The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 5, Primitive History. Hubert Howe Bancroft

to this people, is founded mainly on a passage in the work of the Chinese historian Li yan tcheou, who lived at the commencement of the seventh century of our era. In this passage it is stated that a Chinese expedition discovered a country lying twenty thousand li to the east of Tahan, which was called Fusang.74 Tahan is generally supposed to be Kamchatka, and Fusang the north-west coast of America, California, or Mexico. As so much depends upon what Li yan tcheou has said about the mysterious country, it will be well to give his account in full; as translated by Klaproth, it is as follows: In the first of the years young yuan, in the reign of Fi ti of the dynasty of Thsi, a cha men (buddhist priest), named Hoeï chin, arrived at King tcheou from the country of Fusang; of this land he says: Fusang is situated twenty thousand li75 to the east of the country of Tahan, and an equal distance to the east of China. In this place are many trees called fusang,76 whose leaves resemble those of the Thoung (Bignonia tomentosa), and the first sprouts those of the bamboo. These serve the people of the country for food. The fruit is red and shaped like a pear. The bark is prepared in the same manner as hemp, and manufactured into cloth and flowered stuffs. The wood serves for the construction of houses, for in this country there are neither towns nor walled habitations. The inhabitants have a system of writing and make paper from the bark of the fusang. They possess neither arms nor troops and they never wage war. According to the laws of the kingdom, there are two prisons, one in the north, the other in the south; those who have committed trifling faults are sent to the latter, those guilty of graver crimes to the former, and detained there until by mitigation of their sentence they are removed to the south.77 The male and female prisoners are allowed to marry with each other and their children are sold as slaves, the boys when they are eight years of age, the girls when they are nine. The prisoners never go forth from their jail alive. When a man of superior mark commits a crime, the people assemble in great numbers, seat themselves opposite the criminal, who is placed in a ditch, partake of a banquet, and take leave of the condemned person as of one who is about to die. Cinders are then heaped about the doomed man. For slight faults, the criminal alone is punished, but for a great crime his children and grandchildren suffer with him; in some extraordinary cases his sin is visited upon his descendants to the seventh generation.

      The name of the king of this country is Yit khi; the nobles of the first rank are called Toui lou; those of the second, 'little' Toui lou; and those of the third, Na tu cha. When the king goes out, he is accompanied by tambours and horns. He changes the color of his dress at certain times; in the years of the cycle kia and y, it is blue; in the years ping and ting, it is red; in the years ou and ki, it is yellow; in the years keng and sin, it is white; and lastly, in those years which have the characters jin and kouei, it is black.

      The cattle have long horns, and carry burdens, some as much as one hundred and twenty Chinese pounds. Vehicles, in this country, are drawn by oxen, horses, or deer. The deer are raised in the same manner that cattle are raised in China, and cheese is made from the milk of the females.78 A kind of red pear is found there which is good at all seasons of the year. Grape-vines are also plentiful.79 There is no iron, but copper is met with. Gold and silver are not valued. Commerce is free, and the people are not given to haggling about prices.

      This is the manner of their marriages: When a man wishes to wed a girl, he erects his cabin just before the door of hers. Every morning and evening he waters and weeds the ground, and this he continues to do for a whole year. If by the end of that time the girl has not given her consent to their union, his suit is lost and he moves away; but if she is willing, he marries her. The marriage ceremony is almost the same as that observed in China. On the death of their father or mother, children fast for seven days; grandparents are mourned for by a fast of five days, and other relations by a fast of three days' duration. Images of the spirits of the dead80 are placed on a kind of pedestal, and prayed to morning and evening.81 Mourning garments are not worn.

      The king does not meddle with affairs of government until he has been three years upon the throne.

      In former times the religion of Buddha was unknown in this country, but in the fourth of the years ta ming, in the reign of Hiao wou ti of the Soung dynasty (A.D. 458), five pi khieou or missionaries, from the country Ki pin, went to Fusang and there diffused the Buddhist faith. They carried with them sacred books and images, they introduced the ritual, and inculcated monastic habits of life. By these means they changed the manners of the people.

      Such is the account given by the historian Li yan tcheou of the mysterious land. Klaproth, in his critique on Deguignes' theory that America was known to the Chinese, uses the distances given by the monk Hoeï chin to show that Fusang, where the laws and institutions of Buddha were introduced, was Japan, and that Tahan, situated to the west of the Vinland of Asia, as Humboldt aptly calls Fusang,82 was not Kamchatka but the island of Tarakai, wrongly named on our maps, Saghalien. The circumstance that there were grape-vines and horses in the discovered country is alone sufficient, he says, to show that it was not situated on the American continent, since both these objects were given to the New World by the Spaniards. M. Gaubil also contradicts Deguignes' theory. "Deguignes' paper," he writes to one of his confrères in Paris, "proves nothing; by a similar course of reasoning it might be shown that the Chinese reached France, Italy, or Poland."83

CHINESE EXPEDITION TO AMERICA

      Certain allusions to a Chinese colony, made by Marco Polo and Gonzalo Mendoza, led Horn, Forster, and other writers to suppose that the Chinese, driven from their country by the Tartars about the year 1270, embarked to the number of one hundred thousand in a fleet of one thousand vessels, and having arrived on the coast of America, there founded the Mexican empire. As Warden justly remarks, however, it is not probable that an event of such importance would be passed over in silence by the Chinese historians, who rendered a circumstantial account of the destruction of their fleet by the Tartars about the year 1278 of our era, as well as of the reduction of their country by the same people.84

      The strongest proof upon which the Chinese theory rests, is that of physical resemblance, which, on the extreme north-western coast of America, is certainly very strong.85 I think there can be no doubt of the presence of Mongol blood in the veins of the inhabitants of that region, though it is probably Tartar or Japanese rather than Chinese. Indeed, when we consider that the distance across Bering Strait is all that intervenes between the two continents, that this is at times completely frozen over, thus practically connecting America and Asia, and that, both by sea and by ice, the inhabitants on both sides of the strait are known to have had communication with each other from time immemorial, a lack of resemblance, physical and otherwise, would be far more strange than its presence. In spite of what may be said to the contrary, there can be no doubt that the Mongolian type grows less and less distinct as we go south from Alaska, though, once grant the Mongols a footing on the continent, and the influence of their religion, languages, or customs may, for all we know, have extended even to Cape Horn.

MONGOLIAN ANALOGIES

      Analogies have been found, or thought to exist, between the languages of several of the American tribes, and that of the Chinese. But it is to Mexico, Central America, and, as we shall hereafter see, to Peru, that we must look for these linguistic affinities, and not to the north-western coasts, where we should naturally expect to find them most evident.86 The similarity between the Otomí and Chinese has been remarked by several writers.87 A few customs are mentioned as being common to both Chinese and Americans, but they show absolutely nothing, and are scarcely worth recounting. For instance, Bossu, speaking of the Natchez, says, "they never pare their finger nails, and it is well known that in China long nails on the right hand are a mark of nobility."

74

Deguignes writes: 'Les Chinois ont pénétré dans les pays très-éloignés du côté de l'orient; j'ai examiné leur mesures, et elles m'ont conduit vers les côtes de la Californie; j'ai conclu de-là qu'ils avoient connu l'Amérique l'an 458 J. C.' He also attributes Peruvian civilization to the Chinese. Recherches sur les Navigations des Chinois du côté de l'Amérique, in Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xvii. Paravey, in 1844, attempted to prove that the province of Fousang was Mexico. Domenech's Deserts, vol. i., p. 51. 'In Chinese history we find descriptions of a vast country 20,000 le to the eastward across the great ocean, which, from the description given, must be California and Mexico.' Taylor, in Cal. Farmer, Sept. 12, 1862. 'L'histoire postérieure des Chinois donne à penser qu'ils ont eu autrefois des flottes qui ont pu passer au Mexique par les Phillippines.' Farcy, Discours p. 46, in Antiq. Mex., tom. i., div. i.

75

A Chinese li is about one third of a mile.

76

'Fou sang, en chinois et selon la prononciation japonaise Fouts sôk, est l'arbrisseau que nous nommons Hibiscus rosa chinensis,' Klaproth, Recherches sur le pays de Fou Sang, in Nouvelles Annales des Voy., 1831, tom. li., p. 55, note. Others suppose the fusang to be the maguey, and, indeed, it was used for much the same purposes. It was, however, most probably, the mulberry; fu-soh, the Japanese equivalent for the Chinese fusang, being compounded of fu, to aid, and soh, the mulberry, a tree which abounds in a wild state in the province of Yesso, and which has been cultivated by royal command in other parts of Japan, where, as the reader will presently see, Fusang was probably situated. Mr Brooks, Japanese Consul in San Francisco, also tells me that Fu Sang is a name used in Chinese poetry to mean Japan. In Japan it is also thus used, and also used in trade marks, as 'first quality of Fu Sang silk cocoons,' meaning Japanese cocoons.

77

I follow Deguignes in this sentence; Klaproth has it: 'Ceux qui peuvent recevoir leur grace sont envoyés à la première (méridionale), ceux au contraire auxquels on ne veut pas l'accorder sont détenus dans la prison du nord.' Recherches, in Nouvelles Annales des Voy., 1831, tom. li., p. 55.

78

Deguignes translates: 'des habitants élèvent des biches comme en Chine, et ils en tirent du beurre.'

79

'Il y a dans l'original To Phou thao. Deguignes ayant décomposé le mot Phou tao, traduit: "on y trouve une grande quantité de glayeuls et de pêches." Cependant le mot Phou seul ne signifie jamais glayeul, c'est le nom des joncs et autres espèces de roseaux de marais, dont on se sert pour faire des nattes. Thao est en effet le nom de la pêche, mais le mot composé Phou tao signifie en chinois la vigne.' Klaproth, Recherches, in Nouvelles Annales des Voy., 1831, tom. li., pp. 57-8.

80

'Les images des Esprits,' &c.; Id., p. 59.

81

'Deguignes traduit: 'Pendant leurs prières ils exposent l'image du défunt.' Le texte parle de chin ou génies et non pas des ames des défunts.' Id.

82

'C'est une analogie curieuse qu'offre le pays à vignes de Fousang (l'Amérique chinoise de Deguignes) avec le Vinland des premières découvertes scandinaves sur les côtes orientales de l'Amérique.' Exam. Crit., tom. ii., p. 63, note.

83

Nouv. Jour. Asiatique, 1832, p. 335, quoted by Humboldt, Exam. Crit., tom. ii., pp. 65-6.

84

Warden, Recherches, p. 123.

85

It is enough to look at an Aleut to recognize the Mongol. Wrangel, in Nouvelles Annales des Voy., 1853, tom. cxxxvii., p. 213. 'The resemblance between north-west coast Indians and Chinese is rather remarkable.' Deans' Remains in B. Col., MS. 'I have repeatedly seen instances, both men and women, who in San Francisco could readily be mistaken for Chinese – their almond-shaped eyes, light complexion and long braided black hair giving them a marked similarity… An experience of nearly nine years among the coast tribes, with a close observation and study of their characteristics, has led me to the conclusion that these northern tribes (B. Col. and surrounding region) are the only evidence of any exodus from the Asiatic shore ever having reached our borders.' Taylor, in Cal. Farmer, July 25, 1862. Grant, Ocean to Ocean, p. 304, says that the Chinese and Indians resemble one another so much that were it not for the queue and dress they would be difficult to distinguish. 'The Pacific Indian is Mongolian in size and complexion, in the shape of the face, and the eyes,' and he wants many of the manly characteristics of the Eastern Indians. Morelet, Voyage, tom. i., p. 148, says of the Yucatan Indians, 'leur teint cuivré et quelquefois jaunâtre présente un ensemble de caractères qui rapproche singulièrement leur race de celle des tribus d'origine mongole.' This point of physical resemblance is, however, denied by several writers; thus Kneeland, Wonders, p. 53, says that though Americans have generally been accepted as Mongolians, yet if placed side by side with Chinese, hardly any resemblance will be found in physical character, except in the general contour of their faces and in their straight black hair; their mental characteristics are entirely opposite. Adair writes: 'Some have supposed the Americans to be descended from the Chinese: but neither their religion, laws, customs, &c., agree in the least with those of the Chinese: which sufficiently proves that they are not of that line.' He goes on to say that distance, lack of maritime skill, etc., all disprove the theory. He also remarks that the prevailing winds blow with little variation from east to west, and therefore junks could not have been driven ashore. Amer. Ind., pp. 12-13. 'Could we hope that the monuments of Central and South America might attract the attention and excite the interest of more American scholars than hitherto, the theory of the Mongol origin of the Red-men would soon be numbered among exploded hypotheses.' Nott and Gliddon's Indig. Races, p. 188. 'MM. Spix et Martius ont remarqué la ressemblance extraordinaire qui existe entre la physionomie des colons Chinois et celle des Indiens. La figure des Chinois est, il est vrai, plus petite. Ils ont le front plus large, les lèvres plus fines, et en général les traits plus délicats et plus doux que ceux des sauvages de l'Amérique. Cependant, en considérant la conformation de leur tête, qui n'est pas oblongue, mais angulaire, et plutôt pointue, leur crâne large, les sinus frontaux proéminents, le front bas, les os des joues très saillants, leurs yeux petits et obliques, le nez proportionnellement petit et épaté, le peu de poils garnissant leur menton et les autres parties du corps, leur chevelure moins longue et plate, la couleur jaunâtre ou cuivrée de leur peau, on retrouve les traits physiques communs aux deux races.' Warden, Recherches, p. 123. The Americans certainly approach the Mongols and Malays in some respects, but not in the essential parts of cranium, hair, and profile. If we regard them as a Mongol branch, we must suppose that the slow action of climate has changed them thus materially during a number of centuries. Malte-Brun, Précis de la Géog., tom. vi., p. 289.

86

This will be best shown by referring to Warden's comparison of American, Chinese, and Tartar words. Recherches, pp. 125-6. The Haidahs, are said, however, to have used words known to the Chinese. Deans' Remains in B. Col., MS. Mr Taylor writes: 'The Chinese accent can be traced throughout the Indian (Digger) language,' and illustrates his assertion with a comparative vocabulary of Indian and Chinese. Cal. Farmer, Sept. 12, 1862. The Chinese in California 'are known to be able to converse with them (the Indians) in their respective languages.'! Cronise's California, p. 31.

87

Warden, Recherches, pp. 127-9, gives a long list of these resemblances. See also Ampère, Prom. en Amér., tom. ii., p. 301; Prescott's Mex., vol. iii., p. 396; Faliés, Études Hist. sur les Civilisations, tom. i., pp. 380-1. Molina found (in Chili?) inscriptions resembling Chinese. M'Culloh's Researches on Amer., pp. 171-2. Bossu found some similarity between the language of the Natchez of Louisiana, and the Chinese. Nouveaux Voyages aux Indes Occidentales, tom. i., let. xviii.; cited by Warden, Recherches, p. 121. The last mentioned author also quotes a long list of analogies between the written language of the Chinese and the gesture language of the northern Indians, from a letter written by Wm Dunbar to the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, and comments thereon. Recherches, p. 176. Of the value of these philological proofs the reader may judge by the following fair sample: 'the Chinese call a slave, shungo; and the Naudowessie Indians, whose language from their little intercourse with the Europeans is the least corrupted, term a dog, shungush. The former denominate one species of their tea, shousong; the latter call their tobacco, shousassau.' Carver's Trav., p. 214. The supposition of Asiatic derivation is assumed by Smith Barton on the strength of certain similarities of words, but Vater remarks, these prove only partial migrations. Malte-Brun, Précis de la Géog., tom. vi., p. 290. 'On the whole, more analogies (etymol.) have been found with the idioms of Asia, than of any other quarter. But their amount is too inconsiderable to balance the opposite conclusion inferred by a total dissimilarity of structure.' Prescott's Mex., vol. iii., p. 396. Barton, New Views, gives a comparative vocabulary to show that Asiatic traces have been discovered in the languages of South as well as North America. Latham, Man and His Migrations, p. 185, has proofs that 'the Kamskadale, the Koriak, the Aino-Japanese, and the Korean are the Asiatic languages most like those of America.' 'Dans quatre-vingt-trois langues américaines examinées par MM. Barton et Vater, on en a reconnu environ cent soixante-dix dont les racines semblent être les mêmes; et il est facile de se convaincre que cette analogie n'est pas accidentelle, qu'elle ne repose pas simplement sur l'harmonie imitative, ou sur cette égalité de conformation dans les organes, qui rend presque identiques les premiers sons articulés par les enfans. Sur cent soixante-dix mots qui ont des rapports entre eux, il y en a trois cinquièmes qui rappellent le mantchou, le tungouse, le mongol et le samojède, et deux cinquièmes qui rappellent les langues celtique et tschoude, le basque, le copte et le congo.' Humboldt, Vues, tom. i., pp. 27-8. Prichard, Nat. Hist. Man, vol. ii., pp. 512-13, thinks that the Otomí monosyllabic language may belong to Chinese and Indo-Chinese idioms; but Latham, Varieties of Man, p. 408, doubts its isolation from other American tongues, and thinks that it is either anaptotic or imperfectly agglutinate.