Diary in America, Series Two

Menassah Ten Israel declares, that the Indians of Mexico had a tradition, that their magnificent place of worship had been built by a people who wore their beards, and were more ancient than their Incas. In the Universal History of 1748, it is affirmed, that the Mexicans and other American Indians rend their garments, in order the more effectually to express grief—the Hebrew custom at this day.

Lopez de Gomara states, that the Mexicans offer sacrifices of the first-fruits, and, when Cortez approached Mexico, Montezuma shut himself up for the space of eight days in fasting and prayer. Emanuel de Moreas and Acosta say, that the Brazilians marry in their own tribes and families; and Escorbatus affirms, that he frequently heard the southern tribes repeat the sacred notes Ha-le-lu-yah. Malvenda states, that several tomb-stones were found in St. Michael’s, with ancient Hebrew characters.

When the Spaniards invaded Mexico, the Cholula was considered a holy city by the natives, with magnificent temples, in which the High Priest Quetza-colt preached to man, and would permit no other offerings to the Master of Life than the first-fruits of the harvest. “We know by our traditions,” said the venerable Prince Montezuma to the Spanish General Cortez, “that we who inhabit this country are not the natives but strangers who come from a great distance.”

Don Alonzo Erecella, in his history of Chili, says, the Araucanians acknowledge one Supreme Being, and believe in the immortality of the soul; and the Abbé Clavigero declares, that they have a tradition of the great deluge. The laws and ceremonies of the Peruvians and Mexicans have, no doubt, been corrupted in the course of many ages, both in their sacrifices and worship.

Their great and magnificent temple, evidently in imitation of that erected by Solomon, was founded by Mango Capac, or rather by the Inca Vupanque, who endowed it with great wealth. Clavagero and De Vega, in their very interesting account of this temple say, “what we called the altar was on the east side of the temple. There were many doors to the temple, all of which were plated with gold, and the four walls the whole way round were crowned with a rich golden garland, more than an ell in width. Round the temple were five square pavilions, whose tops were in the form of pyramids. The fifth was lined entirely with gold, and was for the use of the Royal High-Priest of sacrifices, and in which all the deliberations concerning the temple were held. Some of the doors led to the schools where the Incas listen to the debates of the philosophers, sometimes themselves explaining the laws and ordinances.”

Mexico and Central America abound in curiosities, exemplifying the fact of the Asiatic origin of the inhabitants; and it is not many years ago, that the ruins of a whole city, with a wall nearly seven miles in circumference, with castles, palaces, and temples, evidently of Hebrew or Phoenician architecture, was found on the river Palenque. The thirty-fifth number of the Foreign Quarterly Review contains an interesting account of those antiquities.

The ruins of this city of Guatemala, in Central America, as described by Del Rio in 1782, when taken in conjunction with the extraordinary, I may say, wonderful antiquities spread over the entire surface of that country, awaken recollections in the specimens of architecture which carry us back to the early pages of history, and prove beyond the shadow of doubt, that we who imagined ourselves to be the natives of a new world, but recently discovered, inhabit a continent which rivalled the splendour of Egypt and Syria, and was peopled by a powerful and highly cultivated nation from the old world. When we speak of what is called Mexican antiquities, we must not confound the rude labours of modern times, with the splendid perfections which distinguished the efforts of those who reared the Egyptian pyramids, and built the temples of Thebes and Memphis. It is not Mexican antiquities, but the antiquities of Tultecan; and in addition to the ruins of Palenque, on this our continent, there are pyramids larger than those of Sachara in Egypt, at Cholula, Otamba, Paxaca, Mitlan, Tlascola, and on the mountains of Tescoca, together with hieroglyphics, planispheres and zodiacs, a symbolic and Photenic alphabet; papyrus, metopes, triglyphs, and temples and buildings of immense grandeur; military roads, aqueducts, viaducts, posting stations and distances; bridges of great grandeur and massive character, all presenting the most positive evidences of the existence of a powerful enterprising nation, which must have flourished two thousand years before the Spanish conquest. Take, for example, the description of the temple at Palenque, which Lord Kingsborough, in his travels, not only declares was built by the Jews, and is a copy of Solomon’s temple, but which, no doubt, is precisely the model of the temple described by Ezekiel. Travellers speak of it in the following terms:

“It may be appropriately called an ecclesiastical city, rather than a temple. Within its vast precincts there appear to be contained (as indeed was, in some measure, the case with the area that embraced the various buildings of Solomon’s temple) a pyramidal tower, various sanctuaries, sepulchres; a small and a large quadrangular court, one surrounded, as we have said, by cloisters; subterranean initiatory galleries beneath; oracles, courts of justice, high places, and cells or dwellings for the various orders of priests. The whole combination of the buildings is encircled by a quadrilateral pilastered portico, embracing a quadrangular area, and resting on a terraced platform. This platform exhibits the same architectural model, which we have described as characterising the single temples. It is composed of three graduated stuccoed terraces, sloping inwards, at an angle of about seventy degrees, in the form of a truncated pyramid. Four central staircases (one facing each of the cardinal points) ascend these terraces in the middle of each lateral façade of the quadrangle; and four gates fronting the same cardinal points, conduct from the top of each staircase into the body of the building, or into the great court. The great entrance, through a pilastered gateway, fronts the east, and descends by a second flight of steps into the cloistered court. On the various pilasters of the upper terrace are the metopes, with singular sculptures. On descending the second staircase into the cloistered court, on one side, appears the triple pyramidal tower, which may be inferred, from the curious distribution of little cells which surround the central room of each story, to have been employed as a place of royal or private sepulture. It would be pronounced a striking and tasteful structure, according to any architectural rule. On another side of the same cloistered court is the detached temple of the chief god, to whom the whole religious building appears to have been devoted, who appears to have been the great and only god of the nations who worshipped in this temple. Beneath the cloisters, entered by staircases from above, are what we believe to be the initiatory galleries. These opened into rooms, one of which has a stone couch in it, and others are distinguished by unintelligible apparatus carved in stone. The only symbol described as found within these sacred haunts is, however, perfectly Asiatic, and perfectly intelligible; we mean two contending serpents. The remnant of an sitar, or high place, occupies the centre of the cloistered quadrangle. The rest of the edifice is taken up with courts, palaces, detached temples, open divans, baths, and streets of priestly cells, or houses, in a greater or less degree of dilapidation.”

…

“It is perfectly clear, from the few records of their religious rites which have come down to us, and which are principally derived from the extraordinary rolls of American papyrus, (formed of prepared fibres of the Maguery) on which their beautiful hieroglyphical system is preserved (there is one of considerable extent in the Dresden Museum), that they were as simple, perhaps we may add with propriety, as innocent. Not only does it appear that they had no human sacrifices, but no animal sacrifices. Flowers and fruits were the only offerings made to the presiding divinity of their temples.”

But who were the Tultequans and Azeteques, the founders of this empire in America; who built the pyramids of Cholula and city of Palenque? Not the Jews.

Here we have a most singular diversion from the path on which we originally set out—another extraordinary discovery, marked, too, by events no less extraordinary than amazing.

They were the Canaanites, the scriptural Titans, who, according to the sacred historian, built with walls and towers reaching to the heavens. The builders of the Tower of Babel, the family of the shepherd kings who conquered Egypt, and built the pyramids, and were driven from Syria by Joshua. The men who finally founded Tyre and Carthage, navigated round the continent of Africa, and sailed in their small craft across the Atlantic, and landed in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Phoenicians were the founders of Palenque, Mitlan, Papantla. Quemada, Cholula, Chila, and Antiquerra.

When I studied the history of these people, on the ruins of Carthage, it was said by antiquarians present, that the Carthaginians had a colony at a considerable distance, which they secretly maintained; and when I was at Tangiers, the Mauritania Tangitania of the ancients, I was shown the spot where the pillar was erected, and was standing at the time of Ibnu, the Moorish historian, on which was inscribed, in the Phoenician language, “We are the Canaanites who fled from Joshua, the son of Nun, that notorious robber.” From that spot, then … the pillars of Hercules, now known as the Straits of Gibraltar, they crossed to our continent, and founded a great empire of the Ophite worship, with Syrian and Egyptian symbols. Now, mark the issue. Fifteen hundred years after the expulsion of the Canaanites by Joshua, the ten tribes pass over the Straits of Behring to the continent of America, and poured down upon these people like the Goths and Vandals. The descendants of Joshua a second time fell on the Canaanites on another continent, knowing them well as such, and burn their temples, and destroy their gigantic towers and cities.

When Columbus discovered America, he found an innocent people in a demi-savage state, with Jewish traditions, and the only reference to early times was a vague impression that the ruins they saw were built by giants, and a people called wandering masons.

I have the most settled conviction of this theory. The magnificent ruins which are to be seen at this day in Mexico and Central America, were the works of the Phoenicians, and the irruption of the wandering tribes from the north-west coast of America swept that nation away, and have ever since maintained possession of this country, until white men have thinned their ranks, and gradually encroached upon, and usurped a great part of their territory.

The only opposition made to the general declaration of travellers, that the Indians are of Jewish descent, is, that they are red men, and are beardless. Now, take the olive complexion of the Jews in Syria, pass the nation over the Euphrates into a warmer climate, let them mingle with Tartars and Chinese, and after several generations reach this continent, their complexion would undergo some shades of hue and colour; and as to beards, they cannot grow while they are continually plucked, as is the Indian custom. The colour proves nothing against their origin. Take our fellow-citizens on our eastern borders, and compare their florid colour with the sickly hue and sallow complexions of those living on the southern shores, in the palmettoes and everglades, and we shall see a marked distinction, and yet they are members of the same family.

Du Pratz, speaking of the traditions of the Natches tribe, relates that in answer to the question, “Whence come you?” their reply was, “All that we know is that our fathers, to come hither, followed the sun, and came from the place where he rises. They were long in their journey; they were nearly perishing; and were brought to this wilderness of the sun setting without seeking it.” Souard says of the Indians of Surinam, on the authority of Nasci, a learned Jew residing there, that the dialect of those Indians common in Guinana is soft, agreeable, and regular, and their substantives are Hebrew. “Their language, in the roots, idioms, and particular construction, has the genius of the Hebrew language, as their orations have the bold, laconic, and figurative style of the Hebrew prophets.”

The Reverend Mr Chapman says of the Osages, “it is their universal practice to salute the dawn of every morning with their devotion.” A custom always prevailing among pious Jews.

Malvenda and Acosta both affirm, that the natives had a tradition of a jubilee, according to the jubilee of Israel.

Dr Beatty, in speaking of the festival of the first-fruits by the Indians west of the Ohio, says, “at this ceremony twelve of their old men divide a deer into twelve parts, and these men hold up the venison and fruits with their faces to the east, acknowledging the bounty of God to them. A singular and close imitation of the ceremonies and sacrifices of the temple.” The doctor further says, “they have another feast which looks like the Passover.”

Sir Alexander Mackenzie, in his tour to the north-west coast, says, that “the Chepewyan Indians have a tradition among them, that they originally came from another country, inhabited by very wicked people, and had traversed a great lake which was in one place narrow and shallow, and full of islands, where they had suffered great misery; and a further tradition has it that nine parts of their nation out of ten passed over the river. The Mexicans affirm, that seven tribes or houses passed from the east to the wilderness.”

Beltrami says, that the skeletons of the mammoths found in Kentucky and Missouri, and other parts of America, have been ascertained to resemble precisely those which have been found in Siberia and the eastern part of Asia, showing the facility of communication between the two coasts. And here it may be well to state a fact, which is strongly corroborative of the view we have taken, not only of the possibility of passing from one continent to the other, but of the actual and probably constant communication between them. Charlevoix, says, he knew a Catholic priest, called Father Grilion, in Canada, who was recalled to Paris after his mission had been ended, and who was subsequently appointed to a similar mission in China. One day in Tartary, he suddenly encountered a Huron woman with whom he had been well acquainted in Canada, and who informed him that she had been captured, and passed from nation to nation, until she reached the north-west coast, when she crossed into Tartary.

Since delivering the present lecture, I have received a letter from Mr Catlin, the celebrated painter, who for the last five years has been residing among the Indians. Mr Catlin says:

“The first thing that strikes the traveller in an Indian country as evidence of their being of Jewish origin, (and it is certainly a very forcible one,) is the striking resemblance which they generally bear in contour, and expression of head, to those people. In their modes and customs, there are many striking resemblances, and perhaps as proof, they go much further than mere personal resemblance. Amongst those customs, I shall mention several that have attracted my attention, though probably they have never before been used for the same purpose; and others I may name, which are familiar to you, and which it may not be amiss to mention, as I have seen them practised while in their country.

“The universal custom among them of burying their dead with feet to the east, I could conceive to have no other meaning or object than a journey to the east after death—like the Jews who expected to travel under ground after death to the land of Canaan. On inquiry, I found that though they were all going towards the ‘setting sun,’ during their life-times, they expected to travel to the east after death.

“Amongst the tribes, the women are not allowed to enter the medicine lodge; as they were not allowed in Judea to enter the court of Israel. Like the Jewish custom also, they are not allowed to mingle in worship with the men; and at meals, are always separated.

“In their modes, fastings, feastings, or sacrifices, they have also a most striking resemblance. Amongst all the western tribes, who have not been persuaded from those forms by white men, they are still found scrupulously and religiously adhering to, and practising them to the letter. The very many times and modes of sacrificing, remind us forcibly of the customs of the Israelites; and the one in particular, which has been seen amongst several of the tribes, though I did not witness it myself, wherein, like the manner of the ‘peace-offering,’ the firstling and that of the male is offered, and ‘no bone is to be broken.’ Such circumstances afford the strongest kind of proofs. All the tribes have a great feast at the dawn of spring, and at those feasts their various sacrifices are made. At the approach of the season of green corn, a feast of the first ears are sacrificed with great solemnity, followed by feasting and dancing: so at the ripening of different kinds of fruit. The first and best piece that is cut from a buffalo is always Deo Dante.

“Over the medicine lodge, and also over the lodges of the most distinguished chiefs, are hung on high poles large quantities of fine cloth, white buffalo robes, or other most costly articles which can be procured, there to decay, an offering to the Great Spirit.

“The bunch of willow boughs with which each dancer is supplied, in the Mandan religious ceremonies, the sacrificing and other forms therein observed, certainly render it somewhat analogous to the Israelitish feast of tabernacles.

“The universal practice of ‘solus cam solo’ of the women, ablution and anointing with bear’s grease, is strikingly similar to the Jewish custom. Every family has a small lodge expressly for this purpose, and when any one of the family are ready for it, it is erected within a few rods, and meat is carried to her, where she dwells, and cooks and eats by herself, an object of superstitious dread to every person in the village.

“The absence of every species of idolatry amongst the North American Indians, affords also a striking proof of the ceremonial law, and stamps them at once, in one respect, at all events, differing from all other savage tribes of which we have any knowledge.”

What are, I may ask, the characters of these people? On the discovery of America by Columbus, nearly 2,000 years after the dispersion of the Hebrew tribes, the whole continent is found peopled, not with a race of wild men, of cannibals, of savages, but with a race of intellectual, moral, innocent persons, divided into many hundred nations, and spread over 8,000 miles of territory. “I swear to your majesties,” said Columbus, writing to Ferdinand and Isabella, “that there is not a better people in the world than these; more affectionate or mild. They love their neighbours as themselves; their language is the sweetest, the softest and the most cheerful, for they always speak smilingly.” Major Long says, “they are the genuine sons of nature; they have all the virtues nature can give, without the vices of civilisation. They are artless, fearless, and live in constant exercise of moral and Christian virtues, though they know it not.”

Charlevoix gives his testimony in their behalf. “They manifest,” says he, “much stability in their engagements, patience in affliction, and submissive acquiescence in what they apprehend the will of Providence. In all this they display a nobleness of soul and constancy of mind, at which we rarely arrive, with all our philosophy and religion.”

Du Pratz contends that they have a greater degree of prudence, faithfulness, and generosity than those who would be offended with a comparison with them. “No people,” says he, “are more hospitable and free.”

Bartram, who lived many years in the Creek nation, says, “Joy, contentment, love and friendship without guile or affectation, seem inherent in them, or predominant in their vital principle, for it leaves them but with their breath. They are,” says he, “just, honest, liberal and hospitable to strangers considerate and affectionate to their wives, children, and relations; frugal and persevering, charitable and forbearing.”

Who are they? Men do not grow up like stones or trees or rocks; they are not found in herds like wild animals. God, that made man in his own image, gave to the Indians an origin and parentage, like unto the rest of the great family of mankind, the work of his own almighty hand. From whom, then, did our red brethren, the rightful owners of this continent, descend?

There seems to be no difference of opinion that they are of Asiatic origin, and not indigenous to our soil. Nearly all writers and historians concur on this point—they are Asiatic—they crossed to the continent of America from Asia; but who are they, and from whom have they descended?

Eldad, who wrote learnedly of the twelve tribes, in 1300, contends, that the tribe of Dan went into Ethiopia, and pretends that the tribes of Naphtali, Gad, and Asher, followed. That they had a king of their own, and could muster 120,000 horse and 100,000 foot. In relation to part of these three tribes, there might have been some truth in it, for Tigleth Pelieser did compel them to go into Ethiopia. Issachar, he contends, remained with the Medes and Persians. Zebulon extended from the mountains of Pharan to the Euphrates. Reuben dwelt behind Pharan, and spoke Arabic. Ephraim and half Manasseh were thrown on the southern coast. Benjamin of Tudela places Dan, Asher, Naphtali, and Zebulon on the banks of the river Gozan. In the midst of all these contradictory and vague statements, two opinions prevail among Jews and Christians, in early and late periods. One is, that the ten tribes went into Tartary, where they remained; the other, that from Tartary they penetrated into America.

Manasseh Ten Israel, the most learned of the nation, declares that they passed into America. Lescarbot believes that the Indians are the posterity of Ham, expelled by Joshua, and who passed out of the Mediterranean, and were driven by storms to the American coast. Grotius contends, that the inhabitants of the new world were originally from Greenland; and while Basnage frankly admits, that manifest tracts of Judaism are to be found in America, he contends, that the tribes could not have overcome the warlike Scythians and penetrated to this continent, and that they remained in Halak and Heber, and in the cities of the Medes.

Truth, no doubt, lies between these opinions. Many of the tribes passed into Egypt and Ethiopia, many remained in Persia and Tartary; all did not make for the north-west coast, nor was it necessary that all should do so. There were degrees of piety and condition then as now. Restore Jerusalem tomorrow, and all the Jews will not return there. Rabbi Akiba contends, that all the noble families remained in Persia. A number, a considerable number, no doubt, impressed with a solemn belief that if they remained in Persia they would in time become idolators, and lose all the landmarks of their ancient faith, resolved, like those who went out of Egypt, to remain no longer in bondage, and, as Esdrass says, they departed for a country “wherein mankind never before had dwelt”—and the resolution was perfectly feasible. It was a thickly populated country, and by keeping on the borders of China, they would, within the time prescribed, namely, eighteen months, have reached our continent. At this day there is a constant intercourse between the continents, and a trip to the Rocky Mountains, once so terrifying, is now a mere summer’s journey.

If the Indians of America are not the descendants of the missing tribes, again I ask, from whom are they descended? From the Egyptians? Wherein, in their belief, is there the least resemblance to the worship of Isis and Osiris, or the Hieroglyphics or historical reminiscences of that very ancient people? Are they a part of the fierce Scythians? Their warlike propensities would prove them to be so; but where among those barbarians do we discover the belief in one Great Spirit, together with the softer virtues, the purity and talents of the Indians? Are they of the Tartar race? Their complexion, “the shadowed livery of the burning sun,” might be offered in evidence; they have not the flat head, the angular and twinkling eye, nor the diminutive figure of the Chinese or Tartars.