have received an ample education, and have remained for many years in civilised
society, they lose none of their innate love of their own national usages, which
they have almost invariably resumed when chance has left them to choose for
themselves. Such has been the experience of the Spanish and Portuguese
missionaries in South America, and of the English and their descendants in the
northern portion of the continent.*
However much the benevolent mind may regret the inaptitude of the Indian
for civilisation, the affirmative of this question seems to be established beyond a
doubt. His moral and physical nature are alike adapted to his position among
the races of men, and it is as reasonable to expect the one to be changed as the
other. The structure of his mind appears to be different from that of the white
man, nor can the two harmonise in their social relations except on the most
limited scale. Every one knows, however, that the mind expands by culture;
nor can we yet tell how near the Indian would approach the Caucasian after
education had been bestowed on a single family through several successive
generations.f
* Those distinguished travellers, Spix and Yon Martius, mention that an Indian of the Coroados
tribe of Brazil, was brought up. in the adjacent European colony, and so far educated that he was
ordained priest, and read mass; “ but all at once he renounced his new profession, threw aside^his
habit, and fled naked into the woods to his old way of life.” '—Trav. in Brazil, II, p. 242.
My friend Dr. Casanova, who has resided several years in Chili, informs me that instances like
the preceding are not unfrequent in that country, even when the Indians have been taken at a very
tender age, and every inducement has been held out to enlist their feelings in favor of civilised life.
“ At an early period of the existence of Harvard University,” says Dr. Warren, “ our pious
ancestors placed there a number of young Indians. These, after a short term of study, uniformly
disappeared, and I believe the name of Caleb Chees-chaumuck stands on the college catalogue, a
solitary instance of a native regularly graduated.—A recent example of the difficulty of reducing the
young savage to the habits of civilised life, is well known in this vicinity. The government of the
United States, after the late Indian war, placed the son of the Prophet Tecumseh at the West Point
establishment of cadets. The young man conformed at first with apparent ease to the strict discipline
of the institution; but on their visit to this place in 18 2 1 , he availed himself of an opportunity to quit
them, and has not, I believe, since rejoined the corps.” *
The Mohawk warrior Thayendanegea, more familiar by the name of Brant, received a Christian
education, and even joined in the Christian communion; yet he was readily induced by the British
government to resume his savage propensities against the American colonies, and became one of the
most bloody and remorseless destroyers itith e annals of Indian warfare.
t “Variety of powers in the various faces,” observes Mr. Laurence, “ corresponds to the differ-
* Comparative View of the Sensorial Systems in Men and Animals, p. 95.—-I may add, that Dr. Warren does not
suppose the Indians incapable of attaining the sciences and arts; but that the reason of their having made so little
progress, is to be traced to injudicious and inadequate means of instruction.
One of the most remarkable intellectual defects of the Indians is “ a great
difficulty in comprehending any thing that belongs to numerical relations. I
never saw a single man who might not be made to say that he was eighteen or
sixty years of age.”* Wafer made the same remark in reference to the Indians
of Darien; and Mr. Schoolcraft, the United States Indian Agent, assures me that
this deficiency is a cause of most of the misunderstandings in respect to treaties
entered into between our government and the native tribes. The latter sell their
lands for a sum of money without having any conception of the amount, so that
if it be a thousand dollars or a million few of them comprehend the difference
until the treaty is signed and the money comes to be divided. Each man is then
for the first time acquainted with his own interest in the transaction, and disappointment
and murmurs invariably ensue.
15. TH E TOLTECAN FAMILY.
In this group are embraced the civilised nations of Mexico, Peru and Bogota,
extending from the Rio Gila in the thirty-third degree of north latitude, along the
western margin of the continent to the frontiers of Chili. In North America,
however, the people of this family were spread from ocean to ocean, through the
present intendencies of Mexico, Yera Cruz, Puebla, Oaxaca, Guatimala, Yucatan,
Nicaragua, &c. In South America, on the contrary, this family chiefly occupied
a narrow strip of land between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean, and were limited
on the south by the great desert of Atacama. Further north, however, in the
present republic of New Grenada, lived the Bogotese, a people whose civilisation,
like their geographical position, was intermediate between that of the Peruvians
and Mexicans. This division of the Toltecan family had long held their mountain
empire at the epoch of the Spanish invasion and conquest, and were surrounded
on all sides by barbarous and uncongenial tribes.
ences both in kind and degree, which characterise the individuals of each race; indeed, to the general
character o f all nature, in which uniformity is most carefully avoided. To expect that the Americans
can be raised by any culture to an equal height in moral sentiments and intellectual energy with.
Europeans, appears to me quite as unreasonable as it would be to hope that the bull-dog may equal
the greyhound in speed; that the latter may be taught to hunt by scent like the hound; or that the
mastiff may rival in talents and acquirements the sagacious and docile poodle.”—Lectures on Zoology,
p. 501.—See also a graphic view of this question in Dr. Caldwell’s Thoughts on the Unity of the
Human Species, p. 142.
* Humboldt, in Lawrence’s Lect. p. 569.