and almost without motive. Thus they are kind or cruel, loquacious or taciturn,
active or indolent, according to the promptings of caprice or passion; and they
have been truly said to possess the foibles of children, with the vices of men.
The more their character has been studied, the more evident it becomes that their
good qualities were greatly overrated by the first voyagers and missionaries who
visited them. The correctness of these remarks is sustained by the laxity of
moral feeling throughout these islands; by their absurd superstitions and human
sacrifices; by their remorseless cruelty to prisoners taken in war, and their general
recklessness of life; and last, not least, by the Arreois society, (now happily obsolete,)
which enjoined the murder of the offspring of its members.
The Polynesians, nevertheless, are intelligent, imitative, and amenable to
instruction, as is manifest in their rapid progress in elementary literature and
the more useful arts: and if we except the New Zealanders, the Fegee islanders,
and a few other groups, perhaps no people on the globe have been more readily
amenable to the usages of civilised life, and the doctrines of Christianity. Their
intellectual capacities have by some authors been considered equal in all respects
to those of the Caucasian race; which, however, is by no means certain; for
although they rapidly acquire ideas by means of active perceptive powers, their
reflective faculties have not hitherto expanded in proportion.
In their uncivilised state they are singularly devoted to the pastimes of
boxing, wrestling, archery and boat racing; but their most striking predilection is
for maritime amusement and adventure. Their canoes are large, and constructed
with great ingenuity, and will in many instances accommodate fifty men. In
these vessels they prosecute their wars upon the neighboring islanders, and undertake
considerable voyages for profit and pleasure.* Their fondness for the sea is
in fact a national and dominant feature in their character, and shows itself in the
eagerness with which they enter as sailors in the ships of all nations; and their
ingenuity is in nothing so conspicuous as in the construction of their vessels.f
15 THE AMERICAN FAMILY.
The concurrent testimony of all travellers goes to prove that the native
Americans are possessed of certain physical traits that serve to identify them in
* For an instructive account of the protracted and successful voyages of the Polynesians, see
E llis, I, p. 126, and II, p. 51.—Williams’ South Sea Islands, p. 422.—Beechey, Voy. I, p. 172.
t Förster, Obs. p. 457.
localities the most remote from each other; nor do they, as a general rule, assimilate
less in their moral character and usages. It is not to be denied that different
tribes occasionally present very dissimilar features; but these differences are more
obvious in small communities than in collective nations. There are also, in their
multitudinous languages, the .traces of a common origin; and it may be assumed
as a fact that no other race of men maintains such a striking analogy through all
its subdivisions, and amidst all its variety of physical circumstances.'
By what rule of Anthropology, then, are we to group the American nations
into families, or, as some writers have attempted, into species ? The ingenious
Bory de St. Vincent has endeavored to show that the American race embraces
four species exclusive of the Eskimaux ;* but he has certainly failed to point out
any differences that have a claim to specific character.
It appears to me, as heretofore indicated, that the most natural division of
the American race is into two families, one of which, the Toltecan family, bears
evidence of centuries of demi-civilisation, while the other, under the collective
title of the American family, embraces all the barbarous nations of the new world
excepting the Polar tribes or Mongol-Americans. Some writers, however, suppose
even the Eskimaux to be a part of the same original stock, partly because there is
some resemblance in features, partly from partial analogy of language, and partly
again from a determination to merge the American in the Mongolian. I t is
obvious, nevertheless, that the continent of America was originally peopled, as it
yet is, by a very distinct race, and that the Eskimaux arriving in small and
straggling parties from Asia, necessarily adopted more or less of the language and
customs of »the people among whom they settled: hence, the Eskimaux, and
especially the Greenlanders, are to be regarded as a partially mixed race, among
whom the physical character of the Mongolian predominates, while their language
presents obvious analogies to that of the Chippewyans who border them to the
south.f In the American family itself we observe several subordinate groups
or branches which may be designated under the following heads :
* For example, the Mexicans and Peruvians are considered cognate with the Malays, and are
by this author referred to his Neptunian species, (Homo neptunianus.) His Columbian species,
(Homo columbicus,) he supposes to have had their original seats among the Alleghany mountains,
and to have spread themselves from the basin of the St. Lawrence to Florida, the West Indies,
Honduras, Terra Firma, and Guyana. The American species, (Homo americanus,) includes the
tribes of the Orinoco and the Amazon, and those of Brazil, Paraguay, &c. The fourth or Patagonian
species, includes the nations of the far south.—VHomme, Espkces 8, 9,10 el 1 1 .
t Archseolog. Amer. II, p. 118.