affinity to any other tongues, but belong to an absolutely distinct order of speech. They are neither isolating or monosyllabic like the Indo-Chinese group, agglutinating like the Ural-Altaic, Bantu, or Dravidian, nor inflexional like the Semitic and Aryan. They come nearest in structure to the Basque, which is the only incorporating language of the Old World, but differ from it essentially inasmuch as their capacity of incorporating words in the sentence is not restricted to the verb and a few pronominal elements, but extends in principle to all the parts of speech. This faculty, which, with one or two doubtful exceptions, seems to be characteristic of every American idiom from Behring Strait to Cape Horn, has received the name of polysynthesis, literally "a much putting together."[1] Hence, in a comprehensive classification of articulate speech according to its inner mechanism, a special place must be reserved for the American group; and, if we assume as the most probable theory that all speech has slowly evolved from a few simple beginnings, passing successively from the state of crude roots to the isolating condition, and so onwards to the agglutinating and other orders, then in such a scheme the American will stand apart in some such position as under:—
Here it is not intended to imply that American derives from Malayan or Dravidian, but only from some now extinct agglutinating forms of speech of which Malayan or Dravidian may be taken as still surviving typical instances. The disappearance in America of all such assumed forms, unless the Otomi of Mexico is to be accepted as a solitary lingering specimen, argues both a very great antiquity and an independent evolution of the American languages. And as the course this evolution has taken differs entirely from that pursued by the idioms of the Old World, it follows that the first peopling of America, if from the Old World, must be thrown back to a time when all speech itself was in its infancy, to a time when slow diffusion might be conceived as equally probable from an eastern or a western starting-point. It is this feature of polysynthesis that gives the American race its first and greatest claim to be regarded as truly autochthonous, in the same sense that we regard the Mongolian and Caucasian races as truly autochthonous in Asia.
There is a general consensus amongst anthropologists that on the western continent we are in presence of two distinct original types, the brachycephalous and dolichocephalous. But these are no longer confined to separate geographical areas, as Retzius supposed. The very general practice of artificially flattening or otherwise deforming the skull has naturally caused less value to be attached to the craniological test in America than elsewhere. The practice has been traced back even to prehistoric times, and a clay figure recently found associated with the remains of a child by Reiss and Stübel in a grave in Ancon puts in a clear light the method adopted by the ancient Peruvians (The Necropolis of Ancon, Berlin and London, 1881, plate 90). Still, careful investigations have placed it beyond doubt that the normal skull both in North and in South America is now mesaticephalous, or of a type intermediate between the two extremes, a fact supposed to imply a general intermingling of the two primeval stocks. On the other hand, Virchow (loc. cit., passim) shows perfectly normal ancient and recent crania from both sides of Greenland, from El Carmen on the Rio Negro, Patagonia, from the Botocudo tribe, East Brazil, from a tumulus of Santa Fé de Bogota, and even a Peruvian mummy exhumed at Pancatambo, all of which are distinctly, in some cases extremely, dolichocephalic. In the same way he produces brachycephalic skulls from the Brazilian shell-mounds of Santos and Santa Catharina, from the barrows of the Ohio valley mound-builders, from the Carib and Araucanian tribes, and from the Pampas of La Plata, the last mentioned of an extreme type, in close proximity to the extreme dolichocephalous specimens from Patagonia. Were it safe to argue from the analogy of Britain, where the dolichocephalic builders of the long barrows seem to have preceded and afterwards become intermingled with the brachycephalic builders of the round barrows (Dr Thurnam), the western continent might be supposed to have been successively occupied first by a long-headed and then by a round-headed race, which kept aloof in a few places, while more generally becoming fused in a normally mesaticephalic type. But we have in America no guide to the relative priority of the two forms of head, nor are there now any long-headed races on the eastern Asiatic seaboard whose ancestors might be taken as the precursors of the corresponding element in the West. The obvious alternative also remains, that the two forms may have become differentiated on the American continent, just as similar differentiations must, by those who do not accept the doctrine of fixity of species, be assumed to have taken place in Asia. For such an evolution America offered a more ample field even than Asia, for it is not confined to the northern hemisphere, but stretches from the Arctic nearly to the Antarctic Circle, presenting in this wide range almost every conceivable variety of climate, atmosphere, soil, and temperature.
We thus see that the two cranial forms do not necessarily militate against the possible primordial unity of the homo Americanus. This unity seems on the other hand implied in certain physical and mental features, common to all the native races. Of the physical traits the most important and uniform are—(1) the hair, which is always black, coarse, glossy, and long, like a horse's mane, round in transverse section and persistent to extreme old age;[2] (2) slight beard, but always straight, never wavy;[3] (3) eyes small, black, somewhat deep-set, always horizontal;[4] (4) eyebrows narrow, very arched, and black; (5) prominent cheek bones and nose, the latter often very long and aquiline.[5]
The native American being popularly spoken of as "The Red Man," it might be supposed that colour should be included in this brief list of common characteristics. But, notwithstanding the general impression, there is perhaps no
- ↑ Abel Hovelacque (Linguistique, Paris, 1877) has endeavoured to confound polysynthesis with agglutination; but A. H. Keane (Appendix to Stanford's Central and South America, 1878) has shown that the difference between the two is fundamental, and Prof. Sayce (Science of Language, 1880) has finally adopted this view.
- ↑ During the many years that he lived in South America, D'Orbigny assures us that he "never met a bald native of full blood" (L'Homme Américain, i. p. 128).
- ↑ The only known exception are the Guarayos, a Guarani tribe, originally from Paraguay, now in the Moxos missions, altogether a remarkable people, whose quasi-European complexion and appearance are heightened by a very full but always perfectly straight beard.
- ↑ Except amongst the Guaranis, the outer angle of whose eyes is generally pointed upwards, giving them a Mongolian cast.
- ↑ But this feature is not constant, for the nose of many Pampas and Guarani tribes is often very short, broad, and flat.
