The Indian is a hunter and fisherman both from inheritance and necessity. From his mode of life his sense of sight and of hearing have become wonderfully acute. His skill in following a trail is proverbial. When living near the sea or by the side of streams and lakes he is as much at home in a canoe as his relative of the plains in post-Columbian days when seated on his hardy pony. In current literature, however, all of these traits, as in the case of the personality of the Indian, have been fused into one ideal. It is true that the Indian hunter is more skilled in following a trail, in interpreting the signs and sounds in the forest, in shooting the foaming rapids in his frail canoe, etc., than the average white man to whom such pursuits are incidental or newly acquired; but many white men, and particularly those who have in a measure degenerated and

assumed the Indian mode of life, are his equal, if not his superior, in all that pertains to woodcraft.

In mental qualities the Indian is the inferior of the Caucasian and the Asiatic, but is the superior of the negro. The ability to advance is not absent, and capacity to reach a certain grade in civilization is general, but beyond the acquirement of indifferent skill in the arts, literature, etc., but few have passed. The mental quality of perseverance under adverse conditions and of continuous application has not been granted him.

These children of the forests and plains, easily pleased and as easily angered; kind to their children and friends, but cruelly revengeful when enraged; treasuring a kindness, but never forgetting an injury; without rigid self-control, as is sadly illustrated by their inordinate passion for liquor when once a taste for it is acquired, are plastic organisms, which reflect the conditions under which they have developed. These untutored barbarians, descendants from ancestors who brought little with them save the stone axe and the stone spear, but of necessity originated all their arts and institutions without contact with other peoples, and were exposed to a wide range of climatic and other physical conditions for many centuries, present a most instructive subject for the study of the geographer and others who are interested in the relation of man to his environment.

Resources.—To the Indian in pre-Columbian days no ships from overseas brought supplies, and as the various tribes were frequently at war with their neighbours, trade relations were greatly restricted. Intertribal barter was carried on, however, and the capture of supplies and utensils of various sorts by one tribe from another favoured their dispersion. Although such articles as the native copper of the Lake Superior region, the red pipe-stone (catlinite) of Minnesota, and obsidian from various places found its way to remote localities, each tribe had essentially to supply its wants from the natural resources of its own domain. The range in raw materials, to borrow a modern commercial term, that the Indian's intellectual development permitted him to utilize is indicated in the following table:

Used for food. Animal Mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes, crustaceans, insects, and at times human flesh.
Vegetable Wild—Roots, bulbs, seeds, fruits, nuts, bark, berries, sap.
Cultivated—maize, cacao, melons, squashes, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, potatoes, pineapple, (tobacco).
Mineral Salt, (earth in certain instances).
Used for clothing. Animal Skins, sinews, tendons, hair, wool, feathers, and cochineal for dyes.
Vegetable Wild—bark, fibres, roots, dyes, gums.
Cultivated—Cotton, aloe (?)
Mineral Dyes, such as ochres and cinnabar, charcoal.
Used in the construction of houses. Animal Skins, sinew, etc.
Vegetable Logs, bark, seeds; grass, roots, etc., for mats.
Mineral Stone, adobe, sods, earth, selenite (caves).
Used in making boats. Animal Skins, sinew; oil in paint; quills, shells, etc., for decoration.
Vegetable Tree trunks, bark, seeds, pitch.
Mineral Asphaltum; metallic oxides, etc., for paint.
Used in making utensils and weapons. Animal Bones, horns, skins, scales, teeth, shells.
Vegetable Wood, bark, nuts, leaves, fibre, dyes, pitch.
Mineral Soapstone for pots, pipes, etc.; obsidian, flint, etc., for spear and arrow points, knives, scrapers, etc.; various hard stones and pebbles for axes, mortars, pestles, etc.; copper for axes, knives, etc.; mineral dyes; gold and silver.
Used as personal ornaments and in the decoration of houses, boats, etc. Animal Skins, hair, fur, bones, hoofs, claws, teeth, ivory, oil in paints; shells, coral, pearls, feathers, quills, scales, etc.
Vegetable Seeds; fibres for mats, basket-work, etc.
Mineral Stone (turquoise, emerald, jasper, mica, catlinite, etc.), clay, gold, silver, meteoric iron; and various metallic oxides, cinnabar, etc., for paints.

In these several ways, and yet others, as in their games, medical practice, elaborate religious ceremonials, mortuary customs, modes of travel, etc., the aborigines utilized a wide range of materials supplied by nature, and supplemented them by horticulture, and to an exceedingly limited extent by domesticating animals. The degree to which they utilized the natural supplies was much less in certain directions than became possible to civilized people, but several sources of raw materials prized by them have not been called upon by white men, and are now in greater or less measure abandoned by

the natives themselves. The vast mineral wealth of the continent was almost entirely unavailing to the aborigines, except so far as native metals were discovered; while several articles, such as the camass, the seeds of grasses, insects, etc., for food and material, used for implements, as obsidian for arrow points, spears, and knives, catlinite and other stones for pipes, porcupine-quills for decoration, etc., are of small value to Europeans. While civilized man has become more and more independent of climatic and other natural conditions, largely through the aid of commerce, the aborigines were much less resistant and were forced to adjust themselves to their environment, and like other plastic organisms, were modified by it.

The Natural Food Supply.—The food of the Indians was mainly the flesh of mammals, birds, and fishes. The smaller deer of various species inhabited the entire continent from the subarctic forest to Panama. The range of the bears was equally extensive, but in certain instances, on account of superstitious fear, were not customarily used for food. The almost universal source of food supply furnished by the smaller deer was supplemented at the far north by the Barren Ground caribou, succeeded southward by the woodland caribou; overlapping the range of the latter and extending farther south was the moose; this, in turn, was supplemented and exceeded in southern range by the Wapiti (elk); more restricted was the range of the mountain-sheep and mountain-goat, each inhabiting the Pacific mountains; on the Great plains roamed the bison and the antelope, the former extending from the central Atlantic seaboard to the Snake River plains, and the latter from the subarctic forest to Mexico. The mammalian food supply was most abundant in the temperate belt, and while decreasing northward, declined more rapidly towards the south. The food supply furnished by fishes was plentiful wherever water was present, and in superabundance in tidal rivers and estuaries both on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts; but these resources fluctuated in a conspicuous way with seasonal changes, owing especially to the annual migrations of the shad and salmon. Supplementing the highly desirable fish-food on the ocean