BANCROFT'S RACES OF THE PACIFIC STATES.* THE present volume (of
nearly 800 pages) is the first of a series of five, the plan of which is to condense into a few thousand pages the whole mass of available knowledge as to the native races of the west side of North America, from Behring's Straits to the Isthmus of Panama. Certainly the new-risen, money. making State of California is to be congratulated on the production of so solid a literary work. An article in the Overland Monthly, by Mr. J. Ross Browne, gives an interesting account of the author and his undertaking. It appears that Mr. Bancroft, a descendant of a New- England family, has been for some twenty years senior partner in a bookselling and publishing house in San Francisco. Soon after starting in business he began to collect books relating to his adopted home, the State of California. Then he extended his range to a larger district, north and south, and annexed Mexico and Central America for literary purposes. Being a dealer in books, he had special means of collecting through agents all over the world, and he went himself to Europe for two years to carry on the quest. Every book, pamphlet, map, or manuscript printed or written in the Pacific States, or relating to them, whether cheap or dear, valuable or worthless, was so far as possible got together, and at last the edifice was crowned by the purchase of some three thousand volumes, many of them of great rarity, from the library of the unfortunate Emperor Maximilian, collected during forty years by Don J. M. Andrade, litterateur and publisherin the city of Mexico. When Mr. Bancroft had got together this wonderful library, and could sit in the midst of 16,000 volumes of the litera- ture of Western North America, he found, as he says, that, like Tantalus, he was up to his neck in water, yet dying of thirst. He wanted to know all the knowledge in his books, and could not get at it. So he set himself to work with his assistants in the most business-like way to sift the few grains of wheat from the mountain of chaff it was hidden in. In other words, he "posted his books ;" they were read, every item worth keeping was noted on a card, and the result of the mass of collected information was carried by him- self into the work now in course of publication, which is, so to speak, his ledger. The present first volume is devoted to records of the Wild Tribes, the second is to treat of the Civilised Nations, and the remaining three are "to present clearly and concisely all knowledge extant" on the mythology, languages, antiquities, and migrations of them all.
It is certainly a worthy scheme, and is being carried out most conscientiously. The author begins his first chapter with "Facts
are the raw material of science Theories may be only for the day, but facts are for all time and all science." He rejects the temptation to theorise, declaring that his "is the labour of the artisan rather than that of the artist ; a forging of weapons for abler hands to wield ; a producing of raw materials for skilled mechanics to weave and colour at will" His readers will regret his determination, as the Introduction and much else in this volume prove Mr. Bancroft to be a shrewd and fair critic, and competent to form for himself good ethno- logical theories, if the power of seeing the absurdity of bad ones is any criterion. From the time of the Spanish Conquest, America has been the place where the ethnologist has played his wildest antics. It is pointed out by Vanegas, that America must have been peopled by the Carthaginians,—Anakuac being another name for Anak. The exclamation of Isaiah, "Who are these that fly like doves to their windows?" (" Quasi colurnbz ad fenestras suns,") was taken as manifest prophecy of the very name of the dis- coverer of America by the old-fashioned interpreters of prophecy, who seem to have been just a trifle looser in their methods of inter- pretation than those of our own day. There are modern ethnologists who almost vie with the ancient authorities in their speculations on the history of races. Such recognise the Aztecs as lost tribes of Israel on the strength of their having hook-noses and being in the habit of using sticks to beat evil-doers with, or they discover evi- dence of a connection between the Malays and the Californians in the fact that "both have an open countenance, one wife, and no tomahawk " ! One can well understand bow the revulsion from these fancies may have led Mr. Bancroft to his present plan of renouncing theory altogether.
* The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America. By Hubert Howe Bancroft. Vol. L: W ild Tribes. New York : Appletons. London Longnaans it Co. Still, the use of facts is to serve as material for theories. The bewildering mass of details can only become portable know- ledge for public use by extracting general principles from it. A large part of Mr. Bancroft's statements really do no more than assert that such-and-such a tribe does what a hundred other tribes do in other parts of the world. Thus, in describing the Indians of British Columbia, he relates that in cases of severe or mysterious illness, they have recourse to the magic powers of the sorcerer to cast out the evil spirit which has entered into the patient. This he performs by chanting and dancing round the sick man, and kneading and sucking at his body, from which he pretends at last to draw out the demon in the shape of a small bone or other object. There are other similar accounts in the volume, which are much the same as those from Africa or Australia. What the public wants is not so much to read these particulars over and over again, as to understand once for all that in the savage state, and as far as what may be called the middle period of civilisation, people have very generally ascribed severe disease to demoniacal possession, and have bad recourse accordingly to the medi- cine-man or priest to cast out the devil. Such generalities being well known, what one looks for in descriptions of savage tribes is either some special peculiarity, or some account which shows a principle so clearly as to be worth keeping for an illustra- tion. Of such "luminous instances" numbers may be found in the present volume. For example, any one who wishes to form an opinion about the much debated question of polygamous and poly- androus marriage, would do well to take as his starting-point the following matter-of-fact remark as to the practice of the Esquimaux (p. 66.) :—" Polygamy is common, every man being entitled to as many wives as he can get and maintain. On the other hand, if women are scarce, the men as easily adapt themselves to circumstances, and two of them marry one woman." In studying the history of morals, it is curious to contrast the characters of savage tribes described by some observers as monsters of ferocity and greed, by others as chivalrous and gentle. The key to this discrepancy is generally that the moral code varies (as it practically does to a leas degree among ourselves), according to whether they are dealing with friends or strangers. Tbuswe read of the Apaches (p. 524) that they are trained by their mothers to a life of theft and murder, in which they display consummate cunning, treachery, and cruelty. Yet the statement of Colyer is quoted from a Report of Indian Affairs, "I have not seen a more intelligent, cheerful, and grateful tribe of Indians than the roving Apaches." So (p. 525) it is stated of the Comanches, famed for their ferocious and vengeful character, that nevertheless "quarrels among relatives and friends are unheard of among them."
How far uncivilised life is independent of climate could scarcely be better understood than by following Mr. Bancroft in his de- scriptive chapters, beginning with the Esquimaux and Aleutians of the frozen North, passing to the Columbian Indians in their milder but still rugged region, thence to the hordes of the prairies and valleys of California, and ending with the dwellers in the tropical forests of Darien. Between these extremes wild life alters in its details of food and shelter, but in the essential characters of mind, language, and arts, it is clear that man does not go up and down directly with the thermometer. The blubber- eating Esquimaux, in his snow igloo, and the Mosquito Indian in his palm-leaf hut, are not very far from the same level in civilisa- tion. Of the races treated in the present volume, the highest are the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, with their fortress-towns of houses several storeys high, with walls four feet thick of stone or sun-dried bricks. Mr. Bancroft's account of these remarkable people is the best we have met with. It is often thought that they were connected with the semi-civilised nations of Mexico, but there is no proof of this. It is more likely that they are an example of people who, under favourable conditions of peace and prosperity, rose from the level of rude agricultural tribes, and de- veloped their social institutions as they did their architecture. With the contact of the white man both these peculiar elements are fall- ing away. We shall look to Mr. Bancroft's succeeding volumes to give more complete means than have hitherto been afforded for bringing to a solution the vexed problem of the still higher Mexi- can and Central-American civilisations. Were these really products of native growth, or did stray Asiatics implant in the American mind fertile hints of metal-working and architecture, of astronomy and hieroglyphic record?
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