Taking as a basis for our illustration the rules of argument, we will first identify one race, and then prove that the existence of another is not only apparent, but absolute. For the convenience of the general reader, the word "Mexican," until the true name is established, will be applied throughout the following pages to all Central and South America;--for the word "south" may be confounded with that portion of the Republic of North America so denominated, and especially with the American reader. The fundamental error with all writers upon the Aborigines of America is, that they have viewed them _as one people_. Authors have, therefore, been confounded by the different customs and ceremonies of religion as practised in the two great divisions of the continent; they have seen that the natives were, to a certain extent, in one part of the vast domain, idolaters, and not in the other; that the North was essentially republican in every aspect of its political existence, while that of Mexican America was as essentially composed of kingdoms and empires, and governed by despotic monarchs, and that republics were interwoven with them; that each man in the North was a warrior, and an equal, acknowledging no superior but their leader in time of battle, and should he fall in action, there was not a member of the Tribe in which they politically lived, but could have taken his place, and filled it with similar courage and ability. In Mexican America they were not equal, but from the emperor they descended by degrees to the serf and slave; in that country, stone and stuccoed Temples and Palaces were, and still continue to be found, erected with costly magnificence, and in which were jewelled idols, to which they bent the knee; their rich dwellings were splendid mansions, adorned with sculptured and beaten gold, and graced with the works of art, and as a people, enjoying all the refined elegancies of life;--but in the North their Temple was the azure canopy of Jehovah, adorned with its myriads of golden stars, and when beneath that sublime dome, they bent the knee, it was to the Almighty God alone! Their palaces were the gorgeous vistas of the forest; the columns were the gigantic trees, each year increasing in their stateliness; their shadowy and painted roofs were the far-spreading branches, and nature's tinted foliage; their mansions were those of independent wanderers, even the simple tents of Israel; and as for jewelled idols and figures of beaten gold,--they presented the diamonds of the human eye, radiant with intellectual beams, and glancing from the living emblem of the first and priceless image, placed in Eden's garden by the Architect of the Universe!