src="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@29215@29215-h@images@fig-04.png" alt="Drawing of a Maya head from the art" title="Fig. 4." tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}img"/>

The principal figure has better features and expression than the other, but their heads are formed on the same model; whence we may infer that if the suppliant is a servant or a slave of the same race with his master, the artificial moulding of the cranium was common to all classes. If, on the other hand, we assume that he is an enemy imploring mercy, we come to the conclusion that the singular custom of which we are speaking, was in use among other and surrounding nations; which latter inference is confirmed by other evidence, that, for example, derived from the Natchez tribe, and the clay effigies so abundantly found at the ruined temples of the sun and moon at Teotihuacan, near the city of Mexico.9-*

I can aver that sixteen years of almost daily comparisons have only confirmed me in the conclusions announced in my Crania Americana, that all the American nations, excepting the Eskimaux, are of one race, and that this race is peculiar and distinct from all others. The first of these propositions may be regarded as an axiom in ethnography; the second still gives rise to a diversity of opinions, of which the most prevalent is that which would merge the American race in the Mongolian.

It has been objected to a common origin for all the American nations, and even for those of Mexico, that their monuments should present so great a variety in the configuration of the head and face; a fact which forcibly impresses every one who examines the numerous effigies in baked clay in the collection of the American Philosophical Society; yet they are all made of the same material and by the same national artists. The varieties are indeed endless; and Mr. Norman in his first work, has arrived at a reasonable conclusion, in which we entirely agree with him, “that the people prepared these penates according to their respective tastes, and with little reference to any standard or canon.”10-*

They appear to have exercised much ingenuity in this way, blending almost every conceivable type of the human countenance, and associating this again with those of beasts, birds, and various fanciful animals, which last are equal in uncouthness to any productions of the Gothic artists of the middle ages.

Mr. Norman in his late and interesting volume of travels in Cuba and Mexico, discovered in the latter country some remarkable ruins near the town of Panuco, and among them a curious sepulchral effigy. “It was a handsome block or slab of stone, (wider at one end than the other,) measuring seven feet in length, with an average of nearly two and a half feet in width and one foot in thickness. Upon its face was beautifully wrought, in bold relief, the full length figure of a man, in a loose robe with a girdle about his loins, his arms crossed on his breast, his head encased in a close cap or casque, resembling the Roman helmet (as represented in the etchings of Pinelli) without the crest, and his feet and ankles bound with the ties of sandals. The figure is that of a tall muscular man of the finest proportions. The face, in all its features, is of the noblest class of the European or Caucasian race.”10-†

Mr. Norman was himself struck “with the resemblance between this, and the stones that cover the tombs of the Knights Templar in some of the ancient churches of the old world,” but he thinks that neither this nor any other circumstance proves this effigy to have been of European origin or of modern date. “The material,” he adds, “is the same as that of all the buildings and works of art in this vicinity, and the style and workmanship are those of the great unknown artists of the western hemisphere;” and he arrives at the conclusion, as many ingenuous minds have done before him, that these and the other archæological remains of Mexico and Yucatan, “are the works of a people who have long since passed away; and not of the races, or the progenitors of the races, who inhabited the country at the epoch of the discovery.”11-*

With the highest respect for this intelligent traveller, I am not able to agree with him in his conclusion; but I should not now revive my published opinions or contest his, were it not that some new light appears to me to have dawned on this very question.

In the first place, then, we regard the effigy found near Panuco as probably Caucasian; so does Mr. Norman; but instead of referring it to a very remote antiquity, or to some European occupancy of Mexico long before the Spanish conquest, we will venture to suggest, that even if the town of Panuco was itself older than that event, (of which indeed we have no doubt,) it is consistent with collateral facts to infer, that the Spaniards may have occupied this very town, in common with, or subsequent to, the native inhabitants, and have left this sepulchral monument. That the Spaniards did sometimes practice this joint occupancy, is well known; and that they have, in some instances, left their monuments in places wherein even tradition had almost lost sight of their former sojourn, is susceptible of proof.

Mr. Gregg, in a recent and instructive work on the “Commerce of the Prairies,” states the following particulars, which are the more valuable since he had no opinions of his own in reference to the American aborigines, and merely gives the facts as he found them.

Mr. Gregg describes the ruins called La Gran Quivira, about 100 miles south of Santa Fé, as larger than the present capital of New Mexico. The architecture of this deserted city is of hewn stone, and there are the remains of aqueducts eight or ten miles in length leading from the neighboring mountains. These ruins “have been supposed to be the remains of a pueblo or aboriginal city;” but he adds that the occurrence of the Spanish coat of arms in more than one instance sculptured and painted upon the houses, prevents the adoption of such an opinion; and that traditional report (and tradition only) mentions this as a city that was sacked and desolated in the Indian insurrection of 1680.12-* Now had it not been for the occurrence of the heraldic paintings, this city might have been still regarded as of purely Indian origin and occupancy; as might also the analogous ruins of Abo, Tagique and Chilili in the same vicinity; for although these may have been originally constructed by the natives, yet as they are supposed