INDIANS
748
INDIANS
has more advocates, as also more reasons in its favour.
The fact that Japanese and other Asiatic adventurers
have frequently landed upon the North Pacific coast
of America is a matter of history, and tribal tradition
and other evidence indicate that such contact was
as frequent in prehistoric times, but whether all this
has been sufficient to make permanent impression
upon the physique or culture, let alone to account for
a race, is an open question. For some years this
problem has been under systematic investigation by
the American Museum of New York City, with prom-
ise of important results. So far as at present known,
the only permanent migration has been in the opposite
direction, an Eskimo tribe from Ala.ska having taken
up permanent residence in Siberia within the historic
period.
The theory of autochthonous origin is usually, though not necessarily, connected with that of ex- treme antiquity, several writers claiming for the Indian, as for the primitive cave man of Europe, an existence contemporaneous with the glacial period. While this theory has many earnest advocates, basing their opinion upon such isolated finds as those of the Trenton gravels, the "Calaveras skull", and the "Lansing man", the consensus of scientific opinion is that evidence as to the original placement of these finds in undisturbed strata is not sufficient to establish the claim. With regard to shell heaps and other de- posits in mass, the highest estimates of age do not give them more than a few thousand years, and Dall, our best authority for Alaska, allows the oldest mid- dens on the Aleutian Islands not more than three thousand. The more civilized nations, as the Maya, the Totonac, the Muysca, and the Quichua, all prob- ably had their origin, as such, within a thousand years, or within five hundred years of the discovery. Without going back to geologic periods, however, the practical similarity of physical type over both con- tinents implies long occupancy.
The various claims for Jewish, Phoenician, Irish, or Welsh origin have no provable foundation, although the first especially has found advocates for nearly three centuries and has even furnished the moti\-e for the Book of Mormon. The numerous mounds and other earthworks scattered over the eastern United States, with the cliff ruins and other house ruins in the South- W^est, have also given opportunity for much speculation and theorizing as to the former existence in those regions of highly civilized nations now extinct. Scientific examination, however, shows that the ruins and earthworks are of the most rudi- mentary architectural character, being rude in con- struction and inexact and unsymmetrical in dimen- sional measurements, while the various artifacts found within them are almost precisely identical with those still in use by the uncivilized tribes. The more important house ruins are historically or traditionally known to have been built and occupied by the ances- tors of the Pueblo, Pima, and other tribes still inhabit- ing the same region. Some of the mounds of the eastern section are also known to have been in use as foundations for tribal "town-houses" within the historic period, but the majority of the larger earth- works, as those of Cahokia in Illinois, of Etowah in Georgia, the Serpent Mound and Newark earthworks in Ohio, are much more ancient, and probably origi- nated with more populous tribes which afterwards moved down into more southern regions. The Aztec themselves, according to definite trilxil tradition, reached the valley of Mexico from the far North, and linguistic evidence estabhshcs their connexion with the great Shoshonian linguistic stock whose tribes extend almost continuously along the backbone of the continent from the Columbia Kiver to the Isthmus of Panama. In the same way the Apache and Navaho of the Mexican border are known to have emigrated from the frozen shores of the Yukon and Mackenzie.
As in Europe and Asia, the general movement was
from north to south, but the Algonkian (Ojibwa, etc.)
and Siouan (Sioux, etc.) tribes moved westward from
the Atlantic seaboard, while the Mu.skhogean tribes
of the Gulf States had their earlier home west of the
Mississippi. One great South American stock — the
Arawakan — after occupying the Antilles, completed
the chain of connexion by planting a colony in Florida.
Languages. — One of the remarkable facts in .■\meri- can ethnology is the great diversity of languages. The number of languages and well-marked dialects may have reached one thousand, constituting some 150 .separate linguistic stocks, each stock as distinct from all the others as the Aryan languages are di-stinct from the Turanian or the Bantu. Of these stocks appro.ximately seventy were in the northern , and eighty in the southern continent. They were all in nearly the same primitive stage of development, character- ized by minute exactness of description with almost entire absence of broad classification. Thus the Cherokee, living in a country abounding in wild fruits, had no word for grapp, but had instead a dis- tinct descriptive term for each of the three varieties with which he was acquainted. In the same way he could not say simply, "I am here", but must qualify the condition as standing, sitting, etc.
The earliest attempt at a classification of the Indian languages of the United States and British America was made by Albert Gallatin in 1836. The beginning of systematic investigation dates from the establish- ment of the Bureau of American Ethnology under Major J. W. Powell in 1S79. For the languages of Mexico and Central America the basis is the "(ioogra- fia" of Orozco y Berra, of 1864, supplemented by the later work of Brinton, in his " American Race" (1891), and corrected and brought up to latest results in the linguistic map by Thomas and Swanton now in preparation liy the Bureau of Ethnology. For South America, we have the "Catalogo" of Hervas (1784), which covers also the whole field of languages through- out the world; Brinton's work just noted, containing the summary of all known up to that time; and Cham- berlain's comjjrehensive summary, published in 1907.
To facilitate intertribal communication, we fre- quently find the languages of the more important tribes utilized by smaller tribes throughout the same region, as Comanche in the southern plains and Navaho (.\pache) in the South-West. From the same necessity have developed certain notable trade jar- gons, based upon some iloniinant language, with incorporations from many others, including European, all smoothed down and assimilated to a common standard. Chief among these were the "Mobilian" of the Gulf States, based upon Choctaw; the "Chi- nook jargon" of the Columbia and adjacent territories on the Pacific coast, a remarkable conglomerate based upon the extinct Chinook language; and the lingoa grral of Brazil and the Parana region, based upon Tupi-G>iarani. To these must be added the noted "sign languag<'" of the plains, a gesture code, which answered every purpose of ordinary intertribal intercourse from Canada to the Rio Grande.
Adelung and Vater. Mithridates oder allgemeine Sprachen- kunde (4 vols.. Berlin, 1806-17); H. H. Bancroft, Native Races (of the Pacifie States) (5 vols.. San Francisco, 1SS2); Brinton. Essni/B of an A mcriranist (Philadelphia, 1S9(1); Idem. Myths of the New World (New York. 186S) ; Idem. The American Race: Lin- guistic Classifiratwn and Ethnographic Description (New York, 1S91): Husc'HMANN, Spuren der aztekischen Sprache (Berlin, 1854 .ami 1S51)); Dorset, Bibliography of the Anthropology of Peru (Ficlil Mils.. ChioaRO. 1898); Field, Essay Towards an Indian Hihliographi/ (New Y'ork. 187.3); Gagnon. Eaaai de bibh- onraphie Canadienne (Quebec, 1895); Hakluyt Society Publica- tions (92 vols., London. 1847-74). old travels, etc.; Hervas, Cataloim ih-Uc linque conosciute (Cesena. 1784); tr. Spanish (6 vols., Madrid, ISIIO-f), 1); Leclerc. BthiioMeca v4mer«cona (Pans. 1878)- Lillris .difionlis et eurieuses (Cath. Mi.ssions). new ed.. America. VI-IX (Tovllouse. 1810); Morton. Crania Amir^eana (Philadelphia and London, 1839) ; Pilling, Bthhooraphy of the Languages of the North American Indians (Bur. .\m. I'.thn., Washington, 1885), reissued in part in series of 9 bulletins of
