Transcriber’s Note
A number of typographical errors have been maintained in this version ofthis book. They are marked and the corrected text is shown in the popup.A description of the errors is found in the list at the end of the text.Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been maintained. A listof inconsistently spelled and hyphenated words is found at the end ofthe text.
BY
SAMUEL GEORGE MORTON, M. D.,
Author of the Crania Americana, Crania Æygptiaca, &c.
EXTRACTED FROM THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, VOL. II, SECOND SERIES.
NEW HAVEN:
PRINTED BY B. L. HAMLEN,
Printer to Yale College.
1846.
Nothing in the progress of human knowledge is more remarkable than therecent discoveries in American archæology, whether we regard them asmonuments of art or as contributions to science. The names of Stephensand Norman will ever stand preëminent for their extraordinaryrevelations in Mexico and Yucatan; which, added to those previously madeby Del Rio, Humboldt, Waldeck and D’Orbigny in these and other parts ofour continent, have thrown a bright, yet almost bewildering light, onthe former condition of the western world.
Cities have been explored, replete with columns, bas-reliefs, tombs andtemples; the works of a comparatively civilized people, who weresurrounded by barbarous yet affiliated tribes. Of the builders we knowlittle besides what we gather from their monuments, which remain toastonish the mind and stimulate research. They teach us the value ofarchæological facts in tracing the primitive condition and cognaterelations of the several great branches of the human family; at the sametime that they prove to us, with respect to the American race at least,that we have as yet only entered upon the threshold of investigation.
[4]In fact, ethnography and archæology should go hand in hand; and theprincipal object I have in view in giving publicity to the following toodesultory remarks, is to impress on travellers and others who arefavorably situated for making observations, the importance of preservingevery relic, organic or artificial, that can throw any light on the pastand present condition of our native tribes. Objects of this nature havebeen too often thrown aside as valueless; or kept as mere curiosities,until they were finally lost or become so defaced or broken as to beuseless. To render such relics available to science and art, theirhistory and characteristics should be recorded in the periodicals of theday; by which means we shall eventually possess an accumulated mass offacts that will be al