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f ^. I

MAJOR POWELL'S
INQUIRY:

Whence Came tlie taerican y iaos?

AN ANSWER.

A STUDY IN COMPARATIVE ETHNOLOGY

.1 A M KS WICK lOlfSH A M .
TAt:OM.\. WASH., r. S. A.

TACOMA. WASH.:

AJ.LKN & I.AMHOKX PKINTINU CO.

IHilO.

Mi 5Wm- h^'Ml:

WHENCE CAME THE AMEKICAN INDIANS?

We may assume that there is a region which was the home of the
fii'st man, or the primordial species. Where was this home; and by
what route did the aboriginal inhabitants of this continent find their
way from that pristine region ?

Ethnology is the science of aboriginal peoples. Researches in eth-
nology are investigations to discover the origin or derivation of peoples.
What, then, does the science of ethnology teach of the origin or deriva-
tion of the American Indian ?

When the New World was discovered, a great number of tribes
were found dispersed through all the habitable regions of the continent,
thir^v scattered in every district. The total number was comparatively
small, possibly but a few millions. Nowhere in America was there
found a nation, as that term is used by ethnologists — that is, a people
organized into a government on a territorial basis. Everywhere the
people were organized into governments as tribes and confederacies "u
a basis of kinship ; but this kinship was often a legal fiction.

When people are organized there must be some method of grouping
or regimenting them. Among the American Indians this was by kin-
ship. Consanguineal kinship was reckoned usually in the female Wnc.
It was necessary that men who belonged to the same clan should trace
their kinship through mothers : such a group of consanguineal relations
is called a clan. But there were a few tribes that reckoned kinsliip
through the male, as did the Greeks and Romans: when groups are
organized in this manner they are now called gentes. A clan is a group
of people who reckon consanguineal kinship through the female line :
a gens is a group of people who reckon kinship through the male line.
Clan organization seem^s to have preceded gentile organization. Most
of the tribes of North America have elan organization: a few have
gentile organization. One system always precludes the other. A
family group, composed of two parents with their children, is again
regimented with other such families into a group of consanguineal
kindred as a clan or a gens. The consanguineal group is again regi-
mented into a higher group, which we now call the tribe ; that is, all

■f
H

WHENCE CAME THE AMERICAN INDIANS?

611

those persons in clans or gentes who reckon kinship with one another
by affinity or intermarriage constitute a higher group known as the
tribe. Then tribes formed alliances, which are now known to ethnolo-
gists as confederacies. When they formed such alliances, it was under
the legal fiction of kinship. They agreed to bo brothers, or fathers and
sons, or uncles and nephews. Thus the confederacy was founded on
conventional kinship. Within these groups, others were developed,
from time to time, into the nature of which we need not stop to inquire.
We may now understand what the ethnologist means when he speaks
about tribal society as distinct from national society. In tribal society,
peoj)le are regimented by kinship : in national society, by territory.

In national society, a man belongs to the to.vnshij:) in which he re-
sides, takes part in its councils, and is amenable to its laws. lie is
also an integral member of the group of persons who have a home in
the county. In the same manner, he is a member of the group of which
the State is comjiosed, he takes part in the government of the State, and
is amenable to the laws of the State. Finally, he is a component mem-
ber of the national group. Thus, he is a citizen in a hierarchy of
groups ; and his citizenship depends on the locality of his domicile.
But, in tribal society, a man belongs to a hierarchy of groups by reason
of his kinship, actual or conventional.

Now, all the people of America, at the date of their discovery by
Europeans in the Columbian epoch, were organized into tribes ; and the
scanty millions, scattered over the vast region, were grouped as tribes-
men. Such tribal society is quite familiar to us through the Hebrew
scriptures, and has been found as a primitive condition in every part of
the globe ; so that the origin and history of civilization are now almost
universally considered as the development of society from the datum-
point of tribal organization. It began thus in Hellas ; and every na-
tionality which history investigates can, in like manner, be traced back
to tribal conditions. We know it from the Hebrew scriptures as pa-
triarchal society, in which the patriarch is the elder man of the group
in the different groups by which society is regimented. In the family
and in the clan or gens, the ruler or chief is usually the oldest male ;
in the tribe, he is often the oldest male by convention or legal fiction ;
while in the confederacy he is always the oldest male by legal fiction.
Thus, tribal society is often said to be patriarchal society.

In recent years, another term, which is altogether misleading, has
come to be used. We have seen that the clan reckons kinship through
the female line, the gens through the male. A patriarchy is a govern-

" C^'

833

6(8

WHENCE CAME THE AMERICAN INDIANS?

ment ruled in its dilfercnt ur.its througli elder males ; and the term has
this etymologic, as well as scientific, signification. When it was dis-
covered that sometimes, and usually in No. oh America, the group next
above the family reckoned kinship through females, the clan, by a mis-
use of the term, was said to be matriarchal, or ruled by women ; but
the existence of such a method of government has not been found.
The i;sc of the term " matriarchal " in this manner by a few ethnologists
has led many publicists to assume that the earliest stage of society is
matriarchal, and that in primitive society the rulers are woinen. There
are paternal and maternal groups ; but there is no matriarchal group :
the groups are all governed by men. In the Columbian epoch, most of
the tribes had clan organization in the second group, but a few had
gentile organization.

For a long term of years, an attempt has been made to discover
the relationship between the American Indians and other peoples of the
globe, hoping thereby to discover their origin. Thus, researclies in the
ethnology of the American tribes began with an examination of their
physical characteristics as animals. This science is called somatology.
It examines the relative proportions of the parts of the body, especially
of the skeleton ; but it also enters into minute details of everything re-
lating to the human body, as, for example, the color of the skin, the
structure of the hair, the attitude of the eyes, the conformation of the
cranium, etc. Now, in these physical characteristics, such great devia-
tions, or extreme types, as are found in the Old World are not discovered
among the American Indians. For example, there is no race of dwarfs
such as is found in Africa ; nor has there been found a race of giants.
It was long believed that the Patagonians were giants ; but in fact we
cannot say more than that some of them have well-developed bodies.
In America, some tribes have an average stature somewhat larger than
others ; but the variations in the members of the same tribe are much
greater than between different tribes. In the same manner there are
variations in the proportions of their limbs ; but no very great extremes
are found from tribe to tribe, although somewhat greater extremes oc-
cur among the individuals of the same tribe. In the color of the skin
thcu'e is very little variation. All the American Indians are rather dark ;
none of them are black ; and none arc white, except that now and then
albinos are met with. They all have rather straight hair, that is, the
cross-section of the hair varies but little ; they have dark eyes (except-
ing now and then the peculiar eye characteristic of the albino) ; but the
oblique eye of some of the races of the Far East has no counterpart

WHEl^^CE CAME THE AMERICAN INDIANS?

679

here. It is possible to enumerate the physical characteristics of the
American Indian to an indefinite extent, and still it would be found tliat
the extremes of type between tribes are usually much less than be-
tween individuals of the same tribe. In general, the extremes found
among the peoples of the Old World are not found in America; but
the average or mean of the American is about the same as that of men
in the rest of the world.

On this subject there has been much research; tomes have been
written, methods of examination refined, and extensive systems of
anthropometric observations made ; but, the more thorough the in-
vestigation, the firmer is the conclusion that the aboriginal peoples of
America cannot be allied preferentially to any one branch of the hu-
man race in the Old World. The research, in its refinement, has created
an art of anthropometry ; but its practice has not produced a system of
ethnology. The failure of somatology to solve tlie problem of the der-
ivation of the North-American Indian from some other people in the
Old World has led to other methods of investigation, which must now
be considered.

Let us look at the state of industries among our tribes. All were
skilled in the manufacture and use of stone knives, spears, and arrow-
heads. All, or nearly all, of them made pottery. All of them con-
structed dwellings of the material most available for that j)urpose in
their several habitats, — those of the Arctic clime making snow huts ;
those of the arid regions, stone houses; those of the Everglades, shell-
revetted palefits, or key dwellings ; and all utilizing the materials near
their own homes in dwellings of a great variety of structure.

In various directions, now here, now there, the several tribes had at-
tained to a high degree of skill in the textile arts. The extent to which
the skill of the natives in the production of artifacts had advanced —
with one article here and another there, so that altogether many and
diverse industries were produced — is simply marvellous ; especially
when we consider that metallurgy wns scarcely developed in the Wectern
Hemisphere, no tools of bronze or iron being used in manufacturing.

The domiciliary structures and articles of primitive industry are
greatly diversified, and often are made with great skill and ingenu-
ity. But this grand fact stands out in high relief ; viz., that every-
where the local industries were adapted to the immediate environment,
and the people learned to use chiefly those things which were furnished
them by nature in the several regions they inhabited. Sometimes they
supplemented their stores by bartering with adjacent tribes. Every

fiSO

WHENCE CAME THE AMERICAN INDIANS?

article found lias the impress of the soil ; and there is no evidence that
any of the industrial arts of the American Indians were borrowed from
the Orient.

Artifacts arc found in mounds and tombs, where they were buried
with the dead: but nothing has been found wliicli could not liave been
made by tlie tribes discovered in the Columbian epoch; and the pious
offerings of antiquity tell the same story as that told by the artifacts
discovered in use among the tribes by the European invader.

Stone implements and many other things are found in the latest
Pleistocene dejiosits of valleys and plains everywhere throughout
America. Nothing has been discovered which antedates the glacial
epoch, and nothing, with certainty, which has been deposited antece-
dent to the retreat of the ice ; though some few rude implements have
been found for which a claim has been set up, that they date back into
the latter part of the ice age of the region where found. But these con-
elusions are held to lack good geologic evidence of such age. The
evidence on which they rest proves too much ; for it often carries tool-
making man back into the Cretaceous age. We may, with safety,
assert that the evidence carries hina back far into the river and aerial
overplaeement that succeeded the formations of glacial origin.

The story which these fossil artifacts tell is one of great interest; for,
the older they appear, the ruder are they fashioned. From this we are
forced to the conclusion that the industrial arts of the American abo-
rigines began with the simplest tools of stone, bone, and other material
here in ica itself, and that their development to that high degree

of exce^' attained by +V.o tribes at the time of their discovery was

indigenous. The industrial arts of America were born in America.
America was inhabited by tribes at the time of the beginning of indus-
trial arts; so that if we are to find a region or a people, from which the
tribes of America sprang, in the Eastern Hemisphere, we can only con-
elude that they left the Old World before they had learned to make
stone knives, spears, and arrow-heads, or at least when they knew the
art only in its crudest state. Thus, primitive man has been here ever
since the invention of the stone knife and the stone hammer. How
much longer, we cannot say.
\^ With the industrial arts, decorative arts are developed. Like all
primitive decoration, it is symbolic ; but the symbolism used is every-
where the same. The animals of the habitat are pictured on the pottery,
woven into the fabrics, and represented in the basketry. Especially
are the universal symbols of the regions found. These regions or worlds

WHENCE CAME THE AMERICAN INDIANS?

()81

of the primitive cosmolon;ist arc the cast, west, north, south, zenith, na-
dir, and centre, associated witli pictnnvs of animals and otiier eliaractcr-
istics observed in tlie particular locality. No tribe in America has been
found which does not teach a cosmology of regions, witii a primitive
intercourse between them in the symbols of the cioss and the swastika.

The decorative pictui'cs found scattered through every great valley
of America, on the domiciles and artifacts in use by the tribesmen, and
in the ruins and graves of their ancestors, show that the American In-
dians had not yet acquired the knowledge and skill to re])rescnt objects
in linear j)erspective. They could not represent on a jilane surface ob-
jects in position on that plane, together with objects in a })osition on a
plane at right angles thereto; but tlicre are found a vnriety of con-
ventional metiiods of representing three dimensions in pictogra})hs. A
knowledge of this fact sometimes aids the arclneologist in detecting a
hoax. Not many years ago, an inscribed tablet, said to have been found
in a mound and to be of great antiquity, was, for this reason, immedi-
ately pronounced by an archieologist to be spurious. Anotlier archai-
ologist was not long in discovering that the petroglypli was copied from
the advertisement of a l)rewery, with Gambrinus astride a keg !

The archa}ologists of Kurope find glyi)hson articles among deposits
which they call "paleolithic," as representing an age when only the
crudest stone implements were used ; but these glyphs (h^lineate objects
in perspective with a minimum of crude lines worthy of Hogarth. Found
in America, they would be taken as practical jests ; and the arcliasologist
who would accept one as a specimen of primordial art would be regarded
as the victim of a hoax.

Perhaps with every tribe in America we find games of chance par
tially developed into games of skill. All such games have some kind
of paraphernalia like dice, cards, or checkerboards. These are also
found in the tombs and ruins of antiquity. They all seem to have been
developed as schemes of divination ; and they can be reduced to a few
simple types based chiefl}^ on the cosmology of regions. From one end
of the land to the other, one common system is found. All belong to a
workl-wide system ; and the ideas found in one region may be discovered
in e^erj other region. These games are thus the eojnmpn horitage^f
mankind. Tliey give no evidence of the derivation of one people from .
another, but only of the unity of the human race in primitive intel-/
lectaal endowments.

Let us next review the evidence existing in language. The earlier
travellers were surprised to find a great number of tongues spoken by

682

WHENCE CAME THE AMERICAN INDIANS?

the tribes. A few people in one distriet were entirely cut olT from
their nei<,'lil)()r.s in other distriets by the barrier of languiigc. Traders
who went from tribe to tribe, or from confederuey to ecjnCederacy, found
that the few words of trade language which they had mastered in one
region would not serve in another. Missionaries, who sought to spread
the Christian religion, found it a hopeless task to promulgate their doc-
trines as itinerant evangelists, and were forced to establish themselves
in distriets by tribes, devoting themselves to a study of the languages
individually. Every language seemed to have difficult vocables, with
unpronounceable elements, and a gramn.atical structure that revelled
in distinctions to which civilized men were unaccustomed in ordinary
European speech. Some of the latter, however, occur in the Hebrew,
the Greek, and the Latin. Thus they found the declensions and con-
jugations of the three languages of historical learning pretty well devel-
oped, though variously modified ; but, in addition, they discovered a
set of grammatical distinctions which made those Ifinguages difficult of
acquirement to them, though simple to those brought uji in the use of
such grammatical forms. Thus, distinctions were made between elder
and younger brothers, elder and younger sisters, between uncles and
aunts in the female and those in the male line, between cousins in the
male line and cousins in the female line ; and these were again distin-
guished as elder and younger. When things were to be counted, they /
had to learn a different set of numerals for different classes of things.
Long objects were counted with one set of numerals, short objects with
another, standing objects with a third, and recumbent objects with a
fourth. Many such distinctions were observed, in addition to those of
gender, number, case, tense, mood, and voice, with which, as scholars,
they were familiar.

Among a people not exceeding in number those of a small European
nation, but widely scattered throughout North and South America, and
regimented in bodies of kindred, a vast system of distinct languages
was found, usually so unlike each other that they did not furnish a
method of intercommunication between different peoples. Of such lan-
guages some hundreds are well known : perhaps there were thousands.
Every year's investigation multiplies the number ; and any one such
language, when carefully studied, is found to be composed of a number
of languages, — sometimes of those known elsewhere, often of languages
otherwise unkuDwn.

The multitude of tongues thus found is thrown into groups ; each
group representing a number of languages having common elements in

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sin

WHENCE CAME THE AMERICAN INDIANS?

68S

part. Tims wc have a group of Algonquian languages, of which thcro
are about forty, no one of which could be inidcratood by a people
speaking another, and dillering greatly in the extent of non-conuno!i
words. Such a group is called a stock. In the same manner, the
Athapascan stock has from ''lirty to forty languages; the Siouan stock
twenty or more; the Shoshoncan stock a greater number; while there
are stocks which arc represented by a single language, like that spoken
at Zuni, or by the Kiowa.

The Eskimauan language, whi<!h is spoken at the extreme north of
this hemisphere, is also found in the north of Asia. The people have
been called Orarians, that is, "dwellers on the shore," They inhabit a
narrow strip of country around the margin of Greenland, and to the
west of Baflin Bay, around all the great islands and down the coast to
the Gulf of St, Lawrence, on the western shore of Hudson Bay, and
about the bays and straits to the nor'.Ii ; then to the west around Alaska,
and still farther along the Arctic shores of the ci^'tern continent. They
thus extend along the winding island and mainlaml coast for more than
ten thousand miles; inhabiting a narrow frinj'? of country by the sea,
and obtaining their livelihood therefrom. Mure thm ten thousand miles
of coastland are occupied by a })eo})le who speak one language.

But in Newfoundland there are tribes which speak another tongue
mixed wuth the Eskimauan ; while on the southwest coast there are
other tribes speaking mixed tongues; and the same is true of tribes in-
habiting the northern coast of Asia, If we call all those tongues Eski-
mauan, then the principal tongue is still homogeneous, and a common
medium for the communication of tribes occupying, as I have said,
more than ten thousand miles of the most difficult coast known to man-
kind. While there is intercommunication, it is infrequent because of
the difficulties and perils of Arctic navigation. Thus, in all that tretch
of country there is but one language. What are the conditions under
which this language has been preserved in its integrity and homoge-
neity? Simply these : The territory occupied by the pco})les speaking
this language is cut off from the interior by an uninhabitable belt of
glacial land, so that the means of communication are to be found mainly
on the seaward side. The inhabitants, having been distributed over
this enormous belt of coast from a primitive tribe having one language,
have preserved that language through all their vicissitudes and stages
of culture ; while in the southeast, where the Eskimauan territory joins
territory occupied by tribes having other tongues, we find mixed lan-
guages. The same facts appear on the southern coast of Alaska, in

C84

WHENCE CAJtE THE AMERICAN INDIANS?

A-'

liuignaf^cs (lilToventiatcd from the main stock l)y admixtui-o with other
langnagos. Witli the exec])tioii pointed out, tlie Kskiinaiuui hinguage
is the purest language known on this hemisphere. So i'ar as they have
been studieil, all other hmguages are eomjtounded of at least two, and
usually of nianv.

From these examples we learn this im{)ortant fact with respect to
language; viz., that the diU'erentiation of two or more huiguages from
tlio same stock, by reason of the separation ()f the people into tribes
;ind their reorgaui/ation into the nation, plays but a miintr part, in-
deed a \ory minor part, in the multiplication of languages; that the
chief factor in dillcreiitiation is the comjtounding of (bllerent primordial
tongues.

A new language may be formed by the a(bnixturc of two or more
distinct tongues; the cbstinet tongues biMiig wholly absorbed, or they
may remain as distinct languages spoken by l)rwnchcs of j)eoples not
amalgamated. New tongues are developed by compounding and re-
compounding; anil this ]>rocess of comiioundiug has proceeded iu all
time as it has during the historii; period. We know lu)W languages have
developed in this maimer during the last two thousand years; their
origin by comiiounding is attested l)y all history; and there is not
known throughout the wide earth a single instance where, bv the divi-
sion of the ])eople into nations, a language has dilTerentiatcd into two
or more dialects witlxnit the aibnixture of ekMuents from some other
tongue. We are therefore ct)mpclled to regard the evolution of lan-
guage as a process of integration by compounding, and, conseipiently,
to think of a vast multitude of ]>rimordial languages. Kv(>ry little tribe
produced a language of its own ; for we no l(>ng(>r look at language as
something of divine origin, but nnderstaiul it to be a conventional body
of words devised by men in tlu'ir elforts to eommunicati> ideas, and
having a beginning in simjile tribal speech only a little superior to that
of some of the lower animals.

Every language which is studied is traced to lower and still lower
stages of structure; and when we speak of a stoi'k or family of lan-
guages, we mean a group that is conventionally related through the
compoumbng of common elements.

As we caimot reduce the languages of the Kasteni nemisi)here to
one common primordial tongue, so we cannot trace the languag(>s of the
Western ireinisphere to one common body of speech; nor can we
discover any primitive or fundamental relationship between anv one
language of the West with any one language of the East. We are

WHENCE (^AME THE AMl'^RICAN INDTANH?

085

■nUy,

tribe

iw as

therefore forced to conclude, from the evidence of language, that the
tribes iidiabitcd this hemis))here anterior to the development of articu-
late or graniinatie s|)i>eeh,— that is, before words were st) crystallized by
phonetic develo[)nu!nt that they might enter into the compounds
necessary to the evoluticm of a body of speech, and etymological re-
search should be able to abstract its roots and compare tliem with the
fundamental elements of Eastern tongues. As in historic times
languages have developed their vocabularies by com]M)nnding and
adding foreign elements, and in the process have sloughed oJl' cumber-
some grammatic forms and rcplaciNl tliem by logical forms as parts of
speech, so we must conclude that the same process was at work in
prehistoric times.

A vast amount of investigation has bc(Mi ex]H'nded in a search for
sonu^ ])rinu'val language as the foundation of the language of the Aryan
or lndo-Kiii'o]iean ])eo))les. Rut, the longer tlie investigation contiinies,
the more hopeless the problem; for the greati>r is the nund)er of the
}>rimitive languages founil to be. Not one language becanu' the Aryan
languages; but the latter were (IimmvcmI fi-om innumei-able pi'imordial
tongues. There was no single* primordial American tongue ; but, when
languages were formed, there wvw as man}' bodies of speech as there
were tribes of men.

Let us now turn to contemplate the o])inions of mankind. The his-
tory of opinions is the seieiu-e of sopliiology. Ethnologists have long
been in search of tlnve oj)inionsas e.\i)ressed in tluM'osmoIogy and myth-
ologies of the Am(>ri('an Indian. We now know that all our ti'ibes
were primitively zodtheistic ; that is, they worshipped beast, gods, which
beast gods were the primordial animals, — the progenitors and proto-
types of existing animals. 'The gods of each tribe- were the particular
animals of tlu> habitat of that tribe. Trne, they all worshipped the
heavenlv bodies; but tliev supposeel them to be the primitive ai;imals
transporteel to the zenith world. They nlso worshipped ce>rtain animals of
the nadir weu'ld, — tlu* nnderground beasts. Thus they assigned tin
birds to the h(\av(>n ; the badger.s, moles, and otlu-r burrowing animals to
the nadir; and the otlu>r animals to the four cardinal regions. Their
progenitors or ]irototypes are still bi^lieve-d to inhabit these distant re-
gions, and such birds and beasts as iwc now I'omid here to have come
from theses regions as their primitive Ikmucs.

Thus, all the American Indians have a cosmology of regions and a
theology of animal gods; but the tribes diil'tM' from district to district
in the personages of their pantheon. The gods are always organized

686

WHENCE CAME THE AMERICAN INDIANS?

■IW

[aA*c^c*c^

lYVU

as a tribe ; but the chief of the tribe is now this, now that, mythic per-
sonage. Among the Ute it is SJiinauav ; and among the Zuili it is the
sun. Among those tribes that have made the greatest progress in
culture, there seems to be a tendency to exalt celestial personages, and
to adopt a philosophy which singularly resembles that of our Aryan
forefathers. We are able to discover vestiges of ancient zootheistic
belief among the tribes of the Orient; and we are also able to discover
vestiges of a regional cosmology in many places throughout the Eastern
Ilemisphcre. So, we are justly entitled to believe that the cosmology
c^iAt^ I and theology of the American Indian were at one time universal ; but
'-'^'**^ ' we are not able to trace any direct connection between the Orient and
the Occident in the cults of primitive peoples.
/^ We are therefore abundantly warranted in saying that the Ameri-
can Indian did not derive his forms of government, his industrial and
decorative arts, his languages, or his mythological opinions from the
Old World, but developed them in the New. Man thus seems to have
inhabited the New World through all the lost centuries of prehistoric
time. In fact, we are compelled to believe that man occupied the en-
tire habitable globe anterior to the development of arts, industries,
institutions, languages, and cosmological opinions. That this aborigi-
nal man was spread abroad from some primitive habitat may be true ;
but there is no evidence that the dispersion of mankind was subsequent
; to the development of distinctly human activities as represented by
arts, industries, governments, languages, and philosophies, although he
had already acquired a supremacy over the lower animals which made
V him the universal species.

How this primordial species, the ante-human species, was distrib-
uted from some geograjihic centre or region, is the problem which
remains for solution ; and this cannot be solved by ethnology as repre-
sented in physical races or as exhibited in cultural characteristics. If
it shall ever be solved it will be done only by geologic research, — by
discovering the remains of the man-animal in his primordial condition
as they are buried in some geologic stratum, and by following them from
land to land in geologic formations.

Ethnology has traced the problem outside its domain and found it
to be a geological problem. Ethnologists have traced mankind back
into a geological i)criod, — the glacial, — back to a time when the geo-
logical distribution of land areas was cpiite different from that which
now obtains. As it is a geological problem, it can be solved only by
geologists and biologists.

WHENCE CAME THE AMERICAN INDIANS?

681

Let us now review the statements made, in order that we may the
more thoroughly realize the nature of the argument and the conclu-
sions derived therefrom. We have reviewed in a summary manner
the somatologic elements, or those which depend upon the physical
characteristics of men, and have found that we cannot derive Ameri-
can tribes from any other tribe or group of tribes in the Eastern World.
Then we have briefly set forth the evidence furnished by the five
classes of demotic facts ; namely, arts, industries, institutions, lan-
guages, and philosophies. In the five categories of demotic character-
istics, we discover that there are certain features which are universal to
mankind, and certain other features which are of local origin : these
must now be briefly reviewed.

In the cp.se of the aesthetic arts or arts of decoration, arts of physi-
cal amusement or sports, ^^nd arts of intellectual amusement or games,
we find them all founded on ideas universally entertained b}^ tribal men
throughout the globe, but that, at the same time, their embodiment
in objective material is controlled by tribal habitat. Thus, in decora-
tive art, the pictures produced represent the material objects, such as
animals, geographic features, and phenomena of the heavenly bodies,
which are to be observed in the particiilar locality inhabited by each
tribe. The games are those which spring out of the surplus of human
activity everywhere among mankind ; but they have a special envi'on-
ment, represented in the objective materials of the locality. All gumes
start from the universal effort of mankind to divine the future, but find
their expression in objective materials pertaining to the locality where
they are exploited. In considering all these arts, we are led to the
conclusion that they are not derivative from abroad, but are developed
by local environment.

The same is true of the industrial arts. Houses are made of ice
where there is perpetual ice ; of mats of tules, rushes, grass, and leaves
where such materials are abundant ; and of slabs, small trees, boughs,
and bark where such materials are the most convenient. Thev are made
of slabs of stone in arid and cliff regions where flat stones are abundant;
the cliffs themselves are utilized where cliffs prevail; and, finally, in
the Everglade regions, house-sites are selected and these sites developed
and improved by pale'^t structures and shell embankments.

In institutions, we discover that regimentation is founded on the
universal idea of kinship, and that the regulation accompanying regi-
mentation is founded on the universal idea of superior age, while the
details of regulation relate to the activity which the locality demands.

■<r^~

688

WHENCE CAME THE AMERICAN INDIANS?

I !

In languages, we find that they start with the universal effort of
mankind for expression, and that the objects expressed are in part uni-
versal to mankind. All languages have r)ronouns, all languages have
numerals, all languages have words for universal concepts, such as
father, mother, son, and daughter ; but, in addition to these universal
concept terms, there are other terms which express the facts of the
local environment.

Finally, in philosophies, certain univ :rsal concepts, as of regions,
heavenly bodies, fire, etc., are woven into myths, the actors in which
are the animals of the locality.

To a limited extent, arts have travelled from tribe to tribe by ac-
culturation. Industries have, in like manner, travelled from tribe to
tribe; for one tribe h-^s borrowed from another the ideas which are ex-
pressed as object-lessons. Tribes have come in contact with tribes ;
they have made wars on one another, and often established peace and
regulated intercommunication. They have thus borrowed legal prin-
ciples from one another, and entered into mutual agreements on the
nature of these principles. The individuals of tribes have conversed
with one another by gesture speech, and, finally, by oral speech ; and
thus languages have been compounded. Tribes that have commingled
with one another have interchanged the elements of their philosophies ;
and thus myths have spread. Such is the state of demotic characteris-
tics discovered in the Columbian period ; but there is no evidence that
the tribes of the Occident have ever commingled with the tribes of the
Orient. Thus we are forced to conclude that the occupancy of Amer-
ica by mankind was anterior to the development of arts, industries,
i .istitutions, languages, and opinions ; that the primoi'dial occupancy of
the coi^tinent antedates present geographical conditions, and points to a
rt mote time, which can be discovered only by geological and biological
investigation.

In the demotic characteristics of the American Indians, all that is
common to tribes of the Orient is universal, all that distinguishes one
group of tribes from another in America distinguishes them from all
the other tribes of the world.

Mankind was dispersed over the habitable earth anterior to the
development of demotic characteristics. John W. Powell.

I e£fort of
I part uni-
ages have
!, such as
universal
;ts of the

E regions,
in which

be by ac-
n tribe to
sh are ex-
;h tribes;
jeace and
^gal prin-
ts on the
ionversed
ech; and
imingled
jsophies ;
aracteris-
snce that
les of the
)f Amer-
dustries,
pancy of
)int3 to a
dological

1 that is
shes one
from all

r to the

SVELL.