Contents.—Peopling of America. Divisions.
1. The Arctic Group. Members. Location. Character. 2. The North Atlantic Group. Tinneh, Algonkins, Iroquois, Dakotas, Muskokis, Caddoes, Shoshonees, etc. 3. The North Pacific Group. Tlinkits, Haidahs, Californians, Pueblos. 4. The Mexican Group. The Aztecs or Nahuas. Other nations. 5. The Inter-Isthmian Group. The Mayas. Their culture. Other tribes. 6. The South Atlantic Group. The Caribs, the Arawaks, the Tupis. Other tribes. 7. The South Pacific Group. The Qquichuas or Peruvians. Their culture. Other tribes.
The American Race includes those tribes whom we familiarly call “Indians,” a designation, as you know, which perpetuates the error of Columbus, who thought the western land he discovered was a part of India.
I shall not undertake to discuss those extensive questions, Who are the Indians? and, When was America peopled? and, By what route did the first inhabitants come here? These knotty points I treat in another course of lectures, where I marshal sufficient arguments, I think, to show satisfactorily that America was peopled during, if not before, the Great Ice Age; that its first settlers probably came from Europe by way of a land connection which once existed over the northern Atlantic, and that their long and isolated residence in this continent has moulded them all into a singularly homogeneous race, which varies but slightly anywhere on the continent, and has maintained its type unimpaired for countless generations. Never at any time before Columbus was it influenced in blood, language or culture by any other race.
So marked is the unity of its type, so alike the physical and mental traits of its members from Arctic to Antarctic latitudes, that I cannot divide it any other way than geographically, as follows:
1. Arctic Group.
2. North Atlantic Group.
3. North Pacific Group.
4. Mexican Group.
5. Inter-Isthmian Group.
6. South Atlantic Group.
7. South Pacific Group.
All the higher civilizations are contained in the Pacific group, the Mexican really belonging to it by derivation and original location. Between the members of the Pacific and Atlantic groups there was very little communication at any period, the high Sierras walling them apart; but among the members of each Pacific and each Atlantic group, the intercourse was constant and extensive. The Nahuas, for instance, spread down the Pacific from Sonora to the straits of Panama; the Inca power stretched along the coast for two thousand miles; but neither of these reached into the Atlantic plains. So with the Atlantic groups; the Guarani tongue can be traced from Buenos Ayres to the Amazon, the Algonkin from the Savannah River to Hudson Bay; but neither crossed the mountains to the west. The groups therefore are cultural as well as geographical, and represent natural divisions of tribes as well as of regions.
The northernmost of this division is
1. The Arctic Group.
This group comprises the Eskimo and Aleutian tribes.