' Others thought that they were a
washed-up remnant of the great flood. Roger Williams,
the founder of Rhode Island, wrote: 'From Adam and Noah
that they spring, it is granted on all hands.' Even more
fantastic views were advanced. As late as in 1828 a London
clergyman wrote a book which he called 'A View of the
American Indians,' which was intended to 'show them to
be the descendants of the ten tribes of Israel.'
Even when such ideas as these were set aside, historians
endeavoured to find evidence, or at least probability,
of a migration of the Indians from the known continents
across one or the other of the oceans. It must be admitted
that, even if we supposed the form and extent of the
continents to have been always the same as they are now,
such a migration would have been entirely possible. It
is quite likely that under the influence of exceptional
weather--winds blowing week after week from the same
point of the compass--even a primitive craft of prehistoric
times might have been driven across the Atlantic or the
Pacific, and might have landed its occupants still alive
and well on the shores of America. To prove this we need
only remember that history records many such voyages.
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