Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844

Since, however, the first pages of this article were written, a discovery has been announced connected with the physiology of the American aborigenes, which, if subsequently verified, will be of much importance, both as to the anthropological classification of the Americans, and as to the natural history of man generally. In a letter addressed to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and republished in the Philosophical Magazine for July last, is an account of the researches of Dr Lund, who has been for some time engaged in geological investigation in Minas Geraes, a province of Brazil. While examining the caverns of calcareous rocks, he has found in one of them, mixed with the bones of extinct races of animals, human bones, having all the character of fossils; they are stated to be in part petrified, and in part penetrated with iron particles, which gave to them a metallic lustre resembling bronze; they were of extraordinary weight; the crania presented the narrow forehead, prominent zygomatic bones, the facial angle, the maxillary and orbital conformation of the American race. The depression of the forehead in many instances is said to amount to a total disappearance. With the bones was found a smooth stone, about ten inches in circumference, apparently intended to bruise seeds or hard substances. In other caverns were found human bones, but unaccompanied with those of other animals. These facts, if confirmed, will furnish us with most important evidence as to the past state of the Americans, and the ancient history and physiology of the human race; but the novelty of the results, and the recent date of the communication, induce us to abstain from hasty comment.

The general physiological comparison of human races, the similarity of periodic changes, and the average duration of life, are points upon which we can very briefly touch. Dr Prichard considers the different ages at which women are said to be marriageable in different climates to be very much exaggerated. He states his reasons, which do not appear to us to be very conclusive. The exceptional cases from the normal physiology would be more interesting, had we space for them, than the analogies, for which probably all our readers would be prepared. Thus, among the most curious national anomalies   are the Quichuas and Aymaras, who, from the constant habit of breathing an attenuated atmosphere, have their chests enormously expanded; the Mandans, who, without any apparent cause, have the hair grizzled or grey in youth. Among the instances of individual peculiarity, no one is more extraordinary than the horned man, whose entire person was covered with a rugged bark, or hide, having bristles here and there, which hide he was said to shed annually; and this peculiar form of monstrosity appears to have been capable of hereditary transmission, as he had six children with a similar covering. How he procured a wife to bear these children to him does not appear. The children were, it is to be presumed, not equally successful, as the breed of these human rhinoceri has become extinct. Some curious instances of longevity are collected. Of 15 negroes, the names and residences of whom are given, the average age is 135 years; from European nations, there are 1310 recorded instances of persons aged from 100 to 110, and 3 from 180 to 190. We do no more than briefly notice these exceptions, as we are anxious to devote our small remaining space to what will by many be considered the most interesting portions of the book, viz. the author’s psychological view of the different races of mankind, or the comparison of their different mental faculties.

“Though inhabiting, from immemorial times, regions in juxtaposition, and almost contiguous to each other, no two races of men can be more strongly contrasted than were the ancient Egyptian and Syro-Arabian races; one nation, full of energy, of restless activity, changing many times their manner of existence—sometimes nomadic, feeding their flocks in desert places—now settled, and cultivating the earth, and filling their land with populous villages, and towns, and fenced cities—then spreading themselves, impelled by the love of glory and zeal of proselytism, over distant countries; the other, reposing ever in luxurious ease and wealth on the rich soil, watered by their slimy river, never quitting it for a foreign clime or displaying, unless forced, the least change in their position or habits of life. The intellectual character, the metaphysical belief, and the religious sentiments and practices of the two nations were equally diverse; one adoring an invisible and eternal spirit, at whose almighty word the universe started into existence, and ‘the morning stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted for joy;’ the other adorning splendid temples with costly magnificence, in which, with mysterious and grotesque rites, they paid a strange and portentous worship to some foul and grovelling object—a snake, a tortoise, a crocodile, or an ape. The destiny of the two races has been equally different: both may be said still to exist; one in their living representatives, their ever-roving, energetic descendants; the other reposing in their own land—a vast sepulchre, where the successive generations of thirty centuries, all embalmed, men, women, and children, with their domestic animals, lie beneath their dry preserving soil, expecting vainly the summons to judgment—the fated time for which is to some of them long past—before the tribunal of Sarapis, or in the hall of Osymandyas.”

We are far from agreeing with this estimate of the ancient Egyptians. Their progress in mechanical arts, their hieroglyphical literature, and even their theology, with its mystic trine, marked them as a people far surpassing their contemporaries; and they were not the less great because their greatness is now extinct. The Arian21 tribes, though unskilled in many of the most useful arts of life, yet had—

“National poetry, and a culture of language and thought, altogether surprising when compared with their external condition and habits. They had bards or scalds, vates, who were supposed, under divine impulse, to celebrate the history of ancient times, and connect them with revelations of the future, and with a refined and metaphysical system of dogmas, which were handed down from age to age, and from one tribe to another, as the primeval creed and possession of the enlightened race. Among them in the West, as   well as in the remote East, the doctrine of metempsychosis held a conspicuous place, implying belief in an after state of rewards and punishment, and a moral government of the world. With it was connected the notion that the material universe had undergone, and was destined to undergo, a repetition of catastrophes by fire and water; and after each destruction, to be renewed in fresh beauty, when a golden age was again to commence, destined in a fated time to corruption and decay. The emanation of all beings from the soul of the universe, and their refusion in it, which were tenets closely connected with this system of dogmas, border on a species of Pantheism, and are liable to all the difficulties attendant upon that doctrine.

“Among most of the Indo-European nations, the conservation of religious dogmas, patriarchal tradition, and national poetry, was confided, not to accidental reminiscences and popular recitations, but to a distinct order of persons, who were venerated as mediators between the invisible powers and their fellow mortals, as the depositories of sacred lore, and interpreters of the will of the gods, expressed of old to the first men, and handed down, either orally in divine poems, or preserved in a sacred literature, known only to the initiated. In most instances they were an hereditary caste, Druids, Brahmans, or Magi.

“Among the Allophylian nations, on the other hand a rude and sensual superstition prevailed, which ascribed life and mysterious powers to the inanimate objects. The religion of fetisses, of charms, and spells and talismans, was in the hands not of a learned caste, the twice-born sons of Brama, but of shamans or sorcerers, who, by feigning swoons and convulsions, by horrible cries and yells, by cutting themselves with knives, by whirling and contortions, assumed the appearance of something preternatural and portentous, and impressed the multitude with the belief that they were possessed by demons. Of this latter description were the wizards of the Finns and Lappes, the angekoks of the Esquimaux; and such are the shamans of all the countries in Northern Asia, where neither Buddhism nor Islamism has yet penetrated.”

Of the American nations, the prevailing opinion, according to Loskiel, is—

“‘That there is one God, or, as they call him, one Great and Good Spirit.’ It seems, from the testimony of this writer, which is supported by the evidence of all those who have conversed with the aboriginal nations of North America, that the conceptions of these nations respecting the Deity are much more complete and philosophical than those of the most savage people in the Old Continent. They suppose him literally to be the creator of heaven and earth, of men and all other creatures; they represent him as almighty, and able to do as much good as he pleases; ‘nor do they doubt that he is kindly disposed towards men, because he imparts power to plants to grow, causes rain and sunshine, and gives fish and venison to man for his support;’ these gifts, however, to the Indians exclusively. ‘They are convinced that God requires of them to do good, and to eschew evil.’ We may observe that, in these particulars, the Americans resemble the Northern Asiatics. We are assured by the late traveller, M. Erman, on the authority of the metropolitan Philophei, who lived among the Ostiaks on the Oby, that these people had, before Christian missionaries ever came among them, a belief in the existence of a Supreme Deity, of whose nature they had pure and exalted ideas, and to whom they affirmed that they never made offerings, nor had they represented his form; while to inferior gods, and particularly to Oertidk, who was a sort of mediator, and whose name, as it was preserved among the Magyars, Oerdig, was used by the monks as a designator for the devil, they made divers gifts; they performed before his image dances, which Erman, who visited the Kolushians on the Sitcka, declares to be precisely similar to the war-dances of those Americans. Some of the American people make images of the Manittos.

“Besides the Supreme Deity, the American nations believe in a number of inferior spirits, whom the Delaware Indians term Manittos; they are both good and evil. ‘From the accounts of the oldest Indians,’ says Loskiel, ‘it appears that when war was in contemplation, they used to admonish each other to hearken to the good, and not to evil spirits—the former always recommending peace.’ They had formerly no notion of a devil, or evil being, in the Christian or Eastern sense of the term, but readily adopted, according to Loskiel, such a belief from the white people. They have among them preachers, who   pretend to have received revelations, and who dispute and teach different opinions. Some pretend to have travelled near to the dwelling of God, or near enough to hear the cocks crow, and see the smoke of the chimneys in heaven; others declare that no one ever knew the dwelling-place of God, but that the abode of the Good Spirit is above the blue sky, and that the road to it is the milky way—a notion, by the way, which Beausobre and others have traced in the remains of the Manicheans, and other Eastern philosophers. The Americans believe in the existence of souls distinct from bodies, and many of them in the transmigration of souls. According to Loskiel, they declare, ‘that Indians cannot die eternally; for even Indian corn is vivified, and rises again.’ The general opinion among them is, that the souls of the good alone go to a place abounding in all earthly pleasures, while the wicked wander about dejected and melancholy. Like other nations, they had sacrifices. ‘Sacrifices,’ says Loskiel, ‘made with a view to pacify God and the subordinate deities, are of a very ancient date among them, and considered in so sacred a light, that unless they are performed in a time and manner acceptable, illness, misfortune, and death would befall them and their families.’ They offer on these occasions hares, bear’s flesh, and Indian corn. Many nations have, besides other stated times of sacrifice, one principal festival in two years, when they sacrifice an animal, and make a point of eating the whole.

“A small quantity of melted fat is poured by the oldest men into the fire, and in this the main part of the offering consists. The offerings are made to Manittos. The Manittos are precisely the Fetisses of the African nations, and of the Northern Asiatics. They are tutelary beings, often in visible forms. Every Indian has a guardian Manitto; one has the sun for his Manitto; one the moon; one has a dream, that he must make his Manitto an owl; one a buffalo. The Delawares had five festivals in the year, one in honour of fire, supposed to have been the parent of all the Indian nations. Like other nations, these people believed in the necessity of purification from guilt, by fasting and bodily mortification. Some underwent for this end the pain of being beaten with sticks from the sole of their feet to their head. ‘Some gave the poor people vomits as the most expeditious mode.’

“Like the Northern Asiatics, the American nations had, instead of a regular priesthood, jugglers or sorcerers, who pretended to have supernatural power and knowledge. They appear to conform in every respect to the schamans of the Siberians, and the Fetiss-seers of the African nations.”

We have, in the above extracts, placed in juxtaposition the leading psychical characteristics of the five divisions of mankind. There are some points in which the different races of man seem, in their various superstitions and creeds, curiously agreed. The doctrine of sacrificial atonement seems almost universally prevalent, and forms the basis of the various sacerdotal institutions. The care of the dead is also another peculiarity, and one in which mankind appear, from the earliest historical period, to have differed from other animals.

The susceptibility to receive the doctrines of Christianity is a circumstance of agreement among the various races of mankind, from which the Bushmen of South Africa are the only exception; and, viewing these as a branch of the Hottentots, this exception would seem to disappear—for the latter have been converted. The following is the satisfactory account of the Hottentot missionaries as to the moral effect of Christianity:—

“It is the unvarying statement of these missionaries, deduced from the experience of a hundred years of patient service and laborious exertions among the rudest and most abject tribes of human beings; that the moral nature of man must be in the first instance quickened, the conscience awakened, and the better feelings of the heart aroused, by the motives which Christianity brings with it, before any improvement can be hoped for in the outward behaviour and social state; that the rudest savages have sufficient understanding to be susceptible of such a change; and that, when it has once taken place, all the blessings of civilization follow as a necessary result.”

The gypsy tribe, of which Dr Prichard takes no notice, would seem to form an exception from the great mass of mankind as to the absence of religious   creed. The opinions and theories respecting it we must leave, as it forms of itself a wide field for discussion; and, having fully occupied the space allotted to us, we must here bring to a close our sketch of a work which, notwithstanding the somewhat unreadable character of the central portion, has supplied to the public a valuable collection of recorded facts, expressed for the most part in clear, untechnical language. We have not entered into questions of contrast or similitude with the opinions of other authors. Had we done so, we must have adopted a style of criticism interesting only to those who are specially engaged in the subject, and so incapable of limitation that every paragraph would serve for an article longer far than that which we have here written. Dr Prichard appears nowise unwilling to refer to each author his due share of merit, and is by no means sparing of copious extracts, taken with no partial view of supporting a theory. At the risk of being considered only a compiler, he has, at all events, avoided any affectation of originality.

With regard to the proposition sought to be established by the author, the book before us does not appear to be conclusive. The question as to the community of origin of mankind, viewed purely as an inductive one, appears still involved in obscurity. On the one hand, the fact of continual degeneration, resulting from the intermarriage of members of the same family, would require for its explanation either a miraculous interference in the first periods of human existence, or a gradual change in the constitution of man, whereby what once was harmless has become injurious, when the necessity for it is removed; moreover, according to the evidence contained in this book, the races of mankind cannot be traced backward to a single pair. But, taking the three great divisions, the Semitic, the Hamitish, and the Japetic, as derived from Shem, Ham, and Japhet, the various Allophyllian and American aborigines would appear to have existed, and to have been spread over the world before the above nations overran it. On the other hand, supposing that the mere power of reproduction be not of itself sufficient evidence of identity of species, the similarity of physical formation, of periodic changes, and of psychical instincts, are strongly corroborative of this evidence, and would of themselves lead to the deduction of such identity. Upon the whole, we consider the merits of the work before us to consist, not in the demonstration of a theorem, but in presenting to the reader a compendious record of physical, historical, and psychological facts and relations. Viewed in this light, it is an interesting contribution to ethnology; while the size of the book, the pictorial illustrations, and the absence of unnecessary technicality, make it a convenient manual for the general reader.