Social organization, contact of Indians and whites, Indian wars, missions, Indian talent and capacity, syllabaries invented by Indians.

In addition to the articles on Indian tribes there are many on Indian notables—for example, Pontiac, Tecumseh, King Philip, Black Hawk, Brant, and Sitting Bull.

Central America

Interest in the Indians of Central America, popularly called Aztecs, is rather archaeological than ethnological. See in the Britannica the article Central America (Vol. 5, p. 677), by Dr. Walter Lehmann, directorial assistant of the Royal Ethnological Museum, Munich; and the article America, Ethnology and Archaeology (Vol. 1, p. 810), by O. T. Mason, late curator, Department of Anthropology, National Museum, Washington, dealing with the Indians of North, Central and South America in general. The other principal articles on races or tribes of unusual ethnographic importance are:

Negro (Vol. 14, p. 344), by Thomas Athol Joyce, assistant in the Department of Ethnography, British Museum,—with a section on the negro in the United States, by Walter F. Willcox, late chief statistician, United States Census Bureau; supplemented by Africa, Ethnology (Vol. 1, p. 325), by Mr. T. A. Joyce, with a particularly valuable classified list (p. 329) of African tribal distribution, which may be made the basis for further study by reference to articles on the separate tribes, such as Berbers, Kabyles, Mzabites, Tuareg, etc.

Polynesia (Vol. 22, p. 33) for the Polynesian race; and also Samoa (Vol. 24, p. 115) and Hawaii (Vol. 13, p. 83)

Australia, Aborigines (Vol. 2, p. 954) and Maori. The following is a list in alphabetical order of articles on races or tribes:

Terminology

The technical terms of nearly every science are words coined from Latin and Greek roots, so that the student of these languages is at an advantage in learning any science—its terms have some meaning to him no matter how strange the science itself. But in anthropology and ethnology we come across such terms as taboo, totem, shaman and manitou. For their comprehension Latin and Greek give no aid. Each of these terms comes into English from the language of a primitive people to convey an idea at once too primitive and too complex to be expressed by any English word or by a Greek or Latin compound. “Taboo” is a Malay word meaning both “unclean” (as that word is used in the Old Testament) and “sacred”; and the idea it conveys is characteristic of the religious and social system found among the Polynesians and nearly all other peoples in a comparatively low stage of civilization, which sets persons or things apart as sacred or accursed. “Totem” is a Chippewa (North American Indian) word denoting an animal, plant, or other object chosen as the name of a whole family or tribal division. The word “shaman” comes from the Ural-Altaic (Tungus), and means “medicine-man,” a combination of priest, magician and exorcist. “Manitou” is another North American word meaning “spirit” or “genius.”