Produced by Richard Tonsing, Julia Miller and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) Essays of an Americanist. I. ETHNOLOGIC AND ARCHÆOLOGIC. II. MYTHOLOGY AND FOLK LORE. III. GRAPHIC SYSTEMS AND LITERATURE. IV. LINGUISTIC. BY DANIEL G. BRINTON. A. M., M. D., PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN ARCHÆOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PRESIDENT OF THE NUMISMATIC AND ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA, PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN FOLK-LORE SOCIETY, MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY, THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, THE SOCIÉTÈ ROYALE DES ANTIQUAIRES DU NORD, THE SOCIÉTÈ AMÉRICAINE DE FRANCE, THE BERLINER ANTHROPOLOGISCHE GESELLSCHAFT, THE REAL ACADEMIA DE HISTORIA, MADRID, ETC., ETC. PHILADELPHIA: PORTER & COATES. 1890. COPYRIGHT BY D. G. BRINTON. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PREFACE. The word “Essays” appears on the title of this book in the sense in which old Montaigne employed it—attempts, endeavors. The articles which make up the volume have been collected from many scattered sources, to which I have from time to time contributed them, for the definite purpose of endeavoring to vindicate certain opinions about debated subjects concerning the ancient population of the American continent. In a number of points, as for example in the antiquity of man upon this continent, in the specific distinction of an American race, in the generic similarity of its languages, in recognizing its mythology as often abstract and symbolic, in the phonetic character of some of its graphic methods, in believing that its tribes possessed considerable poetic feeling, in maintaining the absolute autochthony of their culture—in these and in many other points referred to in the following pages I am at variance with most modern anthropologists; and these essays are to show more fully and connectedly than could their separate publication, what are my grounds for such opinions.