missionary labor and private benefaction | but still more, internally, by their state of mind present few exceptions to this cheerless and intellect. The aboriginal American is at once in the incapacity of infancy and unpliancy picture, which is sustained by the testiof old age; he unites the opposite poles of inmony of nearly all practical observers." tellectual life. This strange and inexplicable From these remarks, however, Dr. Mor- condition has hitherto frustrated every attempt ton excepts those nations which fall within to reconcile him with the European, to whom what he denominates the "Toltecan Fami- he gives way, so as to make him a cheerful and ly." "Contrasted with the intellectual po- happy member of the community; and it is verty of the barbarous tribes, like an oasis this, his double nature, which presents the greatin a desert, are the demi-civilized nations est difficulty to Science when she endeavors to investigate his origin, and those earlier epochs of the New World, a people whose attain-of history, in which he has for thousands of ment in the arts and sciences are a riddle years moved indeed, but made no improvements in the history of the human mind. The in his condition. But this is far removed from Peruvians in the south, the Mexicans in that natural state of child-like security which the north, and the Muyscas of Bogota marked (as an inward voice declares to us, and between the two, formed these contempoas the most ancient written documents affirm) rary centres of civilization, each inde- the first and foremost period of the history of mankind. The men of the red race, on the pendent of the other, and each equally contrary, it must be confessed, do not appear to skirted by wild and savage hordes. The feel the blessings of a divine descent, but to mind dwells with surprise and admiration have been led by merely animal instinct and on their cyclopean structures, which often tardy steps through a dark past to their actual rival those of Egypt in magnitude; on cheerless present. Much, therefore, seems to their temples, which embrace almost every indicate that they are not in the first stage of that simple, we might say, physical developprinciple of architecture; and on their stament-that they are in a secondary, regentues and bas-reliefs, which are far above erated state. the rudimentary state of the arts. * * * It follows of course, from the preceding remarks, that we consider the American race to present the two extremes of intellectual character; the one capable of a certain degree of civilization and refinement, independent of extraneous aids, the other exhibiting an abasement which puts all "Far beyond the rude condition in which the mental culture at defiance. The one com- aboriginal American was found, and separated posed, as it were, of a handful of people, by the obscurity of ages, lies a nobler past whose superiority and consequent acquisi- which he once enjoyed, but which can now tions made them the prey of covetous de- only be inferred from a few relics. Colossal works of architecture (as those at Tiaguanico stroyers; the other a vast multitude of on the Lake Titicaca, which, the Peruvians, savage tribes, whose very barbarism is as far back as the time of the Spanish conquest, working their destruction from within and beheld with wonder as the remains of a more without." ancient people-raised, according to their traA learned German traveller, Dr. Vonditions, in a single night-and similar creaMartius, whose works on the nations of South America, as observed by Prichard, are well known and highly appreciated, has in strong terms asserted that a psychological difference exists between the American race and those of the Old World. He has sketched his hypothesis with a bold hand, and with a force which we seldom find surpassed in writings upon these subjects. "The indigenous race of the New World is distinguished from all the other nations of the earth, externally, by peculiarities of make, "To guide the inquirer through the intricacies of this labyrinthine inquiry, there is not a vestige of history to afford any clue. Not a ray of tradition, not a war-song, not a funeral lay can be found to clear away the dark night in which the earlier ages of America are involved. A tions scattered in enigmatic fragments here In Brazil no such traces of an ear lier civilization have yet been discovered, and if it ever existed here it must have been in a very remote period; yet still, even the condition 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 we could as sume 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 feature in the history of his mental culture. The present state of the productions of Nature is a documentary proof, that in America she has been already for many thousands of years influenced by the impressing and transform-ings of social life? Have, perchance, burning hand of man. "It is my conviction that the first germs of development of the human race in America can be sought nowhere 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 present state of natural and civil rights among the aboriginal Americans-I mean precisely as before observed, that enigmatical subdivision of the nations into an almost countless number of greater and smaller groups, and that almost entire exclusion and excommunication with regard to each other, in which mankind presents its different families to us in America, like fragments of a vast ruin. The history of the other nations inhabiting the earth furnishes nothing which has any analogy to this. "This disruption of all the bands by which 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 disruption, appear to me the most essential, and, as far as history is concerned, the most significant point in the civil condition of the savage tribes. Such a state of society cannot be the consequence of modern revolutions. It indicates, by marks which cannot be overlooked, 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 the causes of dismemberment and corruption in the languages, and of a corresponding demoralization of the people. By assuming that only a few leading nations were at first dispersed like so many rays of light, mingled together and dissolved, as it were, into each other by mutual collision, and that these migrations, divisions and subsequent combinations 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 then swept away the inhabitants in its vortex? 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 blessing and destructive 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 hostility, so that, maddened against himself by atrocious and bloody acts of cannibalism, he has fallen from the godlike dignity for which he was designed, to his present degraded state of darkness? Or is this inhumanizing, the consequence of deeply rooted preternatural vices, inflicted by the genius of our race (with a severity which, to the eye of a short-sighted observer, appears throughout all nature like cruelty) on the innocent as well as on the guilty? It is impossible to entirely discard the idea of some general defect in the organization of the red race; for it is manifest it already bears within itself the germs of an early extinction. Other nations will live when these unblessed children of the New World have all gone to their rest in the long sleep of death. Their songs have long ceased to resound, their giant edifices are mouldering down, and no elevated spirit has revealed itself in any noble effusion from that quarter of the globe. Without being reconciled with the nations of the East, or with their own fortunes, they are already vanishing away; yes, it almost appears as if no other intellectual life was allotted to them than that of calling forth our painful compassion, as if they existed only for the negative purpose of awak. ening our astonishment by the spectacle of a whole race of men, the inhabitants of a large part 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, where the most benevolent and brotherly love despairs of ever providing them with a home, is a monstrous and tangible drama, such as no fiction of the past has ever yet presented to our contemplation. A whole race of men is wasting before the eyes of its commiserating contemporaries: no power of princes, philosophy, or Christianity, can avert its proud, gloomy progress towards a certain and utter destruction."* "On the state of Civil and Natural Rights among the Aborigines of the Brazils," by C. T. Ph. Von Martius.-Synopsis, Royal Geograph. Soc. Trans. Vol. 2. There is much of rhetoric, if not of sound philosophy, in these observations of Dr. Von Martius. By presenting, however, we do not wish to be understood to endorse them. Our object is to give, in a rapid review, the results which have followed the investigation of these subjects by competent and philosophical minds, as distinguished from the shallow hypotheses and absurd conjectures of pretenders. As already observed, America has unfortunately been the country of systems; it has called out the prejudices of the Dutch Du Pauw and the Scotch Robertson; and been the subject of innumerable essays by charlatans and fools, by George Joneses and Josiah Priests,—an array unmatched for its complacent ignorance and stupid assurance. pire. Nor can it be said that a people peaceable but brave, virtuous, honest, and approaching nearer than any other example which history affords, to the poetical idea of Arcadian simplicity and happiness, like those who inhabited the country above the Gila and the valley of New Mexicothat such a people "have never felt the blessings of divine descent," but have been left to their own dark natures and "preternatural" vicious instincts! vancement, and ultimately reach a respectable rank in the scale of civilization, it will be quite time enough to pronounce upon them the severe sentence of a deficient intellect and an unhallowed heart The assertion of the incapacity of the aborigines to profit by their associations with other races, is practically disproved at the southwest, where the Florida Indians are now located. It will not be asserted, by those informed on the subject, that their condition is one whit inferior It has not yet been satisfactorily shown. to that of their white neighbors on the that the American race is deficient in in- frontier. When the Indians shall be treattellect, or that there is that wide difference ed as human beings, and not as wild aniin their "moral nature, their affections mals; when they shall be relieved from and consciences," which some have assert- the contamination of unprincipled hunters ed. The history of aboriginal art remains and traders, and the moral charlatanism yet to be written-indeed, the extent of of ignorant and narrow-minded missionaits development is yet to be ascertained. ries; when we shall pursue towards them The glimpses which we have afforded us, a just, enlightened, and truly Christian entitle the nations which occupied the cen-policy; then, if they shall exhibit no adtral parts of the continent to rank equally high, in this respect, with the people of Hindustan and the ancient Egyptians. And, as observed by Prichard, "a people who, like the Mexicans, unaided by foreigners, formed a more complete calendar than the Greeks, and had ascertained with precision the length of the solar year, could not be deficient in intelligence." A race of men which shows us an example of a far-seeing policy like that displayed in the Iroquois confederation, before having attained to that degree of civilization which everywhere else has preceded such a display of forecast and wisdom, cannot be said to exhibit the "incapacity of infancy." A people who, like the Peruvians, had civil and social institutions nearly perfect as machineries of government and national organization, "possessing an indefinite power of expansion and suited to the most flourishthe most flourishing condition of the empire as well as to its infant fortunes"-such a people cannot be said to exhibit the "unpliancy of old age," or to be incapable of the highest attainments to which humanity may as dead to sympathy, and incapable of higher developments. Till then, with the black catalogue of European wrongs and oppres sions before him, and the grasping hand of powerful avarice at his throat, blame not the American Indian if he sternly and gloomily prefers utter extinction to an association with races which have exhibited to him no benign aspect, and whose touch has been death. Lest, however, the tearful veil of sympathy should obscure the cold eye of philosophy, we return to our original purpose. In the next number of the Review we shall notice, in some detail, the contributions which have recently been made to the Ethnology and Archæology of America, and to the consideration of which the preceding crude and imperfect résumé of what has thus far been accomplished, in these departments, is only preliminary. E. G. S. THE REPUBLIC. NO. I.-INTRODUCTORY. ing them from the hazards that have A VOLUME has been lately published in | about our " peculiar institutions," exemptNew York, that deserves to be profoundly studied by the people of this country, however trite the subject, and however universally men may think themselves acquainted with its facts and principles. It is entitled "The American's Own Book, or Constitutions of the several States in the Union," pp. 515, octavo, close print. Like publications have appeared before at intervals, and generally, as in the present case, without attracting any notice; coming and going with a noiseless step, as things of no particular concern to any one, though remarkable, in their succession, for a continual, and, of late, a portentous increase of matter, corresponding with the growth of the country, till at length our constitutional elements are become the huge pile that we see, as much larger in bulk, as it is more artificially compounded than any other government system upon earth. Is it not time for patriotic criticism to awake? Self-knowledge is very important knowledge, and if we would know ourselves as a people, we must keep up our acquaintance with those celebrated institutions that we talk so much about. Memory is not enough. We must return daily to the subject as a theme of fresh inquiry. Peradventure things are altered from what they once were. Can it be, that there will not be found something in this vast tome, which it may become us to ponder? Can it be, that half a thousand pages of fundamental law-the work and property of one people, the skeleton details of one empire--are to issue from the press unquestioned in an age like this, when the political world is on fire, and the great problem of human liberty seems enveloped in the smoke of the conflagration? I know it is a kind of faith with many, and perhaps the only faith likely to be regarded as orthodox, that there is a charm Are we wise in this? It is said of fools, (not of wise men,) that they hate instruction; and there is notoriously a folly, that incurs sad penalties by rejecting it. Our "peculiar institutions" may last forever, and they may not. To be peculiar is one thing; but it is quite another to possess the gift of immortality. Causes, of which the power is little apt to be suspected, tell heavily sometimes upon the destiny of nations. Is not human nature everywhere the same? and do not moral influences everywhere assail its weak side? Let it be borne in mind, the safety of our institutions depends as much upon ourselves as upon them. The dependence is mutual. Assuredly it is not in mere forms to perpetuate their own existence. They may be well contrived, may answer well the uses they are made for, and may thus propitiate the public mind in their favor; but their life is from without; nor can that life be permanent save by the constancy and purity of its external source. The people and their institutions go to So that to judge fairly of the prospect before us, there are two branches of inquiry that demand attention: one, the forms of our political system, with its working principles; the other, the living character and habits of the country, that give animation to those principles and forms. Of course, the analogy of foreign examples can only aid us indirectly and collaterally. Our main study is at home. And here we must not content ourselves with looking into the paper evidence of any one period, to determine what security we have for the future; we must also mark the course and tendency of public sentiment among us; comparing the people with their institutions, and this at different periods; so as to judge, with all the certainty we can, whether the government is thus far stable, thus far what it was at first, and what the fathers meant it to be. And then, if any change of moment shall appear to have been made in it already, it will be important to observe whether they have been changes of mere vacillation, this way and that, without decided purpose or drift of any kind in general, or whether they have gone in some uniform direction, ominous of an entire ultimate departure from the original order and policy of things. This is a great point; a slight divergence of one line from another will, if steadily continued, place the whole globe between the two at last. Have the people stood Have the people stood firm upon the high grounds of their inheritance, or have they slunk away insensibly to lower levels, to new alluvial bottoms of their own invention, where the weeds grow ranker, but the footing is less safe? I am afraid it will turn out upon investigation, (and let him who loves his country heed what I say,) that we have, in truth, fallen, in some measure, from our first estate. One thing at any rate is certain, -we have been a people given to change. A kind of Athenian restlessness has marked The fathers were not wise enough for us. It has seemed good in our course. our eyes to depart considerably, and I think fearfully, from the patriarchal platform. Nor have our innovations been the results of mere fickleness, a quality of mind to make us the sport of various impulses, flitting round and round to every point of the compass, according as one or another wind chanced to blow. There has been a method in our madness. We have had our vessel always under one tack; and we have run long without a reckoning; and, whether we see it or not, there is a lee shore under our bows. It is true, our institutions are all popular, and why should not the people have a jurisdiction to remodel them at pleasure? The jurisdiction is undoubtedly theirs, but the subject-matter is a delicate one. A man may have a right to take his own watch to pieces, and to put it together again as he best can; but is he wise, not being a watchmaker by profession, to use the right? And will he not be likely to spoil his watch if he do? Our institutions are the work of no common hand. No common skill has been displayed in putting them together into a great national system. One would think, the very aspect of things should deter us from all unnecessary meddling. We subsist by social compact. And here are one-and-thirty such compacts one of them supreme and general, the others local and subordinate—all dovetailed together in a framework of political architecture, such as never was seen in any foreign country, such as never will be seen but in our own, though imitation has already gone abroad. It used to be thought that compacts of this kind were visionary things; unreal, and barely conceivable. Old writers upon government called them chimeras; yet here is a living specimen-an actual stateforming compact by popular consent; not only so, but a multitude of such marvels; stranger still, this multitude, by a farreaching, all-embracing combination of consenting wills, strung up at last, like the beads of a rosary, upon a single thread. Is this a structure to be rashly meddled with? The States were not so numerous at first, but they were more nicely fashioned, had a more complicated and refined adjustment of parts, and were encircled by the same federal bond of union and communion as at present. Was it prudent |