Note 62 — Chapter III · Music and poetry of the Indians.

In the sitting figures of Na-na-bush, as rudely delineated by the Indians, there is some resemblance to the Asiatic Iswara, or Satyavrata, who, in the eastern mythology, is connected with one of their deluges. Like Noah, like Saturn, and like Iswara, Na-na-bush preserved, during the inundation, those animals and plants, which were afterwards to be useful to mankind; and his addresses to the animals, which the Indians often repeat, remind us of the age when one language was common to men and brutes. (Tooke’s Pantheon, p. 118. Am. ed.) It is true, that, like the Ovidian Deucalion, Na-na-bush reproduced men, the old stock having been entirely destroyed; but it is to be remembered, that any resemblance, however strong, between these traditions, have had ample time to be obliterated. Instead of complaining that the similarity in the opinions of these people to ancient fables, is no stronger, we ought, perhaps, to be surprised that any resemblance exists. If any one would attempt a comparison between the opinions of the Americans and the Pagans of former ages, or of any other race, he should bear in mind how vague and mutable must be all such traditions, in an unwritten language. He must not be surprised to find, on close examination, that the characters of all pagan deities, male and female, melt into each other, and, at last, into one or two, for it seems a well founded opinion, that the whole crowd of gods and goddesses of ancient Rome, the modern Váránes of the east, and Mani-toag of the west, mean, originally, only the powers of nature, and principally those of the sun, expressed in a variety of ways, and by a number of fanciful names. (Asiatic Researches, Vol. I. p. 267, Lond. ed.)

The resemblance between the Algonkin deity, (Na-na-bush,) and Saturn and Satyavrata, or Iswara, of the Sanscrit, may be farther traced in each being figured with a serpent, sometimes held in the hand, and in other instances, as in many of the Roman figures of Saturn, in the mouth. This resemblance is, perhaps, the more worthy of remark, as the Americans seem not to have retained any very satisfactory explanation of this circumstance.

It will not be supposed that these vague resemblances in religious opinions, if they may be so called, afford the means of tracing the American tribes to their origin. That these people have customs and opinions closely resembling those of the Asiatics, particularly of the Hebrews, previous to the Christian dispensation, will not be denied; but the final result of all inquiries into this subject will, perhaps, be the adoption of the opinion of Bryant, of Sir William Jones, and other men of profound research, that Egyptians, Greeks, and Italians, Persians, Ethiopians, Phenecians, Celts, and Tuscans, proceeded, originally, from one central place, and that the same people carried their religion and sciences into China and Japan, to Mexico and Peru, and, we may add, to the banks of the Mississippi, and the coasts of Hudson’s Bay.

Some of the arguments adduced in support of the favourite opinion, that the American tribes are the long lost remnant of the children of Israel, certainly require no answer. An intimate acquaintance with many languages is now so widely diffused, as to supersede the necessity of remarking, or of proving, that a strong similarity in the sound of some few words of different languages, even though they should be found similar in meaning, does not establish the fact of community of origin; and the wide dissimilarity between the American and the Hebrew, and its cognate dialects, in the one particular, of the compounding of words, is probably, to the learned, conclusive proof that our tribes are, in no sort, derived from the Hebrew stock.