[
311]
Huron-
Iroquois, and the
Catawba families.
But though
these nations were in the same state of civilization, were mingled by wars and captures, by embassies and alliances; though they had a common character in the organization of their language, as well as in their customs, government, and pursuits; yet each was found employing a language of its own. If resemblances cannot be traced between two families that have dwelt side by side apparently for centuries, who will hope to recover the traces of the mother tongue in
Siberia or
China?
The results of comparison have thus far rebuked, rather than satisfied, curiosity.
It is still more evident, that similarity of customs furnishes no basis for satisfactory conclusions.
The same kinds of knowledge may have been repeatedly reached; the same customs are naturally formed under similar circumstances.
The manifest repetition of artificial peculiarities would prove a connection among nations; but all the customs consequent on the regular wants and infirmities of the human system, would be likely of themselves to be repeated; and, as for inventions and arts, they only offer new sources for measuring the capacity of human invention in its barbarous or semi-civilized state.
It is chiefly on supposed analogies of customs and of language, that the lost tribes of
Israel, ‘who took
II.
Esdras, c XIII.
v. 40-45 |
counsel to go forth into a farther country, where never mankind dwelt,’ have been discovered, now in the
bark cabins of
North America, now in the secluded
valleys of the
Tennessee, and again, as the authors of
Aglio's Antiquities of Mexico, vol.
VI. |
culture, on the plains of the Cordilleras.
We cannot tell the origin of the Goths and Celts; proud as we are of our lineage, we cannot trace our own descent; and we strive to identify, in the most western part of
Asia,
