A MS. of Mr. Bollaert's, and the work of Kennedy, on Texas, have been the chief authorities for the previous. The notes of interrogation show the extent to which it may be amended. Data for doing this are probably more abundant in America than here.
For the whole area between the three oceans—(Arctic, Pacific, and Atlantic)—and the break formed by the Paducas, the chief groups have now been enumerated—perhaps exhaustively, or nearly so.
Not, however, finally. Although the details of even the wider groups have been so numerous as to make the present notice of them classificational rather than descriptive, there are still a certain series of facts which, from having a significance beyond that of their mere occurrence, require notice.
Whatever has an important bearing upon the following two great problems comes under this category—
1. The unity or non-unity of the American populations, one amongst another.
2. The unity or non-unity of the American populations as compared with those of the Old World.
1. The unity or non-unity of the American populations one amongst another—a short history of the different opinions upon this point will give two things at once—a, the history itself, and, b, the chief facts by which changes in it were brought about.
The broad differences between the American Indians, as a body, when compared with even the most anomalous of the tribes of the Old World, were such as would naturally engender on the part of the earliest investigators—those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—an opinion in favour of a general fundamental unity amongst the several sections of them. This was the effect of the natural tendency of the human mind to connect with each other those things which disagree with certain others rather than the result of any definite series of comparisons. The Brazilian and the Mohawk equally agreed in disagreeing with the Laplander, or Negro; and this common difference was enough to bring them within the same class.
The observed facts which first had a tendency to disturb this notion, were, most probably, those connected with the languages. These really differ from each other to a very remarkable extent—an extent which to any partial investigator seems unparalleled; but an extent which the general philologist finds to be no greater than that which occurs in Caucasus, in the Indo-Chinese frontier, and in many parts of Africa.