The Discovery of America Part 10

_Sixth Report_, pp. 259-371. (The paper last mentioned ends with the weighty words, "The more I study these characters the stronger becomes the conviction that they have grown out of a pictographic system similar to that common among the Indians of North America." Exactly so; and this is typical of every aspect and every detail of ancient American culture. It is becoming daily more evident that the old notion of an influence from Asia has not a leg to stand on.) See also a suggestive paper by the astronomer, E. S. Holden, "Studies in Central American Picture-Writing," _First Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_, pp. 205-245; Brinton, _Ancient Phonetic Alphabet of Yucatan_, New York, 1870; _Essays of an Americanist_, Philadelphia, 1890, pp. 193-304; Leon de Rosny, _Les ecritures figuratives_, Paris, 1870; _L'interpretation des anciens textes Mayas_, Paris, 1875; _Essai sur le dechiffrement de l'ecriture hieratique de l'Amerique Centrale_, Paris, 1876; Forstemann, _Erlauterungen der Maya Handschrift_, Dresden, 1886. The decipherment is as yet but partially accomplished. The Mexican system of writing is clearly developed from the ordinary Indian pictographs; it could not have arisen from the Maya system, but the latter might well have been a further development of the Mexican system; the Maya system had probably developed some characters with a phonetic value, i. e. was groping toward the alphabetical stage; but how far this groping had gone must remain very doubtful until the decipherment has proceeded further. Dr. Isaac Taylor is too hasty in saying that "the Mayas employed twenty-seven characters which must be admitted to be alphabetic" (Taylor, _The Alphabet_, vol. i. p. 24); this statement is followed by the conclusion that the Maya system of writing was "superior in simplicity and convenience to that employed ... by the great a.s.syrian nation at the epoch of its greatest power and glory." Dr. Taylor has been misled by Diego de Landa, whose work (_Relation des choses de l'Yucatan_, ed.

Bra.s.seur, Paris, 1864) has in it some pitfalls for the unwary.]

[Sidenote: Ruined cities of Central America.]

These n.o.ble ruins have excited great and increasing interest since the publication of Mr. Stephens's charming book just fifty years ago.[146]

An air of profound mystery surrounded them, and many wild theories were propounded to account for their existence. They were at first accredited with a fabulous antiquity, and in at least one instance this notion was responsible for what must be called misrepresentation, if not humbug.[147] Having been placed by popular fancy at such a remote age, they were naturally supposed to have been built, not by the Mayas,--who still inhabit Yucatan and do not absolutely dazzle us with their exalted civilization,--but by some wonderful people long since vanished. Now as to this point the sculptured slabs of Uxmal and Chichen-Itza tell their own story. They are covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions, and these hieroglyphs are the same as those in which the Dresden Codex and other Maya ma.n.u.scripts still preserved are written; though their decipherment is not yet complete, there is no sort of doubt as to their being written in the Maya characters. Careful inspection, moreover, shows that the buildings in which these inscriptions occur are not so very ancient. Mr.

Stephens, who was one of their earliest as well as sanest explorers, believed them to be the work of the Mayas at a comparatively recent period.[148] The notion of their antiquity was perhaps suggested by the belief that certain colossal mahogany trees growing between and over the ruins at Palenque must be nearly 2,000 years old. But when M. de Charnay visited Palenque in 1859 he had the eastern side of the "palace"

cleared of its dense vegetation in order to get a good photograph; and when he revisited the spot in 1881 he found a st.u.r.dy growth of young mahogany the age of which he knew did not exceed twenty-two years.

Instead of making a ring once a year, as in our sluggish and temperate zone, these trees had made rings at the rate of about one in a month; their trunks were already more than two feet in diameter; judging from this rate of growth the biggest giant on the place need not have been more than 200 years old, if as much.[149]

[Footnote 146: Stephens, _Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan_, 2 vols., New York, 1841.]

[Footnote 147: It occurred in the drawings of the artist Frederic de Waldeck, who visited Palenque before Stephens, but whose researches were published later. "His drawings," says Mr.

Winsor, "are exquisite; but he was not free from a tendency to improve and restore, where the conditions gave a hint, and so as we have them in the final publication they have not been accepted as wholly trustworthy." _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, i.

194. M. de Charnay puts it more strongly. Upon his drawing of a certain panel at Palenque, M. de Waldeck "has seen fit to place three or four elephants. What end did he propose to himself in giving this fict.i.tious representation? Presumably to give a prehistoric origin to these ruins, since it is an ascertained fact that elephants in a fossil state only have been found on the American continent. It is needless to add that neither Catherwood, who drew these inscriptions most minutely, nor myself who brought impressions of them away, nor living man, ever saw these elephants and their fine trunks. But such is the mischief engendered by preconceived opinions. With some writers it would seem that to give a recent date to these monuments would deprive them of all interest. It would have been fortunate had explorers been imbued with fewer prejudices and gifted with a little more common sense, for then we should have known the truth with regard to these ruins long since."

Charnay, _The Ancient Cities of the New World_, London, 1887, p. 248. The gallant explorer's indignation is certainly quite pardonable.]

[Footnote 148: Some of his remarks are worth quoting in detail, especially in view of the time when they were written: "I repeat my opinion that we are not warranted in going back to any ancient nation of the Old World for the builders of these cities; that they are not the work of people who have pa.s.sed away and whose history is lost, but that there are strong reasons to believe them the creations of the same races who inhabited the country at the time of the Spanish conquest, or some not very distant progenitors. And I would remark that we began our exploration without any theory to support.... Some are beyond doubt older than others; some are known to have been inhabited at the time of the Spanish conquest, and others, perhaps, were really in ruins before; ... but in regard to Uxmal, at least, we believe that it was an existing and inhabited city at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards."

Stephens, _Central America_, etc., vol. ii. p. 455.]

[Footnote 149: Charnay, _The Ancient Cities of the New World_, p. 260.]

[Sidenote: They are probably not older than the twelfth century.]

These edifices are not so durably constructed as those which in Europe have stood for more than a thousand years. They do not indicate a high civilization on the part of their builders. They do not, as Mr. Andrew Lang says, "throw Mycenae into the shade, and rival the remains of Cambodia."[150] In pictures they may seem to do so, but M. de Charnay, after close and repeated examination of these buildings, a.s.sures us that as structures they "cannot be compared with those at Cambodia, which belong to nearly the same period, the twelfth century, and which, notwithstanding their greater and more resisting proportions, are found in the same dilapidated condition."[151] It seems to me that if Mr.

Lang had spoken of the Yucatan ruins as rivalling the remains of Mycenae, instead of "throwing them into the shade," he would have come nearer the mark. The builders of Uxmal, like those of Mycenae, did not understand the principle of the arch, but were feeling their way toward it.[152]

And here again we are brought back, as seems to happen whatever road we follow, to the middle status of barbarism. The Yucatan architecture shows the marks of its origin in the adobe and rubble-stone work of the New Mexico pueblos. The inside of the wall "is a rude mixture of friable mortar and small irregular stones," and under the pelting tropical rains the dislocation of the outer facing is presently effected. The large blocks, cut with flint chisels, are of a soft stone that is soon damaged by weather; and the cornices and lintels are beams of a very hard wood, yet not so hard but that insects bore into it. From such considerations it is justly inferred that the highest probable antiquity for most of the ruins in Yucatan or Central America is the twelfth or thirteenth century of our era.[153] Some, perhaps, may be no older than the ancient city of Mexico, built A. D. 1325.

[Footnote 150: Lang, _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, vol. ii. p.

348.]

[Footnote 151: Charnay, _op. cit._ p. 209. "I may remark that [the] virgin forests [here] have no very old trees, being destroyed by insects, moisture, lianas, etc.; and old monteros tell me that mahogany and cedar trees, which are most durable, do not live above 200 years," id. p. 447.]

[Footnote 152: The reader will find it suggestive to compare portions of Schliemann's _Mycenae_ and M. de Charnay's book, just cited, with Morgan's _Houses and House-Life_, chap. xi.]

[Footnote 153: Charnay, _op. cit._ p. 411. Copan and Palenque may be two or three centuries older, and had probably fallen into ruins before the arrival of the Spaniards.]

[Sidenote: Chronicle of Chicxulub.]

But we are no longer restricted to purely archaeological evidence. One of the most impressive of all these ruined cities is Chichen-Itza, which is regarded as older than Uxmal, but not so old as Izamal. Now in recent times sundry old Maya doc.u.ments have been discovered in Yucatan, and among them is a brief history of the Spanish conquest of that country, written in the Roman character by a native chief, Nakuk Pech, about 1562. It has been edited, with an English translation, by that zealous and indefatigable scholar, to whom American philology owes such a debt of grat.i.tude,--Dr. Daniel Brinton. This chronicle tells us several things that we did not know before, and, among others, it refers most explicitly to Chichen-Itza and Izamal as inhabited towns during the time that the Spaniards were coming, from 1519 to 1542. If there could have been any lingering doubt as to the correctness of the views of Stephens, Morgan, and Charnay, this contemporaneous doc.u.mentary testimony dispels it once for all.[154]

[Footnote 154: Brinton, _The Maya Chronicles_, Philadelphia, 1882, "Chronicle of Chicxulub," pp. 187-259. This book is of great importance, and for the ancient history of Guatemala Brinton's _Annals of the Cakchiquels_, Philadelphia, 1885, is of like value and interest.

Half a century ago Mr. Stephens wrote in truly prophetic vein, "the convents are rich in ma.n.u.scripts and doc.u.ments written by the early fathers, caciques, and Indians, who very soon acquired the knowledge of Spanish and the art of writing. These have never been examined with the slightest reference to this subject; _and I cannot help thinking that some precious memorial is now mouldering in the library of a neighbouring convent, which would determine the history of some one of these ruined cities_." Vol. ii. p. 456. The italicizing, of course, is mine.]

[Sidenote: Maya culture very closely related to Mexican.]

The Mexicans and Mayas believed themselves to be akin to each other, they had several deities and a large stock of traditional lore in common, and there was an essential similarity in their modes of life; so that, since we are now a.s.sured that such cities as Izamal and Chichen-Itza were contemporary with the city of Mexico, we shall probably not go very far astray if we a.s.sume that the elaborately carved and bedizened ruins of the former may give us some hint as to how things might have looked in the latter. Indeed this complicated and grotesque carving on walls, door-posts, and lintels was one of the first things to attract the attention of the Spaniards in Mexico. They regarded it with mingled indignation and awe, for serpents, coiled or uncoiled, with gaping mouths, were most conspicuous among the objects represented. The visitors soon learned that all this had a symbolic and religious meaning, and with some show of reason they concluded that this strange people wors.h.i.+pped the Devil.

We have now pa.s.sed in review the various peoples of North America, from the Arctic circle to the neighbourhood of the isthmus of Darien, and can form some sort of a mental picture of the continent at the time of its discovery by Europeans in the fifteenth century. Much more might have been said without going beyond the requirements of an outline sketch, but quite as much has been said as is consistent with the general plan of this book. I have not undertaken at present to go beyond the isthmus of Darien, because this preliminary chapter is already disproportionately long, and after this protracted discussion the reader's attention may be somewhat relieved by an entire change of scene. Enough has been set forth to explain the narrative that follows, and to justify us henceforth in taking certain things for granted. The outline description of Mexico will be completed when we come to the story of its conquest by Spaniards, and then we shall be ready to describe some princ.i.p.al features of Peruvian society and to understand how the Spaniards conquered that country.

[Sidenote: The "Mound-Builders."]

[Sidenote: The notion that they were like the Aztecs;]

[Sidenote: or like the Zunis.]

There is, however, one conspicuous feature of North American antiquity which has not yet received our attention, and which calls for a few words before we close this chapter. I refer to the mounds that are scattered over so large a part of the soil of the United States, and more particularly to those between the Mississippi river and the Alleghany mountains, which have been the subject of so much theorizing, and in late years of so much careful study.[155] Vague and wild were the speculations once rife about the "Mound-Builders" and their wonderful civilization. They were supposed to have been a race quite different from the red men, with a culture perhaps superior to our own, and more or less eloquence was wasted over the vanished "empire" of the mound-builders. There is no reason, however, for supposing that there ever was an empire of any sort in ancient North America, and no relic of the past has ever been seen at any spot on our planet which indicates the former existence of a vanished civilization even remotely approaching our own. The sooner the student of history gets his head cleared of all such rubbish, the better. As for the mounds, which are scattered in such profusion over the country west of the Alleghanies, there are some which have been built by Indians since the arrival of white men in America, and which contain knives and trinkets of European manufacture. There are many others which are much older, and in which the genuine remains sometimes indicate a culture like that of Shawnees or Senecas, and sometimes suggest something perhaps a little higher.

With the progress of research the vast and vague notion of a distinct race of "Mound-Builders" became narrowed and defined. It began to seem probable that the builders of the more remarkable mounds were tribes of Indians who had advanced beyond the average level in horticulture, and consequently in density of population, and perhaps in political and priestly organization. Such a conclusion seemed to be supported by the size of some of the "ancient garden-beds," often covering more than a hundred acres, filled with the low parallel ridges in which corn was planted. The mound people were thus supposed to be semi-civilized red men, like the Aztecs, and some of their elevated earthworks were explained as places for human sacrifice, like the pyramids of Mexico and Central America. It was thought that the "civilization" of the Cordilleran peoples might formerly have extended northward and eastward into the Mississippi valley, and might after a while have been pushed back by powerful hordes of more barbarous invaders. A further modification and reduction of this theory likened the mound-builders to the pueblo Indians of New Mexico. Such was the opinion of Mr. Morgan, who offered a very ingenious explanation of the extensive earthworks at High Bank, in Ross county, Ohio, as the fortified site of a pueblo.[156]

Although there is no reason for supposing that the mound-builders practised irrigation (which would not be required in the Mississippi valley) or used adobe-brick, yet Mr. Morgan was inclined to admit them into his middle status of barbarism because of the copper hatchets and chisels found in some of the mounds, and because of the apparent superiority in horticulture and the increased reliance upon it. He suggested that a people somewhat like the Zunis might have migrated eastward and modified their building habits to suit the altered conditions of the Mississippi valley, where they dwelt for several centuries, until at last, for some unknown reason, they retired to the Rocky Mountain region. It seems to me that an opinion just the reverse of Mr. Morgan's would be more easily defensible,--namely, that the ancestors of the pueblo Indians were a people of building habits somewhat similar to the Mandans, and that their habits became modified in adaptation to a country which demanded careful irrigation and supplied adobe-clay in abundance. If ever they built any of the mounds in the Mississippi valley, I should be disposed to place their mound-building period before their pueblo period.

[Footnote 155: For original researches in the mounds one cannot do better than consult the following papers in the _Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology_:--1. by W. H. Holmes, "Art in Sh.e.l.l of the Ancient Americans," ii. 181-305; "The Ancient Pottery of the Mississippi Valley," iv. 365-436; "Prehistoric Textile Fabrics of the United States," iii. 397-431; followed by an ill.u.s.trated catalogue of objects collected chiefly from mounds, iii. 433-515;--2. H. W. Henshaw, "Animal Carvings from the Mounds of the Mississippi Valley," ii. 121-166;--3. Cyrus Thomas, "Burial Mounds of the Northern Section of the United States," v. 7-119; also three of the Bureau's "Bulletins" by Dr. Thomas, "The Problem of the Ohio Mounds," "The Circular, Square, and Octagonal Earthworks of Ohio," and "Work in Mound Exploration of the Bureau of Ethnology;" also two articles by Dr. Thomas in the _Magazine of American History_:--"The Houses of the Mound-Builders," xi. 110-115; "Indian Tribes in Prehistoric Times," xx. 193-201. See also Horatio Hale, "Indian Migrations," in _American Antiquarian_, v. 18-28, 108-124; M.

F. Force, _To What Race did the Mound-Builders belong?_ Cincinnati, 1875; Lucien Carr, _Mounds of the Mississippi Valley historically considered_, 1883; Nadaillac's _Prehistoric America_, ed. W. H. Dall, chaps. iii., iv. The earliest work of fundamental importance on the subject was Squier's _Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley_, Philadelphia, 1848, being the first volume of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge.--For statements of the theory which presumes either a race connection or a similarity in culture between the mound-builders and the pueblo Indians, see Dawson, _Fossil Men_, p. 55; Foster, _Prehistoric Races of the United States_, Chicago, 1873, chaps. iii., v.-x.; Sir Daniel Wilson, _Prehistoric Man_, chap. x. The annual _Smithsonian Reports_ for thirty years past ill.u.s.trate the growth of knowledge and progressive changes of opinion on the subject. The bibliographical account in Winsor's _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, i.

397-412, is full of minute information.]

[Footnote 156: _Houses and House-Life_, chap. ix.]

[Sidenote: The mounds were probably built by different peoples in the lower status of barbarism;]

[Sidenote: by Cherokees;]

[Sidenote: and by Shawnees, and other tribes.]

Recent researches, however, make it more and more improbable that the mound-builders were nearly akin to such people as the Zunis or similar to them in grade of culture. Of late years the exploration of the mounds has been carried on with increasing diligence. More than 2,000 mounds have been opened, and at least 38,000 ancient relics have been gathered from them: such as quartzite arrow-heads and spades, greenstone axes and hammers, mortars and pestles, tools for spinning and weaving, and cloth, made of spun thread and woven with warp and woof, somewhat like a coa.r.s.e sail-cloth. The water-jugs, kettles, pipes, and sepulchral urns have been elaborately studied. The net results of all this investigation, up to the present time, have been concisely summed up by Dr. Cyrus Thomas.[157] The mounds were not all built by one people, but by different tribes as clearly distinguishable from one another as Algonquins are distinguishable from Iroquois. These mound-building tribes were not superior in culture to the Iroquois and many of the Algonquins as first seen by white men. They are not to be cla.s.sified with Zunis, still less with Mexicans or Mayas, in point of culture, but with Shawnees and Cherokees. Nay more,--some of them _were_ Shawnees and Cherokees. The missionary Johann Heckewelder long ago published the Lenape tradition of the Tallegwi or Allighewi people, who have left their name upon the Alleghany river and mountains.[158] The Tallegwi have been identified with the Cherokees, who are now reckoned among the most intelligent and progressive of Indian peoples.[159] The Cherokees were formerly cla.s.sed in the Muskoki group, along with the Creeks and Choctaws, but a closer study of their language seems to show that they were a somewhat remote offshoot of the Huron-Iroquois stock. For a long time they occupied the country between the Ohio river and the Great Lakes, and probably built the mounds that are still to be seen there.

Somewhere about the thirteenth or fourteenth century they were gradually pushed southward into the Muskoki region by repeated attacks from the Lenape and Hurons. The Cherokees were probably also the builders of the mounds of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. They retained their mound-building habits some time after the white men came upon the scene. On the other hand the mounds and box-shaped stone graves of Kentucky, Tennessee, and northern Georgia were probably the work of Shawnees, and the stone graves in the Delaware valley are to be ascribed to the Lenape. There are many reasons for believing that the mounds of northern Mississippi were constructed by Chickasaws, and the burial tumuli and "effigy mounds" of Wisconsin by Winnebagos. The Minnitarees and Mandans were also very likely at one time a mound-building people.

[Footnote 157: _Work in Mound Exploration of the Bureau of Ethnology_, Was.h.i.+ngton, 1887. For a sight of the thousands of objects gathered from the mounds, one should visit the Peabody Museum at Cambridge and the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution at Was.h.i.+ngton.]

[Footnote 158: Heckewelder, _History of the Indian Nations of Pennsylvania_, etc., Philadelphia, 1818; cf. Squier, _Historical and Mythological Traditions of the Algonquins_, a paper read before the New York Historical Society in June, 1848; also Brinton, _The Lenape and their Legends_, Philadelphia, 1885.]

[Footnote 159: For a detailed account of their later history, see C. C. Royce, "The Cherokee Nation," _Reports of Bureau of Ethnology_, v. 121-378.]

If this view, which is steadily gaining ground, be correct, our imaginary race of "Mound-Builders" is broken up and vanishes, and henceforth we may content ourselves with speaking of the authors of the ancient earthworks as "Indians." There were times in the career of sundry Indian tribes when circ.u.mstances induced them to erect mounds as sites for communal houses or council houses, medicine-lodges or burial-places; somewhat as there was a period in the history of our own forefathers in England when circ.u.mstances led them to build moated castles, with drawbridge and portcullis; and there is no more occasion for a.s.suming a mysterious race of "Mound-Builders" in America than for a.s.suming a mysterious race of "Castle-Builders" in England.

[Sidenote: Society in America at the time of the Discovery had reached stages similar to stages reached by eastern Mediterranean peoples fifty or sixty centuries earlier.]

Thus, at whatever point we touch the subject of ancient America, we find scientific opinion tending more and more steadily toward the conclusion that its people and their culture were indigenous. One of the most important lessons impressed upon us by a long study of comparative mythology is that human minds in different parts of the world, but under the influence of similar circ.u.mstances, develop similar ideas and clothe them in similar forms of expression. It is just the same with political inst.i.tutions, with the development of the arts, with social customs, with culture generally. To repeat the remark already quoted from Sir John Lubbock,--and it is well worth repeating,--"Different races in similar stages of development often present more features of resemblance to one another than the same race does to itself in different stages of its history." When the zealous Abbe Bra.s.seur found things in the history of Mexico that reminded him of ancient Egypt, he hastened to the conclusion that Mexican culture was somehow "derived" from that of Egypt. It was natural enough for him to do so, but such methods of explanation are now completely antiquated. Mexican culture was no more Egyptian culture than a p.r.i.c.kly-pear is a lotus. It was an outgrowth of peculiar American conditions acting upon the aboriginal American mind, and such of its features as remind us of ancient Egypt or prehistoric Greece show simply that it was approaching, though it had not reached, the standard attained in those Old World countries. From this point of view the resemblances become invested with surpa.s.sing interest. Ancient America, as we have seen, was a much more archaic world than the world of Europe and Asia, and presented in the time of Columbus forms of society that on the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean had been outgrown before the city of Rome was built. Hence the intense and peculiar fascination of American archaeology, and its profound importance to the student of general history.

CHAPTER II.