r has been wholly lost under the
influence of white men. Under that influence many Indians have been
quite transformed, while others have been as yet but little affected.
Some extremely ancient types of society, still preserved on this
continent in something like purity, are among the most instructive
monuments of the past that can now be found in the world. Such a type
is that of the Moquis of northeastern Arizona. I have heard a rumour,
which it is to be hoped is ill-founded, that there are persons who wish
the United States government to interfere with this peaceful and
self-respecting people, break up their pueblo life, scatter them in
farmsteads, and otherwise compel them, against their own wishes, to
change their habits and customs. If such a cruel and stupid thing were
ever to be done, we might justly be said to have equalled or surpassed
the folly of those Spaniards who used to make bonfires of Mexican
hieroglyphics. It is hoped that the present book, in which of course it
is impossible to do more than sketch the outlines and indicate the
bearings of so vast a subject, will serve to awaken readers to the
interest and importance of American archaeology for the general study of
the evolution of human society.

So much for the first and subsidiary theme. As for my principal theme,
the Discovery of America, I was first drawn to it through its close
relations with a subject which for some time chiefly occupied my mind,
the history of the contact between the Aryan and Semitic worlds, and
more particularly between Christians and Mussulmans about the shores of
the Mediterranean. It is also interesting as part of the history of
science, and furthermore as connected with the beginnings of one of the
most momentous events in the career of mankind, the colonization of the
barbaric world by Europeans. Moreover, the discovery of America has its
full share of the romantic fascination that belongs to most of the work
of the Renaissance period. I have sought to exhibit these different
aspects of the subject.

The present book is in all its parts written from the original sources
of information. The work of modern scholars has of course been freely
used, but never without full acknowledgment in text or notes, and seldom
without independent verification from the original sources.
Acknowledgments are chiefly due to Humboldt, Morgan, Bandelier, Major,
Varnhagen, Markham, Helps, and Harrisse. To the last-named scholar I owe
an espe