excellent canoe-men (the word canoe comes from an Arawak dialect). They were users of cotton, and to them we owe the first Indian invention adopted by the whites (hammock, both name and thing are Arawak). From the Arawaks, too, the Spaniards first learned the use of tobacco. Like the Caribs they practiced the couvade. The name of the stock is said to mean "flour-eaters," on account of their use of cassava, which has also passed over to the whites.

Original Habitats.

The question of the original habitats of the important aboriginal stocks is one of the most interesting in American ethnology and archæology. The researches of Rink and Boas in particular seem to have demonstrated that the primitive home of the Eskimo was in the region west of Hudson Bay, whence they spread northward and westward to Alaska, etc., and eastward (north and south) to the Arctic islands, Greenland, and Labrador.

The earliest habitat of the Atha

pascans was in northwestern Canada,

to the westward of the home of the Eskimo. From there they migrated over the lake country, across the Rockies to the southward, leaving colonies along the Pacific to northern California, and sending out, through Arizona and New Mexico to the borders of the Nahuatl territory, the important branches of the Apaches and

Navaho the raids of the Apaches often reaching far into Mexico.

The original habitat of the Algonkian stock was, as Brinton and Hale have assumed, "somewhere north of the St. Lawrence and east of Lake Ontario," while that of the Iroquoian lay" between the lower St. Lawrence and Hudson Bay." The final result of the migrations and wars of these two stocks was to leave the Iroquois of the Ontario-Erie country entirely surrounded by Algonkian tribes. From their primitive home the Algonkian sent out numerous branches. west, south, southwest, etc., making the extent of territory covered by them very large, and bringing them into immediate contact with many other Indian tribes and with the white settlers over a vast area. The Iroquois (in the Cherokee and the kindred tribes of the south) had branches, which were so separated from their northern kin as to be long taken for non-Iroquoian peoples.

The Muskhogean stock, according to Gatschet, have been from time immemorial inhabitants of the country between the Appalachian Mountains, the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi. The scene of their earliest development was in the neighborhood of the Mississippi, or possibly even beyond it.

The chief migrations of the Caddoan (Pawnee) peoples have taken place in historical times northward and southward from the Platte River, from which region they expelled in

own

part the Siouan tribes, etc. If their traditions are reliable, their primitive home lay farther to the south, on the Red River of Louisiana. The primitive home of the Siouan. stock (characteristic Plains Indians since the introduction of the horse) was eastward in the region of the Carolinas. This fact has been revealed by the study of the Tutelo and Catawba languages belonging to this eastern area, and by inspection of the traditions of the various Siouan tribes. The main bodies of Siouan migrants followed the Ohio and the Missouri far to the north and west; the Mandans, Assiniboins, etc., reaching to within the borders of Canada. Other minor bodies traveled to the southwest, their representatives still existing in the Biloxi, etc., of southeastern Mississippi. The Siouan tribes seem to have followed the buffalo in its retreat westward, and their migration from the Carolinas is of considerable sociological interest. At one time their trans-Mississippian habitat included practically all the territory between the Arkansas and the Saskatchewan from the great river to mid-Montana, with the Winnebagoes jutting out on Lake Michigan. Their forays and trade-excursions led some of them from time to time across the Rocky Mountains.

The original habitat of the Shoshonean or Uto-Aztecan stock, which embraces the Ute, the Sonoran, and the Aztecan (Nahuatl) peoples, and has representatives from the north of

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The Arawakan stock (including the natives of the Bahamas and the Antilles, except the intrusive Caribs) had an extension in South America comparable only to that of the Algonkians and Athapascans in the northern half of the continent from the high Paraguay to the Goajiran peninsula in Venezuela, and in its greatest expansion from the Xingù to the Amazon and Orinoco. Its primitive habitat was in some part of the Brazilian interior, probably between the Xingù and the Paraguay, the general trend of their migrations having been northward. The Cariban stock, another very extensive people, who at the time of the Colombian discovery were to be found in the smaller West Indian islands, and the northern part

of the continent from the Essiquibo in Guiana to about the Isthmus of Panama, came originally, as the presence of the Carib Bakairi on the Xingù indicates, from the high interior of Brazil, at the sources of the Xingù and Tapajos.

The Tupian stock was widely extended at the time of the discovery along the Atlantic coast region from the La Plata to the Amazon, with branches scattered along the Paraguay and the Madeira to the foot of the Andes. Their primitive home, Brinton, with reason, assumes have been in the central highland country to the east of Bolivia. The general direction of the earliest migrations of this stock was therefore southward (down the Paraguay to the Atlantic), after which the Tupi branch followed the coast to the Amazon. The Tapuyan stock, which once occupied the region between the Xingù and the Atlantic coast (from the latter they have been driven by the Tupis), are probably the oldest human residents of part of this area, their tenure of the seacoast reaching far back into prehistoric times.

The Chibchan stock, to which was due the civilization of the Bogota region of Colombia, had their original habitat in the Andean highlands of central or southern Colombia, whence they wandered northwest into the Isthmus of Panama and northeastward up the Magdalena.

The Quechuan stock, authors of the most remarkable of South American

civilizations, according to their own traditions, spread from very small beginnings in the country about Lake Titicaca; but von Tschudi and Brinton, for linguistic reasons chiefly, find the primitive home of this people to have been in the extreme northwest of their characteristic area. The Aymara stock, which some authorities consider to have been a branch of, or perhaps an older member of the Quechuan, had its original habitat to the southeast of the latter. The relation of the Aymaran stock to that which produced the Calchaqui civilization of the northern Argentine is not clear.

Language and Writing.

Although the languages of the American aborigines constitute so many independent families of speech, the vocabularies of which are entirely divergent one from another, nearly all (if not all) of them possess certain general grammatical characteristics which justify us in classing them together as one great group of human tongues. Brinton enumerates as points of resemblance: Development of pronominal forms, fondness for generic particles and for verbs over nouns, and incorporation - the inclusion of subject or object (or both) in the verb, etc. Most American Indian tongues may be called "holophrastic," from the practice of compressing a whole "sentence " into a "word," the length of which is sometimes very remarkable. As

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an

an example may be cited the Micmac Algonkian) yǎleoolemāktâwepokwose, "I am walking about carrying a beautiful black umbrella over my head." This word, according to Rand, is derived from pokwŏson, umbrella;" mâktāwāe," I am black;" wolāe, "I am beautiful;" yăleā, "I walk about." From the Kootenay language may be cited: Natltlāmkinē, "he carries the head in his hand " (n, verbal particle; atl, "to carry;" tlām, composition form of aaktlām, 'head;" kin, " to do anything with the hand;" inē, verbal); hinupqanāpinē, "thou seest me" (hin, "thou," subject pronoun); upqa, "to see;" āp, "me (object pronoun); inē, (verbal). As typical incorporative languages the Iroquoian and Eskimo may serve. All the incorporative forms of speech in America do not, however, proceed upon identical lines; and some that do incorporate, like Kootenay and Eskimo, often have one or more cases. According to Dixon and Kroeber, many Californian languages do not possess the feature of incorporation at all (such are, for example, Maidu, Pomo, Yuki, etc.). As types of incorporating languages less complete than Iroquoian, we have Kootenay, Siouan, Aztecan. Some of the Central and South American tongues seem also to have little incorporation. Otomi and Maya appear to be evolving in somewhat the same direction as modern English, away from incorporation and grammatical

45

plethora. Many of the Amerindian tongues are both prefix and suffix languages; others prefer prefixes, others, again, suffixes. Some possess, and some do not, a plural form for nouns; a dual; gender-distinction in pronouns; a high development of demonstratives; reduplication; syntactical cases, etc. A few possess grammatical gender and some exhibit differences in the words used by men and women. In the matter of phonetics the languages of the American aborigines are remarkably divergent, some being extremely harsh, guttural and consonantic, others equally smooth, soft, and vocalic. The absence of certain consonant sounds and the equivalence of certain vowels and consonants characterize some forms

of American American speech. Euphonic changes are of major or minor importance. Sentence-construction differs greatly in various tongues. The position of the adjective is not always the same. The Haida language has

even a distinction like that between our shall and will. Careful investigation of the many Indian languages, as yet studied imperfectly, if at all, may reveal reveal other interesting linguistic phenomena. How much has been written about them, and in some of the languages of primitive America, may be seen from the bibliographies of Pilling! Our knowledge of them varies from a brief vocabulary of the Esselenian to the exhaustive dictionary of Yahgan compiled by Bridges.

The native literature runs from the unrecorded tales of the northernmost Athapascans to the poetry of the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians, some of which has been handed down from pre-Columbian times. The only actually phonetic (syllabic) alphabet now in use among the Indians (except the syllabaries introduced by missionaries among the Athapascans, Crees, etc.), is post-Columbian - the invention of a half-blood Cherokee. A sort of alphabet has, however, sprung up more recently among the Winnebagos. The development of picture-writing varied very much among the numerous tribes, as may be seen from Mallery's classic study of the subject. Sometimes, as is the case with the Kootenays, ability to draw does not seem to have been accompanied by exuberant pictography. The Walum Olum of the Delawares, the "calendars" of the Kiowa, Sioux, Pima, etc., are special developments of primitive records, the highest form of which is seen in the manuscripts ("books ") of the Aztecs and Mayas of a religio-historical character. The pictographic records of the Ojibwa

"medicine men" have been studied by Hoffman, and the rite-literature of the Cherokee by James Mooney. The native literature of primitive America has been the subject of special monographs by Dr. D. G. Brinton. The Spanish-American countries have furnished several writers and investigators of Indian descent.

Religion.

The mythology and religion of the American Indians have received particular treatment at the hands of Müller, Brinton, Powell, etc. Perhaps the most general myth of importance is that of the divine hero, teacher, and civilizer, who after accomplishing his labors, leaves the earth, promising to return at some future time. This myth is found in Mexico (Quetzalcoatl), Yucatan (Kukulkan), Colombia (Bochica), northeast North America (Manabozho, Gluskap, etc.). Somewhat analogous is the myth of the twin reformers of the primitive world among the Pueblo Indians, Navahos, etc. The Iroquoian stock have the myth of the contest of the good and the bad mind. The Algonkians have a myth-cycle of the rabbit, the tribes of the northwest Pacific coast one of the raven and thunder

bird, the Rocky Mountain peoples one of the coyote, the Brazilian Indians one of the jaguar, etc. Some of the tribes are very rich in animal myths and, as Mr. Mooney asserts, the characteristic tales of "an 'Uncle Remus nature" found among the Cherokee and other peoples have not, as many suppose, been borrowed from the negroes of the South. Even the famous "tar-baby " tales have their independent Amerindian analogues. Flood-legends are wide-spread in America and vary from the simple, locally colored stories of rude Athapascans to the elaborate conceptions of the civilized peoples of Mexico,