Excellency's Speech relating to the Quakers, and the affair called Witchcraft, do make their report at the next May Session. Sent down for Concurrence. Read and Concur'd. 1741. July 28. Voted, That Mr. Cushing, Mr. Fairfield. Major Osgood, Capt. Cheevers, and Capt. Lawton, with such as shall be joined by the Honorable Board, be a Committee to enquire who were formerly Sufferers as Quakers, or on Account of Witchcraft, and what Satisfaction has been made by this Court to such Sufferers, and report what in their Judgment may be proper to do thereon. Sent up for Concurrence. 1743. 1,t June. Voted, That Capt. Choate, Mr. Gardner, and Col. Epes, with such as the Honorable Board shall appoint, be a Committee to inquire who were formerly Sufferers, as Quakers, or on Account of Witchcraft; and what satisfaction has been made by this Court to such Sufferers; and report what in their Judgment may be proper to do thereon. Sent up for Concurrence. 1749. June 17. A Memorial of Thomas Newman, Abia Holbrook, Jun. and Elias Thomas, Agents for their respective Relatives, the surviving Children and Grand-Children of George Burroughs, formerly of Falmouth, in the County of York, Clerk, deceased; representing the unparallel'd Persecutions and Sufferings of their said Ancestor, and praying some Recompence for the great Losses sustained in that unhappy Affair. Read and Ordered, That Mr. Speaker, [Joseph Dwight, Esq.] Mr. Hubbard, Col. Choate, Mr. Daniel Pierce, and Thomas Foster, Esq. with such as the Honourable Board shall join, be a Committee to take the case of the Memorialists under Consideration, and report what they judge proper for this Court to do thereon. Sent up for Concurrence. "In Council, Read & Concurred & Samuel Danforth, John Quincy, Ezekiel Cheever, & John Otis, Esq's are joined in the affair." [Mass. Archives, cxxxv., 172.] To His Honour SPENCER PHIPPS Esqre. Lieutenant Governor and Commander in Chief in and over his Majesty's Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, and to the Honourable the Council and the Honourable the House of Representatives in General Court assembled. The Memorial of THOMAS NEWMAN, ABIA HOLBROOK and ELIAS THOMAS agents for their respective relatives, the surviving children and Grandchildren of George Burroughs formerly of Falmouth in the County of York and province aforesaid, Clerk, deceased. As a Supplement to the prayer of their Memorial and petition humbly presented to His Excellency Governor Shirley and the Honourable His Majesty's Council, and this Honourable House of Representatives, on the thirty first day of May last. Most humbly suggesteth: That their said Memorial and petition setting forth the awful and miserable condition of the unhappy children and descendants of the Reverend Mr. George Burroughs who as therein set forth had his blood shed, and was one of the most deplorable victims cut off in the fatal catastrophe in the year 1692.-Was by the Honourable Court referred to the Consideration of a Committee of both Houses in June last to report what might be proper for the Court to act thereupon, but so it seems it hath fell out that the Honourable Mr. Danforth Chairman of the said Committee hath not as yet called them together so much as once to act thereon even to this day, as some of the Honourable Committee themselves were pleased with real concern to signify to your said petitioners. Your Memorialists therefore most humbly supplicate (they having been put to great expense already) that their said Memorial and petition may be again brought forward, Read and Acted upon before the final Rising of this Court, that so a stop may be put to the cry of the long oppressed sufferers. And your Memorialists as in Duty bound shall ever pray &c. Boston March 28. 1750. THOMAS NEWMAN In the House of Representatives March 28, 1750. Read and ordered that the Committee within referred to, be directed to sit forthwith, consider the petition to them committed and report as soon as may be. Sent up for concurrence THOMAS HUBBARD Spk pro Tempore. The entry on the Journal of the House is varied in its mode of expression, as follows: 1750. March 28. "Ordered, That the Committee of both Houses appointed in June last, to consider the Petition of Thomas Newman and others, be directed to sit forthwith, and report as soon as may be. Sent up for Concurrence." On the next day, March 29, 1750, it was further "Ordered, That Major Lawrence and Nathanael Oliver, Esqrs; be of the Committee on the Petition of Thomas Newman and others, in the Room of Joseph Dwight and John Choate, Esqrs. who are absent." " But nothing was done and "the cry of the long oppressed Sufferers' seems to have been stifled: at any rate it was heard no more in the high places of legislation. THE OLMECAS AND THE TULTECAS: A STUDY IN EARLY MEXICAN ETHNOLOGY AND HISTORY. BY PHILIPP J. J. VALENTINI. (Translated from the German by Stephen Salisbury, Jr.) SIXTY years ago the early history of the people of the Nile and the Euphrates was still shrouded in deep obscurity. To-day the veil is rent. We are now taught of their existence and achievements thousands of years before the period of written history. Active scientific research has won this victory. Interest has not been wanting, nor has labor been spared, to throw a similar light upon the condition and history of the early people that inhabited the table-lands of Mexico and Central America. For more than three hundred and fifty years, students have been endeavoring to solve the mysterious problem, and we might therefore reasonably suppose that the labor would not have been wholly in vain. Unfortunately, however, this seems to be the fact. The steps taken in this direction have been slow and somewhat discouraging, and it is almost to be feared, that despite the activity which has been displayed during the last ten years in this ancient province of research, the wished-for goal may never be reached. The reasons must be strong, indeed, to lead us to so melancholy a conclusion. In the following pages we shall endeavor to bring them before our readers. If we consider the historical material offered to the investigator, it is as regards form almost identical in both Hemispheres. In each the written record, either modified or amplified by later writers, forms the main substance: in each also monumental inscriptions of various designs await translation or decipherment. But a difference exists in the character of the material which facilitates the work of the student of Eastern history and perplexes him in the study of Western archæology. It is the ethnic discrepancy that causes the embarassment. The ancient East has always been looked upon as our historic fatherland, and is so regarded to-day with more certainty than ever before. The European, to us, is only a variously transformed exponent of generations, whose ancestry reaches back into Asia, for thousands of years. In this long course of time, it was Greece, Rome, and Judæa, that in written records and in a language quite familiar to the student have left to us a multitude of dates disclosing the process and vicissitudes of our political development. More or less we have always been aware of the revolutions that had taken place in the far East before the first Olympiad, what nations were foremost and had succeeded each other in the task of founding and destroying great empires, what grand deeds we should connect with the names of certain leaders and kings; and although much new material has been brought to light by finding keys to dead and lost languages, it is nevertheless true that by means of this discovery we merely obtained richer details, and in addition the very welcome assistance of a more accurate chronology. These helps, however, only interweave themselves into the substance of dates and events with which we were already acquainted. Therefore, since through the industry of ancient historians the bridge was laid that leads us into the first stages of our historic genesis, and since our resources for research and study are so competent and reliable, it was but natural that the labor undertaken with the material for Indo-European history should have been crowned with success. The case is far different in regard to matters pertaining to the Western Hemisphere, and how difficult are the duties of the investigator into American prehistory! When the Spaniards came to this continent they had no idea of its existence and isolation, nor of the multitude of different nations collected together here, nor of the peculiar state of civilization that some of them had reached. Likewise the natives of this great Western Hemisphere had lived in ignorance of an Eastern Continent. A mass of their historical traditions, reaching back into untold centuries, indeed existed, and were immediately collected by the missionaries from the lips of the natives themselves. But what correct estimation, what thorough understanding of the dates and the materials gathered could be expected from the minds of hearers so unprepared as the Spanish conquerors were? We must not forget that these researches were made either with the help of inexperienced interpreters or by the missionaries themselves, who were and remained but imperfect scholars in this new language to be used in their intercourse with the natives. Not only the whole structure of the language differed from theirs, but even the mode of expression puzzled them. Enquiries for actual proofs were answered by a reference to songs, whose heroic phraseology obscured the original statement of the events themselves, and when the painted annals were referred to, no guarantee for correct interpretation was furnished beyond the good faith and the doubtful learning of the native interpreters. A ready-made summary of historical materials did not exist. Each tribe cared only to preserve its own interesting events. Many tribes in their long migrations had lost their records, or they had been seized by victorious tribes and destroyed. Experiments to reconstruct the records from memory must necessarily have been defective. They invited fabrications, and either little attention was given to the important matter of designating the exact date of an event, or it was given only in round numbers, so that when computations were made and could be compared with others, uncertain and contradictory results were reached. Wherever the Spanish investigator labored he found foreign material and groped in darkness. The names of persons and places had a foreign sound. Between the conqueror and the conquered all sympathy of races, all ethnic consanguinity was wanting, and this absence prevented any sure insight into the historical logic of events. The result is that a great mass of dates have been transmitted to us without proper connection, and the numberless gaps can not be filled. Except for the wonderful similarity which early Mexican civilization bears to that of the ancient nations of the Eastern Hemisphere, only a small fraction of the workers, who in past and present times have so willingly given themselves to this study, could have been induced to undertake the labor. The theory has been advanced that the natives must be considered as a branch of the human family, which, coming from the far East, and having been driven out of its course, has finally settled in these parts; and, indeed, there are many circumstances on which to base the theory. It has been the highest aim of the investigator to firmly establish this theory by positive and well-founded proofs, and both foolish and ingenious arguments have been brought forward for that purpose. An immense literature, grown up from the time of the conquest and continued till our day, bears testimony to the restless effort to unearth the secret. The hope seemed to dawn some time ago, on the discovery of the Landa Alphabet, that by help of the key thus discovered a way might be found to decipher the stone hieroglyphics. And, indeed, the most authentic way to learn a nation's early history is to glean it from such monuments as are covered with the records of events that were sculptured by contemporaries. Therefore the hope arose of filling out the large gaps of the written history, and, if not obtaining direct information, at least of arriving at reasonable conclusions concerning the descent of a people, that had been brought to this new world and afterwards had been lost sight of. But even this cheering hope has been lost to us, and the so-called Landa Key has proved to be an ingenious contrivance of the Spanish missionaries, who wished to aid the natives in learning the sentences of the catechism by means of a picture-writing, which had formerly been quite familiar to them. So ardent was the desire to find out this great secret, that a few modern students forgot entirely, that the question whether the paintings and sculptures were to be explained phonetically or ideographically had been answered, nay practically solved, beyond all doubt, by the natives themselves immediately after the conquest, in favor of the latter method. With such lamentable prospects for final success it might seem advisable to bid a formal farewell to investigations in the prehistoric history of Mexico, rather than to trouble ourselves any more about it, without obtaining corresponding progress or profit. But it is easier to think and to say this than to follow the advice. A literature composed of thousands of volumes collected in the course of centuries can not be |