THE CURIOUS HOAX OF THE TAENSA LANGUAGE 452–467 How it began; the deception exposed; absurdities of the invention; a wonderful calendar; a yet more wonderful marriage-song; a second Psalmanazar; rejoinder of the editor; reply to that; final verdict. INDEX OF AUTHORS AND AUTHORITIES 469–474 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 475–489 PART I. ETHNOLOGIC AND ARCHÆOLOGIC. INTRODUCTORY. Ever since America was discovered, the question about it which has excited the most general interest has been, Whence came its inhabitants? The inquiry, Who are the American Indians? has been the theme of many a ponderous folio and labored dissertation, with answers nearly as various as the number of debaters. Few or none of them have reflected on the unphilosophical character of the inquiry as thus crudely put. Take a precisely analogous question, and this will be apparent—Whence came the African Negroes? All will reply—From Africa, of course. Originally? Yes, originally; they constitute the African or Negro sub-species of Man. The answer in the case of the American Indians is entirely parallel—their origin is American; the racial type was created and fixed on the American continent; they constitute as true and distinct a sub-species as do the African or the White Race. Each of the great continental areas moulded the plastic, primitive man into a conformation of body and mind peculiar to itself, in some special harmony with its own geographic features, thus producing a race or sub-species, subtly correlated in a thousand ways to its environment, but never forfeiting its claim to humanity, never failing in its parallel and progressive development with all other varieties of the species. America was no exception to this rule, and it is time to dismiss as trivial all attempts to connect the American race genealogically with any other, or to trace the typical culture of this continent to the historic forms of the Old World. My early studies inclined me to these opinions, and they have been constantly strengthened by further research. Yet they are not popularly accepted; the very latest writer of competence on the pre-history of America says, “It is now generally held that the earliest population (of the continent) was intruded upon by other races, coming either from Asia or from the Pacific Islands, from whom were descended the various tribes which have occupied the soil down to the present time.”[1] It is true that this opinion is that generally held, and for this reason I have selected for reprinting some articles intended to show that it is utterly fallacious—devoid of any respectable foundation.