The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 1, Wild Tribes: The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 1Bancroft, Hubert Howe
History
The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 1, Wild Tribes: The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 1
Bancroft, Hubert Howe
Indians -- Bibliography; Indians of Central America; Indians of Mexico; Indians of North America -- Pacific Coast of North America
essentially dissimilar to those of the old world; while man in the new
world, though bearing traces of high antiquity, is specifically
identical with all the races of the earth. It is well known that the
hybrids of plants and of animals do not possess the power of
reproduction, while in the intermixture of the races of men no such
sterility of progeny can be found; and therefore, as there are no human
hybrids, there are no separate human races or species, but all are one
family. Besides being consistent with sound reasoning, this theory can
bring to its support the testimony of the sacred writings, and an
internal evidence of a creation divine and spiritual, which is
sanctioned by tradition, and confirmed by most philosophic minds. Man,
unlike animals, is the direct offspring of the Creator, and as such he
alone continues to derive his inheritance from a divine source. The
Hebraic record, continue the monogenists, is the only authentic solution
of the origin of all things; and its history is not only fully sustained
by science, but it is upheld by the traditions of the most ancient
barbarous nations, whose mythology strikingly resembles the Mosaic
account of the creation, the deluge, and the distribution of peoples.
The Semitic family alone were civilized from the beginning. A peculiar
people, constantly upheld by special act of Providence from falling into
paganism, they alone possessed a true knowledge of the mystery of
creation. A universal necessity for some form of worship, a belief
inherent in all mankind, in an omnipotent deity and a life beyond the
grave, point to a common origin and prophesy a common destiny. This much
for the monogenists.
The second hypothesis, that of the polygenists, holds that there was not
one only, but several independent creations, each giving birth to the
essential, unchangeable peculiarities of a separate race; thus
constituting a diversity of species with primeval adaptation to their
geographical distribution. Morton, Agassiz, Gliddon, and others in
America, stand sponsors for this theory. The physiological differences
of race, they say, which separate mankind into classes, do not result
from climatic surroundings, but are inherited from original progenitors.
They point to marked characteristics in various peoples which have
remained unchanged for a period of four thousand years. In place of
controverting divine revelation, they claim that Mosaic history is the
history of a single race, and not the history of all mankind; that the
record itself contains an implied existence of other races; and that the
distribution of the various species or races of men, according to their
relative organisms, was part of the creative act, and of no less
importance than was the act of creation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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