Nations, in their separation from their original stocks, and dispersion over the globe, are yet held together by the leading traits, physical and intellectual, which had characterized them as groups. And in spreading abroad, they are found to have left behind them a golden clue, which we recognize in physiology, languages, arts, monuments, and mental habitudes. These traits are so intimately interwoven in the woof of the mind, and so firmly interlaced in the structure and tendencies to action of the whole organization of the man, that they can be detected and generalized after long eras of separation, and the most severe mutations of history. Such is the judgment, at least, of modern research. Ethnology bases its claims to confidence in the recognition of the dispersed family of man, in these proofs. And when they have been eliminated from the dust of antiquity, they are offered as contributions to the body of well considered facts and inferences, which are to compose the thread of antique history and critical inquiry. And what, it may be inquired, are the evidences the study produces, when these means of scrutiny come to be applied to the existing red race of this continent? or to their predecessors in its occupancy? Do their languages tell the story of their ancient affinities with Asia, Africa, or Europe? Do we see, in their monuments and remains of art, increments of a pre-existing state of advance, or refinement, in the human family, in other parts of the globe? It is confessed, that in order to answer these enquiries, we must first scrutinize the several epochs of the nations with whom we are to compare them, and the changes which they themselves have undergone. Without erecting these several standards of comparison, no certainty can attend the labor. All nations and tribes upon the face of the globe, whom we can make sponsors for the American tribes, are thus constituted the field of study, and we have opened to our investigations a theme at once noble and sublime. Philosophy has no higher species of inquiry, beneath Infinitude, than that which establishes the original affinities of man to man.