While these and other considerations testify forcibly to that isolation
I have already mentioned, they are almost equally positive for an
extensive intercourse in very distant ages between the great families of
the race, and for a prevalent unity of mental type, or perhaps they hint
at a still visible oneness of descent. In their stage of culture, the
maize, cotton, and tobacco could hardly have spread so widely by
commerce alone. Then there are verbal similarities running through wide
families of languages which, in the words of Professor Buschmann, are
"calculated to fill us with bewildering amazement,"[38-1] some of which
will hereafter be pointed out; and lastly, passing to the psychological
constitution of the race, we may quote the words of a sharp-sighted
naturalist, whose monograph on one of its tribes is unsurpassed for
profound reflections: "Not only do all the primitive inhabitants of
America stand on one scale of related culture, but that mental condition
of all in which humanity chiefly mirrors itself, to wit, their religious
and moral consciousness, this source of all other inner and outer
conditions, is one with all, however diverse the natural influences
under which they live.
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