New Jersey as a colony and as a state : one of the original thirteen . y of answers being proof rather of the in-genuity of the processes of human reasoning thanof any conclusive line of argument and satisfae^^tory deduction. It was the gold-seeking Spanish adventurer,bringing to the New World a strange admixtureof religious fanaticism, chivalry, commercialism,and cruelty, who attributed to the Indian an ori-gin in the home of that of the Father of Lies. From Hell they came, he said, and they aredevils incarnate guarding the hidden treasures ofthe earth, a view which tinctured much of thethoug
New Jersey as a colony and as a state : one of the original thirteen . y of answers being proof rather of the in-genuity of the processes of human reasoning thanof any conclusive line of argument and satisfae^^tory deduction. It was the gold-seeking Spanish adventurer,bringing to the New World a strange admixtureof religious fanaticism, chivalry, commercialism,and cruelty, who attributed to the Indian an ori-gin in the home of that of the Father of Lies. From Hell they came, he said, and they aredevils incarnate guarding the hidden treasures ofthe earth, a view which tinctured much of thethought of the English colonists and found its ex-pression in certain forms of later popular litera-ture. Not that this was the usual standpoint ofthe missionaries, yet even such a man as the saint-ly Brainerd as late as the middle of the eighteenthcentury, in New Jersey, cried aloud that the red-men would not hear the call of grace, and be-lieved them to be children of evil. Sweeping aside such an hypothesis, it was earlycontended that the Indian was a descendant of the. /?f 54 NEW JERSEY AS A COL Lost Ten Tribes of Israel. For this view, whichwas largely theological, and had color of scien-tific possibility, there were many advocates. It pleased the theologians of the colonies,whose knowledge of anthropology was radicallyless than their piety, to consider the redmen aslost or, at least, wandering sheep. There wassomething in the nature of a vast tribal romance,in the attempt to show, by comparisons of lan-guage, customs, and personal appearance, thatthe Indian and the Hebrew had a common start-ing point. Samuel Smith, the historian of thecolony of New Jersey, was captivated by thepossibilities of such a proposition, while the pa-triotic Elias Boudinot, marshalling previous ar-guments, in his Star in the West, if he doesnot convince modern investigators, furnishes foodfor the curious in his attempt to settle the ques-tion. Later, bolder spirits, by ingenious if notlogical arguments
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