II. THE NORTH PACIFIC GROUP.

1. THE NORTHWEST COAST AND CALIFORNIAN 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. Elias 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 northerly 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, although they differ surprisingly among themselves in language, they have marked anthropologic similarities, physical and psychical. Virchow[118] has emphasized the fact that the skulls from the northern point of Vancouver’s Island reveal an unmistakable analogy 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 differences within the same tribe;[119] 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 oblique, 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.[120]

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 Alaska 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 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 additional 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 beating 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 surprised to find them in possession of iron knives and other articles obtained by trade over East Cape or from the south. The usual currency 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.

Tlinkit mythology is rich, having a coherent creation 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 injurious influence.[121]

The Haidahs, who dwell on Queen Charlotte Islands and Prince of Wales Archipelago, are probably a distant 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, observes that no physical distinctions can be drawn between them.[122] 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 accumulation the chief object of life. Among them all, women are honored for their chastity and industry, 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 generally prevails, the child among the Salish and Kwakiutl following the father’s gens. The communities 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 Flatheads, 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.[123]

The Sahaptins or Nez Percés, with their affiliated 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 holding an important position, intermediate between the eastern and the Pacific tribes. Having the commercial 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 classification adopted by the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington.

NORTH PACIFIC COAST STOCKS.

(From north to south.)

2. THE 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 term Apaches to the Tinneh (Athapascan) 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).[124]

Animal totems with descent in the male line prevailed 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 construction, 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 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.[125]

The Yumas and Maricopas were agricultural, cultivating 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 common. The favorite ornament was shells, arranged on strings, or engraved and suspended to the neck. The chiefs wore elaborate feather head-dresses.[126]

The Tontos, so-called from their reputation for stupidity, are largely mixed with Tinné 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 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 several Yuma tribes differing in dialect but much alike in culture, all being on its lowest stage. Wholly unacquainted with metals, without agriculture of any kind, naked, and constructing no sort of permanent shelters, they depended on fishing, hunting and natural 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 preference, 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 ossuaries.

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.[127] The early writers state that in appearance these bands did not differ 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 (dolichocephalic and hypsistenocephalic).

YUMA LINGUISTIC STOCK.

3. THE PUEBLO TRIBES.

The word pueblo in Spanish means simply “town;” 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 about 350 miles from east to west and 300 miles from north to south.[129] These are buildings several stories in height, either of stone or of adobes, communal in character, that is, intended to accommodate 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 differ 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 cañons of the Colorado, the Gila and the upper Rio Grande, and their numberless affluents. 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, evidently 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 emphatically say there is nothing in any of the remains of the pueblos, or the cliff houses, or any other antiquities in that portion of our continent, which compels 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 themselves, and with the condition of culture in which they were found. When, in 1735, Pedro de Ainza made an expedition from Santa Fé against the Navajos, he discovered tribes dwelling in stone houses “built within the rocks,” and guarded by watchtowers of stone.[130] The Apaches still remember driving these cliff-dwellers from their homes, and one of the Apache gentes is yet named from them “stone-house people.”[131] 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.

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 independent tribes by the natural facilities offered by the locality. It is a spontaneous production of the soil, climate, and conditions, which were unusually favorable 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 which is peopled by that widespread stem.[132] 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 Zuñi 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 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.

LINGUISTIC STOCKS OF THE PUEBLOS.
KERA STOCK.Pueblos of Kera or Queres, Cochiti, Laguna, Acoma, Silla, etc., on the upper Rio Grande, Jemez and San Juan rivers.
TEHUA STOCK.Jemez, on the Jemez river.
Piros, on Rio Grande and in Chihuahua.
Tanos, near Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Taos, at Taos Pueblo.
Tehuas, at Tesuque and neighboring Pueblos.
ZUÑI STOCK.At Zuñi Pueblo.