GROUP XII.
NORTH AMERICANS DANCING.
This group gives us the general character of the more typical North American Indians, rather than the details of any particular division; the chief sources being the portraits in McKennedy’s Gallery, and some well-executed daguerreotypes taken at St. Louis, and kindly placed at the disposal of the Crystal Palace Company by Mr. Fitzherbert of New York.
The prominence of the features, along with the red or copper tinge of the skin, characterises the Americans before us. This contrasts them with the Eskimo. Their size, on the other hand, distinguishes them from the majority of the South American tribes. Nevertheless, the size decreases as we go southward; and the Eskimo configuration (along with the Eskimo habits) is approached as we move westward of the Rocky Mountains.
Nine-tenths, and perhaps a larger proportion of the Indians of the northern half of the United States are referable to one of three great groups—the Algonkin, the Iroquois, the Sioux; each of which falls into divisions and subdivisions.
I. The Algonkin is the greatest; greatest in respect to the number of its divisions and subdivisions, greatest in respect to the ground it covers, and greatest in respect to the range of difference which it embraces.
The whole of the Canadas, with one small exception, the whole of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, and Prince Edward’s Isle, was originally Algonkin, as were Labrador and Newfoundland to a great extent.
To the Algonkin stock belonged and belong the extinct and extant Indians of New England, part of New York, part of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, part of the Carolinas, and part of even Kentucky and Tennessee.
The Pequods, the Mohicans, the Narragansetts, the Massachuset, the Montaug, the Delaware, the Menomini, the Sauks, the Ottogamis, the Kikkapùs, the Potawhotamis, the Illinois, the Miami, the Piankeshaws, the Shawnos, &c. belong to this stock—all within the United States.
The Algonkins of British America are as follows:—
1. The Crees; of which the Skofi and Sheshatapúsh of Labrador are branches.