Christian Commentary:
Steven M. Collins
The American Indians
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We
are pleased to present articles by leading authors on the subject of
the Biblical promises and covenants to Israel. Author Steven M. Collins
has written a wonderful four-book series on the Two-Houses of Israel.
Ordering information is below. |
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The following article is reprinted with kind permission from Yair Davidy’s website
at www.britam.org
THE AMERICAN INDIANS:
EARLY CONTACTS WITH ISRAELITES
By Steven M. Collins
Brit-am postings have included several comments and questions on the
subject of American Indians recently. The main problem in finding linkages between
ancient Israelites and American Indian tribes is that such contacts occurred so long
ago and on the other side of an extended "Dark Age" when most contacts were
lost between the Old and New Worlds. While there is hard evidence that these contacts
did occur, some of the evidence is more general. This topic is far too large to discuss
in one email, but I will attempt to give a brief overview of the evidence on this subject.
To begin with, there is now no doubt that extensive contacts occurred between the Old
and New Worlds prior to the Dark Ages. Much of these contacts and colonizations of the
New World were by the Israelite/Phoenician Empire and its largest successor colony:
Kirjath Hadeschath (or "Carthage" as the Romans called them). The late-Dr.
Barry Fell, a Harvard Professor Emeritus, wrote a trilogy of books (Bronze Age America,
Saga America, and America BC) which extensively documented many artifacts and inscriptions
of these Old World civilizations in the Americas, but he never placed the evidence in
a biblical context. Dr. Fell was roundly criticized by the "politically-correct" establishment
for daring to print the truth about America's past. However, the evidence is so overwhelming
that one of the most famous American archaeologists, the late-Dr. Cyrus Gordon, wrote
in his book, Before Columbus, that "The Atlantic was crossed long before the Vikings,
by different people during different centuries" (p. 187).
A number of linguistic studies of American Indian languages confirm early common roots
with ancient Hebrew speakers. In the 1998 volume of The Epigraphic Society Occasional
Papers (ESOP), an article ("A Curious Element in Uto-Aztecan") by an author
named Brian D. Stubbs provides evidence that the Indian family of languages called Uto-Aztecan
has demonstrable similarities with the "very archaic" patterns of Hebrew and
the Northwest Semitic family of languages (see p. 112). His article provides many examples
of similarities between ancient Hebrew and the languages of Indian tribes from Central
Mexico to the Southwest and Rocky Mountain tribes (Hopi, Utes, Paiutes, Shoshones, etc.)
His conclusion that the similarities date to very ancient forms of Hebrew is supported
by physical evidence. In New Mexico, the Ten Commandments are written in ancient paleo-Hebrew
on a large stone which I have seen with my own eyes and there are other very ancient
paleo-Hebrew inscriptions in the region as well. One member of the New Mexico Epigraphic
Society took me to see some of these inscriptions, one of which he translated as: "tribe
of Asher." Photographs of some of these inscriptions appear in my recent
book, The Origins and Empire of Ancient Israel. It is my view that these inscriptions
date to the time of King Solomon's Golden Age when he sent fleets to other continents
and one particular fleet only returned every third year (I Kings 10:22). It was
expensive to build and provision a fleet of ships capable of trans-oceanic voyages and
the only time that the Israelites had both the wealth to maintain such fleets and have
sailors and settlers who adhered to the Ten Commandments while in North America would
have been in the time of King Solomon. That era would have used the paleo-Hebrew characters
found in the American Southwest.
Another study of Indian languages by Dr. E. Morgan Kelley of the College of William
and Mary was published in the 1990 volume of ESOP (see pp. 83-91). It was entitled "North
American Indian Tribal Names" and it identified related language groups among the
Indian tribes based on language morphemes. One of the language groups was based on the
morpheme "Dan," the name of one the tribes of Israel.
Another artifact with the Ten Commandments on it was unearthed in a burial mound in
the Ohio River valley in 1860. It was on a small, portable stone and its letters were
in the square Hebrew characters, confirming that it dated to a more recent century than
the Ten Commandments stone in New Mexico. Photos and descriptions of this artifact also
are in my above-named book.
Additionally, a Hebrew inscription called the Bat Creek stone was found in the American
Southeast in the region of the Cherokee near the Tennessee/North Carolina border. It's
authenticity has been documented by
both Dr. Fell and Dr. Gordon. Dr. Gordon's book, Before Columbus, includes a scathing
denunciation of those who attempt to deny the authenticity of this artifact, which he
dates to the 2nd century A.D. Dr. Gordon also documented Hebrew-language coins from
the Bar Kochba period being found in Kentucky (p. 75 of same book), and Dr. Fell documented
Hebrew-language coins being found in Kentucky, Missouri and Arkansas (p. 168 of Saga
America).
A letter from a Georgian of Cherokee ancestry in the 1986 ESOP commented on a Cherokee
legend that a race of pygmies once inhabited the Southern Appalachians. This Cherokee
myth was laughed at by "establishment" types until pygmy skeletons were found
in the region! Evidence presented in chapter 3 of Barry Fell's book, Bronze Age America,
confirms that such a race did exist and their skulls are photographed for that book
as evidence. Also noteworthy is that the Cherokee word for this pygmy race has the same
root word as the languages of Old World languages, indicating either a Cherokee origin
in the Old World or contact with Old World groups. The same chapter of Dr. Fell's book
documents skeletons of both Mongoloid and Europoid settlers in Ancient America, indicating
that the very ancient inhabitants of North America were multi-racial.
The evidence indicates that many Old World and Oriental groups explored and settled
ancient America. Ties between these groups and their founding nations in the Old World
and Asia were largely lost during the Dark Ages. Intermarriage and tribal rivalries
and mergers surely contributed to the situation found by European explorers in the modern
age: a North American continent inhabited by a diverse group of Indian tribes and nations
which had different languages, appearances and cultures. Part of this multiracial reality
was caused by the Carthaginian colonizations in the Americas, attested to by Aristotle
and other Greek writers. Much physical evidence of the Carthaginian presence in ancient
America is presented in my books as well as Dr. Fell's books. The Carthaginians were
a multi-racial society with an army recruited from many racial/ethnic groups. Their
presence in large numbers in the ancient New World led to the Meso-American awareness
of the races of mankind as glyphs and statutes showing Indian, Negro and Caucasian faces
have all been found and documented.