Page 121 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961

ANNUAL ADDRESS.

ANNUAL ADDRESS.

Delivered by Hon. John Y. Smith, of Madison,
Befcre the State Ssto~ical Society, January, 1859.

ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS.
-
THE origin of the Aboriginal tribes of the American Conti-
nent has been regarded by historians as too deeply involved in
mystery to be brought within the range of historic inquiry.
Mr. Presoott, after preparing a chapter on this topic, for his
Conquest of Mexico, finally threw it into his appendix, as unfit
for the main body of the work.
HISTORY, in its strict sense, is the narration of known evepts,
with their causes and consequences. But there are interesting
fields of inquiry bordering upon the domains of history, or
rather forming the outskirts of that domain-fields which we
know have had a history, but the events of which have so far
faded from the memory of man as to leave but a few disjointed
and scattered facts, just enough to awaken our curiosity and
give rise to our conjectures concerning the unknown, and possi-
bly, to furnish some clue to the solution of the most important
of the questions involved. Of this nature is the field now
before us; and if it can be said to belong to the department of
history at all, it must be regarded as philosophical history,
It is said that the study of Natural History has been so sys-
tematized and reduced to elementary principles, that from two
or three, or even a single bone of an animal belonging to an
extinct species, the experienced naturalist is able to proceed,
artificially, and construct the entire skeleton of an animal he
never saw, by simply carrying out the elementary principles
contained in the few specimens before him; and if the lost links
of Indian history are to be recovered and connected, so far even,