FIG. 158.—Gahhigué-Vatake (chief), a Dakota-Siouan Indian
with tomahawk, 38 years old.
(Phot. Prince Roland Bonaparte.)
II. The Indians, improperly called Red-skins,[601] occupy a territory of such vast extent that, in spite of a certain common likeness, considerable differences are noticeable among them, according to the countries they occupy, the climate, configuration, and fauna of which vary in a marked degree. We can in the first place distinguish the Indians of the Arctic and Atlantic slopes of Canada and the United States, belonging to a taller and less brachycephalic race than that which predominates among the Indians in the northern part of the Pacific slope. In the southern part of the Pacific slope we note the appearance of the Central American race, short and brachycephalic, and in the Californian peninsula perhaps the Palæ-American sub-race.[602] Each of the slopes in turn afford several “ethnographic provinces,”[603] the boundaries of which approximately coincide with those of the linguistic families now about to be rapidly passed in review.
FIG. 159.—Siouan chief of Fig. [158], front face.
(Phot. Prince Roland Bonaparte.)
a. The Indians of the Arctic slope—that is to say, of the low-lying country watered by the Mackenzie and the Yukon—belong to one and the same linguistic family, called Athapascan.
The best known tribes are the Kenai in Alaska, the Loucheux on the lower Mackenzie, the Chippewas, the numerous Tinné clans between Hudson’s Bay and the Rocky Mountains, the Takullies to the west of these mountains, etc. All these Athapascans, of medium height (1 m. 66), and mesocephalic, are skilful hunters; they traverse the immense forests of their country hunting fur-bearing animals in winter on their snow shoes, in summer in their light beech-bark canoes. The Athapascan linguistic family is not, however, confined to the wooded region of Alaska and western Canada. Members of this tribe have migrated to a far distant part of the Pacific slope, where they have settled in two different districts. The Athapascans of the West, or the Hupas who dwell in southern Oregon and northern California, differ but little physically from the Athapascans properly so called, but they are already Californians in ethnic character. The Athapascans of the south—that is to say, the Navajos or Nodehs and the Apaches (Fig. [161]), taller (1 m. 69), more brachycephalic (ceph. ind. 84) than their northern kinsfolk[604]—live in the open country of the Pueblo Indians (Arizona, New Mexico), from whom, however, they differ in regard to manners and usages. They are husbandmen relatively civilised, fierce warriors and bold robbers, whose name has been popularised by the novels of Gustave Aimard and Gabriel Ferry. They are more numerous (23,500 in the United States)[605] than the Athapascans of the north (8,500) and the Hupas (scarcely 900).[606]
