Note 549 — Chapter II

Different shades of belief are abundant: F. Xavier de Orrio’s Solucion del gran problema (Mexico, 1763); Fischer’s Conjecture sur l’origine des Américaines; Adair’s Amer. Indians; G. A. Thompson’s New theory of the two hemispheres (London, 1815); Adam Hodgson’s Letters from No. Amer. (Lond., 1824); J. H. McCulloh’s Researches (Balt., 1829), ch. 10; D. B. Warden’s “Recherches sur les Antiquités de l’Amérique” in the Antiquités Méxicaines (Paris, 1834), vol. ii.; E. G. Squier’s Serpent Symbol (N. Y., 1851); Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Hist. des Nations Civilisées, i. 7; José Perez in Revue Orientale et Américaine (Paris, 1862), vol. viii.; Bancroft’s Native Races, v. 30, 31, with references; Winchell’s Preadamites, 397; a paper on Asiatic tribes in North America, in Canadian Institute Proceedings (1881), i. 171. Dabry de Thiersant, in his Origine des Indiens du nouv. monde (Paris, 1883), reopens the question, and Quatrefages even brings the story of Moncacht-Ape (see post, Vol. V. p. 77) to support a theory of frequent Asiatic communication. Tylor (Early Hist. Mankind, 209) says that the Asiatics must have taught the Mexicans to make bronze and smelt iron; and (p. 339) he finds additional testimony in the correspondence of myths, but Max Müller (Chips, ii. 168) demurs. Nadaillac, in his L’Amérique préhistorique, discussed this with the other supposable connections of the American people, and generally disbelieved in them; but Dall, in the English translation, summarily dismisses all consideration of them as unworthy a scientific mind; but points out what the early Indian traditions are (p. 526).