Identifier: americanantiquit00p (find matches)
Title: American antiquities and discoveries in the West:
Year: 1838 (1830s)
Authors: Priest, Josiah, 1788-1851
Subjects: Indians Indians of North America
Publisher: Albany, Printed by Hoffman & White
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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not yet forgotten that which theyhad learned of the manners of their antediluvian ancestors, fromNoah : but as they spread and diverged asunder; what they hadlearned from him concerning the creation, architecture, and theculture of the earth before the flood, they lost, and thus retrograd-ed to savagism. It is true, the family of Shem, of whom were Abraham, Isaac,and Jacob, by the particular Providence of God, retained unadul-terated, the traditional history of the creation, and of man, till thetime Moses embodied it in a book, 857 years after the flood. Butthe rest of the nations were left, in this respect, to mere recollec-tions; which, as soon as they divided and subdivided, became con-tradictory and monstrous in their accounts. But the authors of the great works found in the west, seem tohave retained the first ideas received from their fathers at the eraof the building of Babel, equally, if not superior, to many nationsof Europe, as they were in the year 800 after Christ. This is
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AND DISCOVERIES IN THE WEST. 205 consented to on all hands, and even contended for by the histo-rian Humboldt. In order to show the reader the propriety ofbelieving that a colony, very soon after the confusion of thelanguage of mankind, found their way to what is now called Ame-rica, we give the tradition of the Azteca, nation, who once in-habited Aztalan, the country of the western states, but were, atthe era of the conquest of South America, found inhabiting thevale of Mexico, because they had, as we have shown, beendriven away by the irruptions of the Tartarian Indians, as fol-lows : see below. Traits of the Mosaic History found among the AztecaNations. The tradition commences with an account of the deluge, asthey had preserved it in books made of the buffalo and deerskin, on which account there is more certainty than if it hadbeen preserved by mere oral tradition, handed down from fatherto son. They begin by painting, or as we would say, by telling us thatNoah, whom they call Tezp

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