The Native Races of British North America

Native Races of the British Empire
W. D. HAMBLY, F.R.A.I., B.Sc. (RESEARCH DEGREE, OXON.)
OXFORD DIPLOMA IN ANTHROPOLOGY ASSISTANT ANATOMIST IN THE WELLCOME RESEARCH EXPEDITION TO THE ANGLO-EGYPTIAN SUDAN, 1913-14
HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON, EDINBURGH, GLASGOW TORONTO, MELBOURNE, CAPE TOWN, BOMBAY 1920
NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN CHIEF.
Printed in Great Britain by Morrison & Gibb Ltd. , Edinburgh
During recent years there has been a very happy tendency to change the nature of geographical teaching from a monotonous memorising of the names of natural features to a subject of living interest.
In the endeavour to effect this change there has been a serious omission in our failure to appeal to natural interests of children by making the human element a central feature of geographical work.
A study of the picturesque lives of native races of the British Empire is an absolute essential if the teacher wishes to impart the appropriate colour and setting to a subsequent course of economic, regional, and political geography.
The sharp contrast between European beliefs and customs and those of primitive people is in itself an incentive to study and interest. In addition to this, a sympathetic understanding of the many native races who are controlled by English statesmanship is necessary for the material and moral progress of dominions in the British Empire.
W. D. HAMBLY.
The “Old World” was startled in 1493 by the great navigator Columbus, who returned with wonderful narratives concerning the “New World” of North America, whose native population he called “Indians” because, strange as it may seem to us, he thought that by sailing west he must come to the land of India. At the present day scientists are at a loss to account for the origin of Eskimo and North American Indian tribes; sometimes the former are connected with the European cave dwellers, who did such beautiful work in bone and ivory toward the end of the old Stone Age. Whatever may have been the origin of countless numbers of Indians, comprising hundreds of tribes, we may be certain that they had inhabited the continent from a very remote period, for in very deep old layers of soil one may find stone axes and arrowheads, which are side by side with human remains and the bones of extinct species of the horse.