Their very number is itself an argument against them. It is impossible, of course, to do any justice to them within the bounds of the present essay; and to select a single one or any small number, on which to dilate and fill up a large portion of our time, would be an undue preference. We have therefore passed over slightly many curious statements of a wild and adventurous character, which otherwise might have attracted your attention, and perhaps excited a deeper interest. It is time to approximate a close to these observations, extended perhaps already beyond a reasonable length; and we shall therefore proceed to sum up our conclusions. From a review of all that we have compiled, the mass of evidence appears to us to indicate the inferences which we are now proceeding to append.

We infer that the main bulk of the American population is probably derived from colonies of barbarous people, in the rudest state of life which can be imagined compatible with the preservation of their lives and the increase of their numbers. That the various colonies of civilized men which would appear from historical documents to have, at different periods, reached this country, were probably in many instances massacred, or in other ways destroyed by the unfavourable circumstances of their situation, as has been the case with so many colonies of the fate of which we are furnished with authentic accounts. That the survival of any of them, from the total absence of the domestic arts and knowledge of domestic animals which they must have introduced, is at best extremely problematical; and that they cannot have given rise to any considerable proportion of the population of America. That the Esquimaux races are apparently of Mongolian or Tartar descent, their predecessors having arrived by Behring's Straits or by Alasca and the Aleütian Isles; and that after their formation into tribes and the production of a language, they appear to have transmitted back to

Asia the colony of the Tschuktschi. That it is very probable that much of the blood of the adjacent Indian tribes is derived from the same source, particularly of those of the north-west. That the origin of the great bulk of the Indians. remains without any explanation accompanied by a satisfactory degree of probability. That the derivation of these, particularly in South America, from the Mongolian source, is hard to be conceived when we take into view the difficulties of the case; and that the presumption has considerable force that they are principally the descendants of colonists from the islands of the South Sea. And finally that a certain degree of probability attaches to the hypothesis of African emigration; a question to be elucidated by farther inquiries.

It must certainly be admitted that these conclusions form another and a striking example of the obscurity and imperfection which so much abound in the results of a very large portion of human science. They strongly bring to the mind a criticism of our learned and venerable member, P. S. Duponceau, Esq. While the philosophers of Europe have been employed in speculations and inquiries, directed, beyond a vast ocean, to the origin of the natives of America, some of them have overlooked a problem, yet unexplained, which lies at their own door; the genealogy and cause of the organic peculiarities of the natives of Africa. A section of the globe, within a day's sail of ancient Greece and Rome, nay, which contained ancient Egypt within its boundaries, has had no explanation given of the very remarkable peculiarities which characterize nearly its whole population. We may add, that until the last few years its great rivers were never explored by navigation, its deserts never traversed by civilized men, the conquests and glory of ancient empires were confined to its northern border, and, while the illimitable regions of North and South America have been explored, subdued, delineated in all directions, that continent which

was the cradle of all our civilization, remains throughout nearly its whole extent, a blank upon the map of the globe." Contemplations such as these are calculated to impress us with a distrust of the boasted prowess of our own race; and while we are toiling with self-gratulation in the fields of science, inevitably and perpetually remind us of the littleness of man, and the small space he occupies when taken into comparison with the agencies of nature and the destinies of worlds.

And here, gentlemen of the Historical Society, might properly terminate our dry inquiry into the origin of the American Indians. But I see before me those whom a benign providence has sent into existence for the purpose of softening and ameliorating a world which, if abandoned alone to the passions of men, would be too sanguinary and ferocious; those whose society is at once the source and the reward of civilization and morality. The occasion is tempting to urge the cause of the unhappy aboriginals, and must not be neglected. What are the inquiries of abstract research to the claims of living and suffering humanity? It is to woman that we can ever appeal for all that is generous in self devotion and gentle and lovely in performance. You possess the power to guide and control public opinion. You mould the statesman and the warrior, and convert their cold and cruel calculations into plans of benevolence and humanity. Nothing but woman can bid the demon of avarice to pause in his career. It is to woman, therefore, that I address the cause of the unfortunate beings who have been the subject of this discourse; a race suffering from every ill that can be inflicted by the combined agency of the thirst for land and the thirst for gold. We have habituated ourselves to consider the Indians as something poetical. We call them Lenni Lennapé, and

write odes, elegies and tragedies to their memory. To the unfortunate Delawares, life, alas! is prose. They are a suffering and unhappy race, ruined by the shock of successive wars, for quarrels not their own, or driven to combat by distressing necessity. Wandering upon the banks of the Wabash or the Arkansas, while we possess their old and well known seats, they are still the same people who were so long the faithful allies of Pennsylvania; the men who succoured our ancestors and enable them to form a state. Does not that state owe something to its former friends and partisans?

NOTE.

The writer of the preceding sheets feels it as an act of justice to ack ledge the valuable assistance which he has received in their compilat From Mr. Rawle he received the substantial favour of a very extended interesting set of references. To Mr. Duponceau, he is indebted for s ral highly useful suggestions, most of which, he believes, are referred their proper source in the text. To the Rev. Canon Monteagudo, of Mex he owes references to the learned and copious work of Garcia; and he regrets not having enjoyed such valuable assistance at a time and to an ex which would have made him better acquainted with the early Spanish ters. He must add to the list his young friend, Dr. Edward Rice, of L Pennsylvania; without whose assistance in translating Vater, he could sca ly have executed his purpose.

THE END.