"As each nation has its particular symbol, so each tribe has [17] the badge from which it is denominated. The Sachem is a necessary party in conveyances and treaties, to which he affixes the mark of his tribe. If we go from nation to nation among them, we shall not find one, who does not distinguish himself by his respective family. The genealogical names which they a.s.sume, are derived either from the names of those animals whereof the cherubim is said in revelation to be compounded; or from such creatures as are most similar to them.
The Indians bear no religious respect to the animals from which they derive their names; on the contrary they kill them whenever an opportunity serves.
"When we consider that these savages have been upwards of twenty centuries without the aid of letters to carry down their traditions, it can not be reasonably expected, that they should still retain the identical names of their primogenial tribes: their main customs corresponding with those of the Israelites, sufficiently clear the subject. Moreover they call some of their tribes by the names of the cherubinical figures, which were carried on the four princ.i.p.al standards of Israel."
_2nd, Their worship of Jehovah._
"By a strict, permanent, divine precept, the Hebrew nation was ordered to worship at Jerusalem, Jehovah the true and living G.o.d, who by the Indians is styled "_Yohewah_." The seventy-two interpreters have translated this word so as to signify, _Sir_, _Lord_, _Master_, applying to mere earthly potentates, without the least signification or relation to that great and awful name, which describes the divine presence."
_3rd, Their notions of a theocracy._
"Agreeably to the theocracy or divine government of Israel, the Indians think the deity to be the immediate head of the state. All the nations of Indians have a great deal of religious pride, and an inexpressible contempt for the white people. In their war orations they used to call us _the accursed people_, but flatter themselves with the name of the _beloved people_, because their supposed ancestors were, as they affirm, under the immediate government of the Deity, who was present with them in a peculiar manner, and directed them by Prophets, while the rest of the world were aliens to the covenant.[2] When the old Archimagus, or any of their Magi, is [18]
persuading the people at their religious solemnities, to a strict observance of the old _beloved or divine speech_, he always calls them the _beloved or holy people_, agreeably to the Hebrew epithet, _Ammi_, (my people) during the theocracy of Israel. It is this opinion, that G.o.d has chosen them out of the rest of mankind, as his peculiar people, which inspires the white Jew, and the red American, with that steady hatred against all the world except themselves, and renders them hated and despised by all."
_5th, Their language and dialects._
"The Indian language and dialects appear to have the very idiom and genius of the Hebrew. Their words and sentences are expressive, concise, emphatical, sonorous and bold; and often both the letters and signification are synonymous with the Hebrew language." Of these Mr.
Adair cites a number of examples.
_6th, Their manner of counting time._
"The Indians count time after the manner of the Hebrews. They divide the year into spring, summer, autumn and winter. They number their year from any of these four periods, for they have no name for a year; and they subdivide these and count the year by lunar months, like the Israelites who counted time by moons, as their name sufficiently testifies.
"The number and regular periods of the religious feasts among the Indians, is a good historical proof that they counted time by and observed a weekly Sabbath, long after their arrival in America. They began the year at the appearance of the first new moon of the vernal equinox, according to the ecclesiastical year of Moses. "Till the seventy years captivity [19] commenced, the Israelites had only numeral names for their months, except Abib and Ethanim; the former signifying a _green ear of corn_, the latter _robust or valiant_; by the first name the Indians as an explicative, term their pa.s.sover, which the trading people call _the green corn dance_."
_7th, Their prophets or high priests._
"In conformity to, or after the manner of the Jews, the Indians have their prophets, high priests, and others of a religious order. As the Jews have a Sanctum Sanctorum, so have all the Indian nations. There they deposit their consecrated vessels--none of the laity daring to approach that sacred place. The Indian tradition says, that their forefathers were possessed of an extraordinary divine spirit by which they foretold future events; and that this was transmitted to their offspring, provided they obeyed the sacred laws annexed to it.[3] [20]
_Ishtoallo_ is the name of all their priestly order and their pontifical office descends by inheritance to the eldest. There are traces of agreement, though chiefly lost, in their pontifical dress.
Before the Indian Archimagus officiates in making the supposed holy fire for the yearly atonement of sin, the _Sagan_ clothes him with a white ephod, which is a waistcoat without sleeves. In resemblance of the Urim and Thummim the American Archimagus wears a breastplate made of a white conch-sh.e.l.l, with two holes bored in the middle of it, through which he puts the ends of an otter-skin strap; and fastens a buck-horn white b.u.t.ton to the outside of each; as if in imitation of the precious stones of the Urim."
In remarking upon this statement of Mr. Adair, Faber, a learned divine of the church of England, has said, that Ishtoallo (the name according to Adair of the Indian priests) is most probably a corruption of _Ish-da-Eloah_, a man of G.o.d, (the term used by the Shunemitish woman in speaking of Elisha;) and that _Sagan_ is the very name by which the Hebrews called the deputy of the High Priest, who supplied his office and who performed the functions of it in the absence of the high priest, or when any accident had disabled him from officiating in person.
_8th, Their festivals, fasts and religious rites._
"The ceremonies of the Indians in their religious worship,[21] are more after the Mosaic inst.i.tution, than of Pagan imitation. This could not be the fact if a majority of the old nations were of heathenish descent. They are utter strangers to all the gestures practiced by Pagans in their religious rites. They have likewise an appellative, which with them is the mysterious, essential name of G.o.d; the _tetragrammaton_, which they never use in common speech. They are very particular of the time and place, when and where they mention it, and this is always done in a very solemn manner. It is known that the Jews had so great and sacred regard for the four lettered, divine name, as scarcely ever to mention it, except when the High Priest went into the sanctuary for the expiation of sins."
Mr. Adair likewise says that the American Indians, like the Hebrews, have an ark in which are kept various holy vessels, and which is never suffered to rest on the bare ground. "On hilly ground, where stones are plenty, they always place it on them, but on level land it is made to rest on short legs. They have also a faith, in the power and holiness of their ark, as strong as the Israelites had in theirs. It is too sacred and dangerous to be touched by any one, except the chieftain and his waiter. The leader virtually acts the part of a priest of war protempore, in imitation of the Israelites fighting under the divine military banner."
Among their other religious rites the Indians, according to Adair, cut out the sinewy part of the thigh; in commemoration, as he says, of the Angel wrestling with Jacob.
_12th, Their abstinence from unclean things._
"Eagles of every kind are esteemed by the Indians to be unclean food; as also ravens, crows, bats, buzzards and every species of owl. They believe that swallowing gnats, flies and the like, always breed sickness. To this that divine sarcasm alludes "swallowing a camel and straining at a gnat."" Their purifications for their Priests, and for having touched a dead body or other unclean thing, according to Mr.
Adair, are quite Levitical. He acknowledges however, that they have no traces of circ.u.mcision; but he supposes that they lost this rite in their wanderings, as it ceased among the Hebrews, during the forty years in the wilderness.
_15th, Their cities of refuge._
"The Israelites had cities of refuge for those who killed persons unawares. According to the same particular divine [22] law of mercy, each of the Indian nations has a house or town of refuge, which is a sure asylum to protect a man-slayer, or the unfortunate captive, if they can but once enter into it. In almost every nation they have peaceable towns, called ancient holy, or white towns. These seem to have been towns of refuge; for it is not in the memory of man, that ever human blood was shed in them, although they often force persons from thence and put them to death elsewhere."
_16th, Their purifications and ceremonies preparatory._
"Before the Indians go to war they have many preparatory ceremonies of purification and fasting like what is recorded of the Israelites."
_21st, Their raising seed to a deceased brother._
"The surviving brother, by the Mosaic law, was to raise seed to a deceased brother, who left a widow childless. The Indian custom looks the very same way; but in this as in their law of blood, the eldest brother can redeem."
With these and many arguments of a like kind, has Mr. Adair endeavored to support the conjecture, that the American Indians are lineally descended from the Israelites; and gravely asks of those who may dissent from his opinion of their origin and descent, to inform him how they came here, and by what means they formed the long chain of rites and customs so similar to those of the Hebrews, and dissimilar to the rites and customs of the pagan world.
Major Carver, a provincial officer who sojourned some time with the Indians and visited twelve different nations of them, instead of observing the great similarity, mentioned by Adair as existing between the natives and Hebrews, thought he could trace features of resemblance between them and the Chinese and Tartars; and has undertaken to shew how they might have got here. He says,
"Although it is not ascertained certainly, that the continents of Asia and America join each other, yet it is proven that the sea which is supposed to divide them, is full of islands the distance from which to either continent, is comparatively trifling. From these islands a communication with the main land could be more readily effected than from any other point." "It is very evident that the manners and customs of the American Indians, resemble that of the Tartars; and I have no doubt that in some future era, it will be reduced to a certainty that in some of the wars between the Chinese and Tartars, a part [23] of the inhabitants of the northern provinces were driven from their country and took refuge in some of these islands, and from thence found their way to America. At different periods each nation might prove victorious, and the conquered by turns fly before the conquerors; and hence might arise the similitude of the Indians to all these people, and that animosity which exists among so many of their tribes."
After remarking on the similarity which exists between the Chinese and Indians, in the singular custom of shaving or plucking out the hair leaving only a small spot on the crown of the head; and the resemblance in sound and signification which many of the Chinese and Indian words bear to each other, he proceeds, "After the most critical inquiry and mature deliberation, I am of opinion that America received its first inhabitants from the northeast, by way of the islands mentioned as lying between Asia and America. This might have been effected at different times and from different parts: from Tartary, China, j.a.pan or Kamschatka, the inhabitants of these countries resembling each other, in color, feature and shape."
Other writers on this subject, coinciding in opinion with Carver, mention a tradition which the Indians in Canada have, that foreign merchants clothed in silk formerly visited them in great ships: these are supposed to have been Chinese, the ruins of Chinese ships having been found on the American coast. The names of many of the American kings, are said to be Tartar; and Tartarax, who reigned formerly in Quivira, means the Tartar. Manew, the founder of the Peruvian empire, most probably came from the Manchew Tartars. Montezuma, the t.i.tle of the emperors of Mexico, is of j.a.panese extraction; for according to some authors it is likewise the appellation of the j.a.panese Monarch.
The plant Ginseng, since found in America, where the natives termed it Garentoguen, a word of the same import in their language, with Ginseng in the Tartar, both meaning THE THIGHS OF A MAN.
Dr. Robertson is decidedly of opinion, that the different tribes of American Indians, excepting the Esquimaux, are of Asiatic extraction.
He refers to a tradition among the Mexicans of the migration of their ancestors from a remote country, situated to the north-west of Mexico, and says they point out their various stations as they advanced into the interior provinces, which is precisely the route they must have held, if they had been emigrants from Asia.
Mr. Jefferson, in his notes on Virginia, says, that the pa.s.sage from Europe to America was always practicable, even to the imperfect [24]
navigation of the ancient times; and that, from recent discoveries, it is proven, that if Asia and America be separated at all it is only by a narrow streight. "Judging from the resemblance between the Indians of America and the eastern inhabitants of Asia, we should say that the former are descendants of the latter, or the latter of the former, except indeed the Esquimaux, who, from the same circ.u.mstance of resemblance, and from ident.i.ty of language, must be derived from the Greenlanders. A knowledge of their several languages would be the most certain evidence of their derivation which could be produced. In fact it is the best proof of the affinity of nations, which ever can be referred to."
After regretting that so many of the Indian tribes have been suffered to perish, without our having collected and preserved the general rudiments of their language, he proceeds,
"Imperfect as is our knowledge of the tongues spoken in America, it suffices to discover the following remarkable fact. Arranging them under the radical ones to which they may be palpably traced, and doing the same by those of the red men of Asia, there will be found probably twenty in America, for one in Asia, of those radical languages; so called because if ever they were the same, they have lost all resemblance to one another. A separation into dialects may be the work of a few ages only, but for two dialects to recede from one another, "till they have lost all vestiges of their common origin, must require an immense course of time; perhaps not less than many people give to the age of the earth. A greater number of those radical changes of language having taken place among the red men of America proves them of greater antiquity than those of Asia."
Indian traditions say, that "in ancient days the Great Island appeared upon the big waters, the earth brought forth trees, herbs and fruits: that there were in the world a good and a bad spirit, the good spirit formed creeks and rivers on the great island, and created numerous species of animals to inhabit the forests, and fishes of all kinds to inhabit the water. He also made two beings to whom he gave living souls and named them Ea-gwe-howe, (real people). Subsequently some of the people became giants and committed outrages upon the others. After many years a body of Ea-gwe-howe people encamped on the bank of a majestic stream, which they named, Kanawaga (St. Lawrence.) After a long time a number of foreign people sailed from a part unknown, but unfortunately the winds drove them off and they ultimately landed on the southern part of the great island and many of the crew perished.
Those who survived, selected a place for residence, erected fortifications, became a numerous people and extended their settlements."[4]
Thus various and discordant are the conjectures respecting the manner in which this continent was first peopled. Although some [25] of them appear more rational and others, yet are they at best but hypothetical disquisitions on a subject which will not now admit of certainty. All agree that America was inhabited long anterior to its discovery by Columbus, and by a race of human beings, who, however numerous they once were, are fast hastening to extinction; some centuries hence and they will be no more known. The few memorials, which the ravages of time have suffered to remain of them, in those portions of the country from which they have been long expelled; have destruction dealt them by the ruthless hand of man. History may transmit to after ages, the fact that they once were, and give their "local habitation and their name." These will probably be received as the tales of fiction, and posterity be at as much loss to determine, whether they ever had an existence, as we now are to say from whence they sprang.
"I have stood upon Achilles" tomb And heard Troy doubted. Time will doubt of Rome."
----- [1] "If a learned man of Tobolski or Pekin were to read some of our books, be might in this way demonstrate, that the French are descended from the Trojans. The most ancient writings, he might say, and those in most esteem in France, are romances: these were written in a pure language, derived from the ancient Romans, who were famous for never advancing a falsehood. Now upwards of twenty of these authentic books, affirm that Francis, the founder of the monarchy of the Franks, was son to Hector. The name of Hector has ever since been preserved by this nation; and even in the present century one of the greatest generals was called Hector de Villars.
"The neighboring nations (he would continue,) are so unanimous in acknowledging this truth, that Ariosto, one of the most learned of the Italians, owns in his Orlando, that Charlemagne"s knights fought for Hector"s helmet. Lastly, there is one proof which admits of no reply; namely, that the ancient Franks to perpetuate the memory of the Trojans, their ancestors, built a new city called Troye, in the province of Champagne; and these modern Trojans have always retained so strong an aversion to their enemies, the Greeks, that there is not at present four persons in the whole province of Champagne, who will learn their language; nay, they would never admit any Jesuits among them; probably because they had heard it said, that some of that body used formerly to explain Homer in their public schools."
Proceeding in this manner, M. de Voltaire shows how easily this hypothesis might be overturned; and while one might thus demonstrate that the Parisians are descended from the Greeks, other profound antiquarians might in like manner prove them to be of Egyptian, or even of Arabian extraction; and although the learned world might much puzzle themselves to decide the question, yet would it remain undecided and in uncertainty.--_Preface to the Life of Peter the Great._
[2] In a small work ent.i.tled "Ancient History of the Six Nations," written by David Cusick, an educated Indian of the Tuscarora village, frequent mention is made of the actual presence among them, of Tarenyawagua, or Holder of the Heavens, who guided and directed them when present, and left rules for their government, during his absence. Several miracles performed by him are particularly mentioned. It likewise speaks of the occasional visits of Angels or "agents of the Superior power" as they are called by Cusick; and tells of a visitor who came among the Tuscaroras long anterior to the discovery of America by Columbus. "He appeared to be a very old man, taught them many things, and informed them that the people beyond the great water had killed their Maker, but that he rose again. The old man died among them and they buried him--soon after some person went to the grave and found that he had risen; he was never heard of afterwards."
[3] In confirmation of this tradition among the Indians, the following somewhat singular circ.u.mstance related by Mr. Carver, may with propriety be adduced:
While at Grand Portage, from the number of those who were there and the fact that the traders did not arrive as soon as was expected, there was a great scarcity of provisions, and much consequent anxiety as to the period of their arrival. One day, Mr. Carver says, that while expressing their wishes for the event, and looking anxiously to ascertain if they could be seen on the Lake, the chief Priest of the Kilistines told them that he would endeavor in a conference with the Great Spirit, to learn at what time the traders would arrive: and the following evening was fixed upon for the spiritual conference.
When every preparation had been made, the king conducted Mr.
Carver to a s.p.a.cious tent, the covering of which was so drawn up as to render visible to those without, every thing which pa.s.sed within. Mr. Carver being seated beside the king within the tent, observed in the centre a place of an oblong shape, composed of stakes stuck at intervals in the ground, forming something like a coffin, and large enough to contain the body of a man. The sticks were far enough from each other to admit a distinct view by the spectators, of what ever pa.s.sed within them; while the tent was perfectly illuminated.