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By the Same Author: The Plorldian Peninsula ; its Indian Tribes and Antiquities, pp.
202.
Xhe 9Iytlis of tlie Ne'W "World. Second edition, pp. 331.
Grammar of the Chocta-w J^singuase, By Cyrus Byington. Pp. 56. E;dited by D. G. Brinton.
Xhe Rells:ious Sentiment; a Contribution to the Science of Re- ligion. Pp. 284.
American Hero-Myths ; a Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent. Pp. 251.
Ahorisfinal American Authors* and their Productions. Pp. 63.
Grammar of the Cakchiquel I^ang^uase. Translated from the MS. original and edited by D. G. Brinton. Pp. 72.
The Philosophic Grammar of American I^angruaK es ;
as set forth by Wilhelm von Humboldt. Pp. 51.
A I^enape^-Kngflish Dictionary. Edited by D. G. Brinton and Rev. A. Seqaqkind Anthony. 4to, pp. 236.
Kssays of an Americanist. Pp. 489. illustrated.
Races and Peoples ; I^ectures on the Science of Ethnography. Pp. 313. Illustrated.
I^lbrary of Aboriginal American I^iterature. Edited and published by D. G. Brinton ; comprising :
1. The Chronicles of the Mayas. By D. G. Brinton. Pp. 279.
2. The Iroquois Book of Rites. By Horatio Hale. Pp. 222.
3. The Comedy-Ballet of GuegUence. By D. G. Brinton. Pp. 146.
4. Migration Legend of the Creeks. By A. S. Gatschet. Pp. 251.
5. The l^n&pe and their Legends. By D. G. Brinton. Pp.262.
6. The Annals of the Cakchiquels. By D. G. Brinton. Pp. 234. T. Ancient Nahuatl Poetry. By D. G. Brinton. Pp.176.
%. Rig Veda Atnertcanus. By D. G. Brinton. Pp.95.
The American Race:
A Linguistic Classification and Ethnographic
Description of the Native Tribes of
North and South America.
BY
DANIEL G. BRINTON, A. M., M. D.,
Professor of American Archaeology and Linguistics in the University of Pennsylvania, and of General Ethnology at the Academy of Natural Sci- ences, Philadelphia; Vice-President of the Congr^s International des Americanistes ; Medallist of the Societe Americaine de France; President of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, and of the University Archaeological Association of the University of Pennsylvania; Member of the Anthropological Societies of Berlin and Vienna, and of the Ethnographical Societies of Paris and Florence ; of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, Copenhagen, and of the Royal Society of History, Madrid; of the American Philosophical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, etc.
NEW YORK :
N. D. C. HODGES, PUBI.ISHER,
47 IvAFAYETTE Pl^ACD. 189I.
i'?{
Copyright.
DANIEL G. BRINTON.
1891.
4476
TO THE CONGRfes INTERNATIONAI. DES AMERICANISTES,
AN ASSOCIATION
WHOSE BROAD SYMPATHIES AND ENLIGHTENED SPIRIT
ILLUSTRATE THE NOBLEST ASPECTS OF SCIENCE,
AND WHOSE EXCELLENT WORK IN
AMERICAN ETHNOGRAPHY, ARCH.ffiX)LOGY, AND EARLY HISTORY
HAS CREATED A DEEP AND ABIDING INTEREST IN
THESE STUDIES THROUGHOUT EUROPE,
THIS WORK
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
BY THE
AUTHOR.
Vv
PREFACE.
SO far as I know, this is the first attempt at a sys- tematic classification of the whole American race on the basis of language. I do not overlook Dr. lyatham's meritorious effort nearly forty years ago; but the deficiency of material at that time obliged him to depart from the linguistic scheme and accept other guides.
While not depreciating the value of physical data, of culture and traditional history, I have constantly placed these subordinate to relationship as indicated by grammar and lexicography. There are well- known examples in the ethnography of other races, where reliance on language alone would lead the in- vestigator astray; but all serious students of the native American tribes are united in the opinion that with them no other clue can compare to it in general results. Consequently the Bureau of Eth- nology of the United States and the similar depart- ments in the governments of Canada and Mexico have agreed in adopting officially the linguistic classification for the aboriginal population within
their several territories.
(ix)
X PREFACE.
Wherever the material permitted it, I have ranked the grammatic structure of a language superior to its lexical elements in deciding upon relationship. In this I follow the precepts and example of students of the Aryan and Semitic stocks ; although their meth- ods have been rejected by some who have written on American tongues. As for myself, I am abidingly convinced that the morphology of any language whatever is its most permanent and characteristic feature.
It has been my effort to pay especial attention to those portions of the continent whose ethnography remains obscure. The publications of official bodies, as well as those of numerous societies and individ- uals, have cleared up most of the difficulties in that portion of the continent north of Mexico; hence it is to the remainder that I have given greater space. The subject, however, is so vast, and the material so abundant, that I fear the reader may be disappointed by the brevity of the descriptions I have allowed to the several stocks.
The outlines of the classification and the general arrangement of the material are those which for several years I have adopted in my lecture courses before the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadel- phia. In fact, this volume may properly be re- garded as an expansion of the ninth lecture — that on ''The American Race," — in my lectures on gen-
PREFACE. Xi
eral ethnography, published last year under the title * ' Races and Peoples. ' '
In defining the locations of the various tribes, I have encountered many difficulties from their fre- quent removals. As a rule I have assigned a tribe the location where it was. first encountered and iden- tified by the white explorers; though sometimes I have preferred some later location where its activity- was longest known.
The great variety of the orthography of tribaE names has led me to follow the rule of selecting that . which is locally the most usual. This variety has • been not a little increased by what seems to me the • pedantry of many learned writers, who insist on spell- ing every native name they mention according to - some phonetic system of their own devising — thus ■ adding to the already lamentable orthographic con- fusion.
I have not thought it advisable to adopt termi-- nations to designate stocks as distinguished from', tribes. The Bureau of Ethnology has adopted for- stocks the termination an^ as "Algonkian,'* " Siou- ian.*' This frequently gives terms of strange ap- pearance, and is open to some other objections. It would be desirable to have this question of termi- nology decided by the International Congress of Americanists, on some plan applicable to French, German and Spanish, as well as English, rather
Xll PREKACK.
than to have it left to a local body or a single authority.
My thanks are due Mr. H. W. Henshaw, editor of the American Anthropologist^ for revising the list of North Pacific Coast Stocks, and various suggestions.
I regret that I have not been able to avail myself of the unpublished material in the Bureau of Eth- nology at Washington; but access to this was denied me except under the condition that I should not use in any published work the information thus obtained; a proviso scarcely so liberal as I had expected.
Philadelphia^ February ^ i8gi.
CONTENTS
PAOB
Preface ad
Table of Contents xiii
INTRODUCTORY.
RACIAI, HISTORY AND CHARACTERISTICS.
Theories of the Origin of the American Race. The "ten lost tribes." The "lost Atlantis." Fu-sang. Supposed Asiatic immigrations. When man first appeared in America. The Glacial Epoch. The Post-glacial Era. Oldest relics of man in America ; in California ; in Nicaragua ; in the Columbian gravel ; in the modified drift ; in the loess and moraines. Man did not originate in America. Physical geography of the early Quaternary Period. Land connection of North America with Europe. Opinions of geologists. Remote- ness of the Glacial Epoch. Scheme of the Age of Man in America. "Area of characterization" of the American Race. Permanence of racial traits. Cranial forms. Ceph- alic index. Os Incae. Cranial capacity. Color. Hair. Stature. Uniformity of racial type. Mental endowments. Native culture. Gentile organization. Marriage. Position of woman. Agriculture. Domestic animals. Useful arts. Religions. Myths. Symbolism. Opinions about death. Medicine men. Languages. Linguistic stocks. General classification 17-58
NORTH AMERICAN TRIBES.
I. THE NORTH ATLANTIC GROUP.
1. The Eskimos or Innuit, and Aleutians 59-^7
2. The Beothuks 67-68
3. The Athabascans or Tinn6 68-74
(xiii)
XIV CONTENTS.
PAGB
4. The Algonkins 74-80
5. The Iroquois , 81-85
6. The Chahta-Muskokis 85-89
7. The Catawbas, Yuchis, Timucuas, Natchez, Cheti-
niachas, Tonicas, Adaize, Atakapas, Carankaways, Tonkaways, Coahuiltecans, Maratins 89-94
8. The Pawnees or Caddoes 95-97
9. The Dakotas or Sioux 98-101
10. The Kioways 101-102
II. THE NORTH PACIFIC GROUP.
1. The Northwest Coast and Californian Tribes: The
Tlinkit or Kolosch ; the Haidahs ; the Salish ; the Sahaptins or Nez Percys, etc 103-109
2. The Yumas 109-113
3. The Pueblo Tribes 113-117
III. THE CENTRAL GROUP.
1. The Uto-Aztecan Stock 118
a. The Ute or Shoshonian Branch 120-123
b. The Sonoran Branch 123-127
c. The Nahuatl Branch 128-134
2. The Otomis 135-136
3. The Tarascos 136-138
4. The Totonacos 139-140
5. The Zapotecs and Mixtecs 140-142
6. The Zoques and Mixes 143-144
7. The Chinantecs 144
8. The Chapanecs and Mangues 145
9. Chontals and Popolocas, Tequistlatecas and Matagal-
pas 146-153
10. The Mayas I53-I59
.11. The Huaves, Subtiabas, Lencas, Xincas, Xicaques, "Caribs," Musquitos, Ulvas, Ramas, Pay as, Gua- tusos ..... 159-164
CONTENTS. XV
PAGE
SOUTH AMERICAN TRIBES.
General Remarks 165-171
I. THE SOUTH PACIFIC GROUP.
I. THE COI,UMBIAN REGION. ' 1 72
1. Tribes of the Isthmus and adjacent coast: The Cunas,
Changuinas, Chocos, Caracas, Timotes and others . 1 73-181
2. The Chibchas 181-189
3. The Paniquitas and Paezes 189-192
4. South Columbian Tribes : Natives of Cauca ; Cocon-
ucos, Barbacoas, Andaquis, Mocoas, Canaris .... 192-201
2. THE PERUVIAN REGION. 202
1. The Kechuas 203-216
2. The Aymaras 216-221
3. The Puquinas 221-224
4. The Yuncas 224-226
5. The Atacamenos and Changos 226-228
II. THE SOUTH ATlvANTIC GROUP.
I. THE AMAZONIAN REGION. 229
1. The Tupis 229-236
2. The Tapuyas 236-241
3. The Arawaks 241-250
4. The Caribs 251-258
5. The Cariris 258-259
6. The Coroados, Carajas and others 259-262
7. The Orinoco Basin ; Carib sub-stock ; Salivas ; Arawak
sub-stock; Otomacos; Guamas; Guaybas; Guarau-
nos ; Betoyas ; Churoyas ; Piaroas ; Puinavis . . . 262-278
8. The Upper Amazonian Basin. List of I^anguages:
The Zaparos ; the Jivaros ; the Maynas ; the Yameos or Lamas ; the Ardas ; the Pebas ; the Yaguas ; the Itucales ; the Ticunas ; the Hibitos ; the Panos ; the Pammarys ; the Arauas ; the Hypur- inas 27^295
XVI CONTENTS.
PAOB
9. The Bolivian Highlands. The Chiquitos ; the Yum- cares ; the Mosetenas ; the Tacanas ; the Samucus ; the Canichanas ; the Cayubabas ; the Apolistas ; the Otuquis ; the Ites, and others 295-306
2. THE PAMPEAN REGION. 306
1. The Gran Chaco and its stocks. The Guaycurus,
Lules, Matacos and Payaguas. The Lenguas, Char-
ruas, Guatos, Calchaquis 307-321
2. The Pampeans and Araucanians. The Chonos . . . 321-327
3. The Patagonians and Fuegians. The Tzonecas. The
Yahgans, Onas and Alikulufs 327-332
Linguistic Appendix 333
Vocabularies 335
Additions and Corrections 365
Index of Authors 369
Index of Subjects 374
THE
AMERICAN RACE.
INTRODUCTORY.
RACIAL HISTORY AND CHARACTERISTICS.
THE dififerentiation of the species Man into various races, with permanent traits and inhabiting defi- nite areas, took place early in the present geologic epoch. Of these races there are four which are well- marked, each developed in one of the continental areas as they existed at the time referred to. They are the Eurafrican or white, the Austafrican or black, the Asian or yellow, and the American or red race. The color-names given them are merely approximations, and are retained for the sake of convenience, and as expressing a general and obvious characteristic. *
The American race was that which was found oc- cupying the whole of the New World when it first
*For the full development of these principles, I would refer the reader to my work entitled Races and Peoples ; Lectures on ths Science of Ethnography (N. D. C. Hodges, New York, 1890). 2 (17)
1 8 THE AMERICAN RACE.
became revealed to Europeans. Its members are popularly known as ''Indians," or "American In- dians," because Columbus thought that the western islands which he discovered were part of India; and his error has been perpetuated in the usually received appellation of its inhabitants. To the ethnographer, however, they are the only "Americans," and their race is the "American Race."
When investigation proved that the continent was not a part of Asia, but a vast independent land-area surrounded by wide oceans, the learned began to puz- zle themselves with the problem of the origin of its inhabitants. The Hebrew myths of the creation of man and of a universal deluge in which the whole species perished except a few in Western Asia, for a long time controlled the direction of such specula- tions. The wildest as well as the most diverse hy- potheses were brought forward and defended with great display of erudition. One of the most curious was that which advanced the notion that the Amer- icans were the descendants of the ten ' ' lost tribes of Israel." No one, at present, would acknowledge himself a believer in this theory; but it has not proved useless, as we owe to it the publication of several most valuable works. *
Another equally vain dream was that of ' ' the lost Atlantis," a great island or land-connection which was imagined to have existed within recent times be- tween Northern Africa and South America. A re- miniscence of it was supposed to have survived in a
* Notably, Adair's History of the North American Indians^ and Lord Kingsborough's magnificent Mexican Antiquities,
THE FABULOUS ATLANTIS. I9
story of the Egyptian priests preserved by Plato, that beyond the Pillars of Hercules was a great island which had since sunk in the sea. The account may have referred to the Canary Islands, but certainly not to any land-bridge across the Atlantic to the Ameri- can Continent. Such did exist, indeed, but far back in the Eocene period of the Tertiary, long before man appeared on the scene. The wide difference between the existing flora and fauna of Africa and South America proves that there has been no connection in the lifetime of the present species. *
Scarcely less incredible are the theories which still" have some distinguished advocates, that the conti- nent was peopled from Polynesia, or directly from Japan or China. Several laborious works have been compiled with reference to ''Fu Sang," a land re- ferred to as east of China, and identified by these writers with Mexico. A distinguished ethnologist has recently published a map showing the courses by which he supposes the Japanese arrived in America, f
It is not impossible that in recent centuries some junks may have drifted on the Northwest coast. But their crews would undoubtedly have been promptly slaughtered ; and it is only in later ages that the Chinese or Japanese constructed such junks. The theory, therefore, offers no solution to the problem.
* For a complete refutation of this venerable hypothesis see an article "L'Atlantide," by Charles Ploix, in the Revue cf Anthfo- pologie, 1887, p. 291; and de Mortillet, Le PrMstorique AntiquiU de /' Homme, p. 124.
t De Quatrefages, Histoire Generate des Races Humaines, p. 558. He adds the wholly incorrect statement that many Japanese words are found in American languages.
20 THE AMERICAN RACE.
Still less does that in reference to the Polynesians. They had no such craft as junks, and though bold navigators, were wholly unprepared to survive so long a voyage as from the nearest of the islands of Oceanica to the coast of America. Moreover, we have satisfactory proof that the eastern islands of Polynesia were peopled from the western islands at a recent date, that is, within two thousand years.
Probably the favorite theory at the present day is that the first inhabitants of the New World came from northeastern Asia, either by the Aleutian islands or across Behring Strait. Concerning the Aleutian islands we know by the evidence of language and archaeology that they were first peopled from America, and not from Asia. Moreover, they are separated one from the other in places by hundreds of miles of a peculiarly stormy and dangerous sea. *
It is otherwise with Behring Straits. From East Cape in Siberia one can see the American shore, and when first explored the tribes on each side were in frequent communication. No doubt this had been going on for a long tim^, and thus they had influ- enced each other in blood and culture. But so long as we have any knowledge of the movings at this point, they have been from America into Asia, the Eskimos pushing their settlements along the Asian coast. It will be replied that we should look to a period an-
* The nearest of the Aleutian islands to Kamschatka is 253 miles distant. The explorer Behring found the western Aleutians, those nearest the Asian shore, uninhabited. See W. H. Dall, " Origin of the Innuit," pp. 96, 97, in Contributions to North American Eth- nology, Vol. I. (Washington, 1877.)
WHEN MAN CAME. 21
terior to the Eskimos. Any migration at that remote epoch is refuted by other considerations. We know that Siberia was not peopled till late in Neolithic times, and what is more, that the vicinity of the strait and the whole coast of Alaska were, till a very modern geologic period, covered by enormous glaciers which would have prevented any communication be- tween the two continents.* These considerations re- duce any possible migrations at this point to such as may have taken place long after America, both North and South, possessed a wide-spread population.
The question which should be posed as preliminary to all such speculations is. When did man first appear on this isolated continent?
To answer this we must study its later geological history, the events which have occurred since the close of the Tertiary, that is, during the Quaternary age.
In North and also in South America that age was characterized by one notable event, which impressed its presence by lasting memorials on the surface of the continent. This was the formation of a series of enormous glaciers, covering the soil of nearly halt the temperate zones with a mass of ice thousands of feet in thickness. The period of its presence is called the Great Ice Age or the Glacial Epoch. Be- yond the immediate limits of the ice it may not have been a season of extreme cold, for glaciers form more rapidly when the temperature is not much below the
*The evidences of a vast ice-sheet once covering the whole of East Cape are plainly visible. See Dr. I. C. Rosse, Medical and Anthropological Notes on Alaska, p. 29. (Washington, 1883.)
22 THE AMERICAN RACE.
freezing point. Nor was it continuous. The ice sheet receded once, if not twice, causing an *' inter- glacial " epoch, when the climate was comparatively mild. After this interim it seems to have advanced again with renewed might, and to have extended its crystalline walls down to about the fortieth parallel of latitude, touching the Atlantic near Boston and New York harbors, and stretching nearly across the continent in an irregular line, generally a little north of the Ohio and a little south of the Missouri rivers. Enormous ice masses covered the Pacific Slope as far south as the mouth of the Columbia river, and ex- tended over 1 200 miles along the coast, submerging the whole of Queen Charlotte and Vancouver islands and the neighboring coast of British Columbia, which at that time were depressed about two hundred feet below the present level. The ice also covered for four hundred miles or more the plateau or Great Basin between the Rocky Mountains and the Coast Range, rising in some places in a solid mass five or six thousand feet above the soil. *
The melting of this second glacial inroad began at the east, and on the Pacific coast has not yet ceased. Its margin across the continent is still distinctly de- fined by a long line of debris piled up in ** moraines,'* and by a fringe of gravel and sand called the "over- wash," carried from these by the mighty floods which accompanied the great thaw. This period of melting
^Joseph Prestwich, Geology^ Vol. II, p. 465 (Oxford, 1888). J. D. Dana, Text Book of Geology, pp. 355-359 (New York, 1883). Geo. M. Dawson, in The American Geologist, 1890, p. 153. The last mentioned gives an excellent epitome of the history of the great Pacific glacier.
CHANGES IN I.KVKI.. 23
is the ** Post-glacial Era." It was accompanied by extensive changes in the land-levels and in tempera- ture.
In the glacial and early post-glacial periods, the northern regions of the continent and the bottom of the Northern Atlantic were considerably above their present levels; but in the late post-glacial or "Cham- plain" period the land had sunk so much that at Lake Champlain it was five hundred feet lower than now, and at New York Harbor ten feet lower. The St. Lawrence river was then an arm of the sea. Lake Champlain was a deep bay, and the mouth of the Delaware river was where the city of Trenton now stands, the river itself being a wide inlet.*
The climate, which in the early post-glacial period had been so cold that the reindeer enjoyed an agree- able home as far south as Kentucky, changed to such mildness that two species of elephants, the giant sloth and the peccary, found congenial pasturage in the Upper Ohio and Delaware Valleys, f
The interest which this piece of geologic history has for us in this connection is the presence of man in America during all the time that these tremendous events were taking place. We know he was there, from the evidence he has left behind him in the va- rious strata and deposits attributable to the different agencies I have described. How far back his most ancient relics carry us, is not quite clear. By some, the stone implements from Table Mountain, Califor-
*James D. Dana, loc. cit., p. 359.
t James D. Dana, "Reindeers in Southern New England," in American Journal of Science^ 1875, p. 353.
24 THE AMERICAN RACE.
nia, and a skull found in the auriferous gravel in Calaveras county, California, are claimed to antedate any relics east of the mountains. These stone uten- sils are, however, too perfect, they speak for a too specialized condition of the arts, to be attributable to a primitive condition of man; and as for the Calaveras skull, the record of its discovery is too unsatisfactory. Furthermore, in a volcanic country such as the Pa- cific coast, phenomena of elevation and subsidence occur with rapidity, and do not offer the same evi- dence of antiquity as in more stable lands.
This is an important point, and applies to a series of archaeological discoveries which have been an- nounced from time to time from the Pacific coast. Thus, in Nicaragua, human foot-prints have been found in compact tufa at a depth of twenty-one feet beneath the surface soil, and overlaid by repeated later volcanic deposits. But a careful examination of all their surroundings, especially of the organic re- mains at a yet greater depth, leads inevitably to the conclusion that these foot-prints cannot be ascribed to any very remote antiquity.* The singular changes in the Pacific seaboard are again illustrated along the coast of Ecuador and Peru. For some sixty miles north and south near the mouth of the Esmeraldas river there is a deposit of marine clay six or eight feet thick underlying the surface soil in a continuous stratum. Under this again is a horizon of sand and loam containing rude stone implements, and what is
*See " On an ancient Human Footprint from Nicaragua," by D. G. Brinton, in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society ^ 1887, p. 437.
EARLIEST REUCS OF MAN. 25
significant, fragments of rough pottery and gold or- naments.* This shows conclusively that an extensive and prolonged subsidence took place in that locality not only after man reached there, but after he had developed the important art of the manufacture of clay vessels. This was certainly not at the beginning of his appearance on the scene ; and the theory of any vast antiquity for such relics is not tenable.
The lowest, that is, the oldest, deposit on the east- ern coast in which any relics of human industry are claimed to have been found, is that known as the ** Columbian gravel." This is considered by geolo- gists to have been formed in the height of the first glacial period. From its undisturbed layers have been exhumed stones bearing the marks of rough shaping, so as to serve the purpose of rude primitive weapons, f
During the first or main Interglacial Period was deposited the '* modified drift." In a terrace of this material on the Mississippi, near Little Falls, Minne- sota, Miss Babbitt found numerous quartz chips regarded by competent archaeologists as artificial products. J They represent the refuse of an early workshop near the quartz veins in that vicinity, and
*J. S. Wilson, \n Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of Lon- don, Vol. III., p. 163.
tXhe finders have been Messrs. H. P. Cresson and W. H. Holmes. From my own examination of them, I think there is room for doubt as to the artificial origin of some of them. Others are clearly due to design.
X Her account is in the American Naturalist, 1884, p. 594, and a later synopsis in Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1889, p. 333.
26 THK AMERICAN RACE.
were cast aside by the pristine implement-maker when the Minnesota glacier was receding for the last time, but still lifted its icy walls five or ten miles above the present site of Little Falls.
The extensive beds of loess which cover many thousand square miles in the Central United States are referred to the second Glacial Epoch. Professor Aughey reports the finding of rudely chipped arrow- head in this loess as it occurs in the Missouri Valley. They lay immediately beneath the vertebra of an elephant, an animal, I need scarcely add, long since extinct. Another proof of man's presence about that date is a primitive hearth discovered in digging a well along the old beach of Lake Ontario. Accord- ing to that competent geologist. Professor Gilbert, this dated from a period when the northern shore of that body of water was the sheer wall of a mighty glacier, and the channel of the Niagara river had not yet begun to be furrowed out of the rock by the re- ceding waters.* Other finds which must be referred to about this epoch are those by McGee of a chipped obsidian implement in the lacustrine marls of western Nevada; and that of a fragment of a human skull in the westernmost extension of the loess in Colorado. f
More conclusive than these are the repeated discov- eries of implements, chipped fro^ hard stones, in deposits of loess and gravels in Ohio and Indiana, which deposits, without doubt, represent a closing episode of the last Glacial Epoch. There may be
*G. K. Gilbert, in The American Anthropologist, 1889, p. 173. fW. J. McGee, "Palaeolithic Man in America," in Popular Science Monthly, November 1 888.
GI.ACIAI. MEN. 27
some question about the geologic age of the former finds, but about these there is none. They prove be- yond cavil that during the closing scenes of the Qua- ternary in North America, man, tool-making, fire- using man, was present and active. * This decision is not only confirmed, but greatly extended, by the researches of Dr. C. C. Abbott and others in the gravels about Trenton, on the Delaware. These were laid down contemporaneously with the terminal moraine in Ohio and Indiana, from which the palae- oliths were exhumed. Abbott's discoveries include several hundred stone implements of the true palaeo- lithic or "Chelleen" type, and some fragments of human skeletons. f They reveal to us not only the presence of man, but a well defined stage of culture strictly comparable to that of the ''river drift" men of the Thames and the Somme in western Europe, which has been so ably described by De MortilletJ
Such discoveries have not been confined to the northern portion of the continent. Barcena reported the relics of man in a quarternary rock in the valley of Mexico. II The geologists of the Argentine Repub- lic describe others which must be referred to a very remote age. The writers who have given the most
* See G. Frederick Wright, The Ice Age in North America.
fDr. Abbott has reported his discoveries in numerous articles, and especially in his work entitled Primitive Industry, chapters 32, 33-
JDe Mortillet, Le Prehistorique Antiquite de /' Homme, p. 132, sq.
II Mariano de la Barcena, "Fossil Man in Mexico," in the Amer- ican Naturalist, Aug., 1885.
28 THE AMERICAN RACE.
information about them are Ameghino and Burmeis- ter. They found bone and stone implements of rude form and the remains of hearths associated with bones of the extinct horse^ the glyptodon, and other animals now unknown. The stratigraphic relations of the finds connected them with the deposits of the receding Austral glacier. *
Such facts of these place it beyond doubt that man lived in both North and South America at the close of the Glacial Age. It is not certain that this close was synchronous in both the northern and southern hemispheres, nor that the American glacier was con- temporary with the Ice Age of Europe. The able geologist, Mr. Croll, is of opinion that if there was a difference in time, the Ice Age of America was pos- terior to that of Europe. In any case, the extreme antiquity of man in America is placed beyond cavil. He was here long before either northern Asia or the Polynesian islands were inhabited, as it is well known they were first populated in Neolithic times.
The question naturally arises, did he not originate upon this continent ? The answer to this is given by Charles Darwin in his magistral statement — '^Our progenitors diverged from the catarhine stock of the anthropoids ; and the fact that they belonged to this stock clearly shows that they inhabited the Old World, "t In fact, all the American monkeys,
* Florentino Ameghino, La Antiguedad delHombre en elPlata,
passim. (2 vols, Buenos Aires, 1880.)
4 t The Descent of Man, p. 155. Dr. Rudolph Hoernes, however,
I has recently argued that the discovery of such simian forms in
/ the American tertiary as the Anaptomorphus homunculus, Cope,
ORIGIN OF AMERICANS. 29
whether living or fossil, are platyrhine, have thirty- four teeth, and have tails, characteristics which show that none of the higher anthropoids lived in the New World.
We are obliged, therefore, to look for the original home of the American glacial man elsewhere than in America. Some interesting geological facts throw an unexpected light upon our investigations. I have already remarked that in the various recent oscilla- tions of the earth's crust, there occurred about the middle and later Glacial Epoch an uplift of the northern part of the continent and also of the north- em Atlantic basin. In the opinion of Professor James Geikie this amounted to a vertical elevation of three thousand feet above the present level, and re- sulted in establishing a continuous land connection between the higher latitudes of the two continents, which remained until the Post-glacial Period, * Dr. Habenicht also recognizes this condition of affairs and places it during the **old stone'' age in Europe, t which corresponds to the position assigned it by McGee.
Very recently. Professor Spencer has summed up
renders it probable that the anthropoid ancestor of man lived in North America. Mittheil der Anthrop. GeselL in Wien, 1890, § 71. The Anaptomorphus was a lemur rather than a monkey, and had a dentition very human in character.
* Quoted by G. F. Wright in The Ice Age in America, p. 583.
fH. Habenicht, Die Recenten Verdnderungen der Erdober- flache, s. 27 (Gotha, 1882). He further shows that at that time both northern Russia and northern Siberia were under water, which would effectually dispose of any assumed migration by way of the latter.
30 THE AMERICAN RACE.
the evidence in favor of the elevation of the northern portions of America and the north Atlantic, about the early Pliocene times, and considers that it proves beyond a doubt that it must have reached from 2000 to 3000 feet above the present level. *
Further testimony to the existence of this land bridge is oflfered by the glacial striae on the rocks of Shetland, the Faroe islands, Iceland and south Green- land. These are in such directions and of such a character that Mr. James CroU, a high authority, maintains that they must have been produced by land ice^ and that the theory of a land connection be- tween these localities "can alone explain all the facts, "t A comparison of the flora and fauna in the higher latitudes of the two continents reveals marked identities which require some such theory to explain them. Thus, certain species of land snails occur both in Labrador and Europe, and the flora of Greenland, although American in the north, is dis- tinctly European in the south. J
Again, in certain very late Pliocene formations in England, known as the Norwich crag and the red crag of Suffolk, *'no less than eighteen species of American mollusca occur, only seven of which still live on the Scandinavian coast, the remainder being confined to North America.'' In consequence of
*J. W. Spencer, in the London Geological Magazine, 1890, p. 208, sqq.
t James Croll, Climate and Time, p. 451.
X G. F. Wright, The Ice Age in North America, pp. 582-3 (New York, 1890). De Mortillet, Le Prihistorique, etc., pp. 186-7. H. Rink, in Proc. of the Amer. Philos. Society, 1885, p. 293.
THE LAND-BRIDGE TO EUROPE. 31
such facts the most careful English geologists of to- day hold that the land communication, which cer- tainly existed between Europe and North America in Eocene times by way of Iceland and Greenland, which was then a part of the American continent, continued to exist through the Miocene and Pliocene Epochs. This land bridge formed a barrier of sepa- ration between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, so that the temperature of the higher latitudes was much milder than at present*
The evidence, therefore, is cumulative that at the close of the last Glacial Epoch, and for an indeter- minate time previous, the comparatively shallow bed of the north Atlantic was above water; and this was about the time that we find men in the same stage of culture dwelling on both its shores.
The attempt has often been made by geologists to calculate the remoteness in time of the close of the Ice Age, and of these vestiges of human occupation. The chronometers appealed to are the erosion of river valleys, especially of the gorge of Niagara, the filling of lake beds, the accumulation of modern detritus, etc. Professor Frederick Wright, who has studied the problem of the Niagara gorge with es- pecial care, considers that a minimum period of twelve thousand years must have elapsed since its
*In his excellent work, The Building of the British Isles, (Lon- don, 1888), Mr. A. J. Jukes-Browne presents in detail the proofs of these statements, and gives two plates (Nos. XII. and XIII,), showing the outlines of this land connection at the period referred to (pp. 252, 257, etc.).
32 THE AMERICAN RACE.
erosion began.* But as Professor Gilbert justly re- marks, whatever the age of the great cataract may be, the antiquity of man in America is far greater, and reaches into a past for which we have found no time-measure, f
The same may be said for Europe. De Quatre- fages and many other students of the subject consider that the evidence is sufficient to establish the pres- ence of man near the Atlantic coast in the Pliocene Epoch; and excellent English geologists have claimed that the caves in the valley of the River Clwyd, in north Wales, whose floors contain flint implements, had their entrance blocked by true glacial deposits, so that man was there present before the Great Ice Age began.
From this brief presentation of the geologic evi- dence, the conclusion seems forced upon us that the ancestors of the American race could have come from no other quarter than western Europe, or that por- tion of Eurafrica which in my lectures on general ethnography I have described as the most probable location of the birth-place of the species. J
* Wright, The Ice Age, p. 504.
t Gilbert, Sixth An, Rep. of the Com. of the N. Y. State Reset- vatiofif p. 84 (Albany, 1890). X Races and Peoples, chapter III. (New York, 1890).
AGE OF MAN IN AMERICA. Scheme of the Age of Man in America,
33
|
AGE. |
Period. |
Geological Characters. |
Human Relics. |
|
( |
Auriferous gravels of |
Calaveras skull (?). |
|
|
I. Pre-glacial, |
California (?). lyOwer lake beds in Great Basin. |
||
|
Attenuated drift. |
Palaeoliths from |
||
|
Columbia formation. |
Claymont, Del. |
||
|
Sinking of Atlantic |
|||
|
2. First glacial. ■ |
Coast. Old glacial drift in Mississippi Valley. Brick clays. |
||
|
Modified drift of Min- |
Flint chips and rode |
||
|
nesota. |
implements. |
||
|
3. Inter-glacial. ■ |
Medial Gravels in Great Basin. |
||
|
Pampas formation. |
Bone and stone im- |
||
|
Quaternary |
New glacial drift and |
plements. |
|
|
or |
till, fiords. |
||
|
Moraines of Ohio Val- |
Palaeolithic imple- |
||
|
Pleistocene. |
ley. |
ments from the |
|
|
4. Second glacial. |
I,oess of central United States. British America and N. Atlantic elevated. |
moraines. |
|
|
Trenton gravels. |
Palaeolithic imple- ments from Tren- ton. |
||
|
Completion of Great I<akes. |
Brachycephalic |
||
|
skulls from Tren- |
|||
|
5. Postglacial. |
tqn. |
||
|
Elevation of North At- |
Hearth on former |
||
|
lantic subsiding. |
shore of I^. Ontario. |
||
|
Reindeer in Ohio Val- |
Skulls of Pontimelo |
||
|
ley. |
and Rio Negro, S«A.. |
||
|
1 |
. Climate cold. |
||
|
I^acustrine deposits. |
Argillite imple- ments. Earliest kitchen- |
||
|
Seaboard deposits. |
|||
|
middens. |
|||
|
I. Champlaia |
Land below present |
Umonite bones in |
|
|
level. |
Florida. |
||
|
or |
Climate mild. |
Lagoa Santa bones in Brazil. |
|
|
Fluvial. |
Elephant, mastodon |
||
|
Recent. - |
ohioticus, megather- ium, giant bison, horse (all now ex- . tinct). River deposits. |
||
|
Quartz and jasper |
|||
|
3. Present |
implements. |
||
|
Formation of forest |
Pottery. Later shell |
||
|
or |
loam. |
heaps. Ohio mounds. |
|
|
Alluvial. |
Relics of existing or |
||
|
known tribes. |
34 'I'HE AMERICAN RACE.
Many difficulties present themselves in bringing these periods into correspondence with the seasons of the Quaternary in Europe ; but after a careful study of both continents, Mr. W. J. McGee suggests the following synchronisms :*
Norih America. Western Europe.
Inter-glacial period ^fepoque chelUentie,
Early second glacial period Epoque mousterienne.
Middle (mild) second glacial period . Epoque solutreenne. Close of second glacial period and post- glacial £poque magdalenienne.
Champlain period Kitchen -midden s and
epoque Robenhausienne.
Of course it would not be correct to suppose that the earliest inhabitants of the continent presented the physical traits which mark the race to-day. Racial peculiarities are slowly developed in certain ''areas of characterization,*' but once fixed are indelible. Can we discover the whereabouts of the area which impressed upon primitive American man — an immi- grant, as we have learned, from another hemisphere — those corporeal changes which set him over against his fellows as an independent race?
I believe that it was in the north temperate zone. It is there we find the oldest signs of man's residence on the continent; it is and was geographically the nearest to the land- areas of the Old World; and so far as we can trace the lines of the most ancient mi- grations, they diverged from that region. But there are reasons stronger than these. The American In-
*" Palaeolithic Man in America" in Popular Science Monthly ^ Nov., 1888.
THE **AREA OF CHARACTERIZATION.'' 35
dians cannot bear the heat of the tropics even as well as the European, not to speak of the African race. They perspire little, their skin becomes hot, and they are easily prostrated by exertion in an elevated temperature. They are peculiarly subject to diseases of hot climates, as hepatic disorders, showing none of the immunity of the African.* Furthermore, the finest physical specimens of the race are found in the colder regions of the temperate zones, the Pampas and Patagonian Indians in the south, the Iroquois and Algonkins in the north; whereas, in the tropics they are generally undersized, short-lived, of inferior muscular force and with slight tolerance of disease. f
These facts, taken in connection with the geologic events I have already described, would lead us to place the "area of characterization" of the native American east of the Rocky Mountains, and between the receding wall of the continental ice sheet and the Gulf of Mexico. There it was that the primi^ tive glacial man underwent those changes which re- sulted in the formation of an independent race.
We have evidence that this change took place at a very remote epoch. The Swiss anatomist. Dr. J. Kollmann, has published a critical investigation of the most ancient skulls discovered in America, as the one I have already referred to from Calaveras county,
*'*No one could live among the Indians of the Upper Amazon without being struck with their constitutional dislike to heat.** "The impression forced itself upon my mind that the Indian lives as a stranger or immigrant in these hot regions." H. W. Bates, The Naturalist on the Amazon, Vol. II., pp. 200, 201.
t See E. F. im Thum, Among the Indians of Guiana, pp. 189, 190, who speaks strongly of the debility of the tropical Indians.
36 THE AMERICAN RACE.
California, one from Rock Bluff, Illinois, one from Pontimelo, Buenos Ayres, and others from the caverns of Lagoa Santa, Brazil, and from the loess of the Pampas. All these are credited with an antiquity go- ing back nearly to the close of the last glacial period, and are the oldest yet found on the continent. They prove to be strictly analogous to those of the Indians of the present day. They reveal the same discrepancy in forrfi which we now encounter in the crania of all American tribes. The Calaveras skull and that from Pontimelo are brachycephalic ; those from Lagoa Santa dolichocephalic ; but both possess the wide malar arches, the low orbital indices, the medium nasal apertures and the general broad faces of the present population. Dr. Kollmann, therefore, reaches the conclusion that **the variety of man m America at the close of the glacial period had the same facial form as the Indian of to-day, and the racial traits which distinguish him no^y, did also at that time.'*
The marked diversity in cranial forms here indi- cated is recognizable in all parts of the continent. It has frustrated every attempt to classify the existing tribes, or to trace former lines of migration, by grouping together similar head-measurements. This was fully acknowledged by the late Dr. James Aitken Meigs, of Philadelpl^ia, who, taking the same collec- tion of skulls, showed how erroneous were the pre- vious statements of Dr. Morton in his Crania Ameri' carta. The recent studies of Virchow on American crania have attained the same conclusion. * We must
*See J. Kollman, Zeitschrift fur Ethnologic^ 1884, s. 181 sq. The conclusion of Virchow is "que les caracteres physionomiquea
CRANIOLOGY CONSIDERED. 37
dismiss as wholly untenable the contrary arguments of the French and other craniologists, and still more peremptorily those attempted identifications of Ameri- can skulls with ''Mongolian" or "Mongoloid" types. Such comparisons are based on local peculiarities which have no racial value.
Yet it must not be supposed from this that carefully conducted cranial comparisons between tribes and families are valueless; on the contrary, the shape and size of the skull, the proportion of the face, and many other measurements, are in the average highly distinctive family traits, and I shall frequently call attention to them.
The lowest cephalic index which I have seen re- ported from an American skull is 56, which is that of a perforated skull from Devil river, Michigan, now in the medical museum at Ann Arbor university;* the highest is 97, from a Peruvian skull, though probably this was the result of an artificial de- formity.
It is not necessary to conclude from these or other diversities in skull forms that the American race is a conglomerate of other and varied stocks. As I have pointed out elsewhere, the shape of the skull is not a
des tStes Americaines montrent une divergence si tnanifeste qu'on doit renoncer definitivement k la construction d' un type universel et comniun des indigenes Am^ricains." Cong-res des American- istes, 1888, p.* 260. This is substantially the conclusion at which Dr. James Aitken Meigs arrived, in his "Observations on the Cranial Forms of the American Aborigines," in Proc. of the Acad. Nat. Sci. of Phila., 1866.
* Henry Oilman, Report of the Smithsonian Institution for i88s, p. 239. Other perforated skulls from similar graves in the same- locality showed indices of, 82, 83, 85.
38 THE AMERICAN RACE.
fixed element in human anatomy, and children of the same mother may differ in this respect*
A special feature in American skulls is the pres- ence of the epactal bone, or os Incae^ in the occiput. It is found in a complete or incomplete condition in 3.86 per cent, of the skulls throughout the continent, and in particular localities much more frequently; among the ancient Peruvians for example in 6.08 percent., and among the former inhabitants of the Gila valley in 6.81 per cent. This is far more fre- quently than in other races, the highest being the negro, which offers 2.65 per cent., while the Euro- peans yield but i.iQ.f 'T^he presence of the bone is due to a persistence of the transverse occipital suture, which is usually closed in fetal life. Hence it .is a sign of arrested development, and indicative of an inferior race.
The majority of the Americans have a tendency to meso- or brachycephaly, but in certain families, as the Eskimos in the extreme north and the Tapu^s in Brazil, the skulls are usually decidedly long. In other instances there is a remarkable difference in members of the same tribe and even of the same household. Thus among the Yumas there are some with as low an index as 68, while the majority are above 80, and among the dolichocephalic Eskimos we occasionally find an almost globular .skull. So far as can be learned, these variations appear in per-
^D, G. Brinton, Races and Peoples; Lectures on the Science of Ethnography, p. 20. (New York, 1890.)
t Dr. Washington Matthews, in the American Anthropologist ^ 1889, p. 337.
AMERICAN SKULLS. 39
sons of pure blood. Often the crania differ in no wise from those of the European. Dr. Hensell, for instance, says that the skulls of pure-blood Coroados of Brazil, which he examined, corresponded in all points to those of the average German.*
The average cubical capacity of the American skull falls below that of the white, and rises above that of the black race. Taking both sexes, the Parisians of to-day have a cranial capacity of 1448 cubic centimetres; the Negroes 1344 c. c. ; the Amer- ican Indians 1376. f But single examples of Indian skulls have yielded the extraordinary capacity of 1747, 1825, ^^^ even 1920 cub. cent, which are not exceeded in any other race. J
The hue of the skin is generally said to be reddish, or coppery, or cinnamon color, or burnt coffee color. It is brown of various shades, with an undertone of red. Individuals or tribes vary from the prevail- ing hue, but not with reference to climate. The Kolosch of the northwest coast are very light col- ored; but not more so than the Yurucares of the Bo- livian Andes. The darkest are far from black, and the lightest by no means white.
The hair is rarely wholly black, as when examined by reflected light it will also show a faint undercolor
* Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, Bd. II., s. 195.
t Cf. Lucien Carr, in the Eleventh Atmual Report of the Pea- body Museum, p. 367.
JLucien Carr, "Notes on the Crania of New England Indians," in the Anniversary Memoirs of the Boston Sac ety of Natural His- tory, 1880 ; and compare Topinard, Elements d' Anthropologie GSn- irale, p. 628. (Paris, 1885.)
40 THE AMERICAN RACE.
of red. This reddish tinge is very perceptible in some tribes, and especially in children. Generally straight and coarse, instances are not wanting where it is fine and silky, and even slightly wavy or curly. Although often compared to that of the Chinese, the resemblances are superficial, as when critically ex- amined, **the hair of the American Indian differs in nearly every particular from that of the Mongolians of eastern Asia.'^* The growth is thick and strong on the head, scanty on the body and on the face; but beards of respectable length are not wholly un- known, f
The stature "and muscular force vary. The Pata- gonians have long been celebrated as giants, although in fact there are not many of them over six feet tall. The average throughout the continent would prob- ably be less than that of the European. But there are no instances of dwarfish size to compare with the Lapps, the Bushmen, or the Andaman Islanders. The hands and feet are uniformly smaller than those of Europeans of the same height. The arms are longer in proportion to the other members than in the Euro- pean, but not so much as in the African race. This is held to be one of the anatomical evidences of infer- iority.
*H. Fritsch, in CompteRendu du Congris des AmiricanisteSy 1888, p. 276.
t For instance, some of the Mixes of Mexico have full beards (Herrera, Decadas de las Indias, Dec. IV., Lib. IX., cap. VII.); the Guarayos of Bolivia wear long straight beards, covering both lips and cheeks (D'Orbigny, L' Homme Amiricain, Vol. I., p. 126); and the Cashibos of the upper Ucayali are bearded (Herndon, Ex- ploration of the Valley of the Amazon ^ p. 209).
COURSE OF MIGRATION. 4I
On the whole, the race is singularly uniform in its physical traits, and individuals taken from any part of the continent could easily be mistaken for inhabi- tants of numerous other parts.
This uniformity finds one of its explanations in the geographical features of the continent, which are such as to favor migrations in longitude, and thus prevent the diversity which special conditions in latitude tend to produce. The trend of the moun- tain chains and the flow of the great rivers in both South and North America generally follow the course of the great circles, and the migrations of native na- tions were directed by these geographic features. Nor has the face of the land undergone any serious alteration since man first occupied it. Doubtless in his early days the Laramie sea still covered the ex- tensive depression in that part of our country, and it is possible that a subsidence of several hundred feet altered the present Isthmus of Panama into a chain of islands; but in other respects the continent be- tweeu the fortieth parallels north and south has re- mained substantially the same since the close of the Tertiary Epoch.
Beyond all other criteria of a race must rank its mental endowments. These are what decide irrevo- cably its place in history and its destiny in time. Some who have personally studied the American race are inclined to assign its psychical potentialities a high rank. For instance, Mr. Horatio Hale hesi- tates not to say: ** Impartial investigation and com- parison will probably show that while some of the aboriginal communities of the American continent
42 THE AMERICAN RACE.
are low in the scale of intellect, others are equal in natural capacity, and possibly superior, to the hio^hest of the Indo-Buropean race."* This may be re- garded as an extremely favorable estimate. Few will assent to it, and probably not many would even go so far as Dr. Amedee Moure in his appreciation of the South American Indians, which he expresses in these words: "With reference to his mental powers, the Indian of South America should be classed im- mediately after the white race, decidedly ahead of the yellow race, and especially beyond the African, "f
Such general opinions are interesting because both of them are the results of personal observations of many tribes. But the final decision as to the abilities of a race or of an individual must be based on actual accomplished results, not on supposed endowments. Thus appraised, the American race certainly stands higher than the Australian, the Polynesian or the African, but does not equal the Asian.
A review of the evidence bears out this opinion. Take the central social fact of government. In an- cient America there are examples of firm and stable states, extending their sway widely and directed by definite policy. The league of the Iroquois was a thoroughly statesman-like creation, and the realm of Peru had a long and successful existence. That this mental quality is real is shown by the recent history of some of the Spanish- American republics. Two of
*" Report on the Blackfeet," in Trans. Brit. Assoc. Adv. of Science, 1885.
f'Les Indiens de la Province de Mato Grosso," in the Nou- velles Annales des Voyages, 1862.
NATIVE ART. 43
them, Guatemala and Mexico, count among their ablest presidents in the present generation pure-blood American Indians.* Or we may take up the arts. In architecture nothing ever accomplished by the Africans or Polynesians approaches the pre-Colum- bian edifices of the American continent. In the de- velopment of artistic forms, whether in stone, clay or wood, the American stands next to the white race. I know no product of Japanese, Chinese or Dravidian sculpture, for example, which exhibits the human face in greater dignity than the head in basalt fig- ured by Humboldt as an Aztec priestess, f The in- vention of a phonetic system for recording ideas was reached in Mexico, and is striking testimony to the ability of the natives. In religious philosophy there is ample evidence that the notion of a vsingle incor- poreal Ruler of the universe had become familiar both to Tezcucans and Kechuas previous to the conquest.
While these facts bear testimony to a good natural capacity, it is also true that the receptivity of the race for a foreign civilization is not great. Even individ- ual instances of highly educated Indians are rare; and I do not recall any who have achieved distinction in art or science, or large wealth in the business world.
The culture of the native Americans strongly at- tests the ethnic unity of the race. This applies equally to the ruins and relics of its vanished nations,
*The Mexican president Benito Juarez was a full-blood Zapotec; Barrios of Guatemala, a full-blood Cakchiquel.
t Vues des Cordilleres, et Monumens des Peuples Indigenes de V Amerique, Tome I. p. 51.
44 THE AMERICAN RACE.
as to the institutions of existing tribes. Nowhere do we find any trace of foreign influence or instruction, nowhere any arts or social systems to explain which we must evoke the aid of teachers from the eastern hemisphere. The culture of the American race, in whatever degree they possessed it, was an indigenous growth, wholly self-developed, owing none of its germs to any other race, ear-marked with the psy- chology of the stock.
Furthermore, this culture was. not, as is usually supposed, monopolized by a few nations of the race. The distinction that has been set up by so many eth- nographers between '*wild tribes '* and ** civilized trih^s^^^ /d^^ervolker and Culturvolker^ is an artificial one, and conveys a false idea of the facts. There was no such sharp line. Different bands of the same linguistic stock were found, some on the highest, others on the lowest stages of development, as is strik- ingly exemplified in the Uto-Aztecan family. Wher- ever there was a center of civilization, that is, wher- ever the surroundings favored the development of culture, tribes of different stocks enjoyed it to nearly an equal degree, as in central Mexico and Peru. By them it was distributed, and thus shaded ofif in all directions.
When closely analyzed, the difference between the highest and the average culture of the race is much less than has been usually taught. The Aztecs of Mexico and the Algonkins of the eastern United States were not far apart, if we overlook the objec- tive art of architecture and one or two inventions. To contrast the one as a wild or savage with the
AMERICAN CUI.TURE.
45
other as a civilized people, is to assume a false point of view and to overlook their substantial psychical equality.
For these reasons American culture, wherever ex- amined, presents a family likeness which the more careful observers of late years have taken pains to put in a strong light. This was accomplished for governmental institutions and domestic architecture by Lewis H. Morgan, for property rights and the laws of war by A. F. Bandelier, for the social condition of Mexico and Peru by Dr. Gustav Briihl, and I may add for the myths and other expressions of the religious sentiment by myself.*
In certain ^directions doubtless the tendency has been to push this uniformity too far, especially with reference to governmental institutions. Mr. Mor- gan's assertions upon this subject were too sweeping. Nevertheless he was the first to point out clearly that ancient American society was founded, not upon the family, but upon the gens, totem or clan, as the social unit.f The gens is **an organized body of consan- guineal kindred*' (Powell), either such in reality, or, when strangers have been adopted, so considered by
* Ancient Society, by Lewis H. Morgan (New York, 1878) ; Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines, by the same (Washington, 1881) ; Bandelier, in the Reports of the Peabody Museum ; Dr. Gustav Bruhl, Die Culturvdlker Alt Amerikas (Cin- cinnati, 1887); D. G. Erin ton, The Myths of the New World, 2d ed. (New York, 1876) ; American-Hero Myths, by the same (Phil- adelphia, 1882).
t The word totem is derived from the Algonkin root od or ot and means that which belongs to a person or "his belongings," in the widest sense, his village, his people, etc. ^
46 THE AMERICAN RACE.
the tribal conscience. Its members dwell together in one house or quarter, and are obliged to assist each other. An indeterminate number of these gentes, make up the tribe, and smaller groups of several of them may form *'phratries," or brotherhoods, usually for some religious purpose. Each gens is to a large extent autonomic, electing its own chieftain, and de- ciding on all questions of property and especially of blood-revenge, within its own limits. The tribe is governed by a council, the members of which belong to and represent the various gentes. The tribal chief is elected by this council, and can be deposed at its will. His power is strictly limited by the vote of the council, and is confined to affairs of peate. For war, a "war chief" is elected also by the council, who takes sole command. Marriage within the gens is strictly prohibited, and descent is traced and pro- perty descends in the female line only.
This is the ideal theory of the American tribal or- ganization, and we may recognize its outlines almost anywhere on the continent; but scarcely anywhere shall we find it perfectly carried out. The gentile system is by no means universal, as I shall have occa- sion to point out; where it exists, it is often traced in the male line; both property and dignities may be in- herited directly from the father; consanguine mar- riage, even that of brother and sister or father and daughter, though rare, is far from unexampled.* In fact, no one element of the system was uniformly re-
* Among the Brazilian hordes, for instance, Martins, Beitrdge zur Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerikas, Bd. I. s. ii6 (Iveipzig, 1867).
THE GENTILE SYSTEM. 47
spected, and it is an error of theorists to try to make it appear so. It varied widely in the same stock and in all its expressions.* This is markedly true, for instance, in domestic architecture. The Lenape, who were next neighbors to the Five Nations, had noth- ing resembling their "long house," on which Mor- gan founded his scheme of communal tenements; and the efforts which some later writers have made to identify the large architectural works of Mexico and Yucatan with the communal pueblos of the Gila valley will not bear the test of criticism.
The foundation of the gentile, as of any other family life, is, as I have shown elsewhere, f the mu- tual affection between kindred. In the primitive period this is especially between the children of the same mother, not so much because of the doubt of paternity as because physiologically and obviously it is the mother in whom is formed and from whom alone proceeds the living being. Why this affection does not lead to the marriage of uterine brothers and sisters — why, on the contrary, there is almost every- where a horror of such unions — it is not easy to ex- plain. Darwin suggests that the chief stimulus to the sexual feelings is novelty, and that the familiarity of the same household breeds indifference; and we
*Thus the Heiltsuk and Kwakiutl of the northwest coast, though speaking close dialects of the same stock, differ funda- mentally in their social organization. That of the former is ma- triarchal, of the latter patriarchal. Boas, Fifth Report to the Brit. Assoc. Adv. Sciettce. p. 38.
t Races and Peoples; Lectures on the Science 0/ Ethnography, p. 55 (New York, 1890).
48 THE AMERICAN RACE.
may accept this in default of a completer explana- tion. Certainly, as Moritz Wagner has forcibly shown,* this repugnance to incest is wide-spread in the species, and has exerted a powerful influence on its physical history.
In America marriage was usually by purchase, and was polygamous. In a number of tribes the pur- chase of the eldest daughter gave the man a right to buy all the younger daughters, as they reached nubile age. The selection of a wife was often regarded as the concern of the gens rather than of the individual. Among the Hurons, for instance, the old women of the gens selected the wives for the young men, * * and united them with painful uniformity to women sev- eral years their senior, "f Some control in this direc- tion was very usual, and was necessary to prevent consanguine unions.
The position of women in the social scheme of the American tribes has often been portrayed in darker colors than the truth admits. As in one sense a chattel, she had few rights against her husband ; but some she had, and as they were those of her gens, these he was forced to respect. Where maternal de- scent prevailed, it was she who owned the property of the pair, and could control it as she listed. It passed at her death to her blood relatives and not to his. Her children looked upon her as their parent, but esteemed their father as no relation whatever.
* Die Entstehung der Arten durch Rdumliche Sonderung (Basel, 1889).
tj. W. Sanborn, Legends, Customs and Social Life of the Seneca Indians^ p. 36 (Gowanda, N. Y., 1878).
MATRIARCHAI. SYSTEM. 49
An unusually kind and intelligent Kolosch Indian was chided by a missionary for allowing his father to suffer for food. ^*Iyet him go to his own people,'* replied the Kolosch, "they should look after him.'* He did not regard a man as in any way related or bound to his paternal parent.
The women thus made good for themselves the power of property, and this could not but compel respect. Their lives were rated at equal or greater value than a man's ;* instances are frequent where their voice was important in the councils of the tribe; nor was it very rare to see them attaining the dignity of head chief. That their life was toilsome is true; but its dangers were less, and its fatigues scarce greater, than that of their husbands. Nor was it more onerous than that of the peasant women of Europe to-day.
Such domestic arrangements seem strange to us, but they did not exclude either conjugal or parental affection. On the contrary, the presence of such sen- timents has impressed travelers among even the rudest tribes, as the Eskimos, the Yumas and the hordes of the Chaco;t ^d Miss Alice Fletcher tells me she has constantly noted such traits in her studies of life in the wigwam. The husband and father will
* Father Ragueneau tell us that among the Hurons, when a man was killed, thirty gifts were required to condone the oflfence, but when a woman was the victim, forty were demanded. Relation des JesuiteSy 1635.
t Dr. W. H. Corbusier, in American Antiquarian , Sept. 1886 ; Dr. Amed^e Moure, Les Indiens de Mato Grosso, p. 9 (Paris, 1862).
4
50 THE AMERICAN RACE.
often undergo severe privations for his wife and chil- dren.
The error to which I have referred of classifying the natives into wild and civilized tribes has led to regarding the one as agricultural, and the other as depending exclusively on hunting and fishing. Such was not the case. The Americans were inclined to agriculture in nearly all regions where it was profit- able. Maize was cultivated both north and south to the geographical extent of its productive culture; beans, squashes, pumpkins, and potatoes were assid- uously planted in suitable latitudes; the banana was rapidly accepted after its introduction, even by tribes who had never seen a white man; cotton for clothing and tobacco as a luxury were staple crops among very diverse stocks. The Iroquois, Algonkins and Mus- kokis of the Atlantic coast tilled large fields, and depended upon their harvests for the winter supplies. The diSerence between them and the sedentary Mex- icans or Mayas in this respect was not so wide as has been represented.
It was a serious misfortune for the Americans that the fauna of the continent did not ofier any animal which could be domesticated for a beast of draft or burden. There is no doubt but that the horse ex- isted on the continent contemporaneously with post- glacial man ; and some palaeontologists are of opinion that the Buropean.'and Asian horses were descendants of the American species;* but for some mysterious reason the genus became extinct in the New World
* This opinion is defended by Max Schlosser in the Archivfur Anthropologies 1889, s. 132.
DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 5I
many generations before its discovery. The dog, do- mesticated from various species of the wolf, was a poor substitute. He aided somewhat in hunting, and in the north as an animal of draft; but was of. little general utility. The (lama in the Cordilleras of South America was prized principally for its hair, and was also utilized for burdens, but not for draft.* Nor were there any animals which could be domesticated for food or milk. The buffalo is hopelessly wild, and the peccary, or American hog, is irreclaimable in its love of freedom.
We may say that America everywhere at the time of the discovery was in the polished stone age. It; had progressed beyond the rough stone stage, but had not reached that of metals. True that copper, bronze and the precious ores w^ere widely employed for a variety of purposes; but flaked and polished stone remained in all parts the principal material selected to produce a cutting edge. Probably three- fourths of the tribes were acquainted with the art of tempering and moulding clay into utensils or figures; but the potter's wheel and the process of glazing had not been invented. Towns and buildings were laid . out with a correct eye, and stone structures of sym- metry were erected; but the square, the compass, the plumb line, and the scales and weight had not been devised, f Commodious boats of hollowed logs or of
* The jlama was never ridden, nor attached for draft, though the opposite has been stated. See J. J. von Tschudi, " Das Lama," in Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1885, s. 108.
fSee "The Lineal Measures of the Semi-Civilized Nations of Mexico and Central America," in my Essays of an Americanisty P- 433 (Philadelphia, 1890).
52 THE AMERICAN RACE.
bark, or of skins stretched on frames, were in use on most of the waters; but the inventive faculties of their makers had not reached to either oars or sails to pro- pel them,* the paddle alone being relied upon, and the rudder to guide them was unknown. The love of music is strong in the race, and wind instruments and those sounded by percussion had been devised in considerable variety; but the highest type, the stringed instruments, were beyond their capacity of invention.
The religious sentiment was awake in all the tribes of the continent, and even the lowest had myths and propitiatory rites by which to explain to themselves and cajole to their own interests the unknown powers which order the destiny of human life. There is a singular similarity in these myths. The leading cycle of them usually describes the exploits of a di- vine man, the national hero-god, who was the first instructor, often the ancestor of the tribe, and the creator of the visible universe. His later history is related with singular paralellism by tribes in Canada and Mexico, in Yucatan and Uruguay. After teach- ing his people the arts of life and the sacred rites, the forms of their social organizations and the medicinal powers of plants, he left in some mysterious way, not by the event of death, but for a journey, or by rising to the sky; leaving with them, however, his promise to return at some future day, when they should need him, and he should again become their guide and protector.
* The Caribs and some of the Peruvian coast tribes sometimes lifted a large square cloth when running with the wind ; but this is not what is meant by a sail.
MYTHS AND RELIGION.
53
The interpretation of this fundamental American myth, which I have shown to be the typical religious legend of the race,* offers an interesting problem. Comparing it with others of similar form in Egyptian and Aryac antiquity, I have explained it as based on the natural phenomenon of the returning and depart- ing day, as, if not a solar, at least a light myth, devel- oped through personification and etymologic pro- cesses. Often the hero-god is identified with some animal, as the raven, the rabbit, the wolf or coyote, the jaguar, the toucan, etc. Possibly in these we may recognize the *'totemic animaP' after which the gens was named; but in most cases the identification cannot be made.
The hero-god is usually connected with tales of a creation and a flood, or other destruction of the world. These cosmogonical and cataclysmal myths belong together, and arise from the same impulse to explain cosmic phenomena by the analogy with ordinary changes of the seasons and the day. In constant connection with them, and also with the rites of re- ligion and medicine, with the social institutions and the calendar, with the plans of edifices and the ar- rangement of gens and phratries, in fact, with all the apparatus of life, was a respect for the sacred Clum- ber, It is strange how constantly this presents itself throughout American life, and is, in factj the key to many of its forms. The sacred number is Four, and its origin is from the four cardinal points. These were the guides to the native in his wanderings, and, as identified with the winds, were the deities who ' * American Hero-Myths (Philadelphia, 1882).
54 I^HK AMERICAN RACE.
brought about the change of the seasons and the phe- nomena of the weather. They were represented by the symbols of the cross, whose four arms we see por- trayed on the altar tablet of Palenque, on the robes of the Mexican priests, in the hieroglyphs of the Algonkins, and in countless other connections.
A rich symbolism rapidly developed in all the sedentary tribes, and very much along the same lines. The bird, the serpent, the sacred stone, the tree of life, water as a purifier, the perpetual fire, all these are members of a religious symbolism, clear signs of which recur in all segments of the continent. The chants and dances, the ritual of the medicine men, the functions of esoteric orders and secret societies, present a resemblance greater than that which can be explained by a mere similarity in the stage of culture. I explain it by the ethnic and psychical unity of the race, and its perpetual freedom from any foreign in- fluence.
The mortuary rites indicated a belief in the con- tinued existence of the individual after apparent death. These were by incineration, by inhumation, by exposure, or by mummification. Articles were placed with the deceased for use in his future state, and the ceremonies of mourning were frequently severe and protracted. A sacredness was generally attached to the bones and therefore these were care- fully preserved. In accordance with a superstition widely felt in the Old World, they were supposed to harbor some share of the departed spirit. The con- ception of the after life is wholly material. The Zapotec, for instance, believes that he will return to
MEDICINE-MEN. 55
his familiar haunts after a few hundred years, and buries all the money he makes that he may then live at his ease. Von Gagern estimates the amount of silver thus secreted and lost within the last century at a hundred million dollars.*
The ceremonies of religion, which included that of the treatment of disease, inasmuch as a demonic cause was always assigned to illness, were in the hands of a. particular class, known to the whites as "medicine men,'* or shamans, or sorcerers. Some- times the right of belonging to this order was heredi- tary in a gens, but generally peculiar aptitude for the business was the only requirement. Many of them were skilled in legerdemain, and even to-day some of their tricks puzzle the acutest white observers. As doctors, augurs, rain-makers, spell-binders, leaders of secret societies, and depositaries of the tribal tradi- tions and wisdom, their influence was generally pow- erful. Of course it was adverse to the Europeans, especially the missionaries, and also of course it was generally directed to their own interest or that of their class; but this is equally true of priestly power wherever it gains the ascendency, and the injurious effect of the Indian shamans on their nations was not greater than has been in many instances that of the Christian priesthood on European communities.
The psychic identity of the Americans is well illustrated in their languages. There are indeed in- definite discrepancies in their lexicography and in their surface morphology; but in their logical sub-
* Carlos de Gagern, CharakterisHk der Indianischen Bevdlker- ung Mexikos, s. 23 (Wien, 1873).
56 THE AMERICAN RACE.
structure, in what Wilhelm von Humboldt called the ** inner form,*' they are strikingly alike. The points in which this is especially apparent are in the develop- ment of pronominal forms, in the abundance of gen- eric particles, in the overweening preference for concepts of action (verbs), rather than concepts of existence (nouns), and in the consequent subordina- tion of the latter to the former in the proposition. This last mentioned trait is the source of that char- acteristic which is called incorporation. The Ameri- can languages as a rule are essentially incorporative languages, that is, they formally include both sub- ject and object in the transitive concept, and its oral expression. It has been denied by some able lin- guists that this is a characteristic trait of American languages; but I have yet to find one, of which we possess ample means of analysis, in which it does not appear in one or another of its forms, thus revealing the same linguistic impulse. Those who reject it as a feature have been led astray either by insufficient means of information about certain languages, or by not clearly comprehending the characteristics of the incorporative process itself.*
As intimated, however, in spite of this underlying sameness, there is wide diversity in the tongues them- selves. Where we cannot find sufficient coincidences of words and grammar in two languages to admit of supposing that under the laws of linguistic science they are related, they are classed as independent
* I have treated this subject at considerable length in opposition to the opinion of Lucien Adam and Friederich Miiller in my Essays of an Americanist, pp. 349-389 (Philadelphia, 1890).
I.ANGUAGES.
57
stocks or families. Of such, there are about eighty in North and as many in South America. These stocks oflfer us, without doubt, our best basis for the ethnic classification of the American tribes; the only basis, indeed, which is of any value. The efforts which have been heretofore made to erect a geographic class- ification, with reference to certain areas, political or physical ; or a craniological one, with reference to skull forms; or a cultural one, with reference to stages of savagery and civilization, have all proved worthless. The linguistic is the only basis on which the subdivision of the race should proceed. Similarity of idioms proves to some extent similarity of descent and similarity of psychic endowments. Of course, there has been large imposition of one language on another in the world's history; but never without a corresponding infiltration of blood ; so that the changes in language remain as evidence of national and race comminglings. I select, therefore, the lin- guistic classification of the American race as the only one of any scientific value, and, therefore, that which alone merits consideration.
The precise number of linguistic stocks in use in America at the discovery has not been made out. In that portion of the continent north of Mexico the re- searches of the Bureau of Ethnology of the United States have defined fifty-nine stocks, no less than forty of which were confined to the narrow strip of land between the Rocky mountains and the Pacific ocean.
For convenience of study I shall classify all the stocks into five groups, as follows: —
58 THE AMERICAN RACE.
I. The North Atlantic Group. II. The North Pacific Group.
III. The Central Group.
IV. The South Pacific Group. V. The South Atlantic Group.
This arrangement is not one of convenience only; I attach a certain ethnographic importance to this classification. There is a distinct resemblance be- tween the two Atlantic groups, and an equally distinct contrast between them and the Pacific groups, ex- tending to temperament, culture and physical traits. Each of the groups has mingled extensively within its own limits, and but slightly outside of them. Each is subject to conditions of temperature, altitude and humidity, which are peculiar to itself, and which have exerted definite influences on the constitution and the history of its inhabitants. Such a subdi- vision of the race is therefore justified by anthropolo- gic considerations.
I. THE NORTH ATLANTIC GROUP.
I. THE ESKIMOS.
THE word Eskimo, properly Eski-mwhan^ means in the Abnaki dialect of Algonquin, '*he eats raw flesh," and was applied to the tribe from its cus- tom of consuming fish and game without cooking. They call themselves Innuit^ *' people," a term the equivalent of which is the usual expression applied by American natives to their* own particular stock.
The Innuit are at present essentially a maritime and arctic nation, occupying the coast and adjacent islands from the Straits of Belle Isle on the Atlantic to Icy Bay, at the foot of Mount St. Elias on the Pacific, and extending their wanderings and settle- ments as far up Smith's Sound as N. Lat. 80°, where they are by far the northernmost inhabitants of the earth. They have occupied Greenland for certainly more than a thousand years, and were the earliest settlers in some of the Aleutian islands. Portions of them at some remote period crossed Behring Strait and settled on Asiatic soil, while others established them- selves along the shores of Newfoundland. Indeed, from the reports of the early Norse explorers and from the character of relics found on the Atlantic coast, it is probable that they once extended as far
(59)
6o THE AMERICAN RACE.
south as the mouth of the Delaware river.* Their ancestors quite possibly dwelt on the moors of New England when the reindeer browsed there, and ac- companied that quadruped in its final migration to the north. They belong in history and character to the Atlantic peoples.
This question, as to where their common progeni- tors resided, has been much discussed. A favorite theory of some writers has been that they migrated out of Asia by way of Behring Strait; but those who have studied their culture on the spot do not advocate this opinion. These observers have, without exception, reached the conclusion that the Innuit were origi- nally an inland people, that their migrations were toward the north and west, and that they have been gradually forced to the^'inhospitable climes they oc- cupy by the pressure of foes. Dr. Rink, who passed many years among them, would look for their early home somewhere in Alaska; but Mr. John Murdoch and Dr. Franz Boas, two of our best authorities on this tribe, incline to the view that their primal home was to the south of Jludson Bay, whence they separ- ated into three principal hordes, the one passing into Labrador and reaching Greenland, the second mov- ing to the coast of the Arctic sea, and the third to Alaska. These form respectively the Greenland, the Chiglit and the Kadjak dialects of the common tongue, t
* Packard, "Notes on the Labrador Eskimo and their former range southward," in American Naturalist, 1885, p. 471.
t John Murdoch, in The American Anthropologist, 1888, p. 129; also Dr. Henry Rink, The Eskimo Tribes (London, 1887); Dr.
TRAITS OF THE ESKIMOS. • 6l
.The closest observers report the physical traits of the Eskimos as thoroughly American and not Asian, as has sometimes been alleged. * In appearance the Innuits of pure blood are of medium or slightly un- dersize, color dark, nose prominent and sometimes aquiline, hair dark brown or black, moderately strong on the face, the pubes and in the axilla ; the eyes are dark brown and occasionally blue. The skull is generally long (dolichocephalic), but is sub- ject to extensive variations ranging from almost globular to exceptionally long and narrow speci- mens, t
In spite of the hardships of their life, the Innuits are of a singularly placid and cheerful temperament, good-natured among themselves and much given to mirth and laughter. | The ingenuity with which they have learned to overcome the difficulties of their
Franz Boas, The Central Eskimo, in the Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology ; W. H. Dall, Tribes of the Extreme Northwest (Washington, 1887) ; Ivan Petroff, in The American Naturalist, 1882, p. 567.
*Dall is positive that there is no racial distinction between the Innuit and the other American Indians, loc. cit., p. 95. He adds: "The Tatar, Japanese or Chinese origin of these people finds no corroboration in their manners, dress or language."
t Commander G. Holm found the East Greenlanders, a pure stock, well marked mesocephalic, with a maximum of 84.2 {Les Gronlandais Orientaux, p. 365, Copenhagen, 1889). Dall gives the range in his measurements of Innuit skulls from 87 to 70 {Con- tributions to American Ethnology, Vol. I, p. 71).
X "Unlike the Indian " writes Mr. F. F. Payne, "the Eskimo is nearly always laughing, and even in times of great distress it is not hard to make them smile." "The Eskimo at Hudson Strait," in Proc. Canad. Institute, 1889, p. 128.
62 THE AMERICAN RACK.
situation is quite surprising. In a country without wood or water, frightfully cold, and yielding no man- ner of edible fruit or vegetable, they manage to live and thrive. Their principal nurriture is the pro- duct of the sea. They build boats called kayaks or bidarkas from the bones of walrus covered with the skins of seals; their winter houses are of blocks of snow laid up on the principle of the circular arch to form a dome, with windows of sheets of ice. These they warm by means of stone lamps fed with blubber oil. Their clothing is of bird skins and furs, and they are skilled in the preparation of a sort of leather. As faithful companions they have their dogs, intelli- gent animals, used both in hunting and for drawing small sledges built of wood or bone.
With their tools of bone or stone they fashion many curious and useful articles, displaying a marked in- ventive faculty and an artistic eye. The picture- writing which they devised for the assistance of their memory is greatly superior to any found north of Mexico in the faithful delineation of objects, especi- ally of animal forms.*
The long winter nights are enlivened by music and songs, of which they are passionately fond, and by the recital of imaginative tales, the stock of which is inexhaustible. A skillful bard enjoys a wide reputa- tion, and some of their poems contain fine and delicate sentiments, t Others are from ancient date, and are
*W. J. HoflEman, **On Indian and Eskimo Pictography," in Trans. Anthrop. Soc. of Washington, Vol. II, p. 146.
tSee some examples in my Essays of an Americanist, pp. 288- 290 (Philadelphia, 1890).
SONGS AND STORIES. 63
passed down from generation to generation with scrup- ulous fidelity, every tone, every gesture, being imi- tated. The meter and rendition of their songs seem to the European monotonous, but the Eskimo has his own notion of the music of verse, and it is a very advanced one; he would have it akin to the sweet sounds of nature, and for that reason their poets sleep by the sound of running water that they may catch its mysterious notes, and model on them their own productions.* These songs also serve as a peaceful means to allay feuds. When two persons quarrel, they will appoint an evening and sing *' nith songs'* at each other, and the audience will decide which comes out best. This verdict will put an end to the ill-feeling.
The imaginative character of the people is also reflected in their religions. They believe in one or several overruling powers, and in a multitude of in- ferior spirits and uncanny monsters. These require propitiation rather than worship. The general belief is that a person has two souls, one of which is in- separably connected with his name and passes with it to any infant named for him ; while the second either descends to a warm and pleasant abode under the earth or passes to a less agreeable one in the sky; the streaming lights of the aurora borealis were some- times thought to be these latter spirits in their ce- lestial home.
The rites of their religion were performed chiefly by the priests, called angekoks^ who, however, were
*G. Holm, Les Gronlandais Orientaux, p. 382 (Copenhagen, 1889).
64 THE AMERICAN RACE.
little better than conjurors. In some parts this office was hereditary.
The language of the Innuits is very much the same throughout the whole of their extended domain. Bishop de Schweinitz once told me that a few years ago a convert from the Moravian mission in Labra- dor went to Alaska, and it required but a few weeks for him to understand and be understood by the na- tives there. In character the tongue is highly agglu- tinative, the affixes being joined to the end of the word. The verb is very complex, having thirty- one hundred modified forms, all different and all in- variable. * It is rich in expressions for all the objects of Eskimo life, and is harmonious to the ear. Like the Greek, it has three numbers, singular, dual and plural.
Those Eskimos who live in Asia call themselves Yuity a dialect form of Innuit. They dwell around East Cape and the shore south of it, in immediate contact with the Namollos or Sedentary Chukchis, a Sibiric people, totally different in language, appear- ance and culture. The Yuits have not at all assimi- lated to the reindeer-keeping, pastoral habits of the Chukchis, and by their own well-preserved traditions, moved across the straits from the American side, with which they continue commercial intercourse. Their villages are sometimes close to those of the Namollos, or Sedentary Chukchis, they intermarry, and have a jargon sufficient for their mutual purposes ; but it is an error, though a prevailing one, to suppose that
* Dr. A. Pfizmaier, Darlegungen Gronldndischer Verbalformen (Wien, 1885).
THE ALEUTIANS. 65
they are the same people. The Chukchis never en- tered America, and the Innuits, as a people, never crossed from Asia, or originated there. * The jade im- plements of northeastern Siberia have proved to be of the Alaskan variety of that stone, and not the Chinese jade, as some supposed, f
From all points whence we have definite informa- mation, this interesting people are steadily diminish- ing in numbers, even where they are not in contact with the whites. The immediate causes appear to be increasing sterility and infant mortality. Two sur- viving children to a marriage is about the average productiveness, and statistics show that it requires double this number for a population to maintain itself even stationary.
The Aleutian branch occupies the long chain of islands which stretch westward from the southwestern corner of Alaska. The climate is mild, the sea abounds in fish, and innumerable birds nest in the rocks. We may therefore believe the navigators of the last century, who placed the population of the islands at 25,000 or 30,000 souls, although at present they have sunk to about 2,000. They have the same
*On the relative position of the Chukchis, Namollos and Yuit, consult Dall in American Naturalist, 1881, p. 862 ; J. W. Kelly, in Circular of the U. S. Bureau of Education, No. 2, 1890, p. 8 ; A. Pfizmaier, Die Sprachen der Aleuten, p. i (Vienna, 1884). The Yuits are also known as Tuski. The proper location of the Na- mollos is on the Arctic Sea, from East Cape to Cape Shelagskoi (Dall).
t Proceedings of the U. S. National Museum, 1883, p. 427. All of Clement G. Markham's arguments for the Asiatic origin of the Eskimos have been refuted.
5
66 THE AMERICAN RACE.
cheerful temperament as the Eskimos, and their grade of culture was, when first discovered, about the same. In their own language they call themselves Unangan^ people, the name Aleutes having been given them by the Russians.*
It may be considered settled that their ancestors populated the islands from the American and not the Asiatic side. Not only do their own traditions" assert this,t but it is confirmed by the oldest relics of their culture, which is Eskimo in character, and by their language, which is generally acknowledged to be a derivative of the Alaskan Eskimo. J It is divided into two dialects, the Unalashkan and Atkan, not very dissimilar, and is remarkable for the richness of its verbal forms. ||
In physical traits they are allied to the Eskimos, though with rounder heads, the average of twenty- five skulls giving an index of 80. § Early in this cen- tury they were brought under the control of Russian missionaries, and became partially civilized and at- tached to the Greek Church. In their ancient myths their earliest ancestor was said to have been the dog,
* Either from the jriver Olutora and some islands near its mouth (Petroff ); or from Eleutes, a tribe in Siberia, whom the Russians thought they resembled (Pinart).
flvan Petroff, in Tra7is. Amer. Anthrop. Soc, Vol. II, p. 90.
X Comp. H. Winkler, Ural-Altaische Vdlker und SpracheUy s. 119, and Dall, Contributions to N. Amer. Ethnology, Vol. I, p. 49, who states that their tongue is distinctly connected with the Innuit of Alaska.
II Dr. A. Pfizmaier, Die Sprache der Aleuten und Fuchsinseln, s. 4 (Vienna, 1884).
I Dall, loc. cit., p. 47.
NEWFOUNDIiAND INDIANS. 67
which animal was therefore regarded with due re- spect. *
2. THE BEOTHUKS.
Adjacent to the Labrador Eskimos and the north- ern Algonkins, upon the Island of Newfoundland, dwelt the Beothuks, or " Red Indians,'' now extinct, who in custom and language differed much from their neighbors of the mainland. Although called "red," they are also said to have been unusually light in complexion, and the term was applied to them from their habit of smearing their bodies with a mixture of grease and red ochre. They are further described as of medium stature, with regular features and aquiline noses, the hair black and the beard scanty or absent.
In several elements of culture they had marked differences from the tribes of the adjacent mainland. Their canoes were of bark or of skins stretched on . frames, and were in the shape of a crescent, so that they required ballast to prevent them from upsetting. The winter houses they constructed were large conical lodges thirty or forty feet in diameter, having a frame of light poles upon which was laid bark or skins, generally the latter. Hunting and fishing provided them with food, and they have left the reputation of irreclaimable savages. They had no dogs, and the art of pottery was unknown ; yet they were not unskilled as artisans, carving images of wood, dressing stone for implements, and tanning deerskins for clothing. An»examination of their language discloses some words ' borrowed from the Algonkin, and slight coincidences
*Ivan Petroff, loc. cit., p. 91.
68 THE AMERICAN RACE.
with the Eskimo dialects, but the main body of the idiom stands alone, without affinities. Derivation was principally if not exclusively by suffixes, and the general morphology seems somewhat more akin to Eskimo than Algonkin examples. *
3. THE ATHABASCANS (TINNlfe).
Few linguistic families on the continent can com- pare in geographical distribution with that known as the Athabascan, Chepewyan or Tinn^. Of these syn- onyms, I retain the first, as that adopted by Busch- mann, who proved, by his laborious researches, the kinship of its various braches.f These extend in- terruptedly from the Arctic Sea to the borders of Durango, in Mexico, and from Hudson Bay to the Pacific.
In British America this stock lies immediately north of the Algonkins, the dividing line running approximately from the mouth of the Churchill river on Hudson Bay to the mouth of the Frazer, on the Pacific. To the north they are in contact with the Eskimos and to the west with the tribes of the Pacific coast. In this wide but cold and barren area they are divided into a number of bands, without coherence, and speaking dialects often quite unlike. The I^ou- cheux have reached the mouth of the Mackenzie river,
* Mr. A. S. Gatschet has compiled the accessible information about the Beothuk language in two articles in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society ^ 1885 and 1886.
t J. C. E. Buschmann, Der AthapaSkische Sprachstamm, 4to., Berlin, 1856, and Die Verwandtschafts- Verhdltnisse der Athapaski- schen Sprachen, Berlin, 1863.
ATHAPASCAN BANDS. 69
the Kuchin are along the Yukon, the Kenai on the ocean about the peninsula that bears their name, while the Nehaunies, Secaunies and Takullies are among the mountains to the south. The Sarcees lived about the southern headwaters of the Saskat- chewan, while other bands had crossed the mountains and wandered quite to the Pacific coast, where they appear as Umpquas near Salem, Oregon ; as Tututenas on Rogue river; and in California as Hupas, on and about Trinity river. These are but a small fraction of the great southern migration of this stock. The Navajos belong to it, and the redoubted Apaches, who extended their war parties far into Mexico, and who were the main agents in destroying the civilization which ages ago began to reveal fair promise in the valleys of the Gila and its affluents, and who up to very recent years defied alike the armies of both Mexico and the United States. Their southern mi- grations beyond the valley of the Gila probably do not date far back, that is, much beyond the conquest Although the Mexican census of 1880 puts the Mexi- can Apaches at ten thousand, no such number can be located. Orozco y Berra mentions one of their tribes in Chihuahua, which he calls Tobosos; but Spanish authors refer to these as living in New Mex- ico in 1583. The only Apache band now known to be in Mexico are the Janos or Janeros in Chihuahua, made up of Li pans and Mescaleros. (Henshaw.)
Wherever found, the members of this group pre- sent a certain family resemblance. In appearance they are tall and strong, the forehead low with prom- inent superciliary ridges, the eyes slightly oblique,
70 THK AMERICAN RACE.
the nose prominent but wide toward the base, the mouth large, the hands and feet small. Their strength and endurance are often phenomenal, but in the North at least, their longevity is slight, few living beyond fifty. Intellectually they rank below most of their neighbors, and nowhere do they appear as fosterers of the germs of civilization. Where, as among the Navajos, we find them having some repute for the mechanical arts, it turns out that this is owing to having captured and adopted the members of more gifted tribes. Their temperament is inclined to be gloomy and morose; yet in spite of their apparent stolidity they are liable to f)anic terrors, to epidemic neuroses, temporary hallucinations and manias — a condition not at all rare among peoples of inferior culture. *
Nowhere do we find among them any form of gov- ernment. Their chiefs are chosen without formality, either on account of their daring in war or for their generosity in distributing presents. The office is not hereditary, there is rarely even any war chief, their campaigns being merely hurried raids. A singular difference exists as to their gentile systems, and their laws of consanguinity. Usually it is counted in the female line only. Thus among the TakuUies of the north a son does not consider his father any relation, but only his mother and her people. When a man dies, all his property passes to his wife's family. The totems are named from animals, and as usual a wife must be selected from another totem. This does not
*See Mgr, Henry Faraud, Dix-huit Ans chez les Sauvages, pp. 345, etc. (Paris, 1866.) Petitot, Les Dini Dindjii, p. 32.
ATHABASCAN CUSTOMS. 7 1
stand in the way of a son being united to his father's sister, and such a marriage is often effected for prop- erty reasons. Among the Sarcees the respect for a mother-in-law is so great that her son-in-law dares not sit at a meal with her, or even touch her, without paying a fine. Among the Navajo and Apache tribes the son also follows the gens of the mother, while in the Umpqua and Tutu branches in Oregon he belongs to that of his father. In all the southern tribes the gens is named from a place, not an animal.* Mar- riage is polygamous at will, wives are obtained by purchase, and among the Slave Indians the tie is so lax that friends will occasionally exchange wives as a sign of amity. Usually the position of the woman is abject, and marital affection is practically unknown; although it is said that the Nehaunies, a tribe of eastern Alaska, at one time obeyed a female chief.
The arts were in a primitive condition. Utensils were of wood, horn or stone, though the Takully women manufactured a coarse pottery, and also spun and wove yarn from the hair of the mountain goat. Agriculture was not practised either in the north or south, the only exception being the Navajos and with them the inspiration came from other stocks, f The Kuchin of the Yukon make excellent bark canoes, and
*See George M. Dawson, in An. Rep. of the Geol. Survey of Canada, 1887, P- 191, sq.; Washington Matthews and J. G. Bourke, in. Jour, of Amer. Folk-Lore, 1890, p. 89, sq.
t The best blanket makers, smiths and other artisans among the Navajos are descendants of captives from the Zuiii and other pueblos. John G. 'RowckQ, Journal of American Folk-Lore, 1890, p. 115.
72 THE AMERICAN RACE.
both they and their neighbors live in skin tents of neatly dressed hides. Many of the tribes of the far north are improvident in both clothing and food, and cannibalism was not at all uncommon among them.
The most cultured of their bands were the Navajos, whose name is said to signify ** large cornfields," from their extensive agriculture. When the Span- iards first met them in 1541 they were tillers of the soil, erected large granaries for their crops, irrigated their fields by artificial water courses or aceqiiias^ and lived in substantial dwellings, partly underground ; but they had not then learned the art of weaving the celebrated '* Navajo blankets," that being a later ac- quisition of their artisans.*
In their religions there was the belief in deified nat- ural forces and in magic that we find usually at their stage of culture. The priests or shamans were re- garded with fear, and often controlled the counsels of the tribe. One of their prevalent myths was that of the great thunder-bird often identified with the raven. On the Churchill river it was called Idi^ and the myth related that from its brooding on the primeval waters the land was brought forth. The myth is found too widespread to be other than genuine. The Sarcees seem to have had some form of solar worship, as they called the sun Our Father and the earth Our Mother.
The Navajos, who have no reminiscence of their ancestral home in the north, locate the scene of their creation in the San Juan mountains, and its date
*A. F. Bandelier, Indians of the Southwestern United States, PP- 175-6 (Boston, 1890).
ATHABASCAN DIALECTS. 73
about seven centuries ago. Their story is that the first human pair were formed of the meal of maize brought by the gods from the cliff houses in the canons. *
The Athabascan dialects are usually harsh and dif- ficult of enunciation. In reducing them to writing, sixty-three characters have to be called on to render the correct sounds, t There is an oral literature of songs and chants, many of which have been preserved by the missionaries. The Hupas of California had extended their language and forced its adoption among the half-dozen neighboring tribes whom they had reduced to the condition of tributaries. $
ATHABASCAN WNGUISTIC STOCK.
Apaches, in Arizona, Chihuahua, Durango, etc.
Ariquipas, in southern Arizona.
Atnahs, on Copper River, Alaska.
Beaver Indians, see Sarcees.
Chepewyans, north of the Chipeways.
Chiricahuas, in southern Arizona.
Coyoteros, in southern Arizona.
Hupas, in California, on Trinity River. Janos, in Chihuahua, near Rio Grande. Jicarillas, in northern New Mexico.
Kenais, on and near Kenai peninsula, Alaska.
Kuchins, on Yukon and Copper rivers, Alaska.
Lipanes, near mouth of Rio Grande, (properly, Ipa-ndf).
Loucheux, on lower Mackenzie river ; most northenf tribe.
♦Dr. Washington Matthews, ixs. Journal of American Folk-Lore, 1890, p. 90.
fThe student of this language finds excellent material in the Dictionnaire de la Langue Din^-Dindjii, par E. Petitot (folio, Paris, 1876), in which three dialects are presented.
t Stephen Powers, Tribes of California, p. 72, 76 (Washington, 1877).
74 THK AMERICAN RACE.
Mescaleros, in New Mexico, W. of Rio Grande.
Montagnais, north of Chipeways.
Nahaunies, on Stickine and Talton rivers, Alaska.
Navajos, northern New Mexico and Arizona.
Sarcees, on upper Saskatchewan and at Alberta.
Sicaunies, on upper Peach river.
Slaves, on upper Mackenzie river.
Tacullies, head waters of the Fraser river, Brit. Col.
Tinni, synonym of Athabascan.
Tututenas, on Rogue river, Oregon.
Umpquas, Pacific coast near Salem, Oregon.
4. THE ALGONKINS.
The whole of the north Atlantic coast, between Cape Fear and Cape Hatteras, was occupied at the discovery by the Algonkin stock. Their northern limit reached far into Labrador, where they were in immediate contact with the Eskimos, and along the southern shores of Hudson Bay, and its western litoral as far north as Churchill river. In this vicinity lived the Crees, one of the most important tribes, who re- tained the language of the stock in its purest form. West of them were the Ottawas and Chipeways, closely allied in dialect, and owners of most of the shores of lakes Michigan and Superior. Beyond these again, and separated from them by tribes of Dakota stock, were the Blackfeet, whose lands ex- tended to the very summit of the Rockies. South of the St. Lawrence were the Abnakis or Eastlanders, under which general name were included the Mic- macs, Echemins and others. The whole of the area of New England was occupied by Algonkins, whose near relatives were the Mohegans of the lower Hud- son. These were in place and dialect near to the
TRAITS OF THE AI^GONKINS. 75
Lendpes of the Delaware valley, and to the vagrant Shawnees; while the Nanticokes of Maryland, the Powhatans of Virginia and the Pamticokes of the Carolinas diverged more and more from the purity of the original language.
These and many other tribes scattered over this vast area were related, all speaking dialects mani- festly from the same source. Where their ancient home was situated has been the subject of careful in- vestigations, the result of which may be said to be that traditions, archaeology and linguistic analysis combine to point to the north and the east, in other words, to some spot north of the St. Lawrence and east of Lake Ontario, as the original home of the stock.
The Algonkins may be taken as typical specimens of the American race. Thej^ are fully up to the average stature of the best developed European na- tions, muscular and symmetrical. The distinguished anthropologist Quetelet measured with great care six members of the Chipeway tribe, and pronounced them as equaling in all physical points the best spec- imens of the Belgians.* Their skulls are generally dolichocephalic, but not uniformly so. We have in the collection of the Academy seventy-seven Algon- kin crania, of which fifty-three are dolichocephalic, fourteen mesocephalic, and ten brachycephalic.f The
*"0n voit que leur conformation est a peu pres exactment le n6tre." Quetelet, " Sur les ludiens 0-jib-be-was," in Bull. Acad. Royale de Belgique, Tome XIII.
1 1 refer to the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. The numerous measuremejits of skulls of New England Algonkins by Lucien Carr, show them to be mesocephalic tending to dolichoce-
76 THE AMERICAN RACE.
eyes are horizontal, the nose thin and prominent, the malar bones well marked, the lips thin. The color is a coppery brown, the hair black and straight, though I have seen a slight waviness in some who claim purity of blood. The hands and feet are small, the voice rich and strong. Physical endurance is very great, and under favorable circumstances the longevity is fully up to that of any other race.
The totemic system prevailed among the Algonkin tribes, with descent in the female line; but we do not find among them the same communal life as among the Iroquois. Only rarely do we encounter the *'long house," occupied by a number of kindred families. Among the Lendp^s, for example, this was entirely unknown, each married couple having its own resi- dence. The gens was governed by a chief, who was in some cases selected by the heads of the other gentes. The tribe had as permanent ruler a *' peace chief," selected from a particular gens, also by the heads of the other gentes. His authority was not absolute, and, as usual, did not extend to any matter concerning the particular interests of any one gens. When war broke out, the peace chief had no concern in it, the campaign being placed in charge of a "war chief," who had acquired a right to the position by his prominent prowess and skill.
While the Mohegans built large communal houses, the Lenapes and most of the eastern Algonkins con- structed small wattled huts with rounded tops,
phaly, orthognathic, mesorhine and megaseme. See his article, "Notes on the Crania of New England Indians," in the Anniver- sary Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History^ 1880.
ARTS OF THE ALGONKINS. ^^
thatched with the leaves of the Indian corn or with sweet flags. These were built in groups and sur- rounded with palisades of stakes driven into the ground. In summer, light brush tents took the place of these. Agriculture was by no means neglected. The early explorers frequently refer to large fields of maize, squash and tocacco under cultivation by the natives. The manufacture of pottery was wide- spread, although it was heavy and coarse. Mats woven of bark and rushes, deer skins dressed with skill, feather garments, and utensils of wood and stone, are mentioned by the early voyagers. Copper was dug from veins in New Jersey and elsewhere and hammered into ornaments, arrowheads, knives and chisels. It was, however, treated as a stone, and the process of smelting it was unknown. The arrow and spear heads were preferably of quartz, jasper and chert, while the stone axes were of diorite, hard sandstone, and similar tough and close grained ma- terial.* An extensive commerce in these and similar articles was carried on with very distant points. The red pipe-stone was brought to the Atlantic coast from the Coteau des Prairies, and even the black slate highly ornamented pipes of the Haidah on Vancouver Island have been exhumed from graves of Lendpe Indians.
Nowhere else north of Mexico was the system of picture writing developed so far as among the Algon- kins, especially by the Lenap^s and the Chipeways. It had passed from the representative to the symbolic stage, and was extensively employed to preserve the
*The best work on this subject is Dr. C. C. Abbott's Primitive Industry (Salem, 1881).
78 THE AMERICAN RACE.
national history and the rites of the secret societies. The figures' were scratched or painted on pieces of bark or slabs of wood, and as the color of the paint was red, these were sometimes called ''red sticks.'^ One such, the curious Walum Olum^ or "Red Score," of the Ivcnapes, containing the traditional history of the tribe, I was fortunate enough to rescue from oblivion, and have published it with a transla- tion.* The contents of others relating to the history of the Chipeways (Ojibways) have also been partly preserved.
The religion of all the Algonkin tribes presented a distinct similarity. It was based on the worship of Light, especially in its concrete manifestations, as the sun and fire; of the Four Winds, as typical of the cardinal points, and as the rain bringers; and of the Totemic Animal. Their myths were numerous, the central figure being the national hero-god Manibozho or Michabo, often identified with the rabbit, appar- ently from a similarity in the words. He was the beneficent sage who taught them laws and arts, who gave them the maize and tobacco, and who on his de- parture promised to return and inaugurate the Golden Age. In other myths he is spoken of as the creator of the visible world and the first father of the race. Along with the rites in his worship were others di- rected to the Spirits of the Winds, who bring about the change of seasons, and to local divinities.
* The Lendpi and their Legends ; with the Complete Text and Symbols of the Walam, Olum,,andan Inquiry into its Authenticity. By Daniel G. Brinton, Philadelphia, 1885 (Vol. V. of Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature).
BLACKFEET AND LENAPI^S.
79
The dead as a rule were buried, each gens having its own cemetery. Some tribes preserved the bones with scrupulous care, while in Viif' inia the bodies of persons of importance were dried and deposited in houses set apart for the purpose.
The tribe that wandered the furthest from the primitive home of the stock were the Blackfeet, or Sisika, which word has this signification. It is de- rived from their earlier habitat in the valley of the Red river of the north, where the soil was dark and blackened their moccasins. Their bands include the Blood or Kenai and the Piegan Indians. Half a cen- tury ago they were at the head of a confederacy which embraced these and also the Sarcee (Tinn^) and the Atsina (Caddo) nations, and numbered about thirty thousand souls. They have an interesting mythology and an unusual knowledge of the constellations.*
The Ivcnapes were an interesting tribe who occupied the valley of the Delaware river and the area of the present State of New Jersey. For some not very clear reason they were looked upon by the other members of the stock as of the most direct lineage, and were referred to as ''grandfather." Their dialect, which has been preserved by the Moravian Missionaries, is harmonious in sound, but has varied markedly from the purity of the Cree.f It has lost, for instance, the
*See Horatio Hale, ''Report on the Blackfeet y"" in Pro c. of the Brit. Assoc, for the Adv. of Science, 1885.
t See Lenape-E7iglish Dictionary : From an anonymous MS. in the Archives of the Moravian Church at Bethlehem, Pa. Edited with additions by Daniel G. Brinton, M. D., and Rev. Albert Se- qaqkind Anthony. Published by the Historical Society of Penn- sylvania. Philadelphia, 1888. Quarto, pp. 236.
8o THE AMERICAN RACE.
peculiar vowel change which throws the verb from the definite to the indefinite form. The mythology of the I^enap^s, whicft has been preserved in fragments, presents the outlines common to the stock.
AI^GONKIN WNGUISTIC STOCK.
Abnakis, Nova Scotia and S. bank of St. Lawrence.
Arapahoes, head waters of Kansas river.
Blackfeet^ head waters of Missouri river.
Cheyennes, upper waters of Arkansas river.
Chipezvays, shores of Lake Superior.
Crees, southern shores of Hudson Bay.
Delawares, see Lenapes.
Illinois, on the Illinois river.
Kaskaskias, on Mississippi, below Illinois river.
Kikapoos, on upper Illinois river.
Lendpis, on the Delaware river.
Meliseets, in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
MiatniSy between Miami and Wabash rivers.
Micmacs, in Nova Scotia.
Menomonees, near Green Bay.
Mohegans, on lower Hudson river.
Manhattans, about New York Bay.
Nanticokes, on Chesapeake Bay.
Ottawas, on the Ottawa river and S. of L. Huron.
Pampticokes, near Cape Hatteras.
Passaniaquoddies, on Schoodic river.
Piankishaws, on middle Ohio river.
Piegans, see Blackfeet.
Pottawattomies, S. of Lake Michigan.
Sauteux, see Crees.
Sacs and Foxes, on Sac river.
Secoffies, in Labrador.
Shawnees, on Tennessee river.
Weas, near the Piankishaws.
THE FIVE NATIONS. 8l
5. THE IROQUOIS.
When the French first explored the St. I^awrence River, they found both its banks, in the vicinity where the cities of Montreal and Quebec now stand, peopled by the Iroquois. This tribe also occupied all the area of New York state (except the valley of the lower Hudson), where it was known as the Five Nations. West of these were the Hurons and Neu- tral Nation in Canada, and the Fries south of Lake Frie, while to the south of the Five Nations, in the valley of the Susquehanna and pushing their out- posts along the western shore of Chesapeake Bay to the Potomac, were the Andastes and Conestogas, called also Susquehannocks. Still further south, about the head-waters of the Roanoke River, dwelt the Tuscaroras, who afterwards returned north and formed the sixth nation in the league. West of the Apalachians, on the upper waters of the Tennessee River, lived the Cherokees, who, by their tradition, had moved down from the upper Ohio, and who, if they were not a branch of the same family, were af- filiated to it by many ancient ties of blood and lan- guage. The latest investigations of the Bureau of Fthnology result in favor of considering them a branch, though a distant one, of the Iroquois line.
The stock was wholly an inland one, at no point reaching the ocean. According to its most ancient traditions we are justified in locating its priscan home in the district between the lower St. Lawrence and Hudson Bay. If we may judge from its cranial forms, its purest representatives were toward the east. The skulls of the Five Nations, as well as 6
82 THE AMERICAN RACE.
those of the Tuscaroras and Cherokees, are distinctly dolichocephalic, and much alike in other respects, while those of the Hurons are brachy cephalic* Physically the stock is most superior, unsurpassed by any other on the continent, and I may even say by any other people in the world ; for it stands on record that the five companies (500 men) recruited from the Iroquois of New York and Canada during our civil war stood first on the list among all the re- cruits of our army for height, vigor and corporeal symmetry.
In intelligence also their position must be placed among the highest. It was manifested less in their culture than in their system of government. About the middle of the fifteenth century the Onondaga chief, Hiawatha, succeeded in completing the famous league which bound together his nation with the Mohawks, Oneidas, Senecas and Cayugas into one federation of offense and defence. *'The system he devised was to be not a loose and transitory league, but a permanent government. While each nation was to retain its own council and management of local affairs, the general control was to be lodged in a federal senate, composed of representatives to be elected by each nation, holding ofiice during good behavior and acknowledged as ruling chiefs through- out the whole confederacy. Still further, and more remarkably, the federation was not to be a limited one. It was to be indefinitely expansible. The
*J. Aitken Meigs, "Cranial Forms of the American Aborigines," in Proceedings of the Acad, of Nat. Sciences of Philadelphia, May, 1866.
HIAWATHA'S PLAN. 83
avowed design of its proposer was to abolish war altogether, ' ' *
Certainl)^ this scheme was one of the most far- sighted, and in its aim beneficent, which any states- man has ever designed for man. With the Iroquois it worked well. They included in the league por- tions of the Neutral nation and the Tuscaroras, and for centuries it gave them the supremacy among all their neighbors. The league was primarily based upon or at least drew much of its strength from the system of gentes; this prevailed both among the Iroquois and Cherokees, descent being traced in the female line. Indeed, it was from a study of the Iroquois system that the late Mr. Morgan formed his theory that ancient society everywhere passed through a similar stage in attaining civilization.
It is consonant with their advanced sentiments that among the Iroquois, women had more than ordi- nary respect. They were represented by a special speaker in the councils of the tribe, and were author^ ized to conduct negotiations looking towards making peace with an enemy. Among the Conestogas we have the instance of a woman being the recognizedj^ "Queen'' of the tribe. With the Wyandots, the- council of each gens was composed exclusively of women. They alone elected the chief of the gens, who represented its interests in the council of the tribe, t
♦Horatio Hale, The Iroquois Book of Rites, pp. 21, 22. (Phila- delphia, 1883. Vol. II. of Brinton's Library of Aboriginal Amer- ican Literature.^
t J. W. Powell, First Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 61. . (Washington, 1881.)
84 'THE AMERICAN RACE.
In sundry other respects they displayed an intelli- gent activity. In many localities they wer^ agri- cultural, cultivating maize, beans and tobacco, build- ing large communal houses of logs, fortifying their villages with palisades, and making excellent large canoes of birch bark. According to traditions, which are supported by recent archaeological researches, the Cherokees when they were upon the Kanawha and Ohio had large fields under cultivation, and erected mounds as sites for their houses and for burial purposes. When first encountered in east Tennessee they con- structed long communal houses like the Five Nations, had large fields of corn, built excellent canoes and manufactured pottery of superior style and finish. Although no method of recording thought had ac- quired any development among the Iroquois, they had many legends, myths and formal harangues which they handed down with great minuteness from generation to generation. In remembering them they were aided by the wampum belts and strings, which served by the arrangement and design of the beads to fix certain facts and expressions in their minds. One of the most remarkable of these ancient chants has been edited with a translation and copious notes by Horatio Hale.* The Cherokees had a simi- lar national song which was repeated solemnly each year at the period of the green corn dance. Frag- ments of it have been obtained quite recently.
The Iroquois myths refer to the struggle of the first two brothers, the dark twin and the white, a familiar symbolism in which we see the personification of the
* The Iroquois Book of Rites^ referred to above.
CHOCTAW I.EGENDS. 85
light and darkness, and the struggle of day and night.
IROQUOIS I^INGUISTIC STOCK.
Andastes^ see Conestogas.
Cayugas, south of Lake Ontario.
Cherokees, on upper Tennessee river.
Conestogas, on lower Susquehanna.
Efies, south of Lake Erie.
Hurons, see IVyandots.
Mohawks, on Lakes George and Champlain.
Neutral Nation, west of the Niagara river.
Oneidas, south of Lake Ontario.
Onondagas, south of Lake Ontario.
Senecas, south of Lake Ontario.
Susquehannocks, on lower Susquehanna-
Tuscaroras, in Virginia.
Wyandots, between Lakes Ontario and Huron.
6. THE CHAHTA-MUSKOKIS.
The various nations who are classed under the Muskoki stock occupied the broad and pleasant low- lands stretching from the terminal hills of the Apa- lachian Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and even beyond that; mighty barrier. The remains of a few other stocks in the eastern portion of this area indicate that the Muskokis were not its original occupants, and this was also their own opinion. Their legends referred to the west and the north-west as the direction whence their ancestors had wandered ; and the Choctaw legend which speaks of Nam Waya^ the Bending Mount, a large artificial mound in Winston county, Mississippi, as the locality where their first: parents saw the light, is explained by another which.
86 THE AMERICAN RACE.
describes it as the scene of their separation from the Chickasaws.
Of the main division of the stock, the Choctaws lived furthest west, bordering upon the Mississippi, the Chickasaws in the centre, and the Creeks on the Atlantic slope. The Seminoles were a branch of the latter, who, in the last century, moved into Florida; but it is probable that the whole of the west coast of that peninsula was under the control of the Creeks from the earliest period of which we have any knowledge of it.
The various members of this stock presented much diversity in appearance. The Creeks were tall and slender, the Chickasaws short and heavy ; the skulls of both have a tendency to dolichocephaly, but with marked exceptions, and the custom among many of them to deform the head artificially in various ways adds to the difficulties of the craniologist. * The color of all is called a dark cinnamon.
The gentile system with descent in the female line prevailed everywhere. The Creeks counted more than twenty gentes, the Choctaws and Chickasaws about twelve, united in phratries of four. In the towns each gens lived in a quarter by itself, and marriage within the gens was strictly prohibited. Each had its own burying place and sepulchral mound where the bones of the deceased were deposited after they had been cleaned. The chief of each town was elected for life from a certain gens, but the
* There are twenty-one skulls alleged to be of Muskoki origin in the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, of which fifteen have a cephalic index below 80.
MOUND-BUILDING TRIBES. 87
oflfice was virtually hereditary, as it passed to his nephew on his wife's side unless there were cogent reasons against it. The chief, or miko^ as he was called, ruled with the aid of a council, and together they appointed the ''war chief," who obtained the post solely on the ground of merit. Instances of a woman occupying the position of head chief were not unknown, and seem to have been recalled with pleasure by the tribe. *
The early culture of these tribes is faithfully de- picted in the records of the campaign of Hernando De Soto, who journeyed through their country in 1540. He found them cultivating extensive fields of maize, beans, squashes and tobacco; dwelling in permanent towns with well-constructed wooden edi- fices, many of which were situated on high mounds of artificial construction, and using for weapons and u^nsils stone implements of great beauty of work- manship. The descriptions of later travellers and . the antiquities still existing prove that these accounts were not exaggerated. The early Muskokis were in the highest culture of the stone age; nor were they deficient wholly in metals. They obtained gold from the auriferous sands of the Nacoochee and other streams, and many beautiful specimens of their ornaments in it are still to be seen.
Their artistic development was strikingly similar to that of the "mound-builders" who have left such interesting remains in the Ohio valley; and there is, to say the least, a strong probability that they are the
* Examples given by William Bartram in his MSS. in the Penn- sylvania Historical Society.
88 THK AMERICAN RACE.
descendants of the constructors of those ancient works, driven to the south by the irruptions of the wild tribes of the north. * Even in the last century they built solid structures of beams fastened to up- right supports, plastered on the outside, and in the interior divided into a number of rooms. The art of picture-writing was not unknown to them, and some years ago I published their remarkable ''national legend," read off from its hieroglyphics painted on a skin by their chief Chekilli in i73i.t
The religious rites of the Creeks were so elaborate that they attracted early attention, and we have quite full accounts of them. They were connected with the worship of the principle of fertility, the chief celebration, called the busk {puskita^ fast), being solemnized when the young corn became edible. In connection with this was the use of the ''black drink," a decoction of the Iris versicolor^ and the maintenance of the perpetual fire. Their chief di- vinity was referred to as the " master of breath " or of life, and there was a developed symbolism of colors, white representing peaceful and pleasant ideas; red, those of war and danger. The few Semi- noles who still survive in the southern extremity of the peninsula of Florida, continue the ceremonies of the green corn dance and black drink, though their
*See on this subject an essay on "The Probable Nationality of the Mound-Builders," in my Essays of an Americanist^ p. 67. (Philadelphia, 1890.)
fD. G. Brinton, "The National Legend of the Chahta-Muskoki Tribes," in The Historical Magazine, February, 1870. (Repub- lished in Vol. IV. of Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature.)
SOUTHERN TRIBES. 89
mythology in general has become deeply tinged with half-understood Christian teachings.*
THE MUSKOKI WNGUISTIC STOCK. ApalacheSy on Apalache Bay. Chickasaws, head waters of Mobile river. ChodawSf between the Mobile and Mississippi rivers. Coshattas, on the Red river. Creeks, see Muskokis. Hitchitees, sub-tribe of Creeks. Muskokis, between Mobile and Savannah rivers. Seminoles, in Florida. Yamassees, around Port Royal Bay, South Carolina.
5. THE CATAWBAS, YUCHIS, TIMUCUAS, NATCHEZ, CHETIMACHAS, TONICAS, ADAIZE, ATAKAPAS, ETC.
Within the horizon of the Muskoki stock were a number of small tribes speaking languages totally different. We may reasonably suppose them to have been the debris of the ancient population who held the land before the Muskokis had descended upon it from the north and west. The Catawbas in the area of North and South Carolina were one of these, and in former times are said to have had a wide extension. South of them was the interesting tribe of the Yuchis, When first heard of they were on both banks of the Savannah River, but later moved to the Chatahuche. They call themselves *' Children of the Sun," which orb they regard as a female and their mother. Their gentes are the same as those of the Creeks, and are evidently borrowed from them. Descent is counted in the female line. Women are held in honor, and
*"The Seminole Indians of Florida," by Clay MacCauley, in Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1883-4.
90 'THE AMERICAN RACE.
when De Soto first met them, they were governed by a queen. *
Some of both these tribes still survive; but this is not the case with the Timucuas^ who occupied the valley of the St. John river, Florida, and its tribu- taries, and the Atlantic coast as far North as the St. Mary river. They have been extinct for a century, but we have preserved some doctrinal works written in their tongue by Spanish missionaries in the seven- teenth century, so we gain an insight into their lan- guage, f It is an independent stock.
Near the Choctaws were the Natchez^ not far from the present city of that name. An account of them has been preserved by the early French settlers of Louisiana. They were devoted sun-worshippers and their chief was called "The Sun," and regarded as the earthly representative of the orb. They con-^ structed artificial mounds, upon which they erected temples and houses, and were celebrated for their skill in weaving fabrics from the inner bark of the mulberry tree and for their fine pottery. In their re- ligious rites they maintained a perpetual fire, and were accustomed to sacrifice captives to their gods, and the wives of their chieftain at his death.
The Taensas were a branch of the Natchez on the
*See for the Yuchis, their myths and language, Gatschet in Science, 1885, p. 253.
^ Arte de la Lengua Timuquana, compuesto en 1614 per el Pe Francisco Pareja. Reprint by Lucien Adam and Julien Vinson, Paris, 1886. An analytical study of the language has been pub- lished by Raoul de la Grass6rie in the Compte Rendu du Congris International des Antericanistes, 1888.
SOUTHERN TRIBES. 9I
other bank of the Mississippi. Attention has been drawn to them of late years by the attempt of a young seminarist in France to foist upon scholars a language of his own manufacture which he had christened Taensa^ and claimed to have derived from these peo- ple.* The Natchez language contains many words from the Muskoki dialects, but is radically dissimilar from it.f A few of the nation still preserve it in In- dian Territory.
The Chetimachas lived on the banks of Grand Lake and Grand river, and were but a small tribe. They are said to have been strictly monogamous, and to have had female chieftains. Their chief deity was Kut-Kahansh, the Noon-day Sun, in whose honor they held sacred dances at each new moon.
The Tonicas are frequently mentioned in the early French accounts of the colony of Louisiana. They lived in what is now Avoyelles parish, and were staunch friends of the European immigrants. Their language is an independent stock, and has some un- usual features in American tongues, such as a mas- culine and feminine gender of nouns and a dual in three pronouns.
The Adaize or Atai were a small tribe who once lived between Saline river and Natchitoche, La. They spoke a vocalic language, differing from any other, though including a number of Caddo words, which was owing to their having been a member of the Caddo confederacy.
*See "The Curious Hoax of the Taensa Language" in my Es- says of an Americanist, p. 452.
tD. G. Brinton, "The Language of the Natchez," 'm Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 1873.
gZ THE AMERICAN RACE.
The Atakapas had their hunting grounds about Vermilion river and the adjacent Gulf coast. Their name in Choctaw means "man-eaters/' both they and their neighbors along the Texan coast having an ugly reputation as cannibals, differing in this from the Muskokis and their neighbors east of the Missis- sippi, among whom we have no record of anthro- pophagy, even of a ritual character. The later gen- erations of Atakapas have been peaceful and indus- trious. Their language, though in the main quite alone, presents a limited number of words evidently from the same roots as their correspondents in the Uto-Aztecan family. . The coast of Texas, between the mouths of the Colorado and Nueces rivers, was the home of the Carankaways. The Spaniards gave them a very black character as merciless cannibals, impossible to reduce or convert; but the French and English set- tlers speak of them in better terms. In appearance they were tall and strong, with low foreheads, hooked noses, prominent cheek bones, tattooed skins, and wore their black hair long and tangled. The older writers affirm that they spoke Atakapa, and were a branch of that tribe; but the scanty material of their idiom which we possess seems to place them in a stock by themselves.
The Tonkaways are a small tribe who lived in northwest Texas, speaking a tongue without known relationship. A curious feature of their mythology is the deification of the wolf. They speak of this animal as their common ancestor, and at certain seasons hold wolf dances in his honor, at which they
TEXAN TRIBES. 93
dress themselves in wolf skins and howl and run in imitation of their mythical ancestor and patron. A branch of them, the Arrenamuses, is said to have dwelt considerably to the south of the main body, near the mouth of the San Antonio river.
The lower Rio Grande del Norte was peopled on both its banks by a stock which was christened by Orozco y Berra the Coahuiltecan^ but which Pimentel preferred to call the Texan. The latter is too wide a word, so I retain the former. There is not much material for the study of its dialects, so we are left in the dark as to the relationship of many tribes resi- dent in that region. They were small in size and rich in names. Adolph Uhde gives the appellations and locations of seventy-four, based on previous works and personal observations. * The missionary Garcia, in his Manual of the Sacraments^ published in the last century, names seventeen tribes speaking dia- lects of the tongue he employs, which appears to be a branch of the Coahuiltecan.f
* Die Lander am untern Rio Bravo del Norte. S. 120, sqq. (Heidelberg, 1861.) I give the following words from his vocabu- lary of the Carrizos :
Man, nd. • One, pequeten.
Woman, estoc^ kem. Two, acequeten.
Sun, al. Three, guiye.
Moon, kan. Four, naiye.
Fire, ten. Five, maguele.
The numbers three, four and five are plainly the Nahuatl yey^ nahui, macuilli, borrowed from their Uto-Aztecan neighbors.
t Bartolome Garcia, Manuel para administrar los Santos Sacra- mentos. (Mexico, 1760). It was written especially for the tribes about the mission of San Antonio in Texas.
94 I'HE AMERICAN RACE.
It is useless to repeat the long list, the more so as the bands were unimportant and have long since become extinct, with a few exceptions. They were in a savage condition, roving, and depending on hunting and fishing. The following appear to have been the principal members of the
COAHUILTECAN LINGUISTIC STOCK.
Alazapas, near Monclova.
Cacalotes, on the left bank of the Rio Grande.
Catajanos or Cartujanos, near Monclova.
Carrizos, near Monclova.
Coaquilenes, near Monclova.
Cotonames, left bank of Rio Grande.
Comecrudos, near Reynosa.
Orejones, near San Antonio de Bejar.
Pacaos or Pakawas^ near San Antonio.
Among the extinct dialects of Tamaulipas was the Maratin^ which at one time had considerable exten- sion. The only monument which has been pre- served of it is a wild song, in which the natives cele- brated all too early their victories over the Spaniards. The text contains several Nahuatl words, but the body of the roots appear to have been drawn from some other source. * Uhde locates the Maratins near Soto la Marina and along the Gtilf between the Rio Panuco and the Rio Grande, f
*As chiquat, woman, Nah. cihuatl ; baah-ka, to drink, Nah. paitia. The song is given, with several obvious errors, in Pimentel, Lenguas Indigenas de Mexico, Tom. III., p. 564 ; Orozco y Berra's lists mentions only the Aratines, Geograjia de las Lenguas de Mexico^ p. 295.
t Adolph Uhde, Die Lander am untern Rio Bravo del Norte, p. 120.
TRIBES OF THE PI.AINS. 95
6. THE PAWNEES (CADDOEs).
The Pani* stock was scattered irregularly from the Middle Missouri River to the Gulf of Mexico. The Pawnees proper occupied the territory from the Nio- brara River south to the Arkansas. The Arikari branch had separated and migrated to the North at a comparatively recent period, while the Wichitas, Caddoes and Huecos roamed over Eastern Louisiana and Western Texas. The earliest traditions of all these peoples assign their priscan home toward the south, and the Pawnees remembered having driven the Dakota tribes from the hunting grounds of the Platte Basin.
The stock as a rule had an excellent physique, being tall and robust, with well-proportioned feat- ures, the lips thin and the eyes small. Longevity however was rare, and few of either sex reached the age of sixty. The division of the tribes was into bands and these into totems, but the gentile system did not prevail with much strength among them. The chieftanship of the bands was hereditary in the male line, and the power of the chief was almost absolute. He was surrounded by a body of retainers whom he supported, and who carried out his orders. When he wished a council these messengers carried the summons. Property as well as power passed to
*The name Pani is not a word of contempt from the Algonkin language, as has often been stated, but is from the tongue of the people itself. Pariki means a horn, in the Arikari dialect uriki, and refers to their peculiar scalp-lock, dressed to stand erect and curve slightly backward, like a horn. From these two words came the English forms Pawnee and Arikaree. (Dunbar.)
96 THE AMERICAN RACE.
the family of the male, and widows were often de- prived of everything and left in destitution. Mar- riage was a strictly commercial transaction, the woman being bought from her parents. The pur- chase effected, the bridegroom had a right to espouse all the younger sisters of his wife as they grew to maturity, if he felt so inclined. The laxity of the marriage rules of the stock was carried to its limit by the Arikaris, among whom it is said fathers united with their daughters and brothers with their sisters, without offending the moral sense of the community. This may have arisen after corruption by the whites.
Agriculture among them was more in favor than generally on the plains. Maize, pumpkins and squashes were cultivated, each family having its own field two or three acres in extent. For about four months of the year they were sedentary, dwelling in houses built of poles and bark covered with sods, while the remainder of the time they wandered over their hunting grounds, carrying with them tents of skins which were stretched on poles. The women manufactured a rude pottery and the men implements and weapons of wood and stone. The Arikaris were skilled in the construction of boats of skin stretched over wooden frames, an art they may have learned from the Mandans.
The information about their religion is vague, but it seems in some respects to have resembled that of the Mexican nations. One of their chief divinities was the morning star, Opirikut^ which was supposed to represent the deity of fertility and agriculture. At the time of corn-planting a young girl, usually a cap-
PAWNEE SACRIFICES. 97
tive, was sacrificed to this divinity. The victim was bound to a stake and partly burned alive; but before life had ceased, her breast was cut open, her heart torn out and flung in the flames. Her flesh was then cut into small pieces and buried in the cornfield. This was believed to secure an abundant crop. The similarity of the rite to that in vogue among the Mexicans, who also worshipped the morning star as the goddess of fertility, is interesting.
The dead were buried with their possessions, and the customs of mourning continued sometimes for years. *
PANI I,INGUISTIC STOCK.
Anaddakkas, on left bank of Sabine river.
Arikafis, on the middle Missouri.
Assinais, in central Texas.
Caddoes, near Clear Lake, La.
Cents, see Assinais.
Huecos, on the upper Brazos river.
Innies, see Texas.
Nachitoches, on upper Red river.
Naiacos, see Anaddakkas.
Pawnees, between Niobrara and Arkansas rivers.
Tawakonies, on upper Leon river.
Texas, on upper Sabine river and branches.
Towachies, see Pawnees.
Wichitas, on north bank of Red river.
Yatasses^ on Stony creek, an affluent of Red river.
* The authorities on the Panis are John B. Dunbar, in the Maga- zine of American History, 1888 ; Hayden, Indian Tribes of the Missouri Valley (Philadelphia, 1862), and various government re- ports.
7
98 THE AMERICAN RACE.
7. THE DAKOTAS (SIOUX).
The western water-slied of the Mississippi river was largely in the possession of the Dakota or Sioux stock. Its various tribes extended in an unbroken line from the Arkansas river on the south to the Saskatchewan^ on the north, populating the whole of the Missouri valley as far up as the Yellowstone. Their principal tribes in the south were the Quapaws, Kansas and Osages ; in the central region the Poncas, Omahas ^nd Mandans ; to the north were the Sioux, Assiniboins and Crows ; while about Green Bay on Lake Michigan lived the Winnebagoes.
The opinion was formerly entertained that this great family moved to the locations where they were first met from some western home; but the researches of modern students have refuted this. Mr. Dorsey has shown by an analysis of their most ancient tradi- tions that they unanimously point to an eastern origin, and that the central and southern bands did not probably cross the Mississippi much before the fourteenth century.* This is singularly supported by the discovery of Mr. Horatio Hale that the Tute- loes of Virginia were a branch of the Dakotas ; and further, the investigations of Catlin among the Man- dans resulted in showing that this nation reached the Missouri valley by travelling down the Ohio. They therefore formed a part of the great easterly migra- tion of the North Atlantic tribes which seems to
*J. Owen Dorsey, " Migrations of Siouan Tribes," in the Amer- ican Naturalist^ 1886, p. 211. The numerous and profound studies of this stock by Mr. Dorsey must form the basis of all future in- vestigation of its history and sociology.
CUSTOMS OF DAKOTAS. 99
have been going on for many centuries before the discovery. In the extreme south, almost on the gulf coast of Louisiana, lived some small bands of Dako- tas, known as Biloxis, Opelousas, Pascagoulas, etc. They were long supposed to speak an independent tongue, and only of late years has their proper posi- tion been defined.
Their frames are powerful, and the warriors of the Sioux have long enjoyed a celebrity for their hardi- hood and daring. The massacre of General Custer's command, which they executed in 1876, was the severest blow the army of the United States ever experienced at the hands of the red man. With reference to cranial form they are dolichocephalic, sixteen out of twenty-three skulls in the collection of the Academy* offering a cephalic index under 80.
The northern Dakotas do not seem to have had the same system of gentes which prevailed in most of the eastern tribes. Mr. Morgan was of the opinion that it had existed, but had been lost; this, however, re- quires further proof There are ' many societies among them, but not of the nature of clans. Their chiefs hold their position by hereditary descent in the male line, though among the Winnebagoes the early traveller. Carver, found the anomaly of a woman presiding over the tribe. The central bands,., the Mandans and Minnetarees, recognized gentes with descent in the female line; while among the Poncas and Omahas there were also gentes, but with descent in the male line. The condition in this re- spect, of the members of this family, as also of that: * The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia.
ICX) the; AMERICAN RACE.
of the Athabascan, seefes to prove that the gentile system is by no means a fixed stadium of even Amer- ican ancient society, but is variable, and present or absent as circumstances may dictate.
A few members of this family, notably the Man- dans, attained a respectable degree of culture, becom- ing partly agricultural, and dwelling most of the year in permanent abodes; but the majority of them preferred depending on the bounties of nature, pur- suing the herds of buflfaloes over the boundless pas- tures of the plains, or snaring the abundant fish in the myriad streams which traversed their country.
The mythology of the Dakotas is concerned with the doings of giants in whom we recognize personifi- cations of the winds and storms. One of these is Haokah, to whom the warrior sends up an invocation when about to undertake some perilous exploit. The thunder is caused by huge birds who flap their wings angrily and thus produce the portentous rever- berations. The waters are the home of Unktahe, a mighty spirit who lurks in their depths. Indeed, to the Dakotas, and not to them alone, but to man in their stage of thought, *'A11 nature is alive with gods. Every mountain, every tree is worshipped, and the commonest animals are the objects of ado- ration.***
DAKOTA WNGUISttC STOCK.
Arkansas, on lower Arkansas river.
Assiniboins, on Saskatchewan and Assiniboin rivers.
Biloxis, in Rapides Parish, I^ouisiana.
♦Mrs. Mary Eastman, Dahcotah ; or Life and Legends of the Sioux y p. 211. (New York, 1849.)
THE KIOWAYS. lOI
Crows, on Yellowstone river.
lowas, on the Iowa river.
Kansas, on the Kansas river.
Mandans, on the middle Missouri river.
MinetareeSy on the Yellowstone river.
Ogallalas, sub-tribe of Sioux.
Omahas, on the Elkhom river.
Osages, on Arkansas and Osage rivers.
Ottoes, on the Platte river.
Poncas, on the middle Missouri river.
Quapaws, on lower Arkansas river.
Sioux, on upper Mississippi and aflfluents.
Tetons, sub-tribe of Sioux.
Tuteloes, on upper Roanoke river, Va.
Winnebagoes, western shore of Lake Michigan.
Yanktons, on upper Iowa river.
8. THE KIOWAYS.
The Upper basin of the Canadian branch of the Arkansas River was the home of the Kioways. At the middle of this century they were estimated to be over three thousand, all given to a wild hunting life over the great plains on which they lived. In close proximity to the Comanches and other tribes of Shoshonian lineage, their language presents many affinities to the Shoshonian stock, but not sufficient in the opinion of those who have examined both to justify classing them together as from a common source.
The Kioways are light in color, broad shouldered and strong armed, and for generations were the Arabs of the Great American Desert, depending on hunting and robbery for a subsistence. Their homes ^ were light skin lodges, which they spread on poles > about twelve feet long. With plenty of ponies and!
I03 THE AMERICAN RACE.
without fixed habitations, it was easy for them to move rapidly over the Plains. According to their traditions they came originally from the North, from some cold country, where they had to walk on snow shoes, definitely located near the Black Hills, Dakota, where they were associated with the Apaches. They were idol worshippers, their priesthood consisting of ten medicine-men. The dead were buried in deep graves. At present they have been reduced to about one thousand souls. *
*W. P. Clark, Indian Sign Language^ p. 229 (Philadelphia, 1885) ; Whipple, Ewbank and Turner, Report on Indian Tribes^ pp. 28, 80. (Washington, 1855.)
11. THE NORTH PACIFIC GROUP.
I. THE NORTHWEST COAST AND CAI^IFORNIAN TRIBES.
THE lofty chains of the Rocky Mountains extend from north to south, leaving a narrow coast line seamed with deep and fertile valleys along the Pacific from Mt. St. Blias to the Gulf of California. In spite of its great extent in latitude — from the 30th to the 60th degree — there is less difference in climate than one would suppose from analogy in any other part of the world. The warm ocean current which bathes the northern coast mitigates the cold of the winter to such an extent that the isothermal lines on the Pacific are fifteen degrees of latitude more north- erly than on the Atlantic border of the continent.
A few of the eastern stocks, the Athabascan and the Shoshonian, have sent out colonies who have settled on the banks of the Pacific; but as a rule the tribes of the western coast are not connected with any east of the mountains. What is more singular, al- though they differ surprisingly among themselves in language, they have marked anthropologic similar- ities, physical and psychical. Virchow* has empha- sized the fact that the skulls from the northern point
* R. Virchow, Verhand. der Berliner Gesell. fur Anthropologies 1889, s. 400.
(103)
I04 THE AMERICAN RACK.
of Vancouver's Island reveal an unmistakable anal- ogy to those from the southern coast of California; and this is to a degree true of many intermediate points. Not that the crania have the same indices. On the contrary, they present great and constant dif- ference within the same tribe;* but these differences are analogous one to the other, and on fixed lines.
There are many other physical similarities which mark the Pacific Indians and contrast them with those east of the mountains. The eyes are less ob- lique, the nose flatter, the lips fuller, the chin more pointed, the face wider. There is more hair on the face and in the axilla, and the difference between the sexes is much more obvious, t
The mental character is also in contrast. The Pacific tribes are more quiet, submissive and docile; they have less courage, and less of that untamable independence which is so constant a feature in the history of the Algonkins and Iroquois.
Beginning at the sixtieth degree of north latitude and extending to the fifty-fifth, are the Tlinkit or Kolosch. They dwell on the coast of Alask^and the adjacent islands. Physically they are a strong and often tall people, light in color, with black or slightly reddish hair, eyes horizontal, nose aquiline. The Russians spoke of them as the most intelligent tribe they encountered on the coast. They certainly seem
*Dr. Franz Boas, "Fourth Report on the Tribes of the North West Coast,'* in Proceed. Brit. Assoc. Adv. Science, 1887.
fDr. J. L. Le Conte, "On the Distinctive Characteristics of the Indians of California," in Trans. oftheAmer. Assoc, for the Adv. of Science ^ 1852, p. 379.
NORTHWEST COAST TRIBES. 105
to have developed an uncommon appreciation of property, which is supposed to be a sign of a high order of intellect. Thus they have a gentile system with descent in the female line, but their aristocracy and the selection of their chiefs are entirely on a property basis. The richest obtain the highest places.
The Tlinkit villages are permanent, the houses solidly constructed of wood, sometimes with the ad- ditional protection of a palisade. The carving and painting upon them are elaborate, the subjects being caricatures of faces, men, and animal forms. The chiefs erect at one side of their doors carved and painted '* totem posts," some of which are nearly fifty feet high. These are also found among the Haidahs and Tshimshians to the south. The arts are correspondingly developed. Seaworthy canoes are hewn from the trunks of the red cedar, hides are dressed and the leather worked into a variety of articles; lamps, mortars and utensils were chipped or ground out of stone, and they are handy in beat- ing out ornaments of silver and copper. The Tlinkits have always been active merchants, and when the first navigators visited their villages in 1741, they were suprised to find them in possession of iron knives and other articles obtained by trade over East Cape or from the south. The usual cur- rency were the dentalium shells found along the coast. One of the staple articles of trade were slaves, a custom not in existence on the Atlantic. They were bought from the neighboring tribes, and treated with great cruelty.
Io6 THE AMERICAN RACE.
Tlinkit mythology is rich, having a coherent crea- tion and deluge myth, the principal figure in which is Jelchs^ the raven. He is the Promethean fire- bringer, and sets free the sun, moon and stars from their prisons. The religious rites are in the hands of priests (shamans), who as usual exert a great and in- jurious influence.*
The Haidahs^ who dwell on Queen Charlotte Islands and Prince of Wales Archipelago, are probably a dis- tant branch of the Tlinkit, though the affinity has not been clearly established, so they are officially classed as the Skittagetan stock, from the Skidegate dialect of the coast. In culture and appearance they resemble the Tlinkits, having similar mechanical skill. Their canoes and their intricate carvings, especially totem-posts and pipes of black slate, are celebrated products of the northwest coast.
The above and other tribes of British Columbia and Washington, the Tshimshian, the Kwakiutl, the Nootka, Salish, Chinook, etc., are so much alike physically that Dr. Boas, who has carried out the most recent and thorough examination of them, ob- serves that no physical distinctions can be drawn between them.f In some the hair is slightly wavy ; in others the nose is aquiline or flatter ; the heads of several are artificially deformed, etc. ; but these differences do not characterize whole stocks. All have a great respect for wealth, and consider its ac-
*Dr. Aurel Krause, Die Tlinkit Indianer. (Jena, 1885.) t See the various reports of Dr. Boas to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and the papers of Messrs. Tolmie and Dawson, published by the Canadian government.
NORTHWEST COAST TRIBES. 107
cumulation the chief object of life. Among them all, women are honored for their chastity and in- dustry, men for their skill in hunting and fishing, and for their bravery in war. Their character is generally sombre, and vanity and servility are prominent faults. The animal totemic system gen- erally prevails, the child among the Salish and Kwakiutl following the father's gens. The com- munities are divided into social strata, as common people, middle class and chiefs. A favorite method to obtain popularity is to give a potlatch — a great feast, at which the host makes expensive presents to the guests, and thus becomes as it were their creditor to the amount of his disbursement.
The Salish^ who are distinctively known as Flat- heads, though the custom of deforming the cranium is not confined to them, occupied a large tract in northern Washington and British Columbia.
The principal contribution of the Chinooks to modern life has been the *' Chinook jargon" which has become the trade language of the coast. It is a curious medley of words, and has been recently made the subject of an interesting study by Mr. Horatio Hale.*
The Sahaptins or Nez Perces^ with their afiiliated tribes, occupied the middle and upper valley of the Columbia and its affluents, and also the passes of the mountains. They were in contiguity with the Shoshonees and the Algonkin Blackfeet, thus hold- ing an important position, intermediate between the
* A Manual of the Oregon Trade Language or Chinook Jargon. By Horatio Hale. (London, 1890.)
I08 THE AMERICAN RACE.
eastern and the Pacific tribes. Having the com- mercial instinct of the latter, they made good use of it, and every summer carried the various products of the coast, as shells, carved pipes, hammered copper, etc. , far down the Missouri, where they exchanged them for the wares of the tribes there situate.
Of the numerous other linguistic stocks on the coast it will be sufficient for me to append the classi- fication adopted by the Bureau of Ethnology at Wash- ington.
NORTH PACIFIC COAST STOCKS.
{From north to south.) Tlinkit or Koloschan, in southern Alaska. Haidah or Skittagetan, on Queen Charlotte Islands.
Dialects— Masset, Skidegate, etc. Tshimsian or Chimmessyanian^ on Nass and Skeena rivers.
Dialects— Chimmessy an, Nasqua. Kwakiootl or Haeltzukian, on Gardiner's Channel.
Dialects — Heiltsuk, Kwakiutl, Quaisla. Nutka or Wakashan^ on western coast of Vancouver Island.
Dialects — Aht, Nootka, Wakash. Chinook or Chinookan, Columbia river to Dalles ; Pacific coast
to Shoalwater Bay ; south to Tillamuk Head. Salish, Admiralty Inlet to Spokane river.
Dialects — Bilcoola, Kawitschin, Lummi, Samie. Chimakuan, Puget Sound, Port Townsend to Port lyudlow. Kutenay or Kitunaha^i, head-waters of Columbia. Sahaptin or Sahaptanian, middle affluents of Columbia.
Dialects— Klikatat, Nez Perc6, Sahaptani, Wallawalla, Ya- kama. Wayilaptu or Waiilaptuan, near mouth of Wallawalla river. Yakonan, coast of Oregon from Yaquina river to Umpqua river. Kalapooian, on the Willamette river. Kusan, about Coos Bay. Palaihnihan or Achornawi, on Pit river. Takilmafi, on upper Rogue river.
CALIFORNIAN TRIBES. IO9
Sastean or Shasta, on upper Klamath river. Lutuamian or Modoc, on Klamath Lake and Sprague river. Quoratean or Ehnek, on lower Klamath river to junction of Trinity river.
,t00mYukian, in Round Valley, California.
Yanan or Nozi, Lassen Butte and Round Mountain. Pujunan or Maidu, east bank of Sacramento river. «^ Kulanapan or Porno, Russian river and adjacent coast. Copehan or Wintun, on Trinity river. Weitspekan or Rurok, lower Klamath river from Trinity river
down. Chimarikan, on New river and Trinity river. Wishoskan, on HumboldtBay.
Marifosan or Yokuts, on Kings river and Tulare Lake. Moquelumnian or Mutsun, on Tuolumne river. Costanoan, north of San Francisco Bay to Monterey Bay. Esselenian, Monterey Bay to San Lucia Mts. Salinan, about San Antonio and San Miguel missions. Includes
the Tatche or Telame. Chumashan, at missions of San Buenaventura, Santa Barbara,
Santa Inez, Purissima and San Luis Obispo.
2. THK YUMAS.
The valley of the Colorado River in Arizona, the peninsula of California and portions of the eastern shore of the Gulf of California, formed the home of the Yuma stock. They were found in these regions by Coronado as early as 1540, and own no traditions of having lived anywhere else. The considerable differences in their dialects within this comparatively small area indicates that a long period has elapsed since the stock settled in this locality and split up into hostile fractions.
It has also been called the Katchan or Cuchan stock, and the Apache, that being the Yuma word for ** fighting men;" but we should confine the
no THE AMERICAN RACE.
term ApacHes to the Tinneh (x\tliapascan) tribe so called, and to avoid confusion I shall dismiss the terms Apache-Yumas, Apache-Tontos and Apache- Mohaves, employed by some writers. The Yumas, from whom the stock derives its name, lived near the mouth of the Colorado River. Above them, on both banks of the river, were the Mohaves, and further up, principally on Virgin River, were the Yavapai.
Most of the Yumas are of good stature, the adult males averaging five feet nine inches high, well built and vigorous. The color varies from a dark to a light mahogany; the hair is straight and coarse, the eyes horizontal, the mouth large, and the lips heavy. The skull is generally brachycephalic, but there are a number of cases of extreme dolichocephaly (68).*
Animal totems with descent in the male line pre- vailed among the Yumas, though they seem for a long time not to have regarded these matters closely. In culture they vary considerably. The Seris or Ceris, who formerly lived in the hills near Horcasitas, but in 1779 were removed to the island of Tiburon, are described as thieves and vagrants, lazy and wretched. They were exceedingly troublesome to the Mexican Government, having revolted over forty times. The boats they use are of a peculiar con- struction, consisting of rushes tied together. As weapons up to recent years they preferred the bow and arrow, and upon the arrow laid some kind of
*Dr. W. F. Corbusier, in American Antiquarian, 1886, p. 276; Dr. Ten Kate, in Verhand. der Berliner Gesell. fur Anthrop., 1889, s. 667.
CUSTOMS OF THE YUM AS. Ill
poison which prevented the wounds from healing. Their dialect, which is harsh, is related especially to the western branch of the Yuma stem. They are described as light in color and some of them good- looking, but filthy in habits. *
The Yumas and Maricopas were agricultural, cul- tivating large fields of corn and beans, and irrigating their plantations by trenches. It is highly probable that formerly some of them dwelt, in adobe houses of the pueblo character, and were the authors of some of the numerous ruined structures seen in southern Arizona. The pottery and basket work turned out by their women are superior in style and finish. A few years ago the Mohaves of the west bank lived in holes in the earth covered with brush, or in small wattled conical huts. For clothing they wore strips of Cottonwood bark, or knotted grass. Tattooing and painting the person in divers colors were com- mon. The favorite ornament was shells, arranged on strings, or engraved and suspended to the neck. The chiefs wore elaborate feather head-dresses, f
The Tontos, so-called from their reputation for stupidity, are largely mixed with Tinn^ blood, their women having been captured from the Apaches. Though savage, they are by no means dull, and are considered uncommonly adept thieves.
Quite to the south, in the mountains of Oaxaca and
*J. R. Bartlett, Explorations in New Mexico, Vol. I„ p. 464- C. A. Pajeken, Reise-Erinnerungen in ethnographischen Bildern, s. 97.
t Whipple, Ewbank and Turner, Report on Indian Tribes (Wash- ington, 1855), and numerous later authorities, give full information about the Yumas.
112 THE AMERICAN RACK.
Guerrero, the Tequistlatecas, usually known by the meaningless term Chontales, belong to this stem, judging from the imperfect vocabularies which have been published.
The peninsula of California was inhabited by sev- eral Yuma tribes differing in dialect but much alike in culture, all being on its lowest stage. Wholly un- acquainted with metals, without agriculture of any kind, naked, and constructing no sort of permanent shelters, they depended on fishing, hunting and nat- ural products for subsistence. Their weapons were the bow and the lance, which they pointed with sharpened stones. Canoes were unknown, and what little they did in navigation was upon rafts of reeds and brush.
Marriages among them were by individual prefer- ence, and are said not to have respected the limits of consanguinity; but this is doubtful, as we are also told that the mother-in-law was treated with peculiar ceremony. Their rites for the dead indicate a belief in the survival of the individual. The body was buried and after a certain time the bones were cleaned, painted red, and preserved in ossuasies.
The population was sparse, probably not more than ten thousand on the whole peninsula. At the extreme south were the Pericus, who extended to N. Lat. 24° ; beyond these lived the Guaicurus to about Lat. 26°; and in the northern portion of the peninsula to latitude 33° the Cochimis.* The early writers state that in appearance these bands did not differ
* Jacob Baegert, Nachricht von den Amerikanischen Halbinsel Calif omien. (Mannheim, 1773.)
TRIBES OF THE YTJMAS.
113
from the Mexicans on the other side of the Gulf Their skulls, however, which have been collected principally from the district of the Pericus, present a peculiar degree of elongation and height (dolicho- cephalic and hypsistenocephalic).
YUMA I,INGUISTIC STOCK.
Ceris, on Tiburon Island and the adjacent coast.
Cochimis, northern portion of Califomian peninsula.
Cocopas, at mouth of Colorado river.
Coco- Mar icopas, on middle Gila river.
Comeyas, between lower Colorado and the Pacific.
Coninos, on Cataract creek, branch of the Colorado.
Cuchanes, see Yuntas.
DiegueHos, near San Diego on the Pacific.
Gohunes, on Rio Salado and Rio Verde.
GuaicuruSy middle portion of Califomian peninsula.
Hualapais, from lower Colorado to Black Mountains.
Maricopas, see Coco-Maricopas.
MohaveSy on both banks of lower Colorado.
PericuSy southern extremity of Califomian peninsula.
TontoSy in Tonto basin and in the Pinal mountains.
TequistlatecaSy of Oaxaca and Guerrero.
YavipaiSy west of Prescott, Arizona.
YutnaSy near mouth of Colorado river.*
3. THE PUEBI.O TRIBES.
The ^or^ pueblo in Spanish means simply **towii;" but in American ethnography it has obtained a special signification from the aboriginal structures so-called, whose remains are found in profusion in Arizona and the neighboring localities over an area
*I have not included in the stock the so-called M'Mat stem, in- troduced erroneously by Mr. Gatschet, as Dr. Ten Kate has shown no such branch exists. See Verhandlungen der Berliner Anthrop. GeselL, 1889, ss. 666-7. 8
114 ^HE AMERICAN RACE.
about 350 miles from east to west and 300 miles from north to south. * These are buildings several stories in height, either of stone or of adobes, communal in character, that is, intended to accomodate a whole gens or clan, and usually with certain peculiarities of finish and plan. The adobes are generally large, some four feet long by two feet wide, and were often made upon the wall itself, the clay or gravel being carried in a moist state in baskets of this size and deposited upon the wall till the mass dried. When stones are employed, they are held together by a mud mortar. The most celebrated of these adobe edifices are perhaps the Casas Grandes in the valley of the San Miguel river, in northern Chihuahua. They have frequently been described and do not difier except in size from hundreds of other ruins in the Gila basin.
In connection with the pueblos stand the "cliff- houses, ' ' structures of stones usually carefully squared and laid in mortar, found in great numbers and over an area of wide extent in the deep gorges or canons of the Colorado, the Gila and the upper Rio Grande, and their numberless afiluents. They are perched upon the ledges of the precipices, which often descend almost perpendicularly for thousands of feet, and access to many of them could have been only by ladders or ropes. Prominent points are frequently surmounted by round or square stone towers, evi-
* Mr. E. A. Barber estimates that the area in which the charac- teristic remains of the clifif-dwellers and pueblos are found contains 200,000 square miles. Compte Rendu du Congris des Amtrican- istes, 1878, Tome I., p. 25.
• BUII.DERS OF THK CLIFF HOUSES. 1 15
dently for purposes of observation. The disposition of the cliff houses renders it certain that their plans and positions were selected with a view to make them safe retreats from marauding enemies.
As descriptions of these interesting ruins have often been introduced to support vague and extraordinary theories concerning ancient America, I would em- phatically say there is nothing in any of the remains of the pueblos, or the cliff houses, or any other an- tiquities in that portion of our continent, which com- pels us to seek other constructors for them than the ancestors of the various tribes which were found on the spot by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, and by the armies of the United States in the middle of the nineteenth. This opinion is in accordance with history, with the traditions of the tribes them- selves, and with the condition of culture in which j they were found. When, in 1:735, Pedro de Ainza. made an expedition from Santa F^ against the Nava- jos, he discovered tribes dwelling in stone houses. ** built within the rocks,'' and guarded by watch- towers of stone. * The Apaches still remember drivr - ing these cliflf-dwellers from their homes, and one o^" the Apache gentes is yet named from them ** stone- house people, "t As for the pueblos, seven or eight of them are occupied to-day by the same people who built them, and whose homes they have been for many centuries.
*"Casas y atalayas eregidas dentro de las penas." I owe the quotation to Alphonse Pinart.
t The Tze-tinne ; Capt. J. G. Bourke, in Jour. Amer.. Folk-lore, 1890, p. 114.
Il6 THE AMERICAN RACE.
It is a significant fact that these people do not all belong to the same stock. On the contrary, the *' Pueblo Indians " are members of a number of wholly disconnected stems. This proves that the Pueblo civilization is not due to any one unusually gifted lineage, but was a local product, developed in inde- pendent tribes by the. natural facilities offered by the locality. It is a spontaneous production of the soil, climate, and conditions, which were unusually favor- able to agricultural and sedentary occupations, and prompted various tribes to adopt them.
Of these different peoples, those of the Moqui Pueblo belonged to the Shoshonee branch of the Uto- Aztecan stock, and is the only existing Pueblo w^hich is peopled by that wide-spread stem. * We have good reason to believe, however, that the Pimas of the Sonoran Group of the same stock once occupied a number of adobe Pueblos, and quite likely were the constructors of the Casas Grandes.
The natives of the remaining Pueblos belong to three independent stocks, known as the Kera, the Tehua, and the Zuni families. No relationship has been discovered between either of these and any tribe outside the territory I have referred to.
The culture of the Pueblos, both ancient and modern, bears every mark of local and independent
*This afl&nity was first demonstrated by Buschmann in his Spuren der aztekischen Sprache, though Mr. Bandelier erroneously attributes it to later authority. See his very useful Report of In- vestigations among the Indians of the South Western United States, p. ii6. (Cambridge, 1890.) Readers will find in these ex- cellent reports abundant materials on the Pueblo Indians and their neighbors.
THE PUEBI^O INDIANS. II 7
growth. A knowledge of metals, other than to a limited extent for ornament, is nowhere evident. Tillage of the fields in a rude manner was the main source of the food supply. Pottery of fine temper and in symmetrical forms was manufactured by the women. That they had any other domestic animal than a fowl, and sometimes a dog, has not been shown. Mats and clothing were woven of the fibres of bark and grass, and the culture of cotton was at one time common, especially among the Moquis and Pimas. The arts of weaving feathers and working shells into decorative objects are not yet lost. Apart from the development of the art of architecture, there was little in the culture of the Pueblo tribes to lift them above the level of the Algonkins. The acequias, or irrigation trenches, about which much has been written, were a necessity of their climate, and were in use among their southern neighbors in Sonora, and the Navajos.
KERA STOCK.
TEHUA STOCK.
zula
STOCK.
LINGUISTIC STOCKS OE THE PUEBI^OS.
Pueblos of Kera or Queres, Cochiti, Laguna, Acoma, Silla, etc., on tlie upper Rio Grande, Jemez and San Juan rivers.
Jemez ^ on the Jemez river.
Pit OS, on Rio Grande and in Chihuahua.
Tanos, near Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Taos, at Taos Pueblo.
TehuaSy at Tesuque and neighboring Pueblos.
At Zuiii Pueblo.
III. THE CENTRAL GROUP.
I. THE UTO-AZTECAN TRIBES.
OF all the stocks on the North American Continent, that which I call the Uto-Aztecan merits the closest study, on account of its wide extension and the high development of some of its members. Tribes speaking its dialects were found from the Isthmus of Panama to the banks of the Columbia river, and from the coast of the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico. The relationship of these numerous bands is unquestionable, although many of them have freely adopted words from other stocks. This, how- ever, will not surprise us if we recall that most of the Aryac languages of the old world owe about one third of their radicals to non- Aryac sources.
The principal members of this stock are the Utes, Shoshonees and Comanches in the north, various tribes in Sonora, Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Durango in the center, and the Nahuas or Aztecs in the south. It is not to be understood that the one of these derived its idioms from the other, but rather that at some remote epoch all three were offshoots from some one ancestral stem. This was at a period be- fore the grammatical forms of the tongue had reached full development, and probably when it was in a
(ii8)
EXTENSION OF THE AZTECS. 1 19
stage of isolation, with tendencies to suffix aggluti- nation and incorporation. Since then the stages of growth which the several dialects have reached have been various. The one which far outstripped all others was the Nahuatl, which arrived at clear and harmonious sounds, fixed forms, and even some recog- nizable traces of inflection, though always retaining its incorporative character.
The establishment of the unity of this linguistic family we owe to the admirable labors of Joh. Carl Ed. Buschmann, who devoted years of patient inves- tigation to examining the traces of the Nahuatl, or as he preferred to call it, the Aztec language, in Mexico and throughout the continent to the north. In spite of deficient materials, his sharp-sighted acumen dis- covered the relationship of the chief tongues of the group, and later investigations have amply confirmed his conclusions. *
Ivong before his day, however, the Spanish mis- sionaries to the tribes of Sonora and Sinaloa had recognized their kinship to the Aztecs, and Father Ribas, in his history of the missions established by the Jesuits in Mexico, published in 1645, stated that the root- words and much of the grammar of all these dialects was substantially the same as those of the Nahuatl. t
* Buschmann, Die Spur en der aztekischen Sprache im ndrdlichen Mexiko und hdheren Amerikanischen Norden. 4 to. Berlin,
1859, pp. 819.
Grammatik der Sonorischen Sprachen. 4 to. Berlin, Pt. I., 1864. pp. 266; Pt. II., 1867, pp. 215.
t Perez de Ribas, Historia de los Triomphos de Nuesira Santa Ft, Lib. I., cap. 19.
I30 THE AMERICAN RACE.
It is without doubt the most numerous stock now surviving. According to the census figures of the governments of the United States and Mexico for 1880, the numbers were as follows:*
Shoshonian group, including Pimas in U. S. . . 26,200
Sonoran group in Mexican Territory 84,000
Aztecan group 1,626,000
a. The Ute or Shoshonian Branch.
The northern, or Ute branch, which I so call from its most prominent member, includes the Shoshonees, Utes and Camanches, with their numerous sub-tribes and afifiliated bands. They occupied at the begin- ning of this century an immense area, now included in south-eastern Oregon, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, parts of California^ New Mexico and Ari- zona, northern and western Texas, and the states of Durango and Chihuahua in Mexico. Other names by which they are known in this area are Snakes, Bannocks, Moquis, etc. Everywhere their tongue is unmistakably the same. *' Any one speaking the Shoshonee language may travel without difficulty among the wild tribes from Durango, in Mexico, to the banks of the Columbia River. ''f Their war parties scoured the country from the Black Hills of Dakota far into the interior of Mexico.
So far as can be ascertained, the course of migra- tion of this group, like that of the whole stock, has been in a general southerly direction. The Co- manche traditions state that about two hundred win-
* Anales del Ministerio de Fomento, p. 99. (Mexico, 1881.) fCol. A. G. Bracket!, in Rep. of the Smithson. Inst. 1879, p. 329.
UTES AND SHOSHONEKS. 121
ters ago they lived as one people with the Shoshonees somewhere to the north of the head-waters of the Arkansas River. * This is borne out by similar tra- ditions among the northern Shoshonees. f That very careful student, Mr. George Gibbs, from a review of all the indications, reached the conclusion that the whole group came originally from the east of the Rocky Mountain chain, and that the home of its ancestral horde was somewhere between these moun- tains and the Great Lakes. J This is the opinion I have also reached from an independent study of the subject, and I believe it is as near as we can get to the birth-place of this important stock.
This stock presents the extremes of both linguis- tic and physical development. No tongue on the continent was more cultured than the Nahuatl, and so were those who spoke it The wretched root- digging Utes, on the other hand, present the lowest type of skulls anywhere found in America. || The explanation is easy. It was owing to their lack of nutrition. Living on the arid plains of the interior, little better than deserts, they had for generations been half starved. They were not agricultural, but lived along the streams, catching fish, and making a poor bread from the seeds of the wild sun-flower and the chenopodium. Their houses were brush huts, or
*Capt. W. P. Clark, The Indian Sign Language, p. ii8. (Phil- adelphia, 1885.)
^ Ibid., p. 338.
X See Contributions to North American Ethnology, Vol. I., p. 224. (Washington, 1877.)
II R. Virchow, Crania Ethnica Americana.
122 THE AMERICAN RACE.
lodges of dressed buffalo skins; and where the win- ters were cold, they dug holes in the ground in which they huddled in indescribable filth.
Very much superior to these are the Comanches, A generation or two ago they numbered about fifteen thousand, and were one of the most formidable na- tions of the west. Now they have diminished to that many hundreds, and live peaceably on reserva- tions. They are tall (1.70) and well formed, the skull meso-cephalic, the eyes horizontal, the nose thin, the color light. Agriculture is not a favorite occupation, but they are more reasonable and willing to accept a civilized life than their neighbors, the Apaches or the Kioways. They had little govern- ment, and though polygamists, the women among them exercised considerable influence. Like the Utes, they are sun- worshippers, applying to that orb the term '* father sun," taab-apa^ and performing various dances and other rites in his honor. The ser- pent would seem also to come in for a share of their reverence, their tribal sign in the gesture speech of the plain being that for a snake,* and indeed they are often called Snake Indians. Not less interesting is it to find throughout all these tribes, Ute and Co- manche, the deification of the coyote, which occupies so prominent a niche in the pantheon of the Aztecan tribes and those who have borrowed from them. Ac- cording to the Ute myths, the wolf and the coyote were the first two brothers from whom the race had its origin, and to the latter were attributed all the good things in the world.
*W. P. Clark, The Indian Sign Language y p. 118.
BUII.DERS OF THE CASAS GR ANDES. 1 23
As we approach the southern border of the group, the stage of culture becomes higher. The natives of the Pueblo or Moqui, whose curious serpent-worship has been so well described by Captain Bourke,* are of this stock, and illustrate its capacity for develop- ing a respectable civilization. The Kizh and Netela, who were attached to the mission of San Capistrano, were also Shoshonees.
b. The Sonoran Branch.
In the valley of the Gila river the Shoshonian and Sonoran branches of the Uto-Aztecan stock were in contact from time immemorial. The Sonoran branch begins on the north with the Pimas, who oc- cupied the middle valley of the Gila, and the land south of it quite to the Rio Yaqui. I continue for it the name of Sonoran given by Buschmann, although it extended far beyond the bounds of that province.
The Pima tribe merits our special attention, be- cause of the remarkable ruins and relics of a dense former population, sedentary and agricultural, in the region inhabited by it when the river, basin was first explored. These are the large structures known as the Great Houses or Casas Grandes, and the remains of the numerous towns, extensive irrigating trenches, and ruined enclosures, brought to light by the Hem- enway exploring expedition in the Salt river valley. Their walls were built of adobes or sun-dried bricks of large size, the clay probably placed in baskets upon the wall and allowed to dry there. The extent
* The Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona. By John G. Bourke. (New York, 1884.)
124 '^HE AMERICAN RACE.
of these remains is surprising, and in the Salt river valley alone, in an area of half a million acres, it is estimated that two hundred thousand people may- have found support. Making every allowance, there is no doubt that at some remote epoch the arable land in the valleys of the Gila and its affluents was under close cultivation.
Who these busy planters were has supplied material for much speculation. As usual, the simplest ex- planation has been the last to be welcomed. In fact, there is no occasion for us to look elsewhere than to the ancestors of these Pimas, who lived in the valley when the whites first traveled it. There is nothing in the ruins and relics which demands a higher cul- ture than the Pimas possessed. There is no sign of a knowledge of metals beyond hammered copper; the structures are such as the Pueblo Indians of the same stock live in now; and the Pimas have a historic tradition which claims these ruins and these old fields as the work of their ancestors, from which they were driven by the repeated attacks of the Apaches and other savage tribes of the north. * Some of them, a sub-tribe called the Sobaypuris (Sabaguis), and doubtless many others, took refuge in the deep canons and constructed along their precipitous sides those ^^clifi" houses,'' which have been often described. About a hundred years ago the Apaches drove them out of these last resorts and forced them to flee to the
*For these legends see Captain F. E. Grossman, U. S. A., in Report of the Smithsonian Institution^ pp. 407-10. They attribute the Casas Grandes to Sivano, a famous warrior, the direct descend- ant of Soho, the hero of their flood myth.
SONORAN TRIBES. 135
main body of the Pimas in the south. * In conclu- sion, we may safely attribute most of the ruins in the Gila Basin, as well as most of the cliff houses in the various canons, to these tribes of the Uto-Aztecan stock. When the early missionaries reached the Pimas they found them in precisely the condition of culture of which we see the remains in the Salt River valley. Their houses were built of large adobes, sometimes roofed with tiles; they were agri- cultural and industrious; their fields were irrigated by like extensive canals or trenches, and their weapons, utensils and clothing were just such as the Hemenway expedition showed were those of the early accolents of the Gila and the Salado.f
Most of the other tribes of this group were, from the first knowledge we have of them, inclined to se- dentary and agricultural lives. The Opatas, on the head waters of the Rio Yaqui, and the Tarahumaras, in the valleys of theSierra Madre, are quiet, laborious peoples, who accepted without difiiculty the teachings of the early missionaries. They cultivate the ground and build houses of adobes or of wood plastered.
The Tehuecos, Zuaques, Mayos and Yaquis are sub- tribes of the Cahitas, and speak a dialect the most akin of any to the Nahuatl. They are tall, vigor- ous men, active and laborious, trading in salt and
*The Apaches called them Tze-tinne, Stone House People. See Capt. John G. Bourke, Journal of American Folk-Lore, 1890, p. 114. The Apaches Tontos were the first to wander down the Little Colorado river.
t See the descriptions of the Nevomes (Pimas) in Perez de Ribas, Historia de los Triumphos de Nuestra Santa Fi, Lib. VI., cap. 2. (Madrid, 1645.)
126 THE AMERICAN RACE.
woolen stuflfs, cheerful, and much given to music. South of the Tarahumaras and immediately adjoin- ing them, in the State of Chihuahua, are the Tepe- huanas on the eastern slope of the Sierra Madre, from 25° to 27° latitude north. They are a people of unusual intelligence, of excellent memory, and when first met were living in solid houses of logs or of stone and clay, or as genuine troglodytes in arti- ficial caves, and cultivating abundant crops of maize and cotton, which latter they wove and dyed with much skill. * The chroniclers speak of them as the most valiant of all the tribes of New Spain, but laborious and devoted to their fields, t
The tribe of the Sonoran group which reached the point furthest to the south was the Coras, who dwelt in the Sierra of Nayarit, in the State of Jalisco. From their location they are sometimes called Nayerits. They were a warlike but agricultural people, about the same level as the Tepehuanas.
The Tubares were a peaceable nation living in the Sierra of Sinaloa. They received the missionaries willingly and seem to have been an industrious tribe, their principal object of commerce being articles of clothing. It is said that they spoke two entirely distinct languages, one a dialect of Nahuatl, the other of un-
* " Las casas eran o de madera, y palos de monte, o de piedra y barro; y sus poblaciones unas rancherias, amodo de casilas." Ribas, Historia de los Triumphos de Nuestra Santa Fi, Lib, X., cap. i. (Madrid, 1645.)
tTorquemada, Monarquia Indiana^ Lib. V., cap. 44. An inter- esting sketch of the recent condition of these tribes is given by C. A. Pajeken, Raise- Erinnerungen^ pp. 91-98. (Bremen, 1861.)
SONORAN TRIBKS. 12/
known affinities.* The Guazapares and the Varogios are described as living near the Tubares, on the head- waters of the Rio del Fuerte, and speaking the same or a similar dialect, f
In the defiles of the lofty range, which is sometimes called the Sierra de Topia, resided the Acaxees, Xiximes and other wild tribes, speaking related tongues. By some authorities they are.alleged to be- long to the Sonoran group, but as the material is lacking for comparison, their ethnographic position must be left undetermined.
The Guaymas, on the coast of the Gulf of Califor- nia, south of the Ceris (a Yuma folk), have been as- certained by M. Pinart to speak a dialect allied to that of the southern Pimas, and are therefore to be added to this group. Another Pima dialect was the Baco- rehui, spoken by the Batucaris and Comoparis on the lower Rio del Fuerte; as it was also that of the Ahomes, a distinctly Pima people. {
The uniform tradition of all the tribes of this stock in Sonora and Sinaloa, so far as they were obtained by the early missionaries, was to the effect that their ancestors had migrated from localities further to the north. II
* Perez de Ribas, Historia, etc., Lib. II., cap. 33.
t Eustaquio Buelna, Peregrinacion de los Aztecas y Nombres Geograficos Indigenas de Sinaloa, p. 20. (Mexico, 1887.)
X Buelna, loc. cit., p. 21.
il Father Perez de Ribas, who collected these traditions with care, reports this fact. Histofia de los Triumphos, etc., Lib. I., cap. 19.
128 THK AMERICAN RACK.
c. The Nahuatl Branch,
Under the term Nahuas^ which has the excellent authority of Sahagun in its favor, I shall include all the tribes of the Uto-Aztecan stock who spoke the Nahuatl language, that called by Buschmann the Aztec, and often referred to as the Mexican. These tribes occupied the slope of the Pacific coast from about the Rio del Fuerte in Sinaloa, N. lat. 26°, to the frontiers of Guatemala, except a portion at the isthmus of Tehuantepec. Beyond this line, they had colonies under the name of Pipiles on the coast of Guatemala, and in the interior the Alaguilacs. The Cuitlatecos, or Tecos, "dung-hill people," was a term of depreciation applied to those in Michoacan and Guerrero. On the borders of the lakes in the valley of Mexico were the three important states Tezcuco, Tlacopan and Tenochtitlan, who at the time of the conquest were formed into a confederacy of wide sway.
The last mentioned, Tenochtitlan, had its chief town where the city of Mexico now stands, and its inhabitants were the Azteca. East of the valley were the Tlascaltecs, an independent tribe; south of and along the shore of the gulf from Vera Cruz almost to the mouth of the Rio de Grijalva, were Nahuatl tribes under the dominion of the confederacy. An isolated, but distinctly affiliated band, had wandered down to Nicaragua, where under the name Nicaraos they were found on the narrow strip of land between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific, which they had conquered from tribes of Chapanec lineage. The most distant of all were the Seguas, who at the time of the con-
THS FABULOUS TOI.TECS. 1 29
quest resided in the Valle Coaza, on the Rio Telorio, and later moved to Chiriqui Lagoon. After the conquest they were scattered still further by the transportation of colonies of Tlascalans to Saltillo in the north, and to Isalco in San Salvador in the south.
I omit entirely from this group the Toltecs and the Chichi mecs. These were never tribal designations, and it is impossible to identify them with any known communities. The Toltecs may have been one of the early and unimportant gentes of the Azteca, but even this is doubtful. The term was properly ap- plied to the inhabitants of the small town of Tula, north of the valley of Mexico. In later story they were referred to as a mythical people of singular gifts and wide domain. Modern and uncritical writers have been misled by these tales, and have repre- sented the Toltecs as a potent nation and ancestors of the Aztecs. There is no foundation for such statements, and they have no historic position. *
The term Chichimeca was applied to many bar- barous hordes as a term of contempt, "dogs," ''dog people, "t It has no ethnic signification, and never
*See "The Toltecs and their Fabulous Empire," in my Essays of an Americanist^ pp. 83-100.
t There is an interesting anonymous MS. in the Fond Espagnol of the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris, with the title La Guerra de las Chichimecas. The writer explains ^the name as a generic term applied to any tribe without settled abode, " vagos, sin casa ni sementera." He instances the Pamis, the Guachichiles and the Guamaumas as Chichimeca, though speaking quite diflferent lan- guages. 9
130 THE AMERICAN RACE.
had, but was used in much the same way as Cuitlateca^ above referred to.*
The government of these states did not differ in principle from that of the northern tribes, though its development had reached a later stage. Descent was generally reckoned in the male line, and the male children of the deceased were regarded as the natural heirs both to his property and his dignities. Where the latter, however, belonged rather to the gens than the individual, a form of election was held, the children of the deceased being given the preference. In this sense, which was the usual limitation in America, many positions were hereditary, including that of the chieftancy of the tribe or confederation. The Montezuma who was the ruler who received Cortez, was the grandson of Axayacatl, who in turn was the son of the first Montezuma, each of whom exercised the chief power.
The land was held by the gens and allotted to its members for cultivation. Marriage was also an aflfair regulated by the gentile laws of consanguinity, but the position of woman was not specially inferior, and in the instance of the daughter of the first Monte- zuma, one seems to have occupied the position of head chief for a time.
The general condition of the arts in ancient Mexico is familiar to all who have turned their attention to American history. It has indeed received more than
*"Cuitlatl,=W2Vr^a" (Molina, Vocabulario Mexicano). Cuitl- atlan, Ort des Kothes (Buschmann, Aztekische Ortsnamen^ s. 621), applied to the region between Michoacan and the Pacific ; also to a locality near Techan in the province of Guerrero (Orozco y Berra, Geog. de las Lenguas, p. 233.)
MEXICAN CULTURE. I3I
its due share of attention from the number and prom- inence of the Nahuas at the conquest. They were little if at all superior to many of their neighbors in cultural progress. Even in architecture, where they excelled, the Zapotecs, Totonacos and Tarascos were but little behind them. Numerous artificial pyra- mids and structures of hewn stone remain in the ter- ritories of all these to prove their skill as builders. The Mexicans may be said to have reached the age of bronze. Many weapons, utensils and implements, were manufactured of this alloy of copper and tin. Gold, silver, lead and copper, were likewise deftly worked by founding and smelting into objects of ornament or use. Lead was also known, but not utilized. The majority of implements continued to be of stone. They were fortunate in having for this purpose a most excellent material, obsidian, which volcanic product is abundant in Mexico. From it they flaked off arrow points, knives and scrapers, and by polishing worked it into labrets and mirrors. A variety of nephrite or jade was highly esteemed, and some of the most elaborate specimens of Mexican art in stone are in this hard, greenish material. Frag- ments of colored stones were set in mosaic, either as . masks, knife handles or the like, with excellent effect. With the undoubtedly dense population of many districts, the tillage of the ground was a necessary source of the food supply. The principal crop was as usual maize, but beans, peppers, gourds and fruit were also cultivated. Cotton was largely employed for clothing, being neatly woven and dyed in brilliant : colors.
132 THE AMERICAN RACE.
The religious rites were elaborate and prescribed with minuteness. Priests and priestesses were vowed to the cult of certain deities. Their duties consisted in sweeping and decorating the temples, in preparing the sacrifices, and in chanting at certain periods of the day and night. The offerings were usually of quails, rabbits or flowers, but especially in Tenoch- titlan human sacrifices were not infrequent. The victims were slaves or captives taken in war. At times their flesh was distributed to the votaries, and was consumed as part of the ceremony; but as this was a rite, the Aztecs cannot be said to have been anthropophagous.
The priestly class had charge of the education of the youth of the better class. This was conducted with care and severity. Large buildings were set apart for the purpose, some for boys, others for girls. The boys were taught martial exercises, the history of the nation, the chants and dances of the religious worship, forms of salutation, the art of writing, etc. The girls were instructed in household duties, the preparation of food, the manufacture of garments, and the morals of domestic life. *
The literature which reprCvSented this education was large. It was preserved in books written upon parchment, or upon paper manufactured from the fibrous leaves of the maguey. This was furnished in great quantities from different parts of the realm, as much as 24,000 bundles being required by the gov-
* Dr. Gustav Briihl believes these schools were limited to those designed for warriors or the priesthood. Sahagun certainly assigns them a wider scope. See Briihl, Die Culturvolker AU-Amerikas, PP- 337-8.
AZTEC WRITING. 1 33
ernment annually as tribute. A book consisted of a strip of paper perhaps twenty feet long, folded like a screen into pages about six inches wide, on both sides of which were painted the hieroglyphic characters. These were partly ideographic, partly phonetic; the latter were upon the principle of the rebus, convey- ing the name or word by the representation of some object, the word for which had a similar sound. I have called this the ikonomatic method of writing, and have explained it in detail in several essays on the subject. *
Their calendar recognized the length of the year as 365 days. The mathematical difficulties in the way of a complete understanding of it have not yet been worked out, and it may have differed in the various tribes. Its elements were a common property of all the Nahua peoples, as well as many of their neighbors ; which of them first devised it has not been ascertained.
UTO-AZTECAN WNGUISTIC STOCK.
a. Shoshonian Branch.
Bannacks, in Montana and southern Idaho.
Cahuillos, in southern California.
Chemehuevis, branch of Pi-utes, on Cottonwood Island.
Comanches, in northern Texas, on both banks of Rio Grande.
Kauvuyas, southern California, near the Pacific.
Kechis, in southern California, branch of Kauvuyas.
Kizh, in southern California, branch of Kauvuyas.
Moquis, in Moqui Pueblo, Arizona.
Netelas, in southern California.
Pa- Vants, south of Great Salt Lake.
*See "The Ikonomatic Method of Phonetic Writing" in my Es- says of an Americanist, p. 213. (Philadelphia, 1890.)
134 'I'HE AMERICAN RACE.
Pi-utes, in southern and central Nevada, Arizona, California, Utah.
Shoshonees or Snakes, in New Mexico and Colorado, Idaho and southern Oregon.
Utes or Utahs, in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, etc.
Wihinasht, in Oregon, south of Columbia river.
b. Sonoran Branch.
Acaxees, (?) in the Sierra de Topia.
Cahitas, south of Rio Yaqui.
Coras, in the Sierra de Nayarit.
Eudeves, a sub-tribe of Opatas.
Guaymas, on Rio de Guaymas.
Mayos, on R. Mayo, sub-tribe of Cahitas.
Nevomes, see Pimas.
Opatas, head-waters of Rio Yaqui.
Papayas, or Papagos, sub-tribe of Pimas.
Pimas, from Rio Yaqui to Rio Gila.
Sabaguis, sub-tribe of Pimas.
Tarahumaras, in the Sierra of Chihuahua.
Tehuecos, on R. del Fuerte, dialect of Cahita.
Tecoripas, speak dialect of Pima.
Tepehuanas, in Durango.
Tubares, in upper Sinaloa.
Yaquis, on Rio Yaqui.
c. Nahuatlecan Branch.
Alaguilacs, on Rio Motagua in Guatemala. Aztecs, in the valley of Mexico. Cuitlatecos, south and west of Michoacan. Mexicans, see Aztecs. Meztitlatecas, in the Sierra of Meztitlan.
Nicaraos, in Nicaragua between I^ake Nicaragua and the Pacific. Niquirans, see Nicaraos.
Pipiles, on Pacific coast in Soconusco and Guatemala. . Seguas, near Chiriqui Lagoon. Tecos, see Cuitlatecos. Tezcucans, in valley of Mexico. Tlascalans, in Tlascala, east of valley of Mexico. Tlascaltecans, in San Salvador.
CUIvTURE OF THE OTOMIS. 135
2. THE OTOMIS.
According to Aztec tradition, the Otomis were the earliest owners of the soil of Central Mexico. Their language was at the conquest one of the most widely distributed of any in this portion of the continent. Its central regions were the states of Queretaro and Guanajuato; from the upper portion of the valley ot Mexico it extended north to the Rio Verde, on the west it adjoined the Tarascas of Michoacan, and on the east the Huastecs of Panuco.
The Otomis are below the average stature, of dark color, the skull markedly dolichocephalic, * the nose short and flattened, the eyes slightly oblique. Fol- lowing the lead of some of the old writers, modern authors have usually represented the Otomis as rude savages, far inferior to the Nahuas. Doubtless the latter often so represented them, but this does not correspond with what we learn of them from other sources. Although subjected by the Nahuas, they do not seem to have been excessively ignorant. Agri- culture was not neglected, and from their cotton the women wove clothing for both sexes. Ornaments of gold, copper and hard stones were in use; their reli- gion was conducted with ceremony ;t and they were famous for their songs and musical ability, t The members of the nation to-day are laborious, good tempered, and endowed with a remarkable aptitude
* Four skulls in the collection of the Academy of Natural Sci- ences, Philadelphia, give a cephalic index of 73.
t Sahagun, Historia de la Nueva Espafia, Lib. X, cap. 29.
X D. G. Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry, p. 134 (Philadelphia, 1887, in Library of Aboriginal American Literature).
136 THE AMERICAN RACE.
for imitation, especially in sculpture. Some of the women are quite handsome. *
Their language has attracted a certain amount of attention, partly from its supposed similarity to the Chinese, partly because it is alleged to differ from most American tongues in showing no incorporation. Both of these statements have been proved errone- ous, f It is a tongue largely monosyllabic, of ex- tremely diflScult enunciation, worn down by attrition almost to an isolating form, but not devoid of the usual traits of the languages of the continent. There are several dialects, the relations of which have been the subject of fruitful investigations. J
OTOMI I^INGUISTIC STOCK.
Jonaz, in Prov. of Queretaro.
Matlaltzincos, in Valley of Mexico and Mechoacan.
MazahuaSy southwest of Valley of Mexico.
Mecos, SQQjonaz.
Otomis, throughout Central Mexico.
Fames, in Queretaro and Guanajuato.
Pirindas, see Matlaltzincos.
3. THE TARASCOS. The Tarascans, so called from Taras^ the name of a tribal god,|| had the reputation of being the tallest and handsomest people of Mexico.
* E. G. Tarayre, Explorations des Regions Mexicaines, p. 282, (Paris, 1879).
fD. G. Brinton, Essays of an Americanist, p. 366.
X H. de Charencey, Melanges de Philologie et de Palcsographie Atniricaine, p. 23.
II Sahagun, Historia, Lib. X, cap. 29. The name is properly Tarex, applied later in the general sense of "deity," "idol."
THE TARASCAS. 1 37
They were the inhabitants of the present State of Michoacan, west of the valley of Mexico. According to their oldest traditions, or perhaps those of their neighbors, they had migrated from the north in com- pany with, or about the same time as the Aztecs. For some three hundred years before the conquest they had been a sedentary, semi-civilized people, maintaining their independence, and progressing steadily in culture.* When first encountered by the Spaniards they were quite equal and in some respects ahead of the Nahuas. The principal buildings of their cities, the chief of which was their capital Tzintzuntan, were of cut stone well laid in mortar. A number of remains of such have been reported by various travelers, many of them being conical mounds of dressed stones, locally called yacates^ which proba- bly are sepulchral monuments, f
In their costume the Tarascos differed considerably from their neighbors. The feather garments which they manufactured surpassed all others in durability and beauty. Cotton was, however, the usual ma- terial. Gold and copper are found in the mountains
Tarex is identified by Sahagun with the Nahuatl divinity Mix- coatl, the god of the storm, especially the thunder storm. The other derivations of the name Tarascos seem trivial. See Dr. Nicolas Leon, in Anales del Museo Michoacano, Tom. I. Their ancestors were known as Taruchas, in which we see the same Radical.
* Dr. Nicolas Leon, of Morelia, Michoacan, whose studies of the archaeology of his State have been most praiseworthy, places the beginning of the dynasty at 1200; Anales del Museo Michoacano^ Tom. I, p. 116.
fFrom the Nahuatl, yacatl, point, apex, nose; though other derivations have been suggested.
138 THK AMERICAN RACE.
of the district, and both these metals were worked with skill. Nowhere else do we find such complete defensive armor; it consisted of helmet, body pieces, and greaves for the legs and arms, all of wood covered neatly with copper or gold plates, so well done that the pieces looked as if they were of solid metal. *
A form of picture-writing was in use in Michoacan, but no specimen of it has been preserved. The cal- endar was nearly the same as that in Mexico, and the government apparently more absolute in form. Many but confused details have been preserved about their religion and rites. There was a mysterious supreme divinity, Tucapacha, though Curicaneri, who is said to have represented the sun, was the deity chiefly wor- shipped. Large idols of stone and many of smaller size of terra cotta may still be exhumed by the ener- getic archaeologist. Cremation was in vogue for the disposition of the dead, and human sacrifices, both at funerals and in the celebration of religious rites, were usual.
The Tarascan language is harmonious and vocalic, and its grammar is thoroughly American in charac- ter, the verb being extraordinarily developed, the substantive incorporated in the expression of action, and the modifications of this conveyed by numerous infixes and sufiixes.
* For numerous authorities, see Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific Coast, vol. II, pp. 407-8; and on the antiquities of the country, Dr. Leon, in the Anales del Museo Michoacano, passim, and Beaumont, Cronica de la Provincia de Mechoacan, Tom. Ill, p. 87, sq. (Mexico, 1874).
TRIBES ON THE GUI.F COAST. 139
4. THE TOTONACOS.
The first natives whom Cortes met on landing in Mexico were the Totonacos. They occupied the ter- ritory of Totonicapan, now included in the state of Vera Cruz. According to traditions of their own, they had resided there eight hundred years, most of which time they were independent, though a few generations before the arrival of the Spaniards they had been subjected by the arms of the Montezumas. The course of their early migrations they stated had been from the west and northwest, and they claimed to have been the constructors of the remarkable pyramids and temples of Teotihuacan, ten miles northwest of the city of Mexico. This boast we may be chary of believing, but they were unquestionably a people of high culture. Sahagun describes them as almost white in color, their heads artificially de- formed, but their features regular and handsome.* Robes of cotton beautifully dyed served them for garments, and their feet were covered with sandals. The priests wore long black gowns with collars, so that they looked like Dominican monks. The re- ligion which prevailed among them was a sun-wor- ship with elaborate rites, among which were the circumcision of boys and a similar operation on girls.
These people were highly civilized. Cempoalla, their capital city, was situate about five miles from the sea, at the junction of two streams. Its houses were of brick and mortar, and each was surrounded by a small garden, at the foot of which a stream of fresh water was conducted. Fruit trees and grain * Sahagun, Historia de la Nueva Espafla, Ivib. X, cap. 6.
l4o THE AMERICAN RACE.
fields filled the gardens and surrounded the city. Altogether, says the chronicler, it was like a terres- trial paradise.* That this description is not over- drawn, is proved by the remarkable ruins which still exist in this province, and the abundant relics of ancient art which have been collected there, especially by the efibrts of Mr. Hermann Strebel, whose collections now form part of the Berlin Ethno- graphic Museum, t
The affinities of the Totonacos are difficult to make out. Sahagun says that they claimed kinship with the Huastecs, their neighbors to the north, which would bring them into the Maya stock. Their lan- guage has, in fact, many words from Maya roots, but it has also many more from the Nahuatl, and its grammar is more in accord with the latter than with the former. I Besides these, there is a residuum which is different from both. For this reason I class them as an independent stock, of undetermined con- nections.
5. THE ZAPOTECS AND MIXTECS.
The greater part of Oaxaca and the neighboring regions are still occupied by the Zapotecs, who call themselves Didja-Za. || There are now about 265,000 of them, about fifty thousand of whom speak nothing but their native tongue. In ancient times they con-
♦Herrera, Historia de las Indias Occidentales, Dec. II., Lib. V., cap. 8. t Strebel, Alt-Mexiko.
X Pimentel, Lenguas Indigenas de Mexico, Tom. III., p. 345, sq. II From didja, language, za, the national name.
THE RUINS OF MITbA. 14I
stituted a powerful independent state, the citizens of which seem to have been quite as highly civilized as any member of the Aztecan family. They were agricultural and sedentary, living in villages and constructing buildings of stone and mortar. The most remarkable, but by no means the only speci- mens of these still remaining are the ruins of Mitla, called by the natives Ryo Ba^ the "entrance to the sepulchre," the traditional belief being that these im- posing monuments are sepulchres of their ancestors. * These