Page 142 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961

188 .WISCONSII HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS.
The oldest architectural remains of Mexico and Central America,
cannot claim a date anterior to the Toltecs, or about the seventh
century. Those of Peru are evidently of more recent date.
The earth works of the United States, would hardly bear the
frosts and storms of a thousand years, without becoming quite
obliterated; and those who have observed the prooess of prairie
making, will not believe it could have required more than one or
two thousand years to bring the largest of them to their present
stage of progress.*
2d. While all the facts of Indian history, with rare excep-
tions, point to a general Asiatic origin, they as plainly indicate
s dirersity of q~ecijic origin, that the germs of various tribes
appeared at different points on the north-west coast, at periods
more or less remote from each other, and under different cir-
cumstances and with different degrees of civilization. Their
division into a multitude of distinct tribes, with different, tho'
kindred languages, and the constant shingling of one race upon
another end the consequent heterogeneous nature of the laws
and institutions observed among the Mexicans and Peruvians,
all indicate this diversity of origin, both as to time and place.

* Some men of high reputation in natural science, have made much ndo
about an Indian skull, said to have been found on the Delta, below New
Orleans, sixteen feet below the surfuce. The story is, that in that locality there
were discovered several succe~sive formations of earth, alternating with the
remains of as many cypress swamps, and thnt the skull was found under one
of the cypress stumps belonging to the lowest and primitive swamp; and from
a computation of the time required for these successive formations, they confi-
dently nssert that the skull could not have been less than 50,000 yearn old, and
hence that America must have been inhabited by man, at least that length of
-
time.
But unfortunately for the conclusion, the same reasoning which proves the
skull to have been 50.000 ye~rs old. proves that the stumps in the same forma-
tion must have been about the same age! Poor Xitchee must have found a
grnve in a "hard row qJ' s[urnp3') that in such a situation could have retained
their organic form for 50,000 years. Surely, after finding timber of
such astonishing durability, we should not despair of some day finding Noah's
Ark, all sound and seaworthy and ready for the next flood. And a human
skull so thick nnd so hard as to be able, in moist earth, to resist the gnawings of
time for 50,000 years, one would suppoRe cc~uld not have beloriged to the Indian
race at all, but must have been worn by o genuine son of Africa. But this is
only one of many proofs we hnvc that men of science are not always logicians.
Soon ufter this wonderful discovery of an nnte-Adumic skull, the City of
Pompeii wt~s discovered still deeper in the ground! The locality of that city is
subject to sudden changes from one cnuse. and the Delta of the Misrissippi to
rapid change8 from another equally potent.