The Land We Live In | Page 5

by tribes almost as savage as the wild beasts
upon whom they existed. It is needless, therefore, in this pen picture of
our country, to go into any extended notice of its ancient inhabitants,
although the writer has devoted not a little independent study to their
origin and history. That study has confirmed him in the opinion that the
American Indians came from Asia, with such slight admixture as the
winds and waves may have brought from Europe, Africa and Polynesia.
The resemblance of the American Indians to the Tartar tribes in
language is striking, and in physical appearance still more so, while the
difference in manners and customs is no greater than 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 Æneas
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.
* * *
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