In assigning the geographical limits pf the Toltecan family, it is not to he
supposed that they alone inhabited this extended region ; for while successive
nations of that family held dominion over it for thousands of years, other and
barbarous tribes were every where dispersed through the country, and, whether
of aboriginal or exotic origin, may have at all times constituted a large part of the
population. During these periods of power and grStness, an organised feudal
system divided the nation into two great classes of nobles and plebeians; and
there appears to have been as much objection to the amalgamation of these classes
as ever existed in an aristocratic state of Europe. The advent of the Spaniards
destroyed all distinctions by reducing both classes to equal vassalage ; and three
centuries of slavery and oppression on the part of the Spaniards, have left few
traces of Mexican and Peruvian civilisation, excepting what we glean from their
history and antiquities. These nations can no longer he identified in existing
communities ; and the mixed and motley people who now hear those names, are
as unlike their ancestors in moral and intellectual character, as the degraded Copts
of Egypt are unlike their progenitors of the age of Pharaoh.
As it will he a principal object in the sequel of this work to consider the
character of these nations in reference to their cranial remains, we shall in this
place merely remark that it is in the • intellectual faculties that we discover the
great difference between the Toltecan and American familiës. In-the arts and
sciences of the former we sfeé the evidences of an advanced civilisation. From
the Rio Gila in Calafornia, to the southern extremity of Peru, their architectural
remains are every where encountered to surprise the traveller and confound the
antiquary : among these are pyramids, temples, grottoes, bas-reliefs and arabesques ;
while their roads, aqueducts and fortifications, and the sites of their mining
operations, sufficiently attest their attainments in the practical arts of life.*
* It will be observed that this family is identical with the Neptunian species (Homo neptunianus)
of M. Bory de St. Vincent. I cannot adopt that désignation, because the classification^ which it
belongs refers these people to the Malay race. That they are not Malays is sufficiently obvious from
the difference in their character throughout; at the same time that some analogies between the skulls
of the two races will be recognised from the description already given. It must moreover be granted,
that there are some resemblances in language which are very interesting ; but while these prove a
communication and even protracted intercourse between the Americans and Asiatics, they by no
means establish an affiliation of nations. But the most striking discrepancy between the Malays and
Americans is seen in the extraordinary nautical habits of the one people, and the utter destitution of
all maritime enterprise in the other.
It is1 curious to observe that in M. Dumoulin’s classification, his eleventh, o t^m e n c a n species,
which embraces most of the barbarous tribes of South America east of the Andes, is said to possess
With respect to the American languages, it may be sufficient in this place to
observe that they present resemblances not less remarkable than those we have
noticed in the physical and moral traits of these people. All the nations from
Cape Horn to the Arctic sea, have languages which possess “ a distinct character
common to all, and apparently differing from those of the other continent with
which we are acquainted.’’* This analogy, adds Dr. Wiseman, is not of an
indefinite kind, hut consists for the most part in peculiar conjugational modes of
modifying the verbs by the insertion of syllables; whence the remark of Yater
that this wonderful uniformity observed from one extremity of America to the
other, “ favors in a singular manner the supposition of a primitive people, which
formed the common stock of the American indigenous nations.”f
Note.—On Certain Mixed Races in America.'—The various grades of amalgamation between
the white and Negro population of America, are too well known to require specification in this place;
but there are two other mixed races which, from being much more partial, are much less familiar:
viz, those which have resulted from intermarriages between the Europeans and Indians, and between
the Indians and Negroes. Of the first class the frontier settlements every where present isolated
examples; but at San Paulo, in Paraguay, there is an entire community of these people who are
known by thé name of Mamelukes. They are the offspring of Indian women by men of the
Portuguese, Dutch, French, Italian, German and Spanish nations. The fathers were often outlaws,
the.mothers the y.ery refuse of the Indian tribes. It is not surprising, therefore, that the children of
such parents should have surpassed the indigenous savages in -barbarity and devastation. Their
habitual custom was to attack the missionary stations of the Jesuits, and either destroy or carry into
hopeless slavery all the Indians who fell into their hands; Whole districts were thus depopulated,
and even the Spanish cities were repeatedly attacked and pillaged, and the inhabitants reduced to
slavery. “ It is asserted that in one hundred and thirty years, two millions of Indians were slain, or
carried into captivity by the Mamelukes of Brazil; and that more than one thousand leagues of
country, as far as the river Amazon, were stripped of inhabitants. Pedro de Avilla, Governor of
Buenos Ayres, declared that Indians were openly sold, in his sight, by the inhabitants of San Paulo
at Rio Janeiro; and that six hundred thousand Indians were sold in this town alone from the year
1628 to 1630.” t These atrocious practices were at last done away by the severest measures on the
part of the parent governments of Spain and Portugal, but first by a victory gained over these lawless
banditti by the combined tribes of the Guarany nation.
Allied in origin to these are the Confusos of Brazil, a numerous community with long and curled
for the most part a spherical head, (tête généralement sphérique,) while the Columbian species of the
same author, embracing the Peruvians and Mexicans, is described with an elongated head, (tête
allongée.) It is only necessary to compare the plates of the'.^present work to be satisfied of the
inaccuracy of the latter observation.— Vide Bulletin des Sciences Univ. VI, p. 245.
* Gallatin, in Archæolog.- Amer. II, p. 5,118. t Wiseman, Lectures, p. 80.
t Dobrizhoffer, Abipones, I, p. 161.—Muratori, Paraguay Missions, p. 56.
22