The first encounters with the Native Americans had left the brain trust of old Europe entirely baffled. In fact, the persistent question as to "who" these people were remained an unanswered question well into the Nineteenth Century, for in order to qualify a a member of "enlightened" classes, a fellow had to show some sufficiency in at least two fields: classical literature and the Bible. Therefore, it stood to their reasoning that the inhabitants of the Americas had their story told in one of those two fields of study. Some of Europe's most enlightened minds were convinced that these people were descendants of the survivors of Troy, who, fearing Greek reprisal, caught a strong wind which allowed them to sail both the Mediterranean as well as the Atlantic and arrive on that far distant shore. Others tended to believe that the Native American could only have descended from the lost tribes of Israel, which is the topic of this single page article.
