The Land We Live In | Page 5

that between the Englishman of the seventeenth century and his descendant in the mountains of West Virginia or Kentucky. It is probable--indeed what is known of the aborigines indicates, that the immigrations were successive, and their succession would be fully accounted for by the mighty convulsions among Asiatic nations, of which history gives us a very dim idea. It is easy to suppose that more than one dusky ?neas led his fugitive followers across the narrow strait which divides Asia from America, and pushed on to the warmer regions of the South, driving in turn before him less vigorous and warlike tribes, seizing the lands which they had made fruitful, and adopting in part the civilization which they had built up. Many of the conquered would prefer emigration to submission, and in their turn push farther south, even to the uttermost bound of the continent.
The writer is not of those who believe that the remote inhabitants of America are unrepresented among the red men of the present age. In European and American history the myths about exterminated races are disappearing in the light of investigation. Our ancestors were not so cruel as they have been painted. It is not likely that any nation was ever cut off to a man. Men were too valuable to be destroyed beyond the requirements of warfare or the demands of sanguinary religious customs. Conquered nations, it is now agreed, were usually absorbed by their conquerors, either as equals or serfs. In either event unity was the result, as in the case of the Romans and Latins, the Scots and the Picts, the Normans and the Saxons. The mound builders, in all probability, survive in the Indian tribes of to-day, some of whom in the Southwest were mound builders within the historic period, while the ruined cities of Arizona and New Mexico were the product of a rude civilization, admittedly inherited by the pueblos of the present generation.
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There was nothing in the civilization of the most advanced American races worth preserving, except their monuments. The destruction of the Aztec and Peruvian empires was, on the whole, an advantage to humanity. The darkest period of religious persecution in Europe saw nothing to compare with the sanguinary rites of Aztec worship, and bigoted, intolerant and oppressive as the Spaniards were they did a service to mankind in putting an end to those barbarities. The colonial system established by Spain in America was founded on the principle that dominion over the American provinces was vested in the crown, not in the kingdom. The Spanish possessions on this continent were regarded as the personal property of the sovereign.
The viceroys were appointed by the king and removable by him at pleasure. All grants of lands were made by the sovereign, and if they failed from any cause they reverted to the crown. All political and civil power centred in the king, and was executed by such persons and in such manner as the will of the sovereign might suggest, wholly independent not only of the colonies but of the Spanish nation. The only civil privileges allowed to the colonists were strictly municipal, and confined to the regulation of their interior police and commerce in cities and towns, for which purpose they made their own local regulations or laws, and appointed town and city magistrates. The Spanish-American governments were not merely despotic like those of Russia and Turkey, but they were a more dangerous kind of despotism, as the absolute power of the sovereign was not exercised by himself, but by deputy.
At first the dominions of Spain in the new world were divided, for purposes of administration, into two great divisions or vice-royalties: New Spain and Peru. Afterward, as the country became more settled, the vice-royalty of Santa Fe de Bogota was created. A deputy or vice-king was appointed to preside over each of these governments, who was the representative of the sovereign, and possessed all his prerogatives within his jurisdiction. His power was as supreme as that of the king over every department, civil and military. He appointed most of the important officers of the vice-royalty. His court was formed on the model of Madrid, and displayed an equal and often superior degree of magnificence and state. He had horse and foot guards, a regular household establishment and all the ensigns and trappings of royalty. The tribunals which assisted in the administration were similar to those of the parent country. The Spanish-American colonies, in brief, possessed no political privileges; the authority of the crown was absolute, but not more so than in the parent State, and it could hardly have been expected that liberties denied to the people at home would have been granted to subjects in distant America.
Over the viceroys, and acting for the sovereign, was the