The principal objections to the theory of an identity between the Ten Tribes of larael and our American Indians, appear to me to be the following:

1. The obvious infancy of their mechanick arts.

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2. I urge a similar objection to this theory, from the fact, that the Indians, in their native state, know nothing of the use of iron.

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3. But another, and to myself, most unanswerable objection to the theory of a civilized descent to the Indians, is their want of a written language. Here again, for a moment, we must recur to first principles. The earliest of all methods of communicating ideas by characters, was undoubtedly by painting.

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It is not satisfactory to tell us here that the Indians have a tradition, that their fathers once had a book. The tradition may be doubted, because they evidently had no idea what a book meant, until informed by Europeans. But if admitted, the difficulty is unanswered How could a nation wholly loose the notion of letters?

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4. After this principal objection, I will merely allude to one of minor importance: but one, on which, should the author of the view of the Hebrews, condescend to take notice of these strictures, I should be pleased to be informed.

I am no physiognomist, hut it does strike me as having some force, that the features of our Indians are, in general, so dissimilar to those of known Jews.

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I shall add nothing further to these remarks—too far drawn out already, perhaps—than just to hint at my own theory, respecting the origin of our Indians. I believe them to be, a part of them at least, the immediate descendants of the ancient SCYTHIANS.

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The theory has some of the same arguments in its favour, as those adduced for a Hebrew origin to our Indians; and, by throwing that origin much further back in the history of the world, is comparatively free from its objections.