Now the
civilization which is described as having once existed in America
exhibits these general characteristics, while it has, like each of the
others, its own peculiar traits. If the discoverers had made a different
report, we might have been led to suppose that some such state of things
as we have described had previously existed, but had perished before
their arrival.
Mr. Wilson, however, does not reason in this manner. He has found, from
his own observation,--the only source of knowledge, if such it can
be called, on which he is willing to place much reliance,--that the
Ojibways and Iroquois are savages, and he rightly argues that their
ancestors must have been savages. From these premises, without any
process of reasoning, he leaps at once to the conclusion, that in no
part of America could the aboriginal inhabitants ever have lived in any
other than a savage state. Hence he tells us, that, in all statements
regarding them, everything "must be rejected that is inconsistent
with well-established Indian traits." The ancient Mexican empire was,
according to his showing, nothing more than one of those confederacies
of tribes with which the reader of early New England history is
perfectly familiar.
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