Page 146 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961

142 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS.
naturally expect that Japan, Mongolia, China, Tartary, Elin-
doostan, Persia, and possibly Egypt and some other countries
somewhat remote from the eastern shores of Asia, would have
each contributed its share to the aboriginal stock.
In respect to any particular company of castaways, we shall
readily perceive that the degree of civilization possessed by
their own nation, would not detcrniine the degree which they
would retain and transmit to their descendants. Much more
would depend upon the knowledge and character of the individ-
uals composing the little community, the circumstances under
which they were cast upon the country and the facilities they
might chance to possess for perpetuating their knowledge and
transmitting it to posterity. From these differences of persons
or circumstances, one party of the kind might soon degenerate
into savages, while another, from the same country, might retain
much of their native civilization.
As the Asiatic nations improved in naval architecture and
became accustomed to the use of larger vessels, we should natu-
rally expect that castaways upon the American coast .would be
provided with more facilities for perpetuating their civilization
after their arrival. As at the present day, the officers and crews
of large, commodious and valuable ships, would be better in-
formed, and the passengers of the more intelligent class; and
the existence of inhabitants already on the continent, however
rude, would, when found out, favor still further the preservation
of useful knowledge. Thus the rationale of this view of Indian
origin, corroborates the testimony of Mexican and Peruvian
history, that those regions were first inhabited by savage tribes,
and that their civilization was introduced at a later period by
new arrivals among them, more immediately from civilized
lands, and all the facts of Indian history and remains of
Indian art, which point to the north-west coast as the region
where they all, or nearly all, first appeared on the continent.
But these chance migrations direct from one continent to the
other, are, 'by no means, the only sources of our Indian stock.
'There is the Aleutian chain of islands, extending quite across