University of Virginia Library

4. CHAP. IV.

Bless us!—what a hard life we historians have
of it, who undertake to satisfy the doubts of the
world!—Here have I been toiling and moiling
through three pestiferous chapters, and my readers
toiling and moiling at my heels; up early and to
bed late, poring over worm-eaten, obsolete, good-for-nothing
books, and cultivating the acquaintance
of a thousand learned authors, both ancient and
modern, who, to tell the honest truth, are the stupidest
companions in the world—and after all,
what have we got by it?—Truly the mighty valuable
conclusion, that this country does actually exist,
and has been discovered; a self-evident fact
not worth a hap'worth of gingerbread. And what
is worse, we seem just as far off from the city of
New York now, as we were at first. Now for myself,
I would not care the value of a brass button,
being used to this dull and learned company; but
I feel for my unhappy readers, who seem most
woefully jaded and fatigued.

Still, however, we have formidable difficulties
to encounter, since it yet remains, if possible, to
shew how this country was originally peopled—
a point fruitful of incredible embarrassment, to us
scrupulous historians, but absolutely indispensable
to our works. For unless we prove that the Aborigines
did absolutely come from some where, it
will be immediately asserted in this age of scepticism,
that they did not come at all; and if they did
not come at all, then was this country never populated—a
conclusion perfectly agreeable to the rules
of logic, but wholly irreconcilable to every feeling
of humanity, inasmuch as it must syllogistically
prove fatal to the innumerable Aborigines of this
populous region.

To avert so dire a sophism, and to rescue from
logical annihilation so many millions of fellow creatures,
how many wings of geese have been plundered!
what oceans of ink have been benevolently
drained! and how many capacious heads of learned
historians have been addled and forever confounded!
I pause with reverential awe, when I
contemplate the ponderous tomes in different languages,
with which they have endeavoured to solve
this question, so important to the happiness of society,
but so involved in clouds of impenetrable
obscurity. Historian after historian has engaged
in the endless circle of hypothetical argument, and
after leading us a weary chace through octavos,

quartos, and folios, has let us out at the end of his
work, just as wise as we were at the beginning.
It was doubtless some philosophical wild goose
chace of the kind, that made the old poet Macrobius
rail in such a passion at curiosity, which he
anathematizes most heartily, as “an irksome agonizing
care, a superstitious industry about unprofitable
things, an itching humour to see what is not to
be seen, and to be doing what signifies nothing when
it is done.”

But come my lusty readers, let us address ourselves
to our task and fall vigorously to work upon
the remaining rubbish that lies in our way; but I
warrant, had master Hercules, in addition to his
seven labours, been given as an eighth to write a
genuine American history, he would have been
fain to abandon the undertaking, before he got over
the threshold of his work.

Of the claims of the children of Noah to the
original population of this country I shall say
nothing, as they have already been touched upon
in my last chapter. The claimants next in celebrity,
are the decendants of Abraham. Thus
Christoval Colon (vulgarly called Columbus) when
he first discovered the gold mines of Hispaniola
immediately concluded, with a shrewdness that
would have done honour to a philosopher, that he
had found the ancient Ophir, from whence Solomon
procured the gold for embellishing the temple

at Jerusalem; nay Colon even imagined that
he saw the remains of furnaces of veritable Hebraic
construction, employed in refining the precious ore.

So golden a conjecture, tinctured with such fascinating
extravagance, was too tempting not to be
immediately snapped at by the gudgeons of learning,
and accordingly, there were a host of profound
writers, ready to swear to its correctness, and to
bring in their usual load of authorities, and wise
surmises, wherewithal to prop it up. Vetablus and
Robertus Stephens declared nothing could be more
clear—Arius Montanus without the least hesitation
asserts that Mexico was the true Ophir, and
the Jews the early settlers of the country. While
Possevin, Becan, and a host of other sagacious
writers, lug in a supposed prophecy of the fourth
book of Esdras, which being inserted in the mighty
hypothesis, like the key stone of an arch, gives it,
in their opinion, perpetual durability.

Scarce however, have they completed their
goodly superstructure, than in trudges a phalanx of
opposite authors, with Hans de Laet the great
Dutchman at their head, and at one blow, tumbles
the whole fabric about their ears. Hans in fact,
contradicts outright all the Israelitish claims to the
first settlement of this country, attributing all those
equivocal symptoms, and traces of Christianity and
Judaism, which have been said to be found in divers
provinces of the new world, to the Devil, who

has always affected to counterfeit the worship of
the true Deity. “A remark,” says the knowing
old Padre d'Acosta, “made by all good authors
who have spoken of the religion of nations newly
discovered, and founded besides on the authority
of the fathers of the church.”

Some writers again, among whom it is with
great regret I am compelled to mention Lopez de
Gomara, and Juan de Leri, insinuate that the Canaanites,
being driven from the land of promise by
the Jews, were seized with such a panic, that they
fled without looking behind them, until stopping
to take breath they found themselves safe in America.
As they brought neither their national language,
manners nor features, with them, it is supposed
they left them behind in the hurry of their
flight—I cannot give my faith to this opinion.

I pass over the supposition of the learned Grotius,
who being both an ambassador and a Dutchman
to boot, is entitled to great respect; that
North America, was peopled by a strolling company
of Norwegians, and that Peru was founded
by a colonyfrom China—Manco or Mungo Capac,
the first Incas, being himself a Chinese. Nor shall
I more than barely mention that father Kircher,
ascribes the settlement of America to the Egyptians,
Budbeck to the Scandinavians, Charron to the
Gauls, Juffredus Petri to a skaiting party from
Friesland, Milius to the Celtæ, Marinocus the Sicilian

to the Romans, Le Compte to the Phoenicians,
Postel to the Moors, Martyn d'Angleria to the
Abyssinians, together with the sage surmise of De
Laet, that England, Ireland and the Orcades may
contend for that honour.

Nor will I bestow any more attention or credit
to the idea that America is the fairy region of Zipangri,
described by that dreaming traveller Marco
Polo the Venetian; or that it comprizes the visionary
island of Atlantis, described by Plato. Neither
will I stop to investigate the heathenish assertion of
Paracelsus, that each hemisphere of the globe was
originally furnished with an Adam and Eve. Or
the more flattering opinion of Dr. Romayne supported
by many nameless authorities, that Adam
was of the Indian race—or the startling conjecture
of Buffon, Helvetius, and Darwin, so highly honourable
to mankind, and peculiarly complimentary
to the French nation, that the whole human species
are accidentally descended from a remarkable family
of monkies!

This last conjecture, I must own, came upon
me very suddenly and very ungraciously. I have
often beheld the clown in a pantomime, while gazing
in stupid wonder at the extravagant gambols
of a harlequin, all at once electrified by a sudden
stroke of the wooden sword across his shoulders.
Little did I think at such times, that it would ever
fall to my lot to be treated with equal discourtesy,

and that while I was quietly beholding these grave
philosophers, emulating the excentric transformations
of the parti-coloured hero of pantomime, they
would on a sudden turn upon me and my readers,
and with one flourish of their conjectural wand,
metamorphose us into beasts! I determined from
that moment not to burn my fingers with any more
of their theories, but content myself with detailing
the different methods by which they transported the
descendants of these ancient and respectable monkeys,
to this great field of theoretical warfare.

This was done either by migrations by land or
transmigrations by water. Thus Padre Joseph D'
Acosta enumerates three passages by land, first by
the north of Europe, secondly by the north of Asia
and thirdly by regions southward of the straits of Magellan.
The learned Grotius marches his Norwegians
by a pleasant route across frozen rivers and
arms of the sea, through Iceland, Greenland, Estotiland
and Naremberga. And various writers,
among whom are Angleria, De Hornn and Buffon,
anxious for the acommodation of these travellers,
have fastened the two continents together by a
strong chain of deductions—by which means they
could pass over dry shod. But should even this
fail, Pinkerton, that industrious old gentleman, who
compiles books and manufactures Geographies, and
who erst flung away his wig and cane, frolicked
like a naughty boy, and committed a thousand

etourderies, among the petites filles of Paris[18] —
he I say, has constructed a natural bridge of ice,
from continent to continent, at the distance of four
or five miles from Behring's straits—for which he
is entitled to the grateful thanks of all the wandering
aborigines who ever did, or ever will pass over
it.

It is an evil much to be lamented, that none of
the worthy writers above quoted, could ever commence
his work, without immediately declaring hostilities
against every writer who had treated of the
same subject. In this particular, authors may be
compared to a certain sagacious bird, which in building
its nest, is sure to pull to pieces the nests of all
the birds in its neighbourhood. This unhappy propensity
tends grievously to impede the progress of
sound knowledge. Theories are at best but brittle
productions, and when once committed to the stream,
they should take care that like the notable pots
which were fellow voyagers, they do not crack each
other. But this literary animosity is almost unconquerable.
Even I, who am of all men the most
candid and liberal, when I sat down to write this
authentic history, did all at once conceive an absolute,
bitter and unutterable contempt, a strange and
unimaginable disbelief, a wondrous and most ineffable
scoffing of the spirit, for the theories of the numerous

literati, who have treated before me, of this
country. I called them jolter heads, numsculls,
dunderpates, dom cops, bottericks, domme jordans,
and a thousand other equally indignant appellations.
But when I came to consider the matter coolly and
dispassionately, my opinion was altogether changed.
When I beheld these sages gravely accounting for
unaccountable things, and discoursing thus wisely
about matters forever hidden from their eyes, like
a blind man describing the glories of light, and the
beauty and harmony of colours, I fell back in astonishment
at the amazing extent of human ingenuity.

If—cried I to myself, these learned men can weave
whole systems out of nothing, what would be their
productions were they furnished with substantial
materials—if they can argue and dispute thus ingeniously
about subjects beyond their knowledge,
what would be the profundity of their observations,
did they but know what they were talking about!
Should old Radamanthus, when he comes to decide
upon their conduct while on earth, have the least
idea of the usefulness of their labours, he will undoubtedly
class them with those notorious wise men
of Gotham, who milked a bull, twisted a rope of
sand, and wove a velvet purse from a sow's ear.

My chief surprise is, that among the many writers
I have noticed, no one has attempted to prove
that this country was peopled from the moon—or
that the first inhabitants floated hither on islands of

ice, as white bears cruize about the northern oceans—
or that they were conveyed here by balloons, as modern
æreconauts pass from Dover to Calais—or by witchcraft,
as Simon Magus posted among the stars—or
after the manner of the renowned Scythian Abaris,
who like the New England witches on full-blooded
broomsticks, made most unheard of journeys on
the back of a golden arrow, given him by the Hyperborean
Apollo.

But there is still one mode left by which this
country could have been peopled, which I have reserved
for the last, because I consider it worth all
the rest, it is—by accident! Speaking of the islands
of Solomon, New Guinea, and New Holland, the profound
father Charlevoix observes, “in fine, all these
countries are peopled, and it is possible, some have
been so by accident. Now if it could have happened
in that manner, why might it not have been at the
same time, and by the same means, with the other parts
of the globe?” This ingenious mode of deducing
certain conclusions from possible premises, is an improvement
in syllogistic skill, and proves the good
father superior even to Archimedes, for he can turn
the world without any thing to rest his lever upon.
It is only surpassed by the dexterity with which the
sturdy old Jesuit, in another place, demolishes the
gordian knot—“Nothing” says he, “is more easy.
The inhabitants of both hemispheres are certainly the
descendants of the same father. The common father

of mankind, received an express order from Heaven,
to people the world, and accordingly it has been
peopled. To bring this about, it was necessary to
overcome all difficulties in the way, and they have
also been overcome!” Pious Logician! How does
he put all the herd of laborious theorists to the
blush, by explaining in fair words, what it has cost
them volumes to prove they knew nothing about!

They have long been picking at the lock, and
fretting at the latch, but the honest father at once
unlocks the door by bursting it open, and when he
has it once a-jar, he is at full liberty to pour in as
many nations as he pleases. This proves to a demonstration
that a little piety is better than a cartload
of philosophy, and is a practical illustration of
that scriptural promise—“By faith ye shall move
mountains.”

From all the authorities here quoted, and a variety
of others which I have consulted, but which
are omitted through fear of fatiguing the unlearned
reader—I can only draw the following conclusions,
which luckily however, are sufficient for my purpose—
First, That this part of the world has actually been
peopled (Q. E. D.) to support which, we have living
proofs in the numerous tribes of Indians that inhabit
it. Secondly, That it has been peopled in five
hundred different ways, as proved by a cloud of authors,
who from the positiveness of their assertions
seem to have been eye witnesses to the fact—

Thirdly, That the people of this country had a variety
of fathers, which as it may not be thought
much to their credit by the common run of readers,
the less we say on the subject the better. The question
therefore, I trust, is forever at rest.