Page 150 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961

148 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS.

ral ways by which the American continent was furnished with
its numerous centres of population.
The barbarizing process of extending population through the
Aleutian Islands and Behring's Straits to the American coast,
under the circumstances of privation and want which must have
attended it, renders it philosophically probable that the germs of
the more savage tribes were from these tvo sources, and that
the civilizing elements which were developed in Mexico and
Peru, were castaways, more immediately from the civilized por-
tions of the old continent; and this philosophical view, let us
remember, corresponds with the historical facts preserved iby
the Mexicans and Peruvians, that such was the actual order of
their civilization.
Again, these more civilized castaways would, as we have seen,
almost inevitably, be cast upon the north-west coast. Their
superior intelligence and destitute circumstances would naturally
lead them to journey southward in quest of a more genial cli-
mate and more ready means of subsistence; while the more
barbarous tribes, springing from the north-east of Asia, would
as naturally remain in their native latitude, ascend the streams
in quest of fish and game, and at length penetrate through the
mountain passes and spread over the vast plains of the north.
This also corresponds with the facts of Indian history-that
none but savage tribes have permanently occupied the North,
and that civilization entered the Mexican valley from the North-
west. The tendency of migration towards the South, would
naturally produce a crowded population near the Isthmus, engen-
der wars and drive the vanquished into South America, as well
as eastward, along the Gulf and over its islands.
The greatest difficulty perhaps, in this whole inquiry is, to
account for the appearance of one or two civilized bands in Peru
-the bearded white men, as they .were called, from Lake Titi-
caca, and the Incas, if indeed they were not identical. Lake
Titicaca was South, or at the southern extremity of the Peru-
vian Empire, so that these civilizers seem to have entered the