History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol 1: Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as CitizensWilliams, George Washington
History
History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol 1: Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens
Williams, George Washington
African Americans -- History; Liberia; Sierra Leone
Now, these substantial and indisputable traces of the march of the
Negro races through Japan and Asia lead us to conclude that the Negro
race antedates all profane history. And while the great body of the
Negro races have been located geographically in Africa, they have
been, in no small sense, a cosmopolitan people. Their wanderings may
be traced from the rising to the setting sun.
"The remains of architecture and sculpture in India seem to
prove an early connection between that country and
Africa.... The Pyramids of Egypt, the colossal statues
described by Pausanias and others, the Sphinx, and the
Hermes Canis, which last bears a strong resemblance to the
Varaha Avatar, indicate the style of the same indefatigable
workmen who formed the vast excavations of Canarah, the
various temples and images of Buddha, and the idols which
are continually dug up at Gaya or in its vicinity. These and
other indubitable facts may induce no ill-grounded opinion,
that Ethiopia and Hindustan were peopled or colonized by the
same extraordinary race; in confirmation of which it may be
added, that the mountaineers of Bengal and Benhar can hardly
be distinguished in some of their features, particularly in
their lips and noses, from the modern Abyssinians."[49]
There is little room for speculation here to the candid searcher after
truth. The evidence accumulates as we pursue our investigations.
Monuments and temples, sepulchred stones and pyramids, rise up to
declare the antiquity of the Negro races. Hamilton Smith, after
careful and critical investigation, reaches the conclusion, that the
Negro type of man was the most ancient, and the indigenous race of
Asia, as far north as the lower range of the Himalaya Mountains, and
presents at length many curious facts which cannot, he believes, be
otherwise explained.
"In this view, the first migrations of the Negro stock,
coasting westward by catamarans, or in wretched canoes, and
skirting South-western Asia, may synchronize with the
earliest appearance of the Negro tribes of Eastern Africa,
and just precede the more mixed races, which, like the
Ethiopians of Asia, passed the Red Sea at the Straits of
Bab-el-Mandeb, ascended the Nile, or crossed that river to
the west."[50]
Taking the whole southern portion of Asia westward to Arabia, this
conjecture--which likewise was a conclusion drawn, after patient
research, by the late Sir T. Stanford Raffles--accounts, more
satisfactorily than any other, for the Oriental habits, ideas,
traditions, and words which can be traced among several of the present
African tribes and in the South-Sea Islands. Traces of this black race
are still found along the Himalaya range from the Indus to Indo-China,
and the Malay peninsula, and in a mixed form all through the southern
states to Ceylon.[51]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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