[220] I allude to the opening of the ceremony by the centenarian _white_ man, "the first and only man." Mr Catlin is of opinion that this incident was introduced and superadded by some missionaries, though he adds it would be still more strange if the (Jesuit) missionaries had instructed them "in the other modes." This, however, is understating the case. It is conceivable that missionaries should have come among them, but in this case we should have expected some trace of Christian practices and dogmas; it is difficult to conjecture what set of missionaries could have indoctrinated them with the recondite pagan mysteries of Eleusis and Hierapolis. I have replied more fully, in chap. vii., to Mr Catlin's objection--that though they have a tradition of a deluge, it is not the tradition of the Deluge, because they have not also the tradition of the Creation. Mr Catlin argues upon the view that the American race "were created upon the ground on which they were found" ("Last Rambles," p. 321, 1868); and (p. 319) adds, "I can find nothing in history, sacred or profane, against this." He takes his stand (in "O-kee-pa") upon this--that there is nothing in the Mandan tradition which can be brought in proof of their migration from another continent. In reply I shall adduce their very name. The American continent may have been peopled by way of Behring's Straits, or from Europe in the East by way of Greenland, or by the connection of the Pacific Islands from the opposite coasts of Japan, China, and the Corea, or from the Polynesian groups in the south. The population may have poured in by all these routes. It is said (Prescott, "Conquest of Mexico," ii. 473)[221] that MSS. exist at Copenhagen proving that the American coast was visited by the Northmen in the eleventh century. The Polynesian route we may leave out of consideration, as it will not probably have been the one by which the Mandans came. As to the route by Behring's Straits, Mr Catlin admits "it is a possibility, and therefore they say it is probable" (p. 217, "Last Rambles"). But if, as there appears to me reason to think, they came from the opposite coast of the Corea, it might as reasonably be conjectured that the migration took the route of Behring's Straits, or by way of the Sandwich Islands. The possibility of the former is conceded. I will confine my attention, therefore, to the latter, which Mr Catlin pronounces absolutely impossible. In the first place, the distance between the Sandwich Islands and America is not greater than between Otaheite and New Zealand.[222] Now it is admitted that New Zealand was peopled from Otaheite. Moreover (_vide_ Sir J. Lubbock, "Pre-historic Times," p. 390), the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands, at two thousand miles distance, belong to the same race as those of Tahiti (Otaheite) and New Zealand, and resemble them "in religion,