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who were originally Tartars, having, at some re-mote period, taken possession of the farther India, afterwards spread themselves over the greater part of the islands of that vast ocean, conquering, and driv-ing to the mountains in the interior of some, and in others, reducing to slavery, or extirpating, the primitive inhabitants.  Not being addicted to com-merce, these insular colonies, have not long main-tained any intercourse with the parent country, and have therefore retained the knowledge of only a few of the arts with which their ancestors were acquainted.*  But with these few they have probably advanced from island to island till, at length, they reached the western shore of the American conti-

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  * That either the ancestors of the present inhabitants of many of those islands, or the nations whom they have extirpat-ed, possessed the knowledge of arts which are now lost from among them, is evident from the monuments of architecture and sculpture which still remain.  Several monuments of an-cient art are found even in the small island of Easter which is so deeply embosomed in the ocean, and approaches so near to the American continent, which are beyond the skill or power of its present inhabitants to effect.  The resemblance of the works which are found in Java, and some neighboring islands, to those of Elephanta and Salsette, demonstrate the relation of those an-cient people to the nations of India.  While the religious worship of the Peruvians bears a strong testimony to their Asiatic origin.
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nent.  Here they seem to have laid the foundations of those empires which the Europeans, on their arrival in America, found as yet only in the first stage of civilized society.  Their earliest estab-lishments were evidently made in Peru.  Afterwards Mexico appears to have been founded about three centuries before the discovery.  From this empire a few tribes probably found their way farther up into the continent, to the North of the Mexican gulph.*  But here they were met by ruder and fier-cer tribes whose ancestors had come from Asia by a different route.  But whether leaving Asia, and en-tering America by the North, or by the South, the remote ancestry of both appear to have originated nearly from the same regions.  And in all the Ame-rican indians we discover visible traits of the Tartar countenance.
  The last apparent exception to the general princi-ples of the essay which I think it necessary to notice is found in the islands of the Indian and Pacific oceans.  In these seas people have been discovered

[[footnote]]
  * Such were probably the Natchez, several of whose cus-toms resembled those of the Peruvians.  And generally, the tribes in that vicinity between Mississippi and Mexico were of a milder character than the northern indians.
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