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Daniel Wilson. The Lost Atlantis and Other Ethnographic Studies
The Lost Atlantis and Other Ethnographic Studies
Table of Contents
PREFACE
THE LOST ATLANTIS. I. EARLY IDEAS
II. THE VINLAND OF THE NORTHMEN
III. TRADE AND COMMERCE IN THE STONE AGE
IV. PRE-ARYAN AMERICAN MAN
V. THE ÆSTHETIC FACULTY IN ABORIGINAL RACES
VI. THE HURON-IROQUOIS: A TYPICAL RACE
Comparative Table of Numerals
VII. HYBRIDITY AND HEREDITY
VIII. RELATIVE RACIAL BRAIN-WEIGHT AND SIZE
TABLE I
TABLE II
TABLE III
TABLE IV
TABLE V
TABLE VI
TABLE VII
TABLE VIII
TABLE IX
TABLE X
INDEX
Отрывок из книги
Daniel Wilson
Published by Good Press, 2021
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The reference to the Skrælings in the first friendly intercourse of Thorfinn Karlsefne and his companions with the natives, and their subsequent hostile attitude, ending in the death of Thorvald Ericson, has given occasion to this digression. But the question thus suggested is one of no secondary interest. If we could certainly determine their ethnical character the fact would be of great significance; and coupled with any well-grounded determination of the locality where the fatal incident occurred, would have important bearings on American ethnology. The description of the sallow, or more correctly, swarthy coloured, natives with large eyes, broad cheek-bones, shaggy hair, and forbidding countenances is furnished in the Saga, and then the narrative thus proceeds: “After the Skrælings had gazed at them for a while, they rowed away again to the south-west past the cape. Karlsefne and his company had erected their dwelling-houses a little above the bay, and there they spent the winter. No snow fell, and the cattle found their food in the open field. One morning early, in the beginning of 1008, they descried a number of canoes coming from the south-west past the cape. Karlsefne having held up the white shield as a friendly signal, they drew nigh and immediately commenced bartering. These people chose in preference red cloth, and gave furs and squirrel skins in exchange. They would fain also have bought swords and spears, but these Karlsefne and Snorre prohibited their people from selling to them. In exchange for a skin entirely gray the Skrælings took a piece of cloth of a span in breadth, and bound it round their heads. Their barter was carried on in this way for some time. The Northmen then found that their cloth was beginning to grow scarce, whereupon they cut it up in smaller pieces, not broader than a finger’s breadth, yet the Skrælings gave as much for these smaller pieces as they had formerly given for the larger ones, or even more. Karlsefne also caused the women to bear out milk soup, and the Skrælings relishing the taste of it, they desired to buy it in preference to everything else, so they wound up their traffic by carrying away their bargains in their bellies. Whilst this traffic was going on it happened that a bull, which Karlsefne had brought along with him, came out of the wood and bellowed loudly. At this the Skrælings got terrified and rushed to their canoes, and rowed away southwards. About this time Gudrida, Karlsefne’s wife, gave birth to a son, who received the name of Snorre. In the beginning of the following winter the Skrælings came again in much greater numbers; they showed symptoms of hostility, setting up loud yells. Karlsefne caused the red shield to be borne against them, whereupon they advanced against each other, and a battle commenced. There was a galling discharge of missiles. The Skrælings had a sort of war sling. They elevated on a pole a tremendously large ball, almost the size of a sheep’s stomach, and of a bluish colour; this they swung from the pole over Karlsefne’s people, and it descended with a fearful crash. This struck terror into the Northmen, and they fled along the river.”
Thus ended the abortive enterprise of Thorfinn and his company to found, in the eleventh century, a colony of Northmen on the American mainland. The account the survivors brought back told indeed of umbrageous woodland and the tempting vine. But the forest was haunted by the fierce Skrælings, and its coasts open to assault from their canoes. To the race that wrested Normandy from the Carlovingian Frank, and established its jarldoms in Orkney, Caithness, and Northumbria, such a foe might well be deemed contemptible. But the degenerate Franks, and the Angles of Northumbria, tempted the Norse marauder with costly spoils; and only after repeated successful expeditions awakened the desire to settle in the land and make there new homes. Alike to explorers seeking for themselves a home, and to adventurers coveting the victors’ spoils, the Vinland of the Northmen offered no adequate temptation, and so its traditions faded out of memory, or were recalled only as the legend of a fabulous age. At the meeting of the British Association at Montreal in 1884 Mr. R. G. Halliburton read a paper entitled “A Search in British North America for lost Colonies of Northmen and Portuguese.” Documents were quoted by him showing that from a.d. 1500 to 1570 commissions were regularly issued to the Corte Reals and their successors. Cape Breton was colonised by them in 1521; and when Portugal became annexed to Spain in 1680, and Terra Nova passed with it to her rule, she sent colonists to settle there. The site which they occupied, Mr. Halliburton traced to Spanish Harbour (Sydney), Cape Breton, and this he claimed to be the earliest European settlement in North America. For, as for the Northmen’s reputed explorations and attempt at settlement, his verdict is thus briefly summed up: “When we can discover Greenland’s verdant mountains we can also hope to find the vine-clad hills of Vineland the Good.” That, however, is too summary a dismissal of evidence which, if vague, is to every appearance based on authorities as seemingly authentic and trustworthy as those on which many details of the history of early centuries rest. It would manifestly be unwise to discountenance further inquiry by any such sweeping scepticism, or to discourage the hope that local research may yet be rewarded by evidence confirmatory of the reputed visit of Thorfinn and his fellow-explorers to some recognisable point on the Nova-Scotian coast.
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