Note 115 — CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

I. Alleged Jewish Migration.—The identification of the native Americans with the stock of the lost tribes of Israel very soon became a favorite theory with the early Spanish priests settled in America. Las Casas and Duran adopted it, while Torquemada and Acosta rejected it. André Thevet, of mendacious memory, did not help the theory by espousing it. It was approved in J. F. Lumnius’s De extremo Dei Judicio et Indorum vocatione, libri iii. (Venice and Antwerp, 1569);[730] and a century later the belief attracted new attention in the Origen de los Americanos de Manasseh Ben Israel, published at Amsterdam in 1650.[731] It was in the same year (1650) that the question received the first public discussion in English in Thomas Thorowgood’s Jewes in America, or, Probabilities that the Americans are of that Race. With the removall of some contrary reasonings, and earnest desires for effectuall endeavours to make them Christian (London, 1650).[732] Thorowgood was answered by Sir Hamon L’Estrange in Americans no Iewes, or Improbabilities that the Americans are of that race (London, 1652). The views of Thorowgood found sympathy with the Apostle Eliot of Massachusetts; and when Thorowgood replied to L’Estrange he joined with it an essay by Eliot, and the joint work was entitled Iewes in America, or probabilities that those Indians are Judaical, made more probable by some additionals to the former conjectures: an accurate discourse is premised of Mr. John Eliot (who preached the gospel to the natives in their own language) touching their origination, and his Vindication of the planters (London, 1660). What seems to have been a sort of supplement, covering, however, in part, the same ground, appeared as Vindiciæ Judæcorum, or a true account of the Jews, being more accurately illustrated than heretofore, which includes what is called “The learned conjectures of Rev. Mr. John Eliot” (32 pp.). Some of the leading New England divines, like Mayhew and Mather,[733] espoused the cause with similar faith. Roger Williams also was of the same opinion. William Penn is said to have held like views. The belief may be said to have been general, and had not died out in New England when Samuel Sewall, in 1697, published his Phænomena quædam Apocalyptica ad aspectum Novi Orbis Configurata.[734]