indo- 
 American civilization to which I have not yet 
 adverted, from their bearing but lightly on the 
 main question of this work, but on which I 
 would offer a few observations before bringing the 
 subject to a close. I would observe, therefore, 
 that remains of ancient and regular fortifications 
 have from time to time been discovered in both 
 continents of America ; and the circumstance has 
 repeatedly awakened much curiosity respecting 
 the origin, the history, and the fate of the nation 
 that has left behind it these memorials of its 
 ancient civilization. But regular fortifications 
 of a similar kind are still met with in all parts 
 of the South Sea Islands. In some islands they 
 are constructed of walls of loose stones piled on 
 each other on the tops of hills, as in New 
 
274 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 Zealand ; in others, they are formed of strong pali- 
 sades, like the Burman stockades, as in the level 
 island of Tonga ; and in others again they consist 
 of some artificial addition to a place of great 
 natural strength, as in the district of Atehuru, 
 in Tahiti. In short, the South Sea Islanders 
 have evidently been in a sufficiently advanced 
 state of civilization, in ages past, to enable them 
 to construct fortifications, and to adapt tliese 
 fortifications, in regard to the materials employed 
 in their construction, to the nature of the country 
 in which they were required. Those of the Indo- 
 Americans appear to have been generally formed 
 of mounds of earth — a mode of formation well 
 adapted for such localities as the alluvial banks 
 of the Ohio, the dead levels near the lakes of 
 Canada, or the elevated plains of central America, 
 but not at all adapted for the South Sea Islands.* 
 
 * My talented townsman, the late John Gait, Esq., of 
 Greenock, has informed me that he has seen the remains of an 
 Indian fort on the summit of a precipitous ridge near Lake 
 Simcoe, in Upper Canada. It consisted of a mound of earth, 
 enclosing a considerable extent of ground ; but on the banks 
 of the Miamis River, much farther to the southward, the 
 Indian forts have been constructed of stone. Have any such 
 forts, I would ask, been discovered in Kamtschatka ? 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 275 
 
 Nay, the march of ancient civilization among 
 the Indo-Americans may even be traced, in some 
 measure, by these most interesting remains. In 
 South America I have not heard of their being 
 found to the eastward of the Andes. The gloomy 
 forests of Guiana and the Brazils were evidently 
 unfavourable for the preservation of Indo-American 
 civilization : and the portion of the race that 
 wandered into these vast solitudes was necessarily 
 broken up, at an early period, into an infinity of 
 insignificant tribes that could hold little or no 
 communication with each other, and that, conse- 
 quently, very soon sunk irrecoverably beneath 
 the level of the rest of their nation. But the 
 regions of central America, the elevated plains of 
 Bogota and Cundinamarca, the open valleys of 
 Peru, and the lofty and secluded, but highly 
 fertile, tracts of Chili, were much more favour- 
 able for the formation and maintenance of 
 po^verful states and empires ; and it is, accord- 
 ingly, in these portions of the continent of 
 South America that the ruins of ancient cities 
 and of extensive fortifications are found.* In 
 
 * M. Kenous, a Danish traveller, has recently discovered 
 ruins of the kind above-mentioned in the Chilian Andes. 
 
276 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 the North American continent, the course of the 
 Mississippi and its tributary streams would, 
 doubtless, guide the Indian in his progress to 
 the northward ; and it is, accordingly, on the 
 banks of the Ohio, in the western prairies, and 
 along the lakes of Canada, that we find the monu- 
 ments of his ancient power. 
 
 Again, the picture-writing of the ancient Mexi- 
 cans, of whicli the late Lord Kingsborough has 
 given us so splendid a collection of specimens in 
 his magnificent but purposeless work, "The Monu- 
 ments of Mexico," had unquestionably a decidedly 
 Polynesian, Malayan, or Chinese aspect. Although 
 the Malayan nations inhabiting the islands of the 
 Indian Archipelago were possessed of a written 
 language, with an alphabetic character, long ante_ 
 rior to the rise and prevalence of the Portuguese 
 empire in the east, that incontestible evidence of 
 superior civilization must doubtless be regarded 
 as one of those improvements that were derived, 
 according to Sir Stamford Raffles, at an early 
 period in the history of the nation, through the 
 medium of the Sanscrit language, from the more 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 277 
 
 <}ivilized Indian nations to the westward of the 
 Granges. There is reason to believe, however, 
 that long anterior to the introduction of alpha- 
 betic writing, the Malays, in common with the 
 other branches of their widelv-extended nation, 
 were not unacquainted with a more imperfect 
 method of communicating their ideas, and of 
 transmitting a record of passing events to poste- 
 rity. The present written language of China is 
 merely an improved edition of the primitive hiero- 
 glyphical writing of ancient Egypt — a sort of halt- 
 way station in the progress of the human mind 
 towards an alphabet ; and there is reason to 
 believe that, at the period when the Polynesian 
 nation began to people the multitude of the isles, 
 that more ancient and imperfect species of com- 
 munication was in general use among the Chi- 
 nese, the Indo-Chinese, and the Malayan divisions 
 of the Mongolian race. 
 
 " In the course of our tour around Hawaii," 
 says the Rev. Mr. Ellis, in an Appendix to liis 
 valuable work entitled Polynesian Eesearches, 
 *' we met with a few specimens of what may per- 
 
278 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 haps be termed the first efforts of an uncivilized 
 people towards the construction of a language of 
 symbols. Along the southern coast, both on the 
 east and west sides, we frequently saw a number 
 of straight lines, semi-circles, or concentric rings, 
 with some rude imitations of the human figure, 
 cut or carved in the compact rocks of lava. They 
 did not appear to have been cut with an iron in- 
 strument, but with a stone hatchet, or a stone 
 less frangible than the rock on which they were 
 pourtrayed. On inquiry, we found that they had 
 been made by former travellers, from a motive 
 similar to that which induces a person to carve his 
 initials on a stone or tree, or a traveller to record 
 his name in an album — to inform his successors 
 that he has been there. When there were a num- 
 ber of concentric circles with a dot or mark in the 
 centre, the dot signified a man, and the number 
 of rings denoted the number in the party who had 
 circumambulated the island. When there was a 
 ring, and a number of marks, it denoted the same ; 
 the number of marks showing of how many the 
 party consisted ; and the ring, that they had tra- 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 279 
 
 veiled completely round the island ; but when 
 there was only a semi-circle, it denoted tha>t they 
 had returned after reaching the place where it was 
 made. In some of the islands we have seen the 
 outline of a fish pourtrayed in the same manner, 
 to denote that one of that species or size had been 
 taken near the spot ; sometimes the dimensions of 
 an exceedingly large fruit, &c., are marked in the 
 same way."* 
 
 The Indian nations of North America had car- 
 ried this as well as the other arts, and the general 
 civilization of its central regions, as high as the 
 lakes of Canada. When that province was colo- 
 nized by the French, the most powerful Indian 
 nation in North America were the Iroquois — a 
 nation whom it afterwards required many a fierce 
 battle to exterminate. That warlike nation was 
 sufficiently civilized at the period I refer to to 
 practice the Mexican art of picture-writing ; for an 
 Indian village, situated somewhere near the site 
 of the present city of Montreal, having about that 
 period been surprised and destroyed by the 
 
 * u 
 
 Polyuesiau Eesearches," vol. iv., p, 459. 
 
280 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 French, a painting* or picture-writing, which after- 
 wards fell into tl]e hands of the French, contain- 
 ing a hieroglyphical representation of the event, 
 was executed by some Indian artist, to transmit an 
 account of it either to the distant tribes of the 
 nation or to posterity. The village was indicated 
 by a series of wigwams, and the state in which its 
 inhabitants were surprised, by an Indian asleep. 
 The rising sun indicated that the attack had taken 
 place at the break of day ; and the moon in her 
 first quarter, mounted on the back of a stag, 
 afforded the additional information that it had 
 taken place in the early part of the month in the 
 Indian year of which the stag was the emblem.* 
 
 In a letter to the secretary of the Antiquarian 
 Society, published in the sixth volume of the 
 
 * I recollect listening with a feeling of intense interest to an 
 account of this picture-writing which was given in the course 
 of a Lecture on Natural and Ai'tificial Signs, delivered in the 
 Logic or First Philosophy Class, by the late eminent Professor 
 Jardine, of the University of Glasgow, in the year 1813. In 
 recurring to such scenes, one cannot help sympathising with 
 the grateful feelings which the poet Vida expresses to his 
 deceased parents, for having sent him from his native city 
 when very young to a college at Rome : — 
 
 Me puerum docilem doctam misistis ad urbem. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 281 
 
 Archseology, W. Bray, Esq., gives an account of 
 an Indian picture writing which had been intended 
 to commemorate the exploits of Wingenund, an 
 Indian warrior of the DeUiware nation, about the 
 middle of last century. It consisted of a 
 series of marks or characters inscribed within a 
 square figure on a sugar maple-tree on the Mus- 
 kingham River in the State of Delaware. The first 
 line consisted of the figure of a turtle — the emblem 
 of the tribe to which the warrior belonged — an 
 arbitrary mark designating the particular chief 
 who had executed the writing, and a representa- 
 tion of the sun. Ten horizontal lines on the rigiit 
 side of the figure denoted the number of expedi- 
 tions in which the warrior had been engaged, and 
 opposite to each of these lines on the left there 
 w^as a series of marks resembling the letter X, 
 with a bar across the top of it, representing the 
 number of scalps or of prisoneis he had taken, 
 the sex of the victim being designated by a slight 
 variation of the character, and the central part 
 of the figure being occupied with a rude drawing 
 of three different British forts which he had 
 
282 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 attacked on these occasions. At the bottom of 
 the figure there were twenty-three vertical lines 
 inclining a little to the left (the figure of the sun 
 in the first line of the writing being at the right 
 side of the painting) to denote that at the same 
 time the record was left the writer was marching on 
 another expedition to the northward. 
 
 A similar mode of communication is in use 
 among the Indians of the present day still farther 
 to the northward. *•' The next day," says the Rev. 
 John West, A.M., late chaplain to the Honorable 
 the Hudson's Bay Company, ia his Narrative of 
 a Journev undertaken within the territory of the 
 Red River Colony in the year 1820, "we forded 
 Broad River, on the banks of which we saw seve- 
 ral dens, which the bears had scratched for shel- 
 ter ; and seeing the smoke of an Indian tent at 
 some distance before us, in the direction we were 
 going, we quickened our step, and reached it be- 
 fore we stopped to breakfast. We found the whole 
 family clothed in deer-skins, and upon a hunting 
 excursion from Church-hill. The Indian, or rather 
 a half-breed, was very communicative, and told 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 283 
 
 t 
 
 me that, although he was leading an Indian life, 
 his father was formerly a master at one of the 
 Company's posts, and proposed accompanying our 
 party to the factory. He had two sons, he said, 
 who were gone in the pursuit of a deer ; and, on 
 quitting the encampment to travel with us, he 
 would leave some signs for them to follow us on 
 their return. They were drawn upon a broad 
 piece of wood which he prepared with an axe» 
 They were — 1st, a tent struck, to intimate that the 
 party had gone forward in a particular direction ; 
 2nd, five rude figures, indicating the number of 
 the party, and exhibiting by their dress and ac- 
 coutrements the rank or condition of each indivi- 
 dual, viz.: a European chief, a European servant, 
 an Indian attendant, and two Indians from the 
 encampment ; 3rd, a curvilinear figure, with the 
 two extremities of the curve pointing towards the 
 hindermost of the figures, to intimate to the 
 Indian's two sons that they were to follow the 
 party."* 
 
 * The substance of a Joui-nal during a residence at the Eed 
 Eiver colony ; by John West, M.A. London, 1824. 
 
284 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 The picture-writing of the Mexicans constituted 
 the annals of their empire ; and we are assured on 
 reliable authority that these annals formed a con- 
 tinuous history of the country to as high a period 
 as the sixth century of the Christian era. It is 
 unquestionable, however, that the pyramids and 
 other ancient monuments, both of Peru and 
 Mexico, are the remains of a primitive and Asiatic 
 civilization which had run its course and become 
 extinct long before either the Aztecks or the Tol- 
 tics were heard of in the world. Tluit there had 
 been a renaissance, however, of that ancient and 
 higher civilization under these Mexican people, 
 just as there was in our own world after the era of 
 the Crusades and the fall of Constantinople, is 
 equally evident. 
 
 I would also observe, without intending the 
 slightest reflection on our Legislative Assembly 
 for its somewhat different practice, that the great 
 councils of the Indo-American nations, in which 
 affairs of public interest were publicly discussed, 
 were conducted in the same manner as those of 
 the Polynesian nation. Youth was not suffered to 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 285 
 
 mingle in the high debate. Regular harangues 
 were delivered, most of which were highly ani- 
 mated, and some highly eloquent. And when any 
 Speaker had possession of the Assembly, he was 
 listened to witli profound attention. All such 
 attempts to put down an obnoxious orator as 
 coughing^ cries of hear^ oh ! question^ &c., would 
 liave absolutely shocked the right feelings of the 
 Polynesian and the Indo-American, cannibals 
 though they were. 
 
 From the preceding notices it will doubtless 
 appear that the Indians of North America are 
 derived from the same prolific source as the abori- 
 gines of the southern continent ; and the entire 
 dissimilarity of the whole framework of their sin- 
 gularly formed society to anything of European 
 origin, sufficiently demonstrates the absurdity of 
 those hypotheses that would trace the aborigines 
 of either continent to ancient colonies from Nor- 
 way or from Wales — with the exception, perhaps, 
 of the Grreenlanders of the far North, to whom I 
 have alluded above. Columbus was undoubtedly 
 the first European that ever crossed the Atlantic 
 
286 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 or trod American ground; and that great man 
 was not diaappointed, as we commonly suppose 
 him to have been, in the attainment of his origi- 
 nal object— the discovery of a shorter route to the 
 East Indies. It was the Indians of Cathay that 
 he actually found in the Island of Hispaniola. He 
 had there reached the easternmost of the settle- 
 ments of that great nation, whose innumerable 
 tribes had for thousands of years been the sole 
 occupants of nearly half the surface of the globe. 
 From the evidence I have adduced, in the 
 previous chapters of this work, to prove the 
 unity and identity of the lodo-American nations, 
 and their derivation, by natural descent, from the 
 Polynesians of the vast Pacific Ocean, as well as 
 from the utter want of evidence to prove tliat 
 there had ever been any immigration from Asia 
 to America, either before or since the western 
 discovery of that continent by Captain Behring, 
 it will scarcely be necessary to enter upon a 
 formal confutation of any of the numerous 
 theories that have been put forth by the learned 
 diu-iiig the hist three centuries, on the suppo- 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 287 
 
 sition of such an emigration having actually taken 
 place. The Indo- Americans are neither aborigines 
 nor a distinct creation, but simply the descend- 
 ants of the handful of famished Polynesians who, 
 when driven off their own island by a violent 
 gale of westerly wind, had landed on the South J 
 American coast, from Easter Island, somewhere 
 near Copiapo, in the State of Chili, a few hundred 
 years after the deluge, carrying with them, and 
 re-producing in America, the fashions of the day, 
 especially in architecture, in that early period 
 of the history of mankind. 
 
 It was no wonder, however, that neither 
 Humboldt nor Dr. Eobertson was of a different 
 opinion, and accordingly supposed that they 
 had traced the Indo- Americans to North-Eastern 
 Asia ; for, until a comparatively recent period, 
 when the Polynesians and their monuments 
 in the great Pacific Ocean came to be known 
 to Europeans through the discoveries of our 
 great English and French navigators, it would 
 doubtless have appeared to men of science 
 and learning as utterly incredible that America 
 
288 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 had been originally discovered and settled from 
 South America as it would have been that its 
 first discoverers had come from the moon. But 
 " Grod's thoughts in these matters are not as our 
 thoughts, neither are His ways our ways." 
 
 In regard to the Japanese consul of San Fran- 
 cisco, and his recent advocac}'' of the theory of 
 De Zuniga, which he supports by alleging that 
 vessels from Japan had been wrecked on the 
 west coast of North America, and may therefore 
 have given its aboriginal population to that 
 continent, there is not the slightest evidence in 
 favour of such a supposition ; and when the 
 problem can be solved satisfactorily and without 
 -conjecture in another way, as this work will 
 doubtless prove it can, there is no necessity for 
 attempting a different solution. The following 
 is an instance of a Japanese junk having been 
 foimd in the last state of exhaustion in the route 
 from China and Japan to San Francisco, which I 
 extract from the news of the day in the Sydney 
 Morning Herald of tlie period, although it 
 affords but little encouragement for the idea of 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 289 
 
 any comniimication having ever been maintained 
 between Japan and North America. 
 
 Polynesia.— On the 12th June, 1871, the Pacific Mail 
 Steamship, China, on her voyage from China to San Fran- 
 cisco, fell in with a Japanese junk, in lat. 34 deg. 54 min. 
 N. , and long. 143 deg. 42 min. E. , which had been driven 
 off the coast [of Japan], dismasted and rudderless, 
 eleven men having died on board of starvation ; the 
 twelfth, as one of four rescued in the last stage of 
 exhaustion, djdng the day after arriving in San Fran- 
 cisco. 
 
 This case sufficiently shows that there are 
 sudden and violent gales from the westward in 
 the Northern as well as in the Southern Pacific ; 
 but it is proper to state that the unfortunate 
 junk was still three thousand miles from the 
 American coast when fallen in with by the mail 
 steamer. 
 
 In regard to the expedition of the Welch 
 Prince Madoc, who, we are told, had an expedition 
 of ten ships, which crossed the Atlantic to 
 America, in the tenth or eleventh century, I 
 cannot believe that such an expedition ever took 
 place. Mr. Catlin, however, the American tra- 
 
290 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 veller, not only supposes that it did, but is strongly 
 inclined to believe, also, that Madoc and his ten 
 ships entered the Mississippi and passed up 
 that river till its junction with the Missouri. 
 He then ascended both the Missouri and one of 
 its tributaries, the Yellowstone Kiver, where he 
 founded, through his followers, a Welch colony 
 on the latter River, which we are to believe 
 is represented by the Mandans, an ludo- 
 American tribe settled on the Upper Mis- 
 souri, and subsisting to the present day. " I 
 have been disposed," says Mr. Catlin, " to 
 enquire vrhether here may not be found yet 
 existing the remains of the Welch colony, the 
 followers of Madoc, who, history tells us, started 
 with ten ships to colonize a country which he 
 had discovered in the Western Ocean — whose 
 expedition I think has been pretty clearly traced 
 to the mouth of the Mississippi, or the coast 
 of Florida, and whose fate, further than this, 
 seems sealed in unsearchable mystery."* 
 
 * " Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Con- 
 dition of the North American Indians," By George Catlin. 
 London : 1841. Page 20G. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 291 
 
 But Mr. Catlin ignores two very important cir- 
 -cumstances in the case which he ought to have 
 remembered ; for the Mandans were red men, as 
 he paints them very accurately himself, and 
 therefore could not have been the descendants of 
 "Welchmen ; besides, who ever heard of the Welch 
 disposing of their dead, as both the New 
 Zealanders and Indo-Americans do, by wrapping 
 them up in mats or skins, and placing them 
 upon trestles, to be decomposed, and returned to 
 their dust in the open air ? Mr. Catlin's descrip- 
 tion of chis process, which T subjoin, is very 
 interesting, but quite a refutation of his own 
 theory on the subject. 
 
 " These people never bury the dead, but place 
 the bodies on slight scaffolds, just above the reach 
 of human hands, and out of the way of wolves 
 and dogs,* and they are then left to moulder and 
 decay. This cemetery, or place of deposit for 
 the dead, is just back of the village, on a level 
 
 prairie ; and, with all its appearances, history, 
 
 *It is a remarkable circumstance that the trestles for the 
 dead in New Zealand are only about two or three feet high, 
 because there are no wild beasts in that island. 
 
292 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 forms, ceremonies, e^c, is one of the strangest and 
 most interesting objects to be described in the 
 vicinity of this peculiar race. 
 
 " Whenever a person dies in the Mandan vil- 
 lage, and the customary honours and condolence 
 are paid to his remains, and the body dressed in 
 the best attire, painted, oiled, feasted, and sup- 
 plied with bow and quiver, shield, pipe and 
 tobacco, knife, flint and steel, and provisions 
 enough to last him a few days on the journey 
 which he is to perform ; a fresh buffalo's skin, just 
 taken from the animal's back, is wrapped around 
 the body, and tightly bound and wound, with 
 thongs of raw hide, from head to foot ; then other 
 robes are soaked in water, till tiiey are quite soft 
 and elastic, which are also bandaged around the 
 body, in like manner, and tied fast with thongs, 
 which are wound with great care and exactness, 
 so as to exclude the action of the air from all 
 parts of the body. Some hundreds of these 
 bodies may be seen reposing in this curious place, 
 which the Indians call " the village of the 
 dead." The Mexicans call it jMicoatl. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 293 
 
 " There is then a separate scaffold erected for 
 it, constructed of four upright posts, a little 
 higher than human hands can reach, and on the 
 tops of these are small poles passing around, 
 from one post to the others, across which a 
 number of willow rods just strong enough to 
 support the body, which is laid upon them on its 
 back, with its feet carefully presented towards 
 the rising sun. There are a great number of 
 these bodies resting exactly in a similar way, 
 excepting in some instances, where a chief or 
 medicine man may be seen with a few yards of 
 scarle*: or blue cloth spread on his remains, as a 
 mark of public respect and esteem.* 
 
 I cannot conclude this chapter without refer- 
 ring to the alleged ante-Columbian discovery 
 of America by the Scandinavians, in the tenth 
 century of our era, on which the learned Pro- 
 fessor Eafn, of the University of Copenhagen, 
 who patriotically advocates the claim in honour 
 of his countrymen, has written strongly in 
 support of it, on the authority of the Ice- 
 *Catlin — ubi supra, page 81. 
 
294 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 landic and other northern Sagas ; informing 
 us that the place which the Norwegian dis- 
 coverers had reached in their voyag-e alonsf the 
 east coast of America, somewhere between the 
 Polar circle and the State of Florida, was called 
 by them Vinland. But whether that alleged 
 Norwegian discovery is to be received or not, the 
 subject has just as little bearing on the pre- 
 vious question of this volume — the original dis- 
 covery and progressive settlement of the conti- 
 nent of America — as another Gfeosfraphical and 
 lunary question that has often been mooted, as 
 to whether the moon is inhabited ; for, as the 
 Indo-Americans are all " red," or rather " brown" 
 men, while no original tribe of any other colour 
 has ever been discovered, with the exception, 
 perhaps, of the Esquimaux, the obvious reason 
 for so remarkable a fact is that no such tribe 
 has ever existed ; besides, the comparatively short 
 period that has elapsed since the alleged Scan- 
 dinavian discovery, would be altogether insuffi- 
 cient to account for the existence of so many 
 different languages as are now spoken in both 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 295 
 
 continents of America — a phenomenon wliicb, in 
 mj humble opinion, would require for its exist- 
 ence a period of not less than three or four thou- 
 sand years. 
 
 The following are the sentiments of two very 
 eminent Americans, not only on the alleged Scandi- 
 navian discovery, hut also on all the others of a 
 similar character, whether from Europe, across 
 the Atlantic, or from North-Kastern Asia, by 
 Behring's Straits. 
 
 " The story of the colonization of America by 
 Northmen," observes the distinguished his- 
 torian of the colonization of America, " rests 
 on narratives mythological in form and obscure 
 in meaning — ancient, but not contemporary. 
 The chief document is an interpolation in the 
 history of Sturleson, whose zealous curiosity 
 could hardly have neglected the discovery of a 
 continent. The geographical details are too 
 vague to sustain a conjecture ; the accounts of 
 the mild winter and fertile soil are, on any 
 modern hypothesis, fictitious or exaggerated ; the 
 description of the natives applies only to the 
 
296 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 Esquimaux, inhabitants of hyperborean regions ; 
 the remark that should define the lena'th of the 
 shortest winter's day, has received interpreta- 
 tations adapted to every latitude from New York 
 to Cape Farewell ; and Vinland has been sought 
 in all directions, from Grreenland and the St. 
 Lawrence, to Africa."* 
 
 The other eminent American writer, to whom 
 I have referred, is the celebrated Washington 
 Irving, who observes that, " as far as he had had 
 experience in tracing these stories of early dis- 
 coveries of portions of the New World, he has 
 generally found them very confident deductions 
 drawn from vague and questionable facts. Learned 
 men are too prone to give substance to mere 
 shadows, when they assist some preconceived 
 theory. Most of these accounts, when divested 
 of the erudite comments of their editors, have 
 proved little better than the traditionary fables 
 noticed in another part of this work, respecting 
 
 * History of the Colonizatiou of the United States. By 
 George Bancroft. Vol. I., pages 5 and 6. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 297 
 
 the imaginary islands of St. Bosondon, and of 
 the Seven Cities.* 
 
 * History of the Life of Columbus. By George Washington. 
 Vol. in., page 434. 
 
298 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Resume. — Plagiarism Extraordinary. — Con- 
 clusion. 
 
 Shortly after my arrival in New South Wales for 
 the first time, in the year 1823, I became ac- 
 quainted, and had much friendly intercourse, with 
 various missionaries from the South Sea Islands,who 
 were then, as they have always been, in the way of 
 touching at Sydney on their voyages either out or 
 home, as well as of occasionally visiting our city,, 
 when resident at the islands, either for health or 
 relaxation. I was thus led to take a deep interest 
 in the very singular inhabitants of these islands, 
 and to institute enquiries and collect information 
 of all kinds respecting their manners and customs, 
 their origin and migrations. In prosecuting these 
 enquiries, I soon satisfied myself that the South 
 Sea Islanders or Polynesians had originally reached 
 the Pacific from Eastern Asia and the Indian 
 Archipelago, but hoiv or ivJien no man could tell. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 299 
 
 In the year 1830 I happened to make a second 
 voyage from Port Jackson to London, in connec- 
 tion with certain educational objects, by way of 
 New Zealand and Cape Horn. On that voyage, 
 after encountering a strong south-east gale right 
 ahead of seven or eight days' continuance, off the 
 Xorth-East Cape of New Zealand, we were almost 
 instantaneously caught with a violent gale from 
 the westward, which carried us right across the 
 Pacific to the meridian of Easter Island — the 
 farthest east of Captain Cook's discoveries in the 
 Pacific,* and about two thousand miles from the 
 American Land. We then changed our course to 
 the south-east, the westerly gale still continuing, 
 and soon doubled Cape Horn. I mention these 
 
 * Captain Cook was not the original discoverer of Pasqnas 
 or Easter Island. That, honour, is due, if I recollect aright, to 
 the Dutch Admiral Eoggewein, who discovered it soroe time in 
 the seventeenth century. It was afterwards visited by an Eng- 
 lish captain Davis, from whom it was called Davis' Land ; but 
 the Spaniards, from whom we have borrowed the name, call it 
 Pasquas or Easter Island. Captain Cook visited it in the year 
 ] 770, and astonished the world with his description of the col- 
 lossal remains of a long-extinct civilization which it contains. 
 —Page 90. 
 
300 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 particulars of this voyage from its having afforded 
 me much important information, directly avail- 
 able, as the reader will find in the sequel, as to the 
 course and strength of the winds in the Southern 
 Pacific Ocean. 
 
 I had occasion to make a third voyage to Eng- 
 land, in connection with the same objects, in the 
 year 1833. On that voyage I had occupied myself, 
 when crossing the Southern Pacific, in arranging 
 and studying the papers I had collected, and the 
 notes and extracts I had made in the colony dur- 
 ing the previous ten years, in continuation of my 
 enquiries on the subject of the Polynesians and 
 their history and migrations. Among other works 
 on that subject which I had consulted in the colony, 
 and from whicli I had made extracts, was the work 
 of a learned Spanish writer, Martinez de Zuniga, 
 entitled Hlstoria de las Islas Philipinas, or a 
 History of the Philippine Islands. In that work 
 the Spaniard had advanced and advocated the sin- 
 gular hypothesis that, as the South Sea Islanders 
 could never have made their way to the eastward 
 across the Pacific Ocean in the face of the easterly 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 301 
 
 trade winds of that ocean, the multitude of the 
 Isles of the great South Sea must have been origi- 
 nally discovered and settled by emigrants from 
 the West Coast of America. Without attaching 
 the slightest importance to this hypothesis, which 
 I considered from the first utterly untenable, yet, 
 as the Spaniard had alleged in support of it that 
 a striking conformity subsisted between the Indian 
 language of Chili — from which he had derived a 
 few specimens from the work of Ercilla, the Spa- 
 nish historian of Chili — and that of the province 
 of Tagala in the Philippine Islands, it seemed to 
 me that if such a conformity really subsisted be- 
 tween these languages, it might be owing rather to 
 an emigration of Polynesians to America than of 
 Americans to Polynesia. The circumstances in 
 which I happened to be placed at the moment were 
 remarkably favourable for pursuing the train of 
 thought into which I had thus been unexpectedly 
 led. We were traversing the Southern Pacific, 
 and approaching, at only a few degrees to the 
 southward, the meridian of Easter Island — that 
 remote and solitary isle, in which the colossal re- 
 
302 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 mains of a long extinct Polynesian civilization 
 still prove beyond all controversy that this ancient 
 race had reached and occupied that island during 
 the period in which their long extinct civilization 
 was a living and powerfully-active reality. And 
 as I could not but recollect at tlie moment that, 
 in my own previous and then recent voyage across 
 the Pacific, our good ship had been carried during 
 a violent westerly gale of upwards of four weeks' 
 continuance, into that very neighbourhood on our 
 way to Cape Horn, it struck me all at once with 
 such force that I started up involuntarily in my 
 ■cabin at the idea of having got upon the right 
 track at last for the solution of the grand problem 
 of this volume — the original discovery of America. 
 For I saw at once that, if such a violent westerly 
 g'ale as I had myself experienced only three years 
 before, had caught a Polynesian vessel off tlie 
 ■coast of Easter Island during the period of its 
 ancient civilization, it would have carried her 
 without fail across the remaining tract of ocean, 
 and thereby given its first inhabitants to the Con- 
 tinent of America. 
 
THE POLYxVESIAN NATION. 303 
 
 How swift is a glance of the mind ! 
 
 Compared with the speed of its flight, 
 The tempest itself lags behind, 
 
 And the swift-winged arrows of light.* 
 
 That momentary glance of the mind in my own 
 case convinced me that I had at length got upon 
 the right track for the solution of the great mys- 
 tery which had been hidden from mankind from 
 the days of Columbus, and for the solution of 
 which hundreds of different works had been writ- 
 ten in vain — in English, in French, and in Spa- 
 nish — I mean, THE ORIGINAL DISCOVERY AND PRO- 
 ore ssive settlement of the continent of 
 America. 
 
 Having, therefore, nothing further to do with De 
 Zuniga, I set myself to test and verify, as far as it 
 was possible to do so on shipboard and far at sea, 
 what I could not help regarding from the first as 
 a great discovery. With this view I proceeded, 
 as is done in the Rule of False in arithmetic, by 
 assuming a fact and then reasoning from it to 
 ascertain its reality ; or, as in algebra, by repre- 
 
 * Cowper. 
 
304 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 senting some unknown quantity by the letter Xj 
 and ascertaining from the conditions of the case 
 what that quantity is. 
 
 The first question, therefore, that presented 
 itself for enquiry in the case was, to wliat 
 point on the West Coast of America \?ould a 
 Polynesian vessel caught suddenly, when off the 
 coast of Easter Island, in a violent westerly 
 gale, such as I had myself experienced in the 
 year 1830,* be driven by the tempest ? and the 
 second was — in what directions would the unfor- 
 tunate Polynesians proceed in their subsequent 
 migrations, after effecting a settlement in the 
 unknown land. As to the first of these ques- 
 tions, I was at once constrained to conclude that 
 the unfortunate Polynesians must have landed 
 somewhere near Copiapo, in what is now the State 
 
 * The case of the Apostle Paul, when his good ship was caught 
 suddenly in the tempest Euroclydon off the Island of Clauda, in 
 the Mediterranean, will doubtless recur to the reader as 
 somewhat parallel to the one supposed. I happened to pass 
 in sight of that island on my return to New South Wales 
 in the P. & 0. Company's Branch Mail Steam Ship from 
 Venice to Alexandria, in December, 1874, and naturally gazed 
 at it in the dibtance with intense interest. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 305 
 
 of Chili, in South America, in latitude 27^ 
 south, nearly ; for the violence of the gale sup- 
 posed would prevent them from diverging either 
 north or south from the parallel of Easter Island. 
 The second question I answered by sliewing that 
 they must have migrated either north or south, as 
 the vicinity of the Andes would prevent them 
 from getting far to the eastward. 
 
 Having settled these questions satisfactorily, as 
 I conceived, I proceeded to enquire whether the 
 architectural remains which these wanderers 
 had doubtless left behind them in their subse-^ 
 quent migrations, bore any resemblance to those 
 of the extinct civilization of Polynesia ; whether 
 there was any identity or resemblance in the 
 singular manners and customs of the Tndo- 
 Americans and those of the South Sea Islanders ; 
 and, lastly, whether the languages of these two 
 races of men gave any evidences of their common 
 origin. In all these important points, the dis- 
 cussion of which occupies a large portion of this 
 volume, I was fully satisfied that I was right in my 
 theory ; and, in order that so great an historical 
 
306 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 and ethnological discovery should neither be con- 
 cealed from the world on the one hand, nor 
 pirated on the other, I resolved to publish a small 
 work on the subject, which I did, accordingly, 
 in London, in the year 1834, under the same 
 title as that of this volume, only prefixing the first 
 words " A view of," &c., which my present pub- 
 lisher has dispensed with. This work, although, I 
 acknowledge, a very imperfect production, as com- 
 pared with the present volume, was very favour- 
 ably reviewed in the Eoyal Greographical Society's 
 journal of the day, as well as by two influential 
 American reviews. But, while it was treated 
 with much courtesy in the first of these 
 quarters, and with absolute scepticism in the 
 others ; and whi^e my theory was generally 
 ridiculed by not a few able editors of the day as 
 a perfect absurdity, farther evidence, I found, 
 was desired in certain other quarters before the 
 great question, involved in the case, could 
 be supposed to be finally settled. Such evidence 
 I have now collected, after an interval of more 
 than forty years, and beg to submit to the public. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 307 
 
 I had not been mistaken in supposing that some 
 attempt would have been made to appropriate my 
 views and conclusions in regard to the Polyne- 
 sians and their migrations, had I not published my 
 book on the subject— the first edition of this work 
 — in the year 1834. But that book was scarcely 
 out when such an attempt was actually made, 
 notwithstanding, in the very last quarter in 
 ' wliich I could ever have expected it. For in 
 the year 1835 or 1836 the Rev. .Tohn Williams, 
 afterwards " the martyr of Erromanga," pub- 
 lished his famous work, entitled " A Narrative 
 of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea 
 Islands," which was so highly popular at the time 
 that it had already reached the sixth thousandth 
 in 1837. But my unfortunate book of two 
 hundred pages, with all my arguments and conclu- 
 sions — a work of great labour and research, and 
 tlie result of much previous study, both on 
 land and at sea — had, in the meantime, 
 been actually compressed by Mr. Williams 
 into ten or twelve pages of his " Narrative," 
 tuithoiit one syllable of acknoiuledgment as to how 
 
ft 
 
 308 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 or where they had come from. In short, it was 
 one of the most flagrant pieces of literary piracy 
 I have ever known ! I do not blame Mr. Wil- 
 liams so much, however, for this unwarrantable 
 proceeding, so deeply fraught with injustice to 
 myself. Mr. Williams, although one of Nature's 
 own undoubted noblemen, was an uneducated 
 man, and a mere working blacksmith, when he 
 entered into the service of the London Missionary 
 Society. But the Rev. William Ellis, the author of 
 the work entitled "Polynesian Researches," which 
 I have quoted so frequently in this volume, and 
 afterwards the Apostle of Madagascar, was the 
 Secretary of that Society at the time, and had all 
 the literary work of its agents and servants on his 
 hands. Mr. Williams merely supplied the facts, and 
 Mr. Ellis wrought them up into a noble volume, 
 which many good people at the time used to say 
 was like a second volume of the Acts of the Apos- 
 tles. But Mr. Ellis, being a literary man, and 
 of much experience in connection with the Press, 
 had doubtless told Mr. Williams that there was no 
 necessity for any personal acknowledgment tome. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 309 
 
 in merely embodying in his own work the sum 
 and substance of mine, especially as I was then 
 out of the country and far away at the ends of the 
 earth. 
 
 Besides, Mr. Ellis would doubtless suggest 
 that the incorporation of my work would serve to 
 make Mr. Williams' " Narrative " complete, by 
 showing who the Polynesians were and where they 
 came from, as also how they managed to find their 
 way to the eastward across the broadest part of 
 the Pacific, against the easterly trade winds of 
 that ocean, not to mention, the little fact — 
 that the Indo-Americans were so like the Poly- 
 nesians, that it might be taken for granted, 
 without saying anything more about it, that 
 they came from the South Seas. Thus the three 
 great points of my book of 1834, the fruit of 
 ten years occasional study and research, both by 
 land and sea, were literally stolen by Mr. Ellis to 
 complete and embellish Mr. Williams' "Narrative," 
 and thereby to do me an immense wrong. It would 
 be a comparatively easy task for Mr. Ellis in 
 such circumstances, to add a few particulars to 
 
310 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 what I had stated to throw unlearned people " off 
 the scent." This accordingly was done freely. 
 
 Mr. Williams visited Sydney, on his return to 
 the Islands towards the close of the year 1838. 
 I called on him on the occasion, and as I 
 understood that he was then looking out for a 
 suitable place in our city for holding a large 
 public meeting, for the benefit of his mission, 
 I offered him the use of the Scots Church, 
 which was then the largest building in Sydney 
 available for such a purpose, and which had been 
 used shortly before for a similar object, in honour 
 of King George, the native King of the Tonga 
 or Friendly Islands. Mr. Williams, however, 
 did not accept my offer on returning my call, 
 for what reason I could not divine at the time, 
 for I had not then read his book ; but I could 
 not help observing, during his visit, that he had 
 something on his mind that prevented him from 
 holding more intimate relations with myself. 
 He had, then, doubtless, recognized the extreme 
 impropriety, to say the least of it, of his own 
 proceeding in assenting to Mr. Ellis's suggestion 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 311 
 
 in regard to the use he had made of my book. 
 From what I recollect of the way in wliich that 
 book (of 1834) had been used up in the first 
 edition of Mr. Williams' " Narrative," which I 
 only read on board ship, on my way to England, in 
 the year 1839, I am of opinion that that portion 
 of the work had been considerably modified by 
 Mr. Ellis in the subsequent editions ; but, as 
 I have been unable to find any copy of the work 
 in this colony of an earlier date than that of the 
 sixth thousand, in 1837, I cannot state positively 
 whether it was so or not. The fact, however, if 
 it should ever be deemed a matter of importance, 
 as it is likely to be now, can easily be ascertained 
 in London by a reference to both works in the 
 Librarv of the British Museum — mine of 1834, 
 and Mr. Williams' first edition of 1835 or 1836. 
 
 In the meantime, the following extract from 
 Mr. Ellis's own statements in the latest edition I 
 have seen of his Polvnesian researches, will shew 
 how entirely his views had been changed after 
 the publication of my book in 1834. 
 
 " The origin of the inhabitants of the Pacific," 
 
312 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 says Mr. Ellis, " is involved in great mystery, 
 and the evidences are certainly strongest in 
 favour of their derivation from the Malayan 
 tribes inhabiting the Asiatic Islands ; but, 
 allowing this to be their source, the means by 
 which they have arrived at the remote and 
 isolated stations they now occupy, are still inex- 
 plicable. If they were peopled from the Malayan 
 Islands, they must have possessed better vessels, 
 and more accurate knowledge of navigation than 
 they now exhibit, to have made their way against 
 the constant trade-winds prevailing within the 
 tropics, and blowing regularly, with but transient 
 and uncertain interruptions, from east to west." 
 Again — " On the other hand, it is easy to imagine 
 how they could have proceeded from the east. 
 The winds would favour their passage, and the 
 incipient stages of civilization in which they 
 were found would resemble the condition of the 
 aborigines of America, far more than that of 
 the Asiatics. There are many well-authenticated 
 accounts of long voyages performed in native 
 vessels by the inhabitants of both the North and 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 313 
 
 South Pacific. In 1696, two canoes were driven 
 from Ancarso to one of the Philippine Islands, 
 -a distance of 800 miles. They had run before 
 the wind for 70 days together, sailing from 
 east to west." And again — " If we suppose the 
 population of the South Sea Islands to have 
 proceeded from east to west, these events illus- 
 trate the means by which it may have been 
 accomplished ; for it is a striking fact, that 
 every such voyage related in the accounts of 
 voyagers, preserved in the traditions of the 
 natives, or of recent occurrence, has invariably 
 been from east to west, directly opposite to that 
 in which it must have been, had the population 
 been altogether derived from the Malayan archi- 
 pelago."* 
 
 Such, then, were what may be styled the last 
 tvords of Mr. Ellis about the Pacific Ocean, after 
 his own long residence in the Pacific, both 
 north and south. That ocean was then just as 
 great a mystery to him as it had been to others. 
 The Polynesians were doubtless somewhat like 
 * Polynesian Kesearches, Vol. I., pages 125 to 127. 
 
314 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 the Malays, but how they could ever have crossed 
 the Pacific in the face of the easterly trade 
 winds of the intertropical regions, no man could 
 divine. Besides, the Polynesians were just as 
 like the Aboriginal Americans as they were to 
 the Malays, and the passage from the east, across 
 the Pacific, would merely be a run before the 
 wind the whole way, as De Zuniga had urged. 
 Such, then, was all the light Mr. Ellis had ))een 
 able, to throw, in his conclusions, upon the 
 mystery of the Pacific Ocean, when he had 
 reached the close of his " Researches,*' and was 
 publishing the second edition of his book, in the 
 year 1831. 
 
 But the scene is altogether changed with him 
 after the publication of my book, in 1834. To 
 his great mortification, doubtless, he there finds 
 that I had solved the two great problems of the 
 Pacific Ocean, by tracing the Polynesians to 
 their Malayan origin on the one hand, and by 
 shewing, from La Perouse, Admiral Hunter, and 
 other eminent navigators on the other, that it 
 was quite as practicable, within certain latitudes 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 315 
 
 and at certain seasons, to cross the Pacific from 
 west to east as from east to west. He now 
 alleges that there was no difficulty in the case 
 at all, and that crossing the Pacific to the east- 
 ward was all a matter of plain sailing. Thus, 
 by those figures of speech, which logicians call 
 suppressio veri and suggestio falsi (concealing the 
 truth and suggesting a falsehood), he ignores me 
 altogether in the matter, and makes Mr. Wil- 
 liams assume the entire merit of my discoveries ; 
 thereby depriving me, in the estimation of the 
 public, of the credit and the honour, for forty 
 years past ; for I have never taken any public notice 
 of the grievous wrong thus done me until now. 
 
 I shall doubtless be told that my allusions to 
 those eminent men, Mr. Ellis and Mr. Williams, 
 who are now both long since dead, are in violation 
 of the good old maxim, De mortuis nil nisi 
 bonum; but history of any kind could never be 
 written on that maxim ; and the form which the 
 maxim itself should assume, in all sucli cases, 
 is De mortuis nil nisi verum, " s^^y nothing of 
 the dead but what is true." 
 
316 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 For my own part, I deeply regret having been 
 virtually compelled to mention these humiliating 
 , particulars in the case of two such men as Mr. 
 Ellis and Mr. Williams ; but independently of 
 my own invaded riglits in the matter, which surely 
 deserved to be mentioned, the question as to the 
 way in which the original discovery of the con- 
 tinent of America was effected by man, is of too 
 world-wide an interest to allow any of the more 
 important facts and circumstances connected with 
 it to be concealed, whomsoever the mention of 
 them may affect. 
 
 The three characteristic features of my book 
 of 1834, as distinct from anything that Mr. 
 Ellis, the author of the " Polynesian Eesearches," 
 had ever previously published on the subject of 
 Polynesia, were — lirst, " My successful identifi- 
 cation of the Polynesians with the inhabitants 
 of Eastern Asia and the Malays of the Indian 
 Archipelago ; '' second, " My demonstration of the 
 practicability of crossing the Pacific to the east- 
 ward, which I had established on evidence the 
 most satisfactory, notwithstanding the easterly 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 317 
 
 trade winds of the intertropical regions of that 
 ocean ; " and, third, " My discovery of the way 
 and the means by which America had been first 
 reached by the Polynesians, and their identifica- 
 tion, as being the same people, with the Indo- 
 Americans." 
 
 These three principles, the discovery and es- 
 tablishment of which had cost me much labour 
 and research during the ten years of my previous 
 residence in New South Wales, Mr. Ellis, the 
 real author of Williams' " Narrative," appropriated 
 wholesale in chapter 29th of that Narrative, page 
 503, without ever mentioning my name, or making 
 me the slightest acknowledgment ; thereby making 
 Mr. Williams, who, in a literary point of view, 
 stood to Mr. Ellis in much the same relations as 
 his man Friday did to Robinson Crusoe, solely 
 responsible for his own downright theft. 
 
 The way in which this felonious appropriation 
 of my literary property was effected by the two 
 joint-stock operators was as ingenious, and in 
 much the same style, as any London burglary. 
 After stating, for instance, in page 504 of the 
 
318 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 " Narrative," as I had done in the outset of my 
 book, that the South Sea Islands were inhabited 
 by two distinct races of Polynesians, the eastern 
 and the western, or tlie lighter coloured and the 
 darker — the brown and the black — Mr. Ellis, 
 alias Mr. Williams, goes on as follows : " Tlie 
 point, then, for consideration, is the origin of 
 these Islanders. In tracing that of the copper- 
 coloured Polynesians, I find no difficulty,''^ This 
 is a remarkable statement on the part of Mr. 
 Ellis, for, until after the publication of my book, in 
 1834, he had always found such insurmountable 
 difficulty in tracing the origin of the Poly- 
 nesians, that he had actually held and advocated 
 the irrational theory of De Zuniga, that they 
 had come from the continent of America, run- 
 ning down to the westward with the easterly 
 fair wind. " Thus, I think," continues the 
 writer of the " Narrative," " every difficulty is 
 removed, and that we need not have recourse 
 to the theory advocated by some writers, and 
 countenanced to a certain extent by Mr. Ellis," 
 — that is, by himself — "that the Polynesian. 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 319 
 
 islanders came from South America. Their 
 physical conformation, their general character, 
 and their Malay countenance, furnish, I think, 
 indubitable evidence of their Asiatic origin. 
 But to these proofs must he added the near 
 affinity between the caste of India and tiie 
 tabic of the South Sea Isles.* The similarity 
 of opinions which prevailed respecting women, 
 and the treatment they received in Polynesia and 
 Bengal, more especially the common practice of 
 forbidding them to eat certain kinds of food, or 
 to partake of any in the presence of the men — 
 their inhuman conduct to the sick — the immola- 
 tion of the wives at the funeral of their husbands — 
 and a great number of games and usages ; — these, 
 I think, are clear indications of the Asiatic origin 
 of this people : but the correspondence between 
 the language spoken by the Malays and the Poly- 
 nesians is a still more decisive evidence. Many 
 
 * This was a slight mistake on the part of the dishonest 
 copyist of my book. I had not alleged that there was any 
 affinity between the Indian institution of caste and that of 
 taboo in Polynesia. They have no connection with each other, 
 but they exist alike both in India and in Polynesia. 
 
320 
 
 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 of the words are the same in all the dialects of the- 
 South Sea Islands." 
 
 Now, these items are all the mere heads of my 
 argument in proving the identity of the Polyne- 
 sians, first with the natives of India, and then 
 with the Malays ; and the six words which Mr. 
 Ellis cites in the "Narrative" to prove the identity 
 of the Polynesian and Malayan languages are the 
 identical six which I had cited for the same pur- 
 pose in my book. They are as follows : — 
 
 English. 
 
 Malay. 
 
 Polynesian 
 
 The eye 
 
 Mata 
 
 Mata 
 
 Food 
 
 Mangau 
 
 Manga 
 
 Dead 
 
 Mate 
 
 Mate 
 
 A bird 
 
 Manu 
 
 Manu 
 
 Fish 
 
 Tka 
 
 Ika 
 
 Water 
 
 Vai 
 
 Vai. 
 
 " Thus, I think," Mr. Ellis proceeds in Mr. Wil- 
 liams' " Narrative," " I have disposed of the first 
 objection to r)iy theory^ and I now proceed to tlie 
 consideration of the second — the prevalence of the 
 easterly trade winds. Tliis has been by many a 
 conclusive argument against the Asiatic origin of 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 321 
 
 the South Sea Ishmders, but I do not attach to it 
 so much importance." 
 
 The fact is, Mr. Ellis never had a theory on the 
 subject of crossing the Pacific from the westward in 
 the face of the easterly trade winds of that ocean. So 
 far was he from anything of the kind — from thinking 
 even that the thing was possible — that, by his 
 own confession, he stuck to the theory of De 
 Zuniga, that the South Sea Islands were peopled 
 from America, until after the publication of my 
 book in 1834. Then, indeed, he changed his tune 
 at once, when he found that I had demonstrated 
 the practicability of crossing the Pacific from the 
 westward, notwithstanding the easterly trade 
 winds ; for immediately after his own confession 
 of his abandonment of the Spaniard's theory, he 
 adds, " / vjould far rather say, provided the phy- 
 sical conformation, the structure of their language, 
 and other circumstances established the identity 
 of the Polynesians and the aborigines of America, 
 that tJte latter reached thai continent throtigJt the 
 Isles of the Pacific.'^ Now, Mr. Ellis never had 
 the slightest idea of the Polynesians having reached 
 
322 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 America in their wonderful migrations until after 
 the publication of my book. But when he there 
 found that I had not only suggested the idea, and 
 shown the very point of departure for the Polyne- 
 sians in their last and most remarkable migration, 
 from Easter Island to America, but had actually 
 proved the identity of the Polynesians and the 
 Indo- Americans, from their architectural remains, 
 their manners and customs, and various other cir- 
 cumstances, he again virtually adopts my idea, 
 although, in order to prevent me from getting any 
 credit for it, he claims it as his own, and professes 
 to suggest the grand idea of the aborigines of 
 America having reached that continent through 
 the isles of the Pacific. 
 
 Now, my dear Mr. Ellis, this was the unkindest 
 cut of all I After robbing me of the product of 
 my brain, tlie dearest article of property that a 
 literary man can possess, by appropriating my two 
 great discoveries of the origin and earlier move- 
 ments of the Polynesian race, and the practica- 
 bility of crossing the Pacific from the westward, 
 notwithstanding the prevalence of the easterly 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 323 
 
 trade winds in the intertropical regions of that 
 ocean— -you endeavour to rob me, also, as you have 
 been doing with some success for forty years past, 
 of the credit of having been the original and tlie 
 only discoverer of Grod's way of peopling America, 
 after man had been vainly toiling at the great 
 problem in all the languages of Europe for up- 
 wards of three centuries before. 
 
 It is somewhat singular that, after his very ex- 
 ceptional procedure towards myself as a brother 
 author and a brother minister, in the matter in 
 question, Mr. Ellis — for I make no account of Mr. 
 Williams, his humble fellow- worker, in the case — 
 should not have taken some better means than he 
 did of shielding himself from public reprobation, 
 if the fact should ever come to be known, as it 
 certainly will now. For example, in referring in 
 the introduction of my book to the nature of the 
 investigation on which it proposed to enter, I had 
 stated that " it promised to open up the darkest 
 and the most mysterious portion of the ancient 
 history of man. But Mr. Ellis makes use of these 
 very words in his own remarks on the subject. 
 
324 ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 observing that " This, indeed, is a dark and 
 mysterious chapter in the history of man," as if 
 he wished it to be known that he had got the 
 sentiment from me. 
 
 Mr. Ellis also makes two quotations about .the 
 Malays in Mr. Williams' " Narrative " — the one 
 from Mr. Marsden's "History of Sumatra," and the 
 other from " Captain (afterwards Admiral) King's 
 Vovao'es alono- the North Coast of Australia" — two 
 rather out-of-the-way books ; but it is remarkable 
 enough that both of these quotations had been 
 previously made in my book. 
 
 For my own part, I have never known so gross 
 an instance of literary piracy as that of Mr. Ellis 
 towards myself in the 29th chapter of Mr. Wil- 
 liams' "Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the 
 South Sea Islands" — a work of which Mr. Ellis, at 
 the time, as Secretary of the London Missionary 
 Society, superintended the publication, if he was 
 not rather the real author. It was not a case of 
 mere ordinary plagiarism : it was robbing me, as 
 far as he could, of the credit of not fewer than 
 three distinct discoveries I had made in the South 
 
THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 325 
 
 Seas— the last of which, that of the way in which 
 the original discovery and progressive settlement 
 of America had been effected through some unfor- 
 tunate Polynesian vessel having been driven off 
 Easter island by some violent gale of westerly 
 wind, and carried across the intervening tract of 
 ocean to the American land — this I regard as one 
 of the greatest literary discoveries of the present 
 age. 
 
 In calliug at the University of Sydney a few 
 weeks since, to borrow one of the immense folio 
 volumes of Lord Kingsborough's "Monuments of 
 Mexico," to get a copy of a drawing of an ancient 
 Mexican temple as a frontispiece for this volume, 
 the Eegistrar of the University observed, in con- 
 versation on my forthcoming volume, that my 
 idea of deriving the Indo-Americans from the 
 South Sea Islands was not an original one, as he 
 had seen it elsewhere repeatedly. It was first 
 announced to the world, however, in my book of 
 1834, in which I not only showed how the Poly- 
 nesians must have crossed the intervening tract of 
 ocean from Easter Island to America, under a 
 
326 OEIGIX AND MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 violent gale of westerly wind, but proved, as I con- 
 ceive, the identity of the Polynesian and Indo- 
 American people. But that book was pirated very 
 shortly thereafter, and I have been unjustly de- 
 prived of the credit and the honour of my disco- 
 very for forty years past. At all events the idea 
 and the discovery it implied were wholly and ex- 
 clusively mine. 
 
 Ever since the publication of my very imperfect 
 work on the subject of this volume in the year 
 1834, I had determined, if Divine Providence 
 should grant me life and health for the purpose, 
 to publish a second edition, as I now do, after the 
 lapse of upwards of forty years, with all the addi- 
 tional evidence I could collect in the interval, to 
 prove my theory that, through one of those acci- 
 dents that have doubtless been of constant occur- 
 rence throughout the vast Pacific Ocean for three 
 or four thousand years past, and that have served 
 from time to time during that long period to 
 people the multitude of the isles, a mere handful 
 of Polynesians — fishing, perhaps, off the coast of 
 Easter Island in the Southern Pacific — had been 
 
,xr 
 
 THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 327 
 
 suddenly caught by a violent gale of westerly wind, 
 and carried across the intervening tract of ocean 
 to the American land, landing somewhere near 
 Copiapo in the state of Chili, in South America ; 
 and that the descendants of these Polynesian un- 
 fortunates, carrying with them the long extinct 
 but comparatively high civilization of the South 
 Sea Islands in long ages past, had, in the course 
 of many succeeding generations, progressively 
 settled the whole of the contine^nt of America 
 from Cape Horn to Labrador. 
 
 As a believer in Divine Eevelation, I hold also 
 that G-od not only made the earth to be inhabited, 
 but that, in order to the fulfilment of that Divine 
 purpose in regard to America, He planted that 
 remote and solitary isle, Pasquas or Easter Island, 
 in the deep sea exactly where it stands for the ex- 
 press purpose of serving as a stepping-stone for 
 people of the Polynesian race to reach America ; 
 and I regard myself highly honoured by Divine 
 Providence in having been selected to solve the 
 great problem that has vainly exercised the 
 ingenuity of the learned of all European nations 
 
32c^ ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS, ETC. 
 
 • 
 
 ever since the days of Columbus, or for upwards 
 of three centuries past, in demonstrating how that 
 continent was originally discovered and settled, 
 and in therefore proving to the satisfaction, I 
 believe, of all intelligent and candid persons that 
 Grod had made of one blood both the Polynesian 
 and Indo-American nations, and that all the efforts 
 of modern scepticism to prove the latter a distinct 
 creation, or the mere result of evolution, are there- 
 fore as silly and futile as they are uncalled for. 
 
 By the same Anthor, 
 
 An Histori(>'al and Statistical Account of New South 
 
 Wales, from the Founding op the Colony 
 
 IN 1788, to the present day. 
 
 Fourth Edition. 
 
 In Two Volumes, 8vo. Price, One Guinea. 
 
 London : Sampson, Low, and Co. 
 1875. 
 
 Gtbbs, SiiAi,i,AKi>, ANP Cu., Ptdnters, Pitt Street, Sydney. 
 
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