The natural history of the human species : its typical forms, primeval distribution, filiations, and migrations / by Chas. Hamilton Smith ; with a preliminary abstract of the views of Blumenbach, Prichard, Bachman, Agassiz, and other authors of repute on the subject, by S. Kneeland, Jr.

  • Smith, Charles Hamilton.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The natural history of the human species : its typical forms, primeval distribution, filiations, and migrations / by Chas. Hamilton Smith ; with a preliminary abstract of the views of Blumenbach, Prichard, Bachman, Agassiz, and other authors of repute on the subject, by S. Kneeland, Jr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    been very low. More of them, when speaking of Dr. Morton's Crania Americana. Before the arrival of the Mexican foreigners, this plain was inhabited by races, some civilized and some barbarous, who have left behind them the splendid ruins of Palenque. Among these were the Tarascas, the Othomi, the Totonacs, and the Huaxtecas. The Othomi were a remarkable people, from the circumstance that, while all other known languages of America are polysyllabic, they had a monosyllabic dialect, resembling the Chinese idiom. In the countries to the eastward of the Gulf of California, and extending northward as far as the rivers Gila and Colorado, ruins have been found in various localities, which are supposed to be the different resting places of the Aztecs in their migration towards Anahuac ; the farthest vestige towards the north of this Mexican civilization is in the neighborhood of the Yaquesila, which flows into the Rio Colorado. Among the aborigines of North America there are only two races which can be traced across the Continent, from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean ; these are the two northern nations of the Esqui- maux and the Athapascas. The Esquimaux, subsisting principally on what they obtain from the sea, are rarely found more than one hundred miles from the coast; they inhabit America, chiefly north of the G0° of north latitude, from the east coast of Greenland, in longitude 20°, to Behring's Straits, in longitude 167° west; they occupy an extent of coast of five thousand four hundred miles ; they have the Mongolian cast of countenance. The Athapascas, or Chepewyans, extend from the western shore of Hudson's Bay, across the Conti- nent to the Pacific ; their southern boundary is Churchill river, which falls into Hudson's Bay ; they agree in dress and manners, according to Mackenzie, with the Eastern Asiatics. The greater part of Canada, and the United States east of the Mississippi, at the time of its discovery, was inhabited by two prin- cipal races, the Algonquin-Lenape and the Iroquois, or Hurons ; both were divided into a great number of tribes, which recognized, however, their kindred with each other. The limits of the former were, in genera] terms, Churchill river on the North ; the Atlantic coast on the east, from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to Cape Hat- teras ; on the south, an irregular line drawn from Cape Hatteras to the confluence of the Ohio with the Mississippi; and, on the west, the Mississippi river. The Iroquois, always at war with the for- mer, consisted of two bodies — the northern, entirely surrounded by the Lenapian tribes, in the neighborhood of Lake Huron ; the south- ern were the Tuscaroras, in Virginia and North Carolina.