Produced by Julia Miller and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from scans of public domain material produced by Microsoft for their Live Search Books site.) Transcriber's Note A number of typographical errors have been maintained in this version of this book. They have been marked with a [TN-#], which refers to a description in the complete list found at the end of the text. SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE ETHNOGRAPHY AND ARCHÆOLOGY OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. BY SAMUEL GEORGE MORTON, M. D., Author of the Crania Americana, Crania Æygptiaca, &c. EXTRACTED FROM THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, VOL. II, SECOND SERIES. NEW HAVEN: PRINTED BY B. L. HAMLEN, Printer to Yale College. 1846. SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE ETHNOGRAPHY AND ARCHÆOLOGY OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. Nothing in the progress of human knowledge is more remarkable than the recent discoveries in American archæology, whether we regard them as monuments of art or as contributions to science. The names of Stephens and Norman will ever stand preëminent for their extraordinary revelations in Mexico and Yucatan; which, added to those previously made by Del Rio, Humboldt, Waldeck and D'Orbigny in these and other parts of our continent, have thrown a bright, yet almost bewildering light, on the former condition of the western world. Cities have been explored, replete with columns, bas-reliefs, tombs and temples; the works of a comparatively civilized people, who were surrounded by barbarous yet affiliated tribes. Of the builders we know little besides what we gather from their monuments, which remain to astonish the mind and stimulate research. They teach us the value of archæological facts in tracing the primitive condition and cognate relations of the several great branches of the human family; at the same time that they prove to us, with respect to the American race at least, that we have as yet only entered upon the threshold of investigation.