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

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СКАЧАТЬ their own way, every part of America."72 There are, however, writers who find grave objections to an Asiatic origin, the principal of which are the absence of the horse, the "paucity and the poverty of the lactiferous animals, and the consequent absence of pastoral nations in the New World." For, adds a writer in the Quarterly Review, "we can hardly suppose that any of the pastoral hordes of Tartars would emigrate across the strait of Behring or the Aleutian Islands without carrying with them a supply of those cattle on which their whole subsistence depended."73

THEORY OF ORIGIN FROM CHINESETHE COUNTRY OF FUSANG

      The theory that western America was originally peopled by the Chinese, or at least that the greater part of the New World civilization may be attributed 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 СКАЧАТЬ