Excerpt from The Origin of the North American Indians: With a Faithful Description of Their Manners and Customs, Both Civil and Military, Their Religions, Languages, Dress, and Ornaments
When we take even a superficial view of the surface of the globe which we inhabit, we evidently perceive, that at some unknown remote periods, various revolutions have happened, which not only affected materially the superficial structure of the earth, but the state and condition of its inhabitants.
Although we may fairly boast of the pre-eminence, of the human species over all other animals in arts of ingenious contrivance, and in mental capacities, which elevate our hopes beyond terrestrial enjoyments, yet we find the earth inhabited by different races of men, who do not only vary in complexion, manners, and customs, but their rules of conduct, sentiments, and opinions, are apparently so adverse and inconsistent, that the minds of the curious are at once struck with a degree of surprise that naturally excites a desire of consulting those extensive sources of information which have been laid open to the Antiquarian by the travels and researches of modern travellers. The intellectual faculties of man, as well as his bodily frame and complexion, exhibit so various an aspect among different races of mankind, as would seem to authorise an arrangement of the human species into different classes, marked by specific diversities of powers, both mental and corporeal.
But how much soever the human race may seem to be diversified, by manners and customs, opinions and sentiments, shape and size of body, colour, complexion, or tinge of skin, the organization of the human frame, in all the regions of the earth, prove an uniformity of species, which excludes not the possibility of the whole human race being descended from one original pair.
On discovering, therefore, such a contrariety in the bodily frame and features of man as well as in his mental capacities, we are led to attribute this diversity in the human species, to that general revolution which happened at the confusion of Babel. From sacred
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