Page 123 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961

ANNUAL ADDRESS.
119
America was settled by the immediate descendants of Noah.
That Joktan, son of Heber, founded a city in Peru, and that
colonies from this, were planted by Ophir and Jobab, his sons;
and that Ophir, the land of gold, to which the Tyrians sent their
ships on three years voyages, must have been in America.
Gomara, De Lery and Lescarbot concluded the Indians were
descended from the Canaanites whom Joshua expelled from
their country. Tornelli supposes the descendants of Shem and'
Ham to have reached America by way of Japan.
But the theory which traces them to the lost ten tribes of
Israel, has found the most numerous advocates. Genebrard and
Andrew Thevet were among the early advocates of this theory.
It received a new impulse from Mayhew and Eliot, the New
England missionaries to the natives. Thomas Thorogood pub-
lished a book on the subject. The Earl of Crawford and Lind-
say, a British officer in the war of the revolution, wrote in sup-
port of the same theory. Adair, Dr. Elias Boudinot, Rev.
Ethan Smith, Lord Kingsbury and others, continued the train
of zealous advocates of this view of Indian origin.*
These writers collected some remarkable coincidences in
respect to language, manners and customs, between the Indians
and ancient Hebrews,? and many more of a fanciful and puerile
character, which, taken as a whole, are far from being conclusive
when compared with other and more numerous facts of a contra-
dictory nature.
In regard to this theory it may be remarked, that before giving
ourselves much trouble, to account for an event, we should
be sure that the event has actually occurred. That the Israelites
in
*Archaeology of the United States, by 8. F. HAVEN, Smithsonian contri-
butions, vol. 8.
fscholars who possessed the most extensive means of forming a correctjudg-
ment, have not hesitated to place the Indian tongues in the Shemitic class of
languages. Further than this, it is doubtful whether any man has possessed
sufficient data from which to form a very weighty opinion. To attempt to trace
the Indian tongues to any one of the Shemitic languages, would require a
somewhat familiar acquaintance with them all, both Asiatic and American-a
qualification which no man ever yet posseseed. The Hebrew scholar, acquain-
ted with Indian languages, would be sure to find a relationship between them
and the Hebrew; but he might find the same, or nstronger resemblance between
them and a dozen other Asiatic languagee, if he understood them equally well.