Next to the details of our method, and the principles of our classification, the more important of the special questions command attention. Upon the relations of the Eskimo to the other languages of America I have long ago expressed my opinion. I now add the following remarks upon the prevalence of the doctrine which separated them.
Let us imagine an American or British ethnologist speculating on the origin and unity of the European populations and arriving, in the course of his investigations, at Finmark, or any of those northern parts of Scandinavia where the Norwegian and Laplander come in immediate geographical contact. What would be first? Even this—close geographical contact accompanied by a remarkable contrast in the way of the ethnology: difference in habits, difference in aptitudes, difference in civilisation, difference of creed, difference of physical form, difference of language.
But the different manner in which the southern tribes of Lapland comport themselves in respect to their nearest neighbours, according as they lie west or east, illustrates this view. On the side of Norway few contrasts are more definite and striking than that between the nomad Lap with his reindeer, and reindeer-skin habiliments and the industrial and highly civilized Norwegian. No similarity of habits is here; no affinity of language; little on intermixture, in the way of marriage. Their physical frames are as different as their moral dispositions no and social habits. Nor is this difficult to explain. The Norwegian is not only a member of another stock, but his original home was in a southern, or comparatively southern, climate. It was Germany rather Scandinavia; for Scandinavia was, originally, exclusively Lap or Fin. But the German family encroached northwards; and by displacement after displacement obliterated those members of the Lap stock whose occupancy was Southern and Central Scandinavia, until nothing was left but its extreme northern representatives in the most northern and least favored parts of the peninsula. By these means two strongly contrasted populations were brought in close geographical contact—this being the present condition all along the South Eastern, or Norwegian, boundary of Lapland.
But it is by no means the present condition of those parts of Russian Lapland where the Lap population touches that of Finland Proper.
Here, although the Lap and Fin differ, the difference lies within a far narrower limit than that which divides the Lap from the Norwegian or the Swede. The stature of the Lap is less than that of the Fin; though the Fin is more short than tall, and the Lap is far from being so stunted as books and pictures make him. The habits, too, differ. The reindeer goes with the Lap; the cow with the Fin. Other points differ also. On the whole, however, the Fin physiognomy is Lap, and the Lap Fin; and the languages are allied.
Furthermore—the Fin graduates into the Wotiak, the Zirianean, the Permian; the Permian into the Tsheremiss, the Mordvin &c. In other words, if we follow the Lap eastwards we come into a whole fancy of congeners. On the west, however, the further we went, the less Lap was everything. Instead of being Lap it was Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, or German. The last of those, however, would lead us into the Sarmatian family, and this would bring us round to the Fins of South Finland. The time, however, may come when Russia will have so encroached upon the Fin populations to the south of the Arctic Circle as for the Lap and Slave to come in immediate contact; and when this contact is effected there will be contrast also—contrast less strong, perhaps, than that between the Lap and Swede, but still contrast.
Mutatis mutandis—this seems to have been the case with the Eskimo and the North American Indians as they are popularly called—popularly but inaccurately; inasmuch as the present writer considers the Eskimo to be as truly American as any other occupants of the soil of America. On the East there has been encroachment, displacement, and, as an effect thereof, two strongly contrasted populations in close geographical contact—viz.: the Eskimos and the northern members of the Algonkin family. On the west, where the change has been less, the Athabaskans, the Kolutshes, and the Eskimos graduate to each other, coming under the same category, and forming part of one and the same class; that class being by no means a narrow, though not an inordinately, wide one.
Another special question is that concerning the origin of the Nahuatl, Astecs, or Mexicans. The maritime hypothesis I have abandoned. The doctrine that their civilisation was Maya I retain. I doubt, however, whether they originated anywhere. By this I mean that they are, though not quite in situ, nearly so. In the northermost parts of their area they may so entirely. When I refined on this—the common sense—view of them I was, like many others, misled by the peculiar phonesis. What it is may be better seen by an example than explained. Contrast the two following columns. How smoothly the words on the right run, how harshly sound (when they can be sounded) those of the left. Not, however, that they give us the actual sounds of the combination khl &c. All that this means is that there is some extraordinary sound to be expressed that no simple sign or no common combination will represent. In Mr. Hale's vocabularies it is represented by a single special sign.
Now if the Astec phonesis be more akin to the Selish and its congeners than to the Shoshoni and other interjacent forms of speech, we get an element of affinity which connects the more distant whilst it separates the nearer languages. Overvalue this, and you may be misled.