THE study of man, physiologically and, psychically, is confessedly the noblest which can claim human attention; and the results of such study must lie at the basis of all sound organizations, social, civil, or religious. It involves a consideration of all his wants, his capabilities, impulses and ambitions--the manner and the extent in which they are affected by circumstances, and how conditions may be best combined to produce their harmonious and healthy action and development. It has, therefore, the first claim upon the statesman, the reformer, and all those who by position or endowments are placed among the leaders of men.

The study of man, in this comprehensive sense, constitutes the science of Ethnology. The elements of this science are the results, the ultimates of all other sciences; it begins where the rest stop.

"The traveller who examines into the physical characters and mental condition of the families of men with whom he comes in contact; who studies their vocabularies and inquires into their grammar; who is a spectator of their religious observances, and pries into the dark mysteries of their traditions and superstitions; who watches their habits of life, and acquaints himself with their laws and usages-furnishes an important quota to the accumulation of ethnological materials. Scarcely less valuable are the materials collected by him, whose tastes lead him to attend rather to the physiognomy of the country than to that of its human inhabitants; to its climate and its soil, its products and capabilities, rather than to their faculties and actions. For in the determination of the important problem, how far the characters of particular races are dependent upon those of the countries which they inhabit, the latter set

of data are as useful as the former; and no satisfactory result can ever be obtained, until both are ascertained with equal accuracy. So again the philologist who is working out, in the solitude of his study, the problems involved in the history and science of Language, though he may little think of connecting his conclusions with the affinities of nations, is an invaluable ally. In the same manner, anatomists and physiologists, in scrutinizing the varieties which the typical form of humanity undergoes, and contrasting the extremes of configuration, of color, and constitutional peculiarity, as observable amongst the inhabitants of distant climes, cannot enlarge the boundaries of their own sciences, without at the same time rendering the most essential assistance to the ethnologist."*

Equally valuable with physiological and ' philological facts, are those which may be gathered from civil history-especially so far as they serve to throw light upon the early seats, the numbers, migrations, conquests, and interblendings of the primary divisions and families of men.

It will be seen from this, that the existence of Ethnology as a science presupposes a general high attainment in all other departments of knowledge. It is essentially the science of the age; the offspring of that prevailing mental and physical energy which neglects no subject of inquiry, and which brings the minutest points of the world, its most widely separated and diverse nations, with some knowledge of their history, institutions and condition, at once under view, enabling the student to arrive at conclusions under no other circumstances attainable. The ancient philosophers, even the philosophers of the

* Edinburgh Review, Am. Ed. vol. xxix, p. 223.

Amongst the investigators who have contributed most largely towards giving this science its present prominence and high distinction, it is a matter of just pride to know that America has furnished some of the most distinguished, if it may not indeed be claimed that she has furnished the greatest number. Nor is the circumstance surprising; for nowhere else on the globe is afforded so wide and so favorable a field for researches of this nature. Nowhere else can we find brought in so close proximity, the representatives of races and families of men, of origins and physical and mental constitutions so diverse. Within the boundaries of our own country, three at least of the five grand divisions into which the human family is usually grouped, are fully represented. The contrasts which they present, and the singular results which have followed their contact, are too striking to be overlooked by the philosophical observer. Upon this continent also is found a grand division of the human race whose history is involved ia night, and the secret of whose origin and connections affords a constant stimulus to investigations of a strictly ethnological

character.

For these reasons, we may claim that Ethnology is not only the science of the age, but also that it is, and must continue to be, to a prevailing extent, an American science. Do we seek to know the course and progress of development among a people separated from the rest of the world, insulated physically and mentally, and left to the operation of its own peculiar elements? The inquirer must turn to America, where alone he can hope to find the primitive conceptions, beliefs and practices of an entire original people, in no considerable degree modified or impaired

mixture or association. Do we desire to discover the results which must follow from the blending of men of different races and families? Do we inquire in what consists the superiority of certain families over others; to what extent they may assimilate with, to what repel each other, and how their relations may be adjusted so as to produce the greatest attainable advantage to both? The practical solution of these problems can only be found in America, where alone exist the requisite conjunctions.

The inquiries of American ethnologists have not, however, been exclusively confined to America, nor is the eminence they have attained entirely due to the advantages of the ethnological field in which they are placed. It was left to an American (Dr. Morton) to determine the ethnological position of the ancient Egyptians, and to settle finally what for centuries had been in dispute, that the ancient inhabitants of Egypt were Caucasians, and not negroes, and that the germs of the civilization of that country came from the northward, and did not descend the valley of the Nile.*

clusions to which Dr. Morton's investigation of this *The subjoined are some of the principal consubject have led.

"1. The valley of the Nile, both in Egypt and in Nubia, was originally peopled by a branch of

the Caucasian race.

tians, were the Mizriamites of Scripture, the pos"2. These primeval people, since called Egypterity of Ham, and directly affiliated with the Libyan family of nations.

"3. In their physical character the Egyptians were intermediate between the Indo-European and Semitic races.

"4. The Austral-Egyptian, or Meroite communities were an Indo-Arabian stock engrafted on the primitive Libyan inhabitants.

"B. Besides these exotic sources of population, the Egyptian race was at different periods modified by the influx of the Caucasian nations of Asia and Europe-Pelasgi or Hellenes, Scythians, and Phenicians.

"6. Kings of Egypt appear to have been incidentally derived from each of the above nations.

"7. The Copts, in part at least, are a mixture of the Caucasian and the Negro in extremely variable proportions.

"8. Negroes were numerous in Egypt; but their it now is, that of servants and slaves. social position in ancient times was the same that

"9. The national characteristics of all these

families of man are distinctly figured on the mon

into a de

It is not our purpose to go tailed exposition of what our countrymen have accomplished in ethnological science; but we cannot omit a brief reference to some of the more prominent results of their labors.

In the departments of physiology and philology their investigations have been conducted on a large scale, and in a very complete and thorough manner, and with eminent success. The craniological inquiries of Dr. S. G. MORTON, as presented in that splendid monument of scientific research, Crania Americana," have attracted an amount of attention second to none others of similar character.*

uments; and all of them, excepting the Scythians and Phenicians, have been identified in the catacombs.

"10. The present Fellahs are the lineal and least mixed descendants of the ancient Egyptians; and the latter are collaterally represented by the Tuaricks, Kabyles, Siwahs, and other remains of the Libyan family of nations.

"11. The modern Nubians, with a few exceptions, are not the descendants of the monumental Ethiopians, but a variously mixed race of Arabs and negroes.

And that "the physical or organic characters which distinguish the several races of men, are as old as the oldest records of our species."

learned Prichard, "far exceeds in its comprehen"This work," (Crania Americana,) says the siveness, and in the number and beauty of its engravings, any European work that has as yet appeared on natural varieties of the skull, and comprises nearly the sum of our information on the distinctive characters of the head and skeleton in the several tribes of the new world." The

same distinguished authority observes of Dr. Morton's "Crania Egyptiaca"-" A most interesting and really important addition has lately been made to our knowledge of the physical characters

of the ancient Egyptians, from a quarter where local probabilities would least of all have induced us to look for it. In France, where so many scientific men have been devoted, ever since the conquest of Egypt by Napoleon, for a long time under the patronage of the government, to researches in the subject; in England, possessed of the immense advantages of wealth and commercial resources; in the academies of Italy and Germany, where the arts of Egypt have been studied in national museums, scarcely any thing has been done, since the time of Blumenbach, to elucidate the physical history of the ancient Egyptian race. In none of these countries have any extensive collections been made of the materials and resources which alone can afford secure foundation for such attempts. It is in the United States of America that a remarkable advancement in this part of physical science has at length been achieved."

The results relating to the aboriginal families of this continent, have long been known to the scientific world, and have met the general concurrence of scientific

men.

The

It has been remarked that Asia is the country of fables, Africa of monsters, and America of systems, to those who prefer hypothesis to truth; and it is these alone who still continue audaciously to speculate upon the origin and connections of the American race, as though no grand leading points had been established, and as though there was afforded a legitimate field for unrestrained conjecture. questions thus mooted are such as can only be determined by a large number of concurrent facts of different kinds; but still, so far as cranial characteristics are concerned, we may regard the conclusions advanced by Dr. Morton as substantially demonstrated, and look upon them as so many fixed points whereby to govern our further investigations. His general conclusions, upon which all the others in some manner depend, is the essential peculiarity of the American race; that the American nations, excepting perhaps those on the extremities of the continent, (and concerncharacterized by a conformation of skull ing which no sufficient data have as yet been collected to justify an opinion,) are radically distinct from that of any of the other great divisions of the human family. To use Dr. Morton's own language, his observations and researches tend to sustain the following propositions:

"1st. That the American race differs essentially from all others, not excepting the Mongolian; nor do the feeble analogies of language, and the more obvious ones of civil

With what perseverance and success Dr. Morton's investigations have been conducted, may be inferred from the fact, that his collection of crania, now deposited in the Academy of Natural Sciences, at Philadelphia, is not only the largest in the world, but neither public nor private cabinets in any country, contain a tithe of his materials or varieties; all obtained at his individual expense, and rapidly increasing by contributions from every part of the globe. The impetus which this investigation has given to science in this department has been sensibly felt abroad, and has induced the Emperor of Russia to found, at St. Petersburgh, a national museum exclusively dedicated to craniology, to contain the skulls of all the ancient and modern races of his vast dominions.

and religious institutions and the arts, denote any thing beyond casual or colonial communication with the Asiatic nations; and even these analogies may perhaps be accounted for, as Humboldt has suggested, in the mere coincidence arising from similar wants and impulses in nations inhabiting similar latitudes.

"2d. That the American nations, excepting the polar tribes, are of one race and one species, but of two great families, which resemble each other in physical but differ in intellectual character.

'3d. That the cranial remains discovered in the mounds from Peru to Wisconsin belong to the same race, and probably to the Toltecan family."*

No doubt the inquirer, at first glance, would be somewhat startled at these propositions, and incredulously point to the disparities existing between the various families of the continent as affording a sufficient refutation of them. When, however, we separate what is radical from what is incidental, or the result of circumstances, it will be found that these diversities are superficial, and that elementarily the various natives of the continent exhibit identities of the most striking kind. This is true, not only of their physical characteristics, but of their languages and their religions. And if we can point to no other race on the globe which has exhibited so many modifications, it is because there is no other which in its infancy, and before it was able to overcome or control natural influences, was so widely disseminated, and subjected to so many vicissitudes. History, nevertheless, has some singular examples of the changes which may be occasioned by circumstances, not only among nations of the same race, but of the same family. Dr. Morton points us to that branch of the great Arabian stock, the Saracens, "who established their seat in Spain, whose history is replete with romance and refinement, whose colleges were the centres of genius and learning for several centuries, and whose arts and sciences have been blended with those of every succeeding age. Yet the Saracens belonged to the same family with the Bedouins of the desert; those intractable barbarians who scorn all restraints which

* Crania Americana, page 260.

are not imposed by their own chief, and whose immemorial laws forbid them to sow corn, to plant fruit-trees, or build houses, in order that nothing may conflict with those roving and predatory habits which have continued unaltered through a period of three thousand years."

That resemblances should gradually arise among nations of entirely different origins, under the influence of concurring conditions, is very obvious.

"It would indeed be not only singular, but wonderful and unaccountable," observes an eminent authority, "if tribes and nations of men, possessed of similar attributes of mind and body, residing in similar climates and situations, influenced by similar states of society, and obliged to support themselves by similar means, in similar pursuits-it would form a problem altogether inexplicable, if nations thus situated did not contract habits and usages, and, instinctively, modes of life and action, possessing towards each other many striking resemblances." The converse of this is equally true; and if admitted, it is only necessary to show a radical resemblance in certain important features between the various American families and nations, and their difference in the same respects from other races, in order to the complete demonstration of their essential homogeneousness, and their distinct position as a separate people.

Having presented the compressed results of Dr. Morton's investigations, it is but just that he should be allowed to speak more fully upon the points in question. "It is an adage among travellers, that he who has seen one tribe of Indians has seen all; so much do the individuals of this race resemble each other, notwithstanding their immense geographical distribution, and those differences of climate which embrace the extremes of heat and cold. The half-clad Fuegan, shrinking from his dreary winter, has the same characteristic lineaments, though in an exaggerated degree, as the Indians of the tropical plains; and these again resemble the tribes which inhabit the region west of the Rocky Mountains, those of the great valley of the Mississippi, and those again which

*Distinctive Characteristics of the American Race, p. 15.