Pre-historic America

Front matter

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,0 vV re-Historic America

Preface

Pre-historic man has for some time excited a justifiable interest not only among men of science but among men of intelligence everywhere.

The first revelations in regard to the co-existence of man with extinct animals were received not only with surprise but with natural incredulity. Soon, however, proofs of such weight multiplied, that doubt became no longer reasonable, and we are now able to assert with confidence that, at a period from which we are separated by many centuries, man inhabited the earth, already old at the time of his appearance. The length of this period can be measured by no chronology, no calculation can compute it, history and tradition are silent with regard to it ; and it is only by the study of works which may be almost termed stupendous, and by the most careful reasoning that traces of pre-historic man have been followed up through an almost fabulous past and some idea has been gained of the rude pioneers who were the ancestors of the human race. With some probability Asia has been fixed upon as the primaeval cradle of humanity, from which by successive migrations, during an incalculable period, man spread to the uttermost parts of the Old World.

At an epoch not far distant, men probably derived from the same source, made their appearance in the New World, wandering on the shores of either ocean. Like their nomad contemporaries of the other hemisphere they knew no shelter save that afforded by nature in her forests and rocks. Rudely shaped stones served them alike for tools and weapons and their social condition was paralleled by that known for their European contemporaries under the name of the Stone age. In accordance with a universal law of vi

PREFACE.

Nature now well recognized, men alike in habits, physique, and mental culture, though in the midst of most diverse conditions of fauna, flora, and climate, were traversing the forests of India and the frigid regions of the north, chasing the reindeer or the bear on the banks of the Delaware or the Mississippi as well as along the Thames or the Seine.

Nor is this all ; the inhabitants of distant continents passed through strictly analogous phases of culture. The nomads were succeeded by sedentary tribes who settled by the banks of rivers or the shores of ocean, wherever the bounty of the waters afforded the subsistence. Shell-heaps and kitchen middens bear witness to the long duration of their sojourn. Centuries passed, new wants were felt, aesthetic feeling awoke, and here and there the stimulus to progress did not fail. Social life had taken on a communal garb and the common needs led to united effort for their satisfaction. Mounds, tumuli, pyramids, arose, and earthen structures in whose form the savage often embodied the animal outlines associated with his myths or ceremonials. In other regions, probably later, another form was taken by the outward symbols of social structure, resulting in beehive-like pueblos. Threatened by dangers soon to be ever present they sought for refuge in the recesses of the cliffs, conquering difficulties of construction which appear almost insurmountable to our eyes. Towns and monuments arose of which the imposing ruins still bear witness to the skill of those whose very existence has been but recently made known.

Although mounds and cliff-houses, ruins and temples, determine no dates of erection or names of the builders, yet through them Ave may become acquainted with the essentials of the manners, habits, and mental culture, of the ancient inhabitants of America. We are able to conclude that at the time of the first European invasion the civilization of the Americans, the slow growth of ages, was in some respects not inferior to that of their conquerors.

In " Les premiers homines et les temps pre'liistoriques" I have

PREFACE.

Vll described the Stone Age of Europe and the early resting-places of the ancient inhabitants of the Old World. The good- will with which that work was received has led me to supplement it by tracing the analogous period in America, seeking the first evidences of a culture parallel to our own and bringing the recital down to the sixteenth century of our era._

My task has been facilitated by the numerous investigations undertaken in the United States. There, many societies devote themselves to the study of aboriginal antiquities, museums exist already containing a wealth of material ; excavations are carried on with an energy and perseverance justly commanding admiration. Success has crowned these efforts, every day bringing to light the most remarkable discoveries, the most unexpected results.

These researches and discoveries it is my desire to make widely known, but, as I have said elsewhere, and now repeat, the state of archaeology is such that however great the importance of the facts revealed by it, we cannot regard our present conclusions from them as final. Nothing has been more injurious to science that the ephemeral popularity of hypotheses which the revelations of a day have sometimes overturned. As was lately said by Virchow, " when we know as little as we do yet, it behooves us to be modest in our theories."

Our present lack of information, however, is stimulating rather than prejudicial to archaeological study. For my part I know no grander spectacle than the onward march of human progress. Every fact won, every stage accomplished, becomes the starting point of fresh acquirement, of further progress which will ever be the glorious heritage of future generations. A yet more elevating sentiment results from these studies which is a profound gratitude toward Him who created man, who made him capable of such progress and granted him such potentiality of mind. Science in its freedom and its strength cannot disown its author.

Paris, October-], 1882.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Man and the Mastodon i

II. The Kitchen-Middens and the Caves . 46

Chapter I. Man And The Mastodon

THE existence of the American continent was unknown to the Egyptians and the Phoenicians, as well as to the Greeks and Romans. We find nothing in the writings either of historians or of geographers to justify the assertion that the ancients even suspected the existence of a vast continent beyond the Atlantic, and a few vague statements, a few bold guesses, interpreted later with the help of accomplished facts, cannot be accepted as evidence. M. De Guignes has endeavored to prove that intercourse took place between China and America as early as the fifth century of our era 1 ; according to legends in which a little truth is mingled with much fiction, Northmen landed in New England about A.D. iooo ; and in maps dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, continents and islands of uncertain outline are for the first time represented beyond the ocean. The Eskimo passed freely from one continent to another in the circumpolar regions, but they were themselves as entirely unknown as the other inhabitants of America. In the course of the present work we shall examine into the question of the relations which may have existed between the Old World and the New, but shall content ourselves at present with saying that the first positive information ' about the new countries and their mysterious people dates only from the fifteenth century. Side by side with the glorious name of Christopher Columbus, 2 we must place those of Jacques Car-

1 These fables arose from early voyages of the Chinese to Korea and Japan, exaggerated accounts of which were misunderstood by students of ancient Chinese literature.

2 Christopher Columbus left Palos, near Seville, on the 3d of August, 1492, •and on the 14th of the following October landed on the island of Samana.

PRE-HIS TORIC A ME RICA.

tier, John and Sebastian Cabot, Amerigo Vespucci, Magellan* Pizarro, and especially Fernando Cortes, as the first to establish the supremacy of European civilization in the New World.

Cortes disembarked at the mouth of the little river Tabasco, on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico, and fought two successive battles with the Indians, 1 who ventured to oppose his passage. The second battle, which was bloody and long contested, took place on the 18th of March, 15 19. Victory remained with the Spaniards, and Cortes erected upon the soil of America his great standard of black velvet embroidered with gold; having in the centre a red cross surrounded by blue and white flames, bearing the following inscription in Latin : " Friends, let us follow the Cross, and if we have faith in that sign we shall conquer." This was Europe's. Act of Appropriation ; from that moment her fortunes and those of the New World have been indissolubly united. 2

1 Columbus, imbued with, the ideas of his time, supposed the land he saw stretching before him to be the coast of India, hence the name of the West Indies, and that of Indians still given to the natives of America, as if posterityhad felt it a point of honor to perpetuate the illusion of the great navigator.

2 Pre-historic America has been discussed by numerous writers. A mere list of them would fill a long bibliography : we will only name : Atwater's " Description of the Antiquities of Ohio " ; the publications of the Smithsonian Institution, including the work of Squier and Davis on "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley " ; the researches of Dr. Chas. Rau, and those of Dall, on pre-historic remains in the Aleutian islands ; Squier's " Antiquities of the State of New York," and Lapham's " Antiquities of Wisconsin " ; Schoolcraft's " Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the Indian Tribes of the United States, "in six volumes ; Baldwin's " Ancient America " ; Wilson's" Prehistoric Man " ; Waldeck's " Voyage au Yucatan " ; Charnay's " Cites et Ruines Americaines," with a preface by Violletle Due; Stephens' " Incidents of Travels in Central America," in two volumes ; Prescott's " Conquest of Mexico" and " Conquest of Peru " ; Jones' " Antiquities of the Southern Indians " ; Morton's. "Crania Americana" ; Nott and Gliddon's "Types of Mankind " ; Foster's "Pre-historic Races of the United States " ; Brasseur de Bourbourg's " Histoire des Nations Civilisees du Mexique et de 1' Amerique Centrale," in four volumes ; Southall's " Recent Origin of Man " ; Short's " North Americans of Antiquity"; Tylor's "Researches into the Early History of Mankind"; Squier's " Peru " ; his " Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas" ; and the important work of H. H. Bancroft, on "The Native Races, of the Pacific States of North America," in five volumes*

MAN AND THE MASTODON.

In the sixteenth century America was inhabited from the Arctic Ocean to Cape Horn, from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Pacific, by millions of men of types analogous to and with characteristics as varied as many of the inhabitants of the Old World. Amongst them were to be found numerous shades of complexion, from the ruddy white of the inhabitants of the Cordillera of the Andes, of the Amazon valley, or of the island of Santa Catherina, to the much darker tint of some of the tribes of California and Florida, of the natives of the island of St. Vincent, or of the Charruas dwelling on the southern banks of the Rio de la Plata. 1 The Eskimo of the north were short ; the Patagonians of the south were remarkable for their lofty stature. 2 Some Indian tribes had slender limbs with small hands and feet ; others were robust and stoutly built. Some had round heads, whilst in others the dolicho-cephalous 3 form was pronounced. Some had an abundant crop of hair, others scarcely any ; some shaved their heads, others let their hair grow long. It would take a long time to enumerate all the differences of type and race met with by Europeans when they first arrived on the American continent. The native Americans lived among mammalia, birds, fish, and reptiles mostly unknown in Europe. In the south the Llama 4 was their chief domestic animal ; they used it as a beast of burden, ate its flesh, clothed themselves with its wool. Oxen, camels, goats, horses, and asses were unknown to them. The European dog, our faithful companion, also appears to have been a stranger to them. 5 His place was very inadequately filled

1 Nott and Gliddon's " Types of Mankind " ; Broca, Pruner Bey, Bull. Soc. Anlh., 1862 ■; Ameghino, " La Antiguedad del Hombre en el Plata," vol. i., p. 71.

2 Topinard, Rev. d' Anth., 1878, p. 511.

3 From doXlXOb long, and KBcpaXrf head.

4 The Llama (Auchenia) is a ruminant of the family of the Camelidce. It resembles the camel in the peculiar structure of its stomach, and is a native of the regions on the slopes of the Cordillera of the Andes. The Guanaco and the Vicuna are species of the same group.

5 Certain kinds of dogs were, however, domesticated in America. They were called Xulos in Nicaragua, Tzomes in Yucatan, and Techichis in Mexico.

PRE-HISTORIC A M ERICA .

by the coyote, 1 or prairie wolf, which they kept in captivity and had succeeded in taming to a certain extent. The large feline animals were represented by the jaguar, 2 the lynx, 3 the puma, 4v the habitat of which extended from Canada to Patagonia ; and the ocelot, 5 frequenting Mexico and part of South America. The bears were represented by the little black bear G and by the grizzly bear, 7 both of which differ in many important characters from any which could have been previously known to the Spaniards. Even the monkeys, so numerous in South America, were quite unlike those of the Old World. All had long prehensile tails, such as are not possessed by European or African monkeys.

The differences in the flora were not less marked. The trees were generally of species foreign to Europe and Asia. Maize was the only cereal cultivated in the New World, though the so-called "wild rice" was harvested in North America. Wheat, rye, barley, oats, millet, and rice were unknown to the Indians. On the other hand, they had a leguminous plant, the manioc, different from any European vegetable, 8 tobacco, 9 tomatoes, and peppers — all valuable acquisitions to civilization.

These were considered to afford very delicate food after having been castrated and fattened.

1 Canis latraus, Baird. In a description of Virginia published in 1649, we Tead : " The wolf of Carolina is the dog of the woods. The Indians had no other curs before the Christians came amongst them. They are made domestic. They go in great droves, in the night to hunt deer, v/hich they do as well as the best pack of hounds."

2 Felis onca, Linnaeus, a native of South America.

3 Lynx canadensis, Raf . , known also under the name of loup-cervier or wildcat ; its skin formed one of the objects of trade by the Hudson Bay Company. The natives are said to eat its flesh, which is white and insipid.

4 Felis concolor, Illiger,

5 Felis pardalis, Linnaeus.

6 Ursns Americanus, native to North America.

7 Ursns ferox. It could easily drag off a buffalo weighing more than a thousand pounds. Some twenty years ago this bear was still pretty common in California. The Indians hunted and overcame it with the help of their lassos.

K The roots of the manioc yield a starch known under the name of tapioca. 9 It* is said that tobacco was first imported into Europe in 1588 by Sir Walter Raleigh.

MAN AND THE MASTODON.

The Indians, who were successively conquered by foreign invaders, spoke hundreds of different dialects. _ Bancroft estimates that there were six hundred between Alaska and Panama ; 1 Ameghino 2 speaks of eight hundred in South America. Most of these, however, are mere derivatives from a single mother tongue like the Aymara and the Guarani. We quote these figures for what they are worth. Philology has no precise definition of what constitutes a language, and any one can add to or deduct from the numbers given according to the point of view from which he considers the matter. As an illustration of this, it may be mentioned that some philologists estimate the languages of North America at no less than thirteen hundred, whilst Squier 3 would reduce those of both continents to four hundred,

These dialects present a complete disparity in their vocabulary side by side with great similarity of structure. 4 " In

1 " Native Races," vol. III., p. 557. These dialects maybe divided into numerous distinct groups, of which four particularly characteristic families may be mentioned. 1. The Innuit or Eskimo, which differs strongly from the other American languages ; 2. The Tinneh, spoken in the Rocky Mountain region, and extending into Alaska, the British possessions, Oregon, California, New Mexico, and Texas ; 3. The Aztec or Nahua, which is widely spread throughout Central America. The remarkable poems of Nezahualcoyotl, king of Tezcuco, are written in this language. Lastly the Maya-Quiche, probably the most ancient language of Central America, which predominated in Yucatan, Chiapas and Guatemala. The Indians of Yucatan are said to speak it to this day, and Sehor Orozco y Berra tells us that all the geographical names of the peninsula are of Maya origin (" Geog. de las Lenguas de Mex.," p. 129).

2 " La Antiguedad del Hombre," vol I., p. 77. Senor Ameghino notes the curious fact that amongst certain tribes the women speak a dialect distinct from that of the men. It is more likely that the sexes merely express themselves in a different manner.

3 Nott and Gliddon, " Types of Mankind." Squier asserts that one hundred and eighty-seven words of these four hundred dialects are . common to foreign languages ; one hundred and four occur in Asiatic or Australian, forty-three in European, and forty in African languages. This, however, requires further confirmation.

4 Bancroft, vol. III., p. 556. " Other peculiarities common to all American languages might be mentioned, such as reduplications, or a repetition of the same syllable to express plurals ; the use of frequentatives and duals ; the application of gender to the third person of the verb ; the direct conversion of nouns, substantive and adjective, into verbs, and their conjugation as such ;

PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA.

America," says Humboldt, 1 " from the country of the Esquimaux to the banks of the Orinoco, and thence to the frozen shores of the Straits of Magellan, languages differing entirely in their derivation have, if we may use the expression, the same physiognomy. Striking analogies in grammatical con. struction have been recognized, not only in the more perfect languages, such as those of the Incas, the Aymara, the Guarani, and the Mexicans, but also in languages which are extremely rude. Dialects, the roots of which do not resemble each other more than the roots of the Sclavonian and Biscayan, show resemblances in structure similar to those which are found between the Sanscrit, the Persian, the Greek, and the Germanic languages." These languages are polysynthetic 2 and agglutinative, 3 which generally indicates a rudimentary state of culture. They were, however, rich enough to indicate that there was not a total absence of intellectual development. 4 Their diversity may be accounted for by the constant crossing of races, migrations, and by the new customs

peculiar generic distinctions arising from a separation of animate from inanimate beings."

Quoted by Pritchard, "Natural History of Man," 4th edition, vol. II., p. 496.

2 Gallatin (" Trans. Am. Ethn. Soc. ," vol. I.) defines a polysynthetic language as one in which all that modifies the subject or the action, or still more several complex ideas having a natural connection with each other, is expressed by a single word. The Aztec language is one of the most curious of this kind. Take, for instance, the word Amatlacuilolitquitcatlaxlahuilli, which means, " Payment received for having been bearer of a paper with writing on it." On p. 34 Gallatin gives the longest word in the Cherokee language — Winitawtgeginaliskawlungtanawnelitisesti, which translated into English means : " They will by that time have nearly done granting (favors) from a distance to thee and to me."

3 An agglutinative language is one in which new words are formed by joining roots together without changing their construction. Ameghino in his " Antiguedad del Hombre," vol. I., p. 7b, says: " casi todas las lenguas Americanas son polisilabicas o aglutinativas, es decir que difieren esencialmente del grupo de lenguas monosilabicas del Asia oriental y de las lenguas a flexion que hablan los pueblos arianos."

4 We cannot agree with Canon Farrar's opinion, that the richness which has been -admired in the aboriginal American languages is only a means of hiding their real poverty (" Families of Speech," London, 1873, pp. 124 et seq.).

MAN AND THE MASTODON.

and ideas which gradually become introduced even amongst the most degraded peoples ; still more by the well-recognized instability and mobility of many aboriginal languages. Some missionaries say they have found the language of tribes, revisited after an absence of ten years, completely changed in the interim. 1

The differences in culture of the American aborigines were hardly less remarkable. These need not, however, surprise us, for at the same period equally radical differences existed among European races, — differences, indeed, which are still maintained in spite of constant intercommunication. Some of the American races were rich, industrious, and agricultural ; they had an organized government, towns, laws, a religious system, and a powerful priesthood. In reporting to the Emperor Charles V. on a reconnoissance made in the province of Ouacalco, Cortes stated that the river 2 was dotted on either side with numerous large towns. " The whole province is level and well fortified, rich in all the productions of the earth." 3 His verdict was equally favorable in many other particulars.

Side by side with these people, who may best be compared with the ancient nations of Asia, dwelt other aborigines, presenting a complete contrast to their neighbors ; sedentary tillers of the soil, living in communities, in pueblos resembling bee-hives in their arrangement ; the Algonquins and the Apaches, nomad savages living on grasses and roots when the chase and fishing failed them ; the Aleutians, disfigured by hideous tatooing, chasing the sea otter in ingenious canoes of seal-skin, fabricating delicate tissues out of such materials as grass-fibres and feathers, and deriving their entire subsistence from the products of the sea.

Some of these people venerated animals, such as the serpent and the owl ; in Honduras it was the tiger, in Vancouver

2 The Coatzacoalcos, a river of the isthmus of Tehuantepec, at the southern extremity of the province of Vera Cruz.

3 Carta Segunda de relacion ap. Lorenzana, Folios 91, 92. Published at Mexico, 1700.

s

PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA.

Island the squirrel, which was connected with religious myths. Nor was this the extreme limit of human degradation; among certain Californian tribes men and women wandered about stark naked, recognizing neither laws, Gods, nor chiefs, and owning no shelter but that of some lofty tree, or the cave for which they competed with the wild beasts.

No less striking were the contrasts in South America ; side by side with the Peruvians, the richest and most cultured people of the two Americas, the barbarous Querandis occupied the territory now forming the Argentine Republic. On the 2d of February, 1535, Don Pedro de Mendoza landed at the mouth of the Riachuelo, where he founded the city of Santissima Trinidad de Buenos Ayres. One of his companions has written an account of his expedition, 1 and of his long struggle with the savages who had nothing but stone weapons, slings with which they flung their do/as, and the lassos so formidable in their hands. Even less civilized were the vast deserts of the extreme South, overrun as they were by savage nomad tribes, disputing with each other and with wild beasts for subsistence and shelter.

Such were the people upon whom the Europeans swept down as upon a prey given over to their desires. While Cortes was subjugating Central America, and Pizarro was overturning the throne of the Incas, parties led by Mendoza, Solis, Gaboto, and Cabeca de Vaca ascended the Rio de la Plata, the Paraguay, and the Parana, their courage and energy winning for Spain the magnificent colonial empire which she retained until the nineteenth century. Why was it necessary that their glory should have been stained by foul cruelty and gloomy fanaticism ?

The Portuguese 2 were no less active, and the two nations

1 A German soldier, Ulrich Schmidt, who took part in the expedition, has given a very interesting account of it, which was printed at Frankfort-on-the- Main in 1567, under the title of " Warhafftige und liebliche Beschreibunge etlicher furnemen Indianischen Landtschafften und Indsulen," etc. See also Ruy Diaz de Guzman's " Historia del descubrimiento, conquistas y poblacion del Rio de la Plata."

3 For an account of the part taken by the Portuguese in the discovery of the

MAN AND THE MASTODON.

disputed for the possession of the New World with ferocious zeal.

On the 9th of March ] 500, Alvarez de Cabral left Portugal with a fleet of thirteen vessels, to go to the Indies by way of the Cape of Good Hope. After passing the Cape de Verde islands he steered westward to avoid the calms which prevail off the coast of Guinea. Chance favored him beyond his hopes, and six weeks after he sailed he landed at Porto Seguro. Brazil was thus discovered, 1 and Cabral had the glory of giving to his country a land sixteen times as large 2 as France. The country was inhabited by the Tupis, of the Guarani race. 3 These people lived in villages consisting generally of four spacious green arbors enclosing a square. They were skilful in the use of the bow, and subsisted upon the products of the chase. They were entirely naked. A strange ornament disfigured the men, who wore in the lower lip a plug of wood or jade, 4 the weight of which dragged down the lip in a hideous fashion.

Some years later, Magellan 5 discovered the strait bearinahis name. An Italian named Antonio Pio-afetta, who went with him, relates 6 that the great navigator was obliged

New World, see a capital essay by L. Cordeiro in the first volume of the Compte rendu du Congres des Americanisfes, held at Nancy in 1S75.

1 It is possible that the French had previously touched at several points of Brazil. On this point see Bergeron, "Hist, de la Navigation," Paris, 1630, p. 107. "Normans and Bretons, however, maintain that they were the first to discover these countries, and that they traded from time immemorial with the natives of that part of Brazil now known as Porto Real. But there having been no written record of this intercourse it has fallen into complete oblivion. The Portuguese called the country Santa Cruz, after the cross solemnly erected by Cabral ; but our French called it Brazil, because that wood grows very plentifully in certain parts." See also an essay by M. Gafferel, Congres des Americanistes,. Luxembourg, volume I., 1S77.

2 Brazil has an area of 3.2SS,ooo English square miles.

3 Dr. Couto de Magalhaes, "O Selvagem," Rio de Janeh-0,1876. The Guaranis also peopled the Argentine Republic, Uruguay, and Paraguay.

4 This custom lingers to the present day among the Botocudos, a savage tribe of cannibals in Brazil, and the western Eskimo.

6 " Magellan's First Voyage Round the World," Hakluyt Society's publications, p. 50.

IO

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to winter in the Bay of San Juliano, where an Indian was brought to him who had been surprised by his sailors. This man, says our historian, "was so tall that the tallest of us only came up to his waist ; however, he was well built ; he had a large face, painted red 1 all round, and his eyes also were painted yellow around them ; * * * he was clothed with the skin of a certain beast ; * * * this beast has its head and ears of the size of a mule, and the neck and body of the fashion of a camel, the legs of a deer, and the tail like that of the horse. * * * This giant had his feet covered with the skin of this animal in the form of shoes, and he carried in his hand a short and thick bow, * * * with a bundle of cane arrows, which were not very long, and were feathered like ours, but they had no iron at the end, though they had at the end some small white and black cut stones." It was a Tehuelche, to whom Magellan gave the name of Patagon, because of the size of his foot, which was aggravated by the shape of the shoe he wore.

Before the arrival of the Europeans, Guiana was inhabited by a number of petty native tribes, many of them consisting of a few families. The more advanced cultivated fields of manioc, the roots of which supplied all their needs. Their bows and cotton hammocks were their only wealth. Their chiefs had little authority, and they were so totally ignorant of religion that they could not even be called idolaters. They had vague ideas of the existence of a good and an evil spirit, and their only dissipation was to intoxicate themselves with a drink made from manioc root, which was chewed by the old women and then fermented. 2

But we need not give any further account of these great discoveries. We must return to the companions of Cortes to tell of the new wonders which awaited them. Even in the most remote districts in the primeval forests covering Chiapas, Guatemala, Honduras, and Yucatan ; where through