Entered according to Act of Congress in the Year 1890, by

HUBERT H. BANCROFT,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.

TET VVD ZIVMKOMD TIMOR

All Rights Reserved.

62858

ESSAYS

AND

MISCELLANY

CHAPTER I

THE EARLY AMERICAN CHRONICLERS

Facts can be accurately known to us only by the most rigid observation and sustained and scrutinizing scepticism

-Froude

IN the North American Review for April, 1876, appeared an article by Lewis H. Morgan entitled "Montezuma's Dinner," in which the writer attempts to show that the native nations of Central and South America were not so far advanced in culture as from the evidence of priests and conquerors we have been led to suppose, were not indeed so far advanced as the Iroquois and some other northern tribes. As Mr Morgan takes for his text the second volume of my Native Races of the Pacific States, treating of the aboriginal civilization of the Mexican and Central American table-lands; and as his remarkable hypotheses affect not alone the quality of American aboriginal culture, but the foundations of early American history, and indeed of all historic evidence; and as among his disiples are found several popular writers disseminating these erroneous ideas, I deem it not out of place to express my views upon the subject.

I shall not attempt the elucidation of Mr Morgan's theories, which run through voluminous and somewhat