VIEW OF AMERICA AND ITS NATIVE TRIBES, BY ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.

It cannot but excite astonishment, that, at the conclusion, of the fifteenth century, there should have been found, in a world which we denominate the new, the very same kind of antiquarian remains, the same religious notions, and forms of architecture, as seem to belong to the earliest ages of civilization in Asia.

It is with the characteristics of nations, as with the internal structure of the plants that are spread over the face of the earth.

The stamp of the original stock remains indelible, notwithstanding the numberless modifications produced by climate, soil, and various other incidents.

In the first period after the discovery of America, the attention of the Europeans was more particularly directed to the gigantic edifices of Corzco, to the high roads through the midst of the Cordilleras, to the lofty graduated pyramids, to the religious rites, and symbolical writings of the Mexicans.

Descriptions of different provinces of Mexico and Peru were then as frequent as are, in our days, the accounts of the vicinity of Port Jackson, in New Holland, or the Island of Otaheite. It is absolutely necessary to have been upon the spot, in order to appreciate justly the noble simplicity and the character of truth and fidelity which pervade the narrations of the earliest Spanish travellers: and, in perusing their works, we lament only the want of graphic illustrations, which would have given us more satisfactory ideas of many monuments, partly demolished by fanaticism, and partly fallen to decay through culpable neglect.

The ardor for those American investigations diminished after the commencement of the seventeenth century.

The Spanish colonies, whose territory alone had been inhabited by civilized nations, were shut against foreigners; and when, more recently, the Abbe Clavigero published, in Italy, his work on the ancient history of Mexico, doubts were raised concerning many facts which were formerly confimed by numerous eye-witnesses, frequently persons by no means amicably disposed towards each other.

Celebrated writers, who received less pleasure from the harmony of nature than from her contrasts, have represented America as one vast swamp, unfavourable to the propagation of the animal species, and not till of late inhabited by races of men not surpassing the South Sea islanders in civilization.

An unlimited scepticism had banished sound criticism from the historical disquisitions on the Americans.

The fictions of a Solis and some other travellers who had never quitted Europe, were blended with the faithful and simple relations of the earliest visitors of the New World; and it was deemed the duty of a philosophic historian to protest, in the first place, against all that the missionaries had observed.

Towards the end of the past century, a happy alteration took place in regard to the opinions entertained respecting the civilisation of nations, and the causes that alternately promote and obstruct its progress.

We became acquainted with nations whose manners, institutions, and arts, are almost as different from those of the Greeks and Romans, as the original forms of the extinct species of animals from those which at present engage the attention of naturalists.

The society of Calcutta has thrown a brilliant light over the history of the Asiatic nations.

The monuments of Egypt have, of late, been partly described with admirable correctness, and partly compared with those of the most distant regions; and my researches concerning the native tribes of America appear at an epoch, when that which does not approach to the style and manner of which the Greeks have left us inimitable models, is nevertheless deemed well worthy of attention.

In the description of the historical monuments of America, I have endeavoured to observe a due mean between two routes alternately pursued by those literati who have entered into the discussion of such monuments, languages, and national traditions.

The one adopting hypotheses which, though brilliant, rest on tottering foundations, have deduced general conclusions from a small number of insulated facts.

They found, in America, Chinese and Egyptian colonies, Celtic dialects, and the alphabet of the Phoenicians.

While we yet remain in the dark respecting the origin of the Osci, the Goths, and the Celts, they pretended to pronounce decisively on the origin of the tribes of the New World.

Other writers, on the contrary, amassed materials, without ever raising themselves to any general notions: a proceeding from which the history of nations can derive as little benefit as the different branches of the natural sciences.

I shall deem myself fortunate if I shall be thought to have equally avoided both these extremes.

A small number of tribes, far distant from one another, as the Etruscans, the Egyptians, the Tibetians, the Aztekians, exhibit striking co-incidences in their buildings and religious institutions, in their division of the year, in their returning periods of time, and in their mystical representations.

The historian ought not to overlook these coincidence, for which it is just as difficult to account as for the resemblance between the Sanscrit, Persian, Greek, and German idioms; but while he rises to general ideas, he should know how to stop at the point where we are abandoned by certain facts.

Agreeably to these principles, I will attempt to state the results deduced from the data which I have been enabled to collect concerning the native tribes of America.

An attentive examination of the geological relations of the New World, and a consideration of the equilibrium of the waters spread over the surface of the earth, forbid the assumption that the new and the old continents rose at different times from the bosom of the deep.

On both hemispheres we perceive the like series of rocky strata lying one above another, and probably the granite, gypsum, and sand-stone formations in the mountains of Peru, had their origin at the same period as the corresponding strata in the Alps of Switzerland.

The whole globe has apparently been visited by the same catastrophes.

On the summits of the Andes, at an elevation exceeding that of Mont Blanc, are found the petrified muscles of the ocean.

Fossile bones of elephants are scattered over the equatorial regions, and, what is remarkable, they are met with, not only under the palms in the torrid valleys of the Oronoko, but on the highest and coldest plains of the Cordilleras.

In the new as in the old world, whole creations and whole species of organic bodies have become extinct, to give place to those which now people the earth, the air, and the waters.

No grounds exist for presuming that America was first peopled by men at a much later period than the other continents.

The luxuriant vegetation, the breadth of the rivers, and the partial in-undations are powerful obstacles to the migration of nations in tropical countries.

Extensive tracts of northern Asia are as thinly peopled as the savannahs of New Mexico and Paraguay, and we should by no means presuppose that the countries first inhabited must necessarily be the most populous.

The question relative to the origin of the population of America can no more belong to the province of history, than those concerning the origin of plants and animals, and on the distribution of organic germs, to the natural sciences.

History, when it goes back to the most ancient periods, exhibits to us almost all the parts of the globe inhabited by people who look upon themselves as aborigines, because their ancestry is unknown to them.

Amidst a variety of tribes who succeeded and intermingled with one another, it is impossible to decide with certainty from which of them the population first proceeded, and to define the limits beyond which the empire of cosmogonal tradition commences.

The tribes of America, with the exception of those that are nearest to the polar circle, belong all to one single race, which is distinguished by the form of the skull, complexion, very scanty beard, and straight hair.

The American race exhibits striking analogies with that of the Mongol tribes, which comprehends the descendants of the Hiong-nu, so famous under the denomination of Huns, the Kalkases, the Calmucks, and the Burattes.

Recent observations have even demonstrated, that not only the inhabitants of Oonalashka, but several South American tribes also, denote, by the osteological characters of the skull, a transition from the American to the Mongol race.

If the sable African race, and the numberless tribes which inhabit the interior of Asia and its north-eastern regions, and to which systematic geographers have given the indefinite appellation of Tartars or Tschoudes, should ever become better known to us, the Caucasian, Mongol, American, Malay, and Negro races will be less widely separated than they have been, and we shall recognize, in this great family of man, one single original, which has undergone various modifications from circumstances that we shall, perhaps, never be able to penetrate.

The native tribes of the new world, though all of them are allied by very essential characteristics, yet, on the other hand, present, in their moveable features, in their more or less dark complexion, in their shape and size, varieties not less striking than the difference which we perceive between the Arabs, Persians, and Slavonians of the Circassian race.

The hordes, however, which rove about in the burning plains of the equinoctial regions are by no means of a darker colour than the mountaineers, or the inhabitants of the temperate zone; whether it be that in man, as in most animals, there is a certain period of life beyond which the influence of climate and food is insignificant, or that the deviation from the original mode is not perceptible till the expiration of many centuries.

From all that has been observed, however, it results, that the Americans, like the Mongol tribes, have a less flexible organization than the other Asiatic and European nations.

The American race, though less numerous than any other, is dispersed over the greatest portion of the globe.

It extends, through both hemispheres, from 68° N. L. to 55° S. L. It is the only one that, at the same time, inhabits the scorching vallies bounded by the ocean, and the ridges of mountains elevated more than 200 fathoms above the Peak of Teneriffe.

The number of the languages which distinguish the indigenous nations from one another seems to be still greater in America than in Africa, where, according to the recent researches of Messrs. Seetzen and Vater, they exceed 140.

In this respect the whole of America resembles the Caucasus, Italy before the conquest of the Romans, and Asia Minor at the time when the Cilicians, of Semitic origin, the Phrygians, of Thracian descent, the Lydians and the Celts dwelt here together within a small compass.

The formation of the earth, the extreme luxuriance of the vegetable kingdom, and the dread of the intense heat of the vallies entertained by the inhabitants of the tropical regions, impede mutual intercourse and create an astonishing diversity of American dialects.

This diversity is not so great in the savannahs and forests of the north, which are traversed by hunters, on the banks of the great rivers, along the coasts of the ocean, and wherever the Incas have introduced their theocracy by force of arms.

When we speak of more than a hundred languages, on a continent whose total population is not equal to that of France, we term those different languages which have the same affinity to one another as, I will not say the German to the Dutch, or the Italian to the Spanish; but as the Danish to the German, the Chaldee to the Arabic, the Greek to the Latin.

As a person becomes more and more familiar with the labyrinth of American languages, he perceives that many of them belong to one and the same family, while a great number of others remain insulated like the Basque among the Europeans, and the Japanese among the Asiatic languages.

This insulation is perhaps only apparent, and it may be presumed that those languages which seem to defy all ethnographic classification, are allied to others either long extinct, or peculiar to nations whom no travellers have hitherto visited.

Most of the American languages, even those whose groups differ from one another in the same manner as the dialects of German, Celtic, and Slavonian origin, exhibit a certain resemblance in their general organization, which if it does not indicate one common stock, at least denotes a very close analogy in the intellectual faculties of the American nations from Greenland to the streights of Magellan.

Very minute enquiries, conducted according to a method before unknown in etymological studies, have proved, that there is a small number of words common to the language of the Old and New World.

In 83 American languages , examined by Messrs. Barton and Vater, have been found about 170 words which seemed to have the same roots; and we may easily convince ourselves that these resemblances are by no means accidental or an imitative harmony, and perhaps resulting only from the uniform structure of the organs which renders the first articulated tones of children pretty nearly the same in all parts of the world.

Out of 170 words, in which this similarity is perceived, three fifths seem to claim affinity with the languages of the Mantchous, Tungusians, Mongols, and Samojedes, and the other two-fifths with Celtic and Tschoudian dialects, and with the Basque, Coptic, and Congo languages.

Those words were found out on a comparison of the whole of the American languages, with the whole of the languages of the Old World; for as yet we know not of any American dialect which can be deemed more nearly allied than the rest to any of the numerous groups of Asiatic, African, or European languages.

The assertions of some scholars, proceeding upon abstract theories, respecting the supposed poverty of all the American languages, as well as the extraordinary scantiness of their system of numbers, are as rash and unfounded as the statements of others who contend for the imbecility and stupidity of the human race in the New World, the diminution of organic bodies, and the degeneracy of the animals transported thither from our hemisphere.

Various dialects at present spoken by barbarous nations alone, seem to be relics of copious and flexible languages, which denote a considerable progress in civilization.

I shall not here enter into an examination of the question--whether the original condition of mankind was a state of rudeness and stupidity, or whether the savage hordes are descended from nations whose mental powers, as well as the language in which they are reflected, were previously both equally developed: but I shall merely observe that the little which we know of the history of the Americans seems to demonstrate that those tribes which migrated from north to south, possessed in their northern abodes that variety of languages which we discover in the tropical regions.

Hence we may draw the analogical inference that the ramification, or to use an expression independent of all systems the diversity of the languages is a very ancient phenomenon.

Perhaps the languages which we term American originally belong no more to this quarter of the globe than the Madjarian or Hungarian, and the Tschoudian or Finnish do to Europe.

It must be admitted that the comparison of the languages of the Old and New World has led as yet to no general results; but we ought not on this account to relinquish our hopes that this study will prove more productive when the sagacity of scholars shall possess a larger stock of materials.

How many languages of America, as well as of the interior and eastern part of Asia may there still be, whose mechanism is as unknown to us as that of the Tyrrhenian, Oscian, and Sabine dialects!

Of the nations which disappeared from the Old World, there may perhaps still exist some petty detached tribes in the vast wilds of America.

If, however, the early intercourse between the two worlds can be but very imperfectly proved by the languages, it is on the other hand unequivocally demonstrated by the cosmogonies, the monuments, hieroglyphics, and institutions of the American and Asiatic nations.

I think that to the evidences already adduced on this point, I have added no small number that were hitherto unknown.

I have every where endeavoured to discriminate that which denotes a common origin from what must be considered as the result of analogous relations, subsisting between nations which have attained the highest degree of civilization.

To determine the period of the ancient connexion between the two worlds was previously impracticable, and it would be too presumptuous to pretend to designate the group of nations in the Old World, to which the Toltekes, Aztekes, Muyscas, or Peruvians, are nearest allied, since the relations here alluded to are founded upon such traditions, monuments, and usages, as may possibly be of higher antiquity than the present division of the Asiatics into Mongols, Hindoos, Tongouses, and Chinese.

At the time of the discovery of the New World, or to speak more correctly, at the period of the first Spanish invasion, the American nations, which had made the greatest progress in civilization were mountaineers.

People born in the valleys of a temperate region climbed the ridges of the Cordilleras, which become more elevated as they approach the equator; and on these heights they found a temperature and vegetation similar to those of their native land.

All those situations in which man has to struggle with natural obstacles on a soil of inferior fertility, and is not absolutely vanquished in too unequal a conflict, are most favourable to the development of his energies.

On the Caucasus and in the centre of Asia the barren mountains afford an asylum to independent and savage tribes.

In the equinoctial regions of America, where ever verdant savannahs rise above the region of the clouds, the Cordilleras alone are inhabited by polished tribes; the first advances in science were there coeval with the extraordinary institutions by no means favourable to individual liberty.

We perceive in the New World, as in Asia and Africa, various centres whence spread an original civilization, whose mutual relations, however, we are as incapable of discovering as those of Meröe, Tibet, and China.

Mexico derived its civilization from a more northern region.

In South America it was the extensive structures of Tiahuanako that furnished the models of those monuments which the Incas erected at Coutzko.

Ramparts of considerable extent, bronze weapons, and engraved stones found in the vast plains of Upper Canada, in Florida, and in the wilds bounded by the Oronoko, Cassiquaire, and Guainia, attest that these regions now traversed only by hordes of savage hunters were once the abode of nations who had made some proficiency in the arts.

The unequal distribution of the different species of brute animals over the earth, had a powerful influence on the condition of nations, and on their more or less rapid progress in civilization.

In the Old World, it was the pastoral life that formed the link between the hunter and the husbandman.

The ruminating animals, so easily naturalized in every climate, were the companions of the African Negro, as well as of the Mongols, the Malays, and Caucasian race.

Now, though several quadrupeds, and very numerous species of vegetables, are common to the northernmost parts of both worlds, yet the only kinds of horned cattle possessed by America are the buffalo and the bison, two varieties which it is very difficult to domesticate, and the females of which, notwithstanding the richness of the pastures, yield but little milk.

The American hunter, therefore, was not prepared, by the care of flocks and herds, and the occupations of a pastoral life, for the pursuits of agriculture.

Never did the inhabitants of the Cordilleras attempt to milk the lama, alpaca, or guanaco; and milk diet was formerly as unknown to the Americans, as it is to many of the tribes of eastern Asia.

There is no instance of the savage living in the forests of the temperate zone, having voluntarily exchanged the chase for agriculture.

This transition, the most important and the most difficult in the history of human society, cannot be effected but by compulsory means.

When in their great migrations troops of hunters, persecuted by other warrior hordes, reach the plains of the equinoctial zone, the impenetrable closeness of the woods, and the luxuriant growth of the vegetable species, produce an essential change in their character and way of life.

Between the Oronoko, Ukajale, and the river of Amazons, there are tracts where man finds scarcely any thing but streams and lakes.

Here on the banks of the rivers, even the most savage inhabitants surround their huts with the fig of Paradise, the jatropha tree, and some other vegetables, which contribute to their subsistence.

Neither historical facts nor popular tradition record that any connexion ever subsisted between the South American nations and those dwelling to the north of the isthmus of Panama.

The annals of the Mexican empire seem to go back to the sixth century of our aera.

They state the periods of the migrations which took place, the causes which occasioned them, the names of the leaders belonging to the illustrious family of the Citins who conducted northern tribes from the unknown regions of Aztlan and Teocolhuacan to the plains of Anahuac.

The founding of Tenochtilan happens like that of Rome in the heroic age, and it is only from the 12th century that the Aztekian chronicles, like those of the Chinese and Tibetians, contain the almost uninterrupted record of the secular festivals, the succession of the kings, the tributes imposed upon the conquered, the foundation of cities, meteorological phenomena, and many trivial incidents which have an influence on society in infant states.

But though no traditions denote any immediate connexion between the nations of the two grand divisions of America, their history on the other hand exhibits striking coincidences in the political and religious revolutions which led to the civilization of the Aztekes, Muyscas and Peruvians.

Bearded men of a lighter complexion than the natives of Anahuac, Cundinamarca, and the plain of Couzco, make their appearance, without its being known from what country they come.

As high priests, legislators, friends of peace, and of the arts and sciences, which it promotes, they accomplish a change in the state of the nations, from whom they experience a respectful reception.

Quetzalcoat, Bochica, and Mango Capac, are the sacred names of these mysterious beings.

Quetzalcoat comes in black priestly attire from Panuco and the shores of the Mexican Gulf: Bochica, the Buddha of the Muyscas appears on the elevated plains of Bogota advancing from the savannahs situated on the east side of the Cordilleras . The history of these lawgivers is full of marvellous stories, religious fictions, and such circumstances as betray an allegorical meaning.

Some scholars have conjectured that these foreigners might have been shipwrecked Europeans, or descendants of the Scandinavians , who as early as the 11th century visited Greenland, Newfoundland, and perhaps even Nova Scotia; but the slightest reflection on the period of the first Toltekian emigrations, on the monastic institutions, the religious symbols, the calendar and the forms of the monuments of Cholula, Sogamozo, and Couzco, will lead to the conviction that the codes of Quetzalcoat, Bochica, and Mango Capac, could not possibly derive their origin from the north of Europe.

Every thing, on the contrary, seems to point to eastern Asia, and to people connected with the Tibetians, the Shamanists, the Tartars, and the bearded Ainos of the islands of Jesso and Sachalin.

When I employ the terms--Monuments of the New World--progress in the imitative arts--cultivation of the understanding, in my inquiries respecting America, it is by no means my intention to denote a state of things which is rather vaguely denominated a higher degree of culture and civilization.

Nothing is more difficult than to institute comparisons between nations who have advanced by different roads to social improvement.

The Mexicans and Peruvians must not be judged by such principles as are deduced from the history of the nations of whom our studies are continually reminding us.

They differ from the Greeks and Romans in the same ratio as they resemble the Etruscans and Tibetians.

The theocratic government of the Peruvians favoured on the one hand the progress of industry, public works, and, if I may be allowed the expression, whatever relates to civilization in general and in mass: on the other hand it prevented the development of individual energies.

Among the Greeks it was just the reverse, and till the time of Pericles the free and rapid mental development of individuals bore no proportion to the slow advance of national cultivation.

The empire of the Incas might be likened to a vast monastic institution, in which every member had prescribed to him what he was to do for the general benefit.

Whoever makes himself acquainted on the spot with those Peruvians, who for ages retained their national physiognomy without alteration, will be enabled duly to appreciate the code of Mango Capac and its influence on morals and the public weal.

There was general prosperity, but no individual happiness; resignation to the will of the sovereign usurped the place of patriotism; for great enterprizes there was patient obedience, but no genuine courage; a spirit of order, which by petty laws for regulating the conduct in the most indifferent transactions, extinguished at once all freedom of thought and all greatness of character.

The most complicated of all political institutions recorded in history had nipped the bud of individual liberty; and the founder of the empire of Couzco, who flattered himself that he should render men happy through restraint, in fact transformed into mere machines.

The Peruvian theocracy was indeed less oppressive than the government of the Mexican monarch, but both contributed essentially to impart to the monuments the religious worship and mythology of these mountaineers that dismal and gloomy air, which forms so striking a contrast with the arts and the pleasing fictions of the people of Greece.

Paris, April, 1813.