Nouveau Monde
seroient encore maintenant, aux yeux des fideles, une race d'animaux
equivoques.... Qui auroit cru que malgre cette sentence de Rome, on eut
agite violemment au conseil de Lima, 1583, si les Americains avoient
assez d'esprit pour etre admis aux sacrements de l'Eglise. Plusieurs
eveques persisterent a les leur refuser pendant que les Jesuites
faisoient communier tous les jours leurs Indiens esclaves au Paraquai,
afin de les accoutumer, disoient-ils, a la discipline, et pour les
detourner de l'horrible coutume de se nourrir de chair humain.--_Recherches
Philosophiques sur les Americains_, De Pauw, tom. i., p. 35.]

[Footnote 206: Rousseau, opposed by Buffon, Volney, &c.]

[Footnote 207: "Notwithstanding the striking analogies existing between the
nations of the New Continent and the Tartar tribes who have adopted the
religion of Bouddah, I think I discover in the mythology of the Americans,
in the style of their paintings, in their languages, and especially in
their external conformation, the descendants of a race of men, which, early
separated from the rest of mankind, has followed for a lengthened series of
years a peculiar road in the unfolding of its intellectual faculties, and
in its tendency toward civilization."--Humboldt's _Ancient Inhabitants of
America_, vol. i., p. 200.

"It can not be doubted that the greater part of the nations of America
belong to a race of men who, isolated ever since the infancy of the
world from the rest of mankind, exhibit in the nature and diversity of
language, in their features, and the conformation of their skull,
incontestable proofs of an early and complete civilization."--_Ibid._,
vol. i., p. 250.

On the American races in general, Humboldt refers to the beautiful work
of Samuel George Morton, _Craniae Americanae_, 1839, p. 62-86; and an
account of the skulls brought by Pentland from the Highlands of
Titicaca, in the '_Dublin Journal of Medical and Chemical Science_,'
vol. v., p. 475, 1834; also, Alcide d'Orbigny, _L'Homme Americain
considere sous ses Rapports Physiol. et Mor._, p. 221, 1839; and,
further, the work, so full of delicate ethnographical observations, of
Prinz Maximilian of Wied, _Reise in das Innere von Nordamerika_, 1839.]

[Footnote 208: "With regard to their origin, I have no doubt,
independent of theological considerations, but that it is the same with
ours. The resemblance of the North American savages to the Oriental
Tartars renders it proba