ART. II. — American Antiquities, and Researches into the Origin and History of the Red Race. By ALEXANDER W. BRADNew York: 1841. Dayton and Saxton. 8vo.

FORD.

A GREAT deal has been written of late about modern European civilization, and the philosophy of history. By some Christianity has been treated as a mere result of civilization, and of what is called the progressive development of the human race; by others as a mere element, although confessedly an important one, of that peculiar civilization which modern Europe has exhibited. Others again, proceeding on the principle which led the Arabian calif to destroy the Alexandrian library, have argued, at least practically, that if modern civilization, with its vast benefits, proceeded wholly from the Christian religion, the Christian religion must contain all that the knowledge of civilization could give; but if not, then it must be either unnecessary to the integrity of that religion, or opposed to it, and so the knowledge of it likewise either unnecessary or injurious. At all events, it is certain that history, and especially historical criticism, has either been neglected, or pursued chiefly by those who have approached their investigations with a very imperfect apprehension that what gives to the history of men its real worth is the intervention therein of God, making it the history of his providence and his church. But this being once understood, it is altogether unnecessary to deny that Christianity is built upon civilization, and presupposes its historical development. The church is indeed the soul, the life of Christendom, but what are its materials? The hardy northern tribes contributed their new and unexhausted animal energies; the fragments of the Roman empire gave the forms of civil administration and the theory of jurisprudence; Greece, in due time, added her letters and philosophy. All would have been nothing, doubtless, without the church, which actuated and controlled these in themselves ineffectual elements-converting the Goths, consecrating the authority of princes, and surrounding her own by impenetrable defences of logic and philosophy, drawn from the ancient literature which she was principally instrumental in preserving. For if we trace the history of civilization back beyond Christianity, and to such a period

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Ancient Civilization of America.

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as admits no suspicion of her indirect influence, we shall find no examples of savage, or half-savage conquerors, originating, like the Goths in modern Europe, a civilization infinitely superior to that of the nations they had conquered. Nay, the civilization of the west, anterior to the Christian, can easily be traced back to one primitive and original fountain. Rome derived her religion from Etruria, her laws and letters from Greece. The Egyptians instructed the Greeks, and the Etrurian civilization was either a contemporaneous development of the same culture which existed in Egypt, or else was transplanted after its developmen: from one country to the other. Hence the great importance of studying well that primitive type of civilization, if we would have any true knowledge of that which is derived from it, and especially of the Christian, which has appropriated all its remains. A true conception of that first culture, which existed in the world immediately after the deluge, and diffused itself so widely over the face of our planet, has, we may boldly say, not heretofore been mastered by those who have written wisely and well of man's history. Nothing, indeed, can be finer in their way than the Researches of Heeren, but they do not touch this point.

We confess it is chiefly because Mr. Bradford's book has laid the foundation for a just theory on this subject, that we regard it as worthy of that detailed examination which we are about to give it. The ancient and now extinguished civilization of America, has heretofore been regarded as either an historical anomaly, or an example of a commencing civilization arrested midway in its course of spontaneous development. Those who have considered it as anomalous have of course been able to make no use of it in solving the problems presented by the civilization of the eastern continent. Those who have considered it in the second light to which we have alluded, have unhesitatingly applied the generalizations founded on such a view to the solution of those problems; and of course if, as we believe, the ancient American civilization was neither a spontaneous one, nor just commencing at the time of the Spanish conquest, they have generalized erroneously. It is needless to say how perpetually, in works treating of the origin and development of nations, a covert allusion to the assumed history of the Peruvian and Mexican empires is the real strength of the argument.

If America was originally peopled by barbarous tribes, who, gradually increasing, formed at last considerable and permanent communities on the more fertile soils, and by the natural exertion of their faculties discovered the rudiments of science, and the imperfect beginnings of the arts, becoming able to maintain dynasties and hierarchies, of necessity gave birth to kings and priests, and so to government, to mythology and sacred rites then we may likewise easily believe that but for the violent interruption of this beautiful process of civilization, it would in due time have developed the higher forms of society-that the culture of Greece and the polity of Rome would have succeeded, in the course of nature, to the patriarchal system of the Incas and the fierce sway of the Montezumas, and at length Christianity itself, or some analogen of it, would have appeared as the last "expression" of progressive humanity.

But i, on the other hand, it be admitted that the primitive inhabitants of this continent were a race already in effect civilized, who, in their hereditary and traditional religious ideas, and in the fixed mythological symbols of these, derived, likewise, from their ancestors, possessed the very soul and body of all culture; that by which the imagination is quickened and the understanding informed; that religion, making government its earliest instrument, originated an enormous industry which could alone accomplish the vast demands of its dogmas for an adequate realization; and that, having satisfied itself, by thus effecting the erection of monuments and establishing a ritual which exhausted its ideas and expended the whole force of its sanctions without exhausting or even completely unfolding the energies of the race, it was left only the task of maintaining the edifice it had erected; and, finally, that the system thus formed began to decay so soon as it ceased to develop, and was in a state of gradual decadence at the period of the discovery, then we shall be led to believe in the sole supernatural origin of a religion that has continued for three thousand years constantly to develop itself without showing one symptom of decay in its institutions, and which incessantly demands a kind of realization to which the utmost efforts of all men united can but imperfectly approximate.

Let it be remembered, that what we are seeking is the true idea of history-the right point of view from which we may apprehend the real order and proper causes of human

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Two Classes of the Remains of Art.

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progress. In the undeniable confusion of views now prevalent on this subject, it will certainly tend to the establishment of a just theory if we can determine the origin and unfold the progress of a race which, having been allotted by Providence an entire continent as the theatre of its sole and undisturbed development, affords to the historical inquirer the same advantage that an experiment with simple elements affords to the naturalist.

In looking round us for the materials from which thus to construct, at least in outline, the primitive history of this continent, we are very soon led to sympathize with Mr. Bradford in the expressions of regret and indignation with which he reverts to the period when the miserable fanaticism or more miserable policy of the Spanish conquerors destroyed so many of its monuments, and especially of those more perishable and at the same time more valuable records - the pictorial manuscripts.

So few of these now remain, and they are so imperfect, that the principal reliance of the investigator must be placed on the scrutiny and comparison of the more permanent ancient monuments. The first part of Mr. Bradford's volume. is devoted to a somewhat detailed and remarkably well classified description of these, in which are included all the important remains on the continent. This portion of his work, although it will prove less interesting probably to the generality of readers, reflects the highest credit on the industry no less than on the discrimination of the author; and, to the cultivated reader, so luminous and pregnant a description will possess an interest not inferior to the deductions that follow it.

Mr. Bradford divides the ancient remains of art existing in America, first, into two great classes, differing in style and importance, one of which, namely, that comprehending all such monuments, utensils, etc., as are to be ascribed to the existing tribes of Indians, he dismisses with a brief notice of the characteristics by which they are distinguished from the more ancient remains. Such, in the case of the utensils, ornaments, etc., continually disinterred in the progress of opening new lands, are their proximity to the surface of the earth, their inferior workmanship compared with the ancient specimens, and their obvious similarity to the articles now constructed by the Indians. The tumuli of Indian origin are, in like manner, distinguished from those of earlier date by

their inferior size, isolated position, and, in some degree, by the character of their materials and contents, which are usually such as indicate sepulchral mounds, not fortresses or high places for worship. The deep religious reverence for the dead thus shown to be a characteristic of the savage Indian tribes, is, however, distinguished by our author as a circumstance identifying them as a race with the primitive inhabitants of America, and tending thus to establish the theory of a common origin in all the aborigines, whether barbarous or cultivated.

The second, which, of course, the author considers the only legitimate class of American antiquities, he again divides into, first, the remains within the United States; secondly, those of Central America, Mexico, and the adjoining provinces; and third, those of South America.

This division is not wholly founded on the local position of these remains, but partly on differences which, in the progress of the work, become the ground of important inferences as to the history of their respective authors. Lastly, the remains within the United States are considered in detail under three divisions: the mural remains, the mounds, and the specimens of ancient art and other miscellaneous articles found in these or elsewhere.

For the particular descriptions thus embodied, we must, of course, refer to the work itself; nor can we do more here than rapidly indicate some of the more prominent points in the general inferences therein drawn out at length from the collation of so extensive materials. Such are the undoubted origin of all these monuments from one people or from nations essentially identical in customs, inferred from their identity in structure, position, apparent uses, etc.; the immense number, wide diffusion, and permanent settlement of that people, inferred from the number of the monuments, which is truly surprising; from their extent, spreading over the immense valley watered by the Mississippi and its branches, reaching to the great lakes on the north and to Florida on the south, although, except in the last instance, not touching the Atlantic; and, from their size and the art displayed in their construction, both far above the abilities of roving and unsettled tribes; the high antiquity of this people, evinced by the twofold fact of the skill and resources displayed in their monuments, and by the present state of these, covered for the most part, as they are, by heavy forests of the second or permanent