The author of this work has endeavored to ob-
serve, in the printing, the orthography of our distin-
guished countryman, DR. WEBSTER. Such obser-
vance does not of course apply to the literal transcripts
of old documents which are inserted; and there may
be some other departures from it, occasioned by inad-

vertence.

INTRODUCTION.

ORIGIN OF THE INDIANS IN AMERICA.

FROM what particular part of the old world the aboriginals found their way to this continent, is a question which has given rise to much philosophical and learned disquisition among historians. It however appears now to be the settled opinion that America first received its inhabitants from Asia. Mr. Snowden, in his History of America, advances many able and ingenious arguments in support of this opinion. After citing many great revolutions which have from time to time taken place in various parts of our globe, Mr. Snowden states:

"In the strait which separates America from Asia, many islands are found, which are supposed to be the mountainous parts of land, formerly swallowed up by earthquakes: which appears the more probable, by the multitude of volcanoes, now known in the peninsula of Kamtschatka. It is imagined, however, that the sinking of that land and the separation of the new continents, has been occasioned by those great earthquakes, mentioned in the history of the Americans; which formed an era almost as memorable as that of the deluge. We can form no conjecture of the time mentioned in the histories of the Toltecas, or of the year 1, (Tecpatl,) when that great calamity happened.

"If a great earthquake should overwhelm the isthmus of Suez, and there should be at the same time as great scarcity of historians as there were in the first age of

the deluge, it would be doubted in three or four hundred years after, whether Asia had ever been united by that part to Africa; and many would firmly deny it.

"Whether that great event, the separation of the continents, took place before or after the population of America, it is impossible to determine; but we are indebted to the above-mentioned navigators,* for settling the long dispute about the point from which it was effected. Their observations prove, that in one place the distance between continent and continent is only thirty-nine miles; and in the middle of this narrow strait, there are two islands, which would greatly facilitate the passage of the Asiatics into the new world, supposing it took place in canoes, after the convulsion which rent the two continents asunder.

"It may also be added, that these straits are, even in the summer, often filled with ice; in winter frozen over, so as to admit a passage for mankind, and by which quadrupeds might easily cross, and stock the continent. But where, from the vast expanse of the north-eastern world, to fix on the first tribes who contributed to people the new continent, now inhabited from end to end, is a matter that has baffled human reason. The learned may make bold and ingenious conjectures, but plain good sense cannot always accede to them.

"As mankind increased in numbers, they naturally protruded one another forward. Wars might be another cause of migrations. No reason appears, why the Asiatic north might not be an officina vivorum as well as the European. The overteeming country to the east of the Riphean mountains, must have found it necessary to discharge its inhabitants: the first great increase of people were forced forwards by the next to it: at length reaching the utmost limits of the old world, found a new one, with ample space to occupy unmolested for ages; till Columbus, in an evil hour for them, discovered their country; which brought again new sins and new deaths to both worlds. It is impossible, with the lights

*Cook and others.