THE manner in which America was originally peopled has been the cause of considerable speculation. For a long time it was generally believed, and there are some who still hold that belief, that this peopling occurred within comparatively recent times by way of Bering Strait, and that before that the continent was not inhabited. But peoples do not willingly migrate into frozen regions, and the Bering Strait and Alaska down to Dixon Entrance were not many centuries ago buried under a mantle of ice. I doubt if there were even Eskimo in Alaska five hundred years back. It is my belief that all the tribes of the North-west migrated there from the South and South-east, and not within recent geologic time from the Asiatic direction.

That the continent was entirely peopled by way of Bering Strait within the last thousand years, by migrations through a zone of ice, is improbable. To assume that a population came over and passed down to Mexico and Yucatan and even South America, carrying with them their arts, but not exercising them on this interminable journey, is ridiculous. No pottery has yet been found between the Yukon and the Humboldt, or even farther south, probably because the Eskimo learned what little they knew about it while in the St. Lawrence valley or the Atlantic region, and the tribes of the North-west coast never came into sufficiently close contact with potters to learn the art.[387] Furthermore, no authentic trace of any Old-World language thus far has been found on this continent, and the only Asiatic language now known to be allied to an American is that of a branch of the Eskimo family which crossed from this side within the last three hundred years. The Amerind languages change slowly. An immense period must have elapsed since their separation from the rest of the world. It is said that two Japanese vessels a year are wrecked on our California coast, and some have peopled the continent from this source; a more absurd theory than the other. The number of Japanese vessels that were afloat a thousand years ago was as nothing compared with those afloat to-day, and if only two per annum are wrecked on these shores to-day, the wrecks a thousand years ago did not add materially to the population.[388] It is possible, however, that a few persons may have reached either seaboard that way, and like Cabeza de Vaca, they may have wandered for years among the various tribes as teachers and medicine-men, giving rise to legends of “white and bearded strangers.” But in the early days vessels were frail and did not venture far from the coast, so that the chances of being driven to American shores without foundering were very slight. The Northmen made the voyage, however, and others may have done it. Yet the supposed visits of the Irish and Danes are hardly worthy of serious consideration, although it would be rash to deny the possibility of their having come. As for the Lost-Tribes-of-Israel theory, on which Kingsborough was wrecked, no archæologist of to-day would be willing to give it a second thought. A multitude of stock languages, differing from each other, yet forming a world-group by themselves, are found here. The people who speak them, from Panama to the Arctic, are in their habits, customs, and physical characteristics wonderfully homogeneous,[389] yet they appear to exhibit several types that have been moulded into a family resemblance by some strange circumstance. Toward Panama, some of them attained a considerable degree of progress, but these were not of one special stock but of diverse stocks. Farther north there was another group attaining to a less but a similar kind of progress, and they also were, and are, of diverse stocks. In the Mississippi valley are evidences of another similar culture group, probably also of diverse stocks because some of them were allied to, or were part of, the stocks found there when the whites came. The same general conditions prevailed farther east, and a centre of development was rapidly forming in New York when it was destroyed by our coming. One of the most widespread stocks, the Shoshonean or Uto-Aztecan, is composite, containing within it tribes of the highest culture and tribes of the least culture, tribes that were peaceful and tribes that were warlike. It is evident then that culture was no evidence of relationship or the reverse among the Amerind people. By some powerful influence and long association they had, whatever their origin, been moulded into one race. “Where had they come from?” “How did they come to be so much alike?” “Why did their highest development take place down by the Isthmus instead of by the Great Lakes or in the fertile valley of the Mississippi?” These are pertinent questions. Attempts have been made to answer them by importing different people from different parts of the world and their recent culture with them. But the more the Amerinds are studied, the more homogeneous do we find them and the more isolated from Old-World influences. Culture, as mentioned, was not confined to one stock; it permeated through unrelated stocks. The languages too are totally different from all others. Thus the more the matter is investigated, the more closely are we confined to the Western Hemisphere for the origin of the Amerind people, as we know them. Toward Panama, that is below the City of Mexico, a kind of civilisation was attained, and there we find was the densest population on the continent. Culture never develops in a game country with a sparse population, and there is, therefore, an intimate connection between a crowded population and “culture” or “civilisation.” It may be broadly asserted, I think, that civilisation is crowding; it is man’s effort at self-preservation. Where the game-supply is exhausted or insufficient and subsistence must be wholly or largely wrested from the soil, there will be found the culture centres, the hothouses of art and science, from which a filtration occurs into all the contiguous regions and peoples. On this continent the chief centre of culture was the narrowest part; the population was packed there as in the narrow end of a funnel, leaving the whole broad top thinly peopled. The question immediately arises: “Why was this so?” It is evident at a glance that there was some preponderating, irresistible influence which compelled the inhabitants to draw into these narrow, restricted regions, there to act and react one tribe on another, and this influence was constantly at work moulding them all. If the continent had been peopled within any comparatively recent time, it is not reasonable to suppose that the tribes would willingly have huddled together far down in the most limited area. It is also from this area apparently that all the arts have spread. The crowding and the culture development were coincident. What was the cause of it? If we can arrive at a satisfactory understanding of the cause, it seems to me that we have the solution of the whole matter. The explanation appears to be that the continent was peopled before the beginning of the glacial epoch, and the crowding into the narrow regions, and consequently the development of culture there, were due to the encroachment from the north of the great cold. Wright says: “Just before the beginning of the ice age, a temperate climate corresponding to latitude 35 on the Atlantic coast extended far up toward the north pole, permitting Greenland and Spitzbergen to be covered with trees and plants similar in most respects to those found at the present time in Virginia and North Carolina. Here indeed in close proximity to the north pole were then residing, in harmony and contentment, the ancestors of nearly all the plants and animals which are now found in the north temperate zone.” It is not unreasonable to suppose, then, that man was also here, though as yet the scientific evidence is perhaps not sufficient to prove it. If he circled the globe in the Northern regions at that time, and was also occupying Central portions, the cold drove all south and together with changes of land levels cut off the American division from the other world.[390] Migration legends are useless in determining the origin of the Amerinds, for they can only relate to the comparatively recent changes of location before which, for a long period, the people drifted up and down and across the continent under the influences I have suggested. However man first originated, or where, he was doubtless distributed, like the flora and fauna, at some exceedingly remote period, over the whole world, by causes not now understood, but one of which was probably a greater continuity of land surfaces than exists to-day.[391] Some of the earlier-world people were possibly more advanced than we have been willing to concede, and there was, from a very early day, a differentiation of tribes. Some were making respectable weapons and tools of stone while others were using clubs. Too much stress has been placed upon the European classification of stone implements. It may exhibit conditions that existed in Europe, but it has nothing to do with a standard of measurement for the world. When Moses was leading his enlightened people, the European was a painted savage. The period of time in which man used stone implements is enormous; that in which he has used metal tools, comparatively insignificant. It stands to reason, therefore, that during this long use of stone, tribes attained to varying degrees of culture, and varying degrees of perfection in stone tools. There never could have been a single period of time when all tribes the world round made a certain quality of implements, then another period when they all made other quality of implements. Classification of tribes and races in a time-scale, or even in a culture scale, according to the kind of stone implements they used, is impossible. The Pai Ute and the Iroquois made equally good tools in the seventeenth century, while in other lands still inferior tribes were making implements about as good, and others were struggling on with poorer ones. At the time of the Aztec confederacy, their stone tools were not greatly superior to those of the Pai Ute. Therefore, it would seem that any resemblance between so-called American “paleolithic” implements and modern stone implements cannot be used as an argument to disprove the age of the former, nor that a polished stone implement found in a supposed ancient gravel is necessarily an indication of intrusion or that the gravel is not ancient. The implements thus far found in the California auriferous gravels have been similar to those found on the surface to-day, and this has been held by some to be a suspicious circumstance. It is not. Some tribes in California in those remote times were probably making stone implements quite as good as anything made to-day. Stone-working is not capable of high development. The range is limited. Some tribes compassed it early. Because also we do not find stone implements abundant in the North-American glacial drift proves nothing concerning man’s condition, presence or absence on the continent at that time. The population was almost entirely below the glacial limit, only a few inferior tribes skirting its southern fringe. We should, then, expect to find few northerly pre-glacial evidences,[392] as the main culture development took place south of the ice line, and tribes above this in pre-glacial times would be the most primitive.

The material evidences concerning the antiquity of man in America are many, but few are entirely satisfactory. The Calaveras skull and other remains in the auriferous California gravels seem to place him here as early as the Tertiary, and this, says Holmes,[393] would make man older on this continent than anywhere else in the world according to present evidence. A rudely chipped arrow-head has also been found in another region under some elephant bones. A primitive hearth was discovered in well digging in an old beach of Lake Ontario which dates back to the glacial time. Many specimens of stone implements have been found throughout the land in deposits which appear to be of great age. There is always the question of modern introduction through burials, overturned trees, etc., but the number and varying positions seem to indicate that some of these tools have been found in their original places. I excavated a mound in southern Utah from the depths of which I brought out an exceedingly primitive grinding-stone, yet not a single stone implement of any other kind was found. The grinding-stone was twenty feet below the top of the mound and ten below the present general level of the surface. The mound was formed of many layers of earth interspersed with thin layers of charcoal and ashes. All around the site there were house ruins on the surface, but in the mound not a trace of a building stone was seen. I was told that in digging a well not far from this locality a small earthen jug of antique type was found about thirty feet below the present level. I did not see it nor even the man who found it, but the great abundance of such finds must indicate antiquity, for they could not all be fraudulent, nor all recent intrusions.

The cause of the glacial period has been much discussed. It seems to have been largely due to changes in land levels,[394] and to other causes not now understood. The people inhabiting the world before it may have been originally much alike in kind and colour with local variations, and the isolation produced by glacial conditions modified this colour and increased the variations, those finally left in hot lands becoming darker, medium temperatures producing brown, still cooler the reds and yellows, and the forests of Europe evolving a shade or shadow people, shrinking from the strong sun; the so-called white race. The glacial epoch is often spoken of as if the whole world were frozen solid, whereas in North America, from the Ohio and the Columbia to the Isthmus, the climate was doubtless about relatively the same as it is now from Davis Strait to the Potomac and from Yakutat Bay to northern California. The ice extended down about to the Ohio River in the East and on lowlands not below the Columbia in the West. The Western mountain tops must have been completely glaciated and all elevated regions were cold, the conditions prevailing resembling those now found in Southern Alaska. The Sierra Nevadas, receiving the warm, moist airs from the Pacific, must have been far more heavily glaciated than the Rockies, which received less moisture in consequence. The ice period is estimated to have endured from ten to twenty thousand years, with an interval of recession in it and subsequent advance. The people were driven southward, and those most favourably situated developed the most. The people most favourably situated were all who were already in, or could fight their way to, the temperate lowlands of southern Mexico and Central America, which were rendered somewhat more extensive by the recession of the sea, caused by the withdrawal of the immense quantities of water that were heaped up in ice thousands of feet in thickness.[395] This has been estimated to have lowered the waters of the ocean by from 600 to 1000 feet.[396] The lands thus laid bare were climatically inviting and probably were soon covered with vegetation. In South America the people were crowded northward, or held there by the cold coming from the south. It would be in the northern portions, particularly the lowlands, that we ought to find evidence of the highest development, especially on the side receiving warm currents, and there is where we do find it. We apparently have then a northern and a southern limit to the ancient inhabitants of this hemisphere, within which climatic conditions during the period of great cold, and for some time thereafter, were most favourable to human development. This limit in the Northern continent is latitude 23 and in the Southern also 23. Within these lines the great precolumbian development took place, and the heart of this development on the Northern continent seems to have rested between the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the present upper frontier of Honduras, chiefly on the lowlands, and probably also on lands now beneath the ocean.

In North America, south of latitude 23, then, most of the tribes of the continent were crowded by the great cold, and here they developed their chief characteristics, so that by the time the ice began its last recession they had become a homogeneous people, with the greatest advancement and the greatest similarities in the region where the population had been densest, with a diminishing scale outward, those tribes farthest from the culture centre varying most from the highest culture attained. The tribe on the extreme edge was, and is now, represented by the Eskimo.[397] The development and the distribution of the arts were in the same order, and here apparently is the explanation of the superior excellence of Central-American arts, and the seeming derivation of all the arts on the continent from this centre. Finally the recession of the ice caused renewed trouble. The melting of it and the return thereby of the locked-up waters to the ocean caused a submergence of lowlands that had been made habitable by their withdrawal. There were floods and floods. Tribes were overwhelmed or were driven to higher ground. There was a renewed shifting of populations over the whole continent. Those which had been held back toward the highlands and toward the ice, accustomed to the cool airs and to a particular food, readily followed the retrogression of the ice, impelled always by pressure of the tribes farther south. They were inured to cold. The most southerly tribes became inured somewhat to heat, and clung to their lands, impelled also to do this by the pressure of wilder tribes recoiling from contact with still other tribes. But heat being debilitating, and especially so to the Amerind constitution, the Yucatec peoples, who were those who had attained the highest development, gradually degenerated under its influence, and before the voyage of Columbus whole cities were depopulated. Some held their own for a longer period, but were already on the way to decline when the Spaniards appeared. In some cases their towns were occupied by an inferior tribe of perhaps the same stock, or an inferior tribe dwelt around them and, not knowing the origin of the architectural works, attempted to account for them by fairy tales like the legend of the Dwarf’s House, which Stephens learned. The people nearest the ice front are still represented by the Eskimo, and their next neighbours, as of yore, are the Athapascans, and Algonquins, and so on down in zones more or less distinct, but considerably deranged by subsequent migrations, to the builders of the Yucatec ruins. The Apaches and Navajos are usually said to have come down from their kin in the North, but it is equally possible that they remained behind in the high mountains while their kin pushed on.[398] The table-lands of Mexico, being high and temperate, formed a final refuge for many tribes, some of whom had profited by contact with the centre of development, and these roamed the plateau, one branch finally settling around the lake of Mexico, and there planting again the seeds of the lowland culture. Many tribes were early crowded into the California coast region, because the lowland climate there remained comparatively mild, and the supply of fish, seals, etc. was so great that they were not compelled to till the soil for subsistence (if indeed they were possessed of sufficient knowledge, or if the land were in condition to produce), as was the case farther south, where the population was denser and natural supplies insufficient. But the region was so inhospitable that only fragments of these tribes survived. They did not multiply.

The reason the Eastern continents produced many and diverse peoples is that the glacial period temperate zone, or warm zone, extended through many degrees of longitude, offering extensive areas of settlement to the races in that hemisphere, where they remained more or less isolated and independent, to advance in their own way and along their own lines; that is, on the Eastern continents there was ample latitudinal land space, while on the Western there was a very limited latitudinal land space that retained a salubrious climate. This was the cause of North American race homogeneity.

The period of time that has elapsed since the so-called disappearance of the ice was formerly believed to be very great, but latterly views on this point have been much modified. Gilbert has declared, after a study of the Niagara gorge, that the time since the ice left that region is not more than seven thousand years, perhaps less. More recent investigations have tended to confirm his suggestion of fewer years. Immediately after the recession of glacial ice, as may be seen in Alaska to-day, erosion is extremely rapid. I have not space to discuss this point at length, but it is apparent that the rate of erosion is variable, and I doubt if more than five thousand years have passed since the ice left the vicinity of the Niagara gorge. As it still lingers in the North, far down on the Pacific side, it is probably not more than a thousand years since its influence was powerful in affecting the climate of all the region southward. The North is undoubtedly growing warmer. Some five hundred years ago Alaska was still covered with glacial ice. Five hundred years from now there will scarcely be a glacier to be found there, except in the highest mountains. “The next generation will find few of them with their fronts still in the sea,” says Henry Gannett.[399]

The most widely spread stocks are made up of those that were forced to occupy a middle position during the cold, like the Algonquins and Athapascans, who were invigorated by it. Other stocks, for reasons not understood, dwindled to mere handfuls of people, like the Karankawan, now extinct, the Adaizan, the Natchezan, the Uchean, the Zuñian, Keresan, and others. The oldest people of the Valley of Mexico mentioned are the Xicalancas, Olmecas, and the Toltecs. Brinton believed the latter never existed, but other authors, fully as distinguished, accept them as a bona-fide tribe. They may have been kindred to the Nahuatls, coming from the crowded lowlands, as the waters rose and the heat increased, and occupying the cooler plateau. Their wilder relatives later became influenced by them and adopting their learning began the famous development in the Valley of Mexico. The period of evolution in the crowded region was very long. Tribes rose to power and declined.[400] Other tribes, profiting by their experience, took up some of their ways and progressed. Many of these tribes we have no reminiscence of.

Back of the Conquest of Mexico by Cortes, the thread of authentic history becomes most uncertain. It begins about the sixth century. Ixtlilxochitl, the native Mexican, has written a good deal, but it must be taken, oftentimes, with extreme caution. The history of the Amerind race is written mainly by their conquerors. It is a one-sided affair, and even so is not pleasant reading. Balzac says: “Historians are privileged liars, who lend their pen to popular beliefs.” Certainly the character of the Amerind and his doings have not often been too charitably drawn, while, on the other hand, our actions toward him, even as related by ourselves, are enough to make one sometimes doubt the benefits of civilisation. Morgan, speaking of the remnant of the Senecas, says: “To embitter their sense of desolation as a nation, the pre-emptive right to these last remnants of their ancient possessions is now held by a company of land speculators, the Ogden Land Company, who, to wrest away these few acres, have pursued and hunted them for the last fourteen years with a degree of wickedness hardly to be paralleled in the history of human avarice. Not only have every principle of honesty, every dictate of humanity, every Christian precept been violated by this company in their eager artifices to despoil the Senecas; but the darkest frauds, the basest bribery, and the most execrable intrigues which soulless avarice could suggest, have been practised in open day upon this defenceless and much injured people.”[401]

On one occasion in 1643, out of a spirit of revenge for a murder committed by an Indian who had been infuriated by whisky, but whose friends, according to Amerind custom, offered to pay a blood indemnity, Governor Kieft, heading a band of soldiers and freebooters from Dutch privateers, fell upon the unsuspecting Algonquins and slaughtered over a hundred of them. Little children were tossed into the river, and the parents who plunged to the rescue were prevented from landing by the soldiers, and child and parent both perished. In this incident began the Dutch and Indian War, which lasted two years. Can anyone condemn them for going to war after such treatment?

Acts of white brutality of this character could be quoted to fill a volume, but these are sufficient to indicate the manner of the European approach, except in the case of Penn. The more docile the Amerinds were, the more abuse they got. If they became self-supporting like the Navajos, the government gave them nothing; if they were murderous and deadly, like the Apaches, the government took care of them and fed them. Issuing rations is a proper thing, when we have destroyed the native means of subsistence, but the tribe that works and helps itself ought to be aided further toward civilisation in other ways. One of the most stubborn of the numerous Amerind wars was the Seminole in the Everglades of Florida. Our whole available force was engaged in this war, besides some fifty thousand militia and volunteers. Though there were probably not more than four hundred warriors, the cost of the war was over $30,000,000, and three thousand lives were sacrificed. The wars with the Apaches were long and difficult. The Modocs also carried on a disastrous war, and recently the Sioux took their turn. These wars could generally have been averted by proper diplomacy. The battle of Wounded Knee was precipitated by a wild and unauthorised shot at a critical moment by one of our soldiers. Had he remained inactive the battle would probably never have occurred. Many tribes were exterminated at an early period. Most of the Carolina tribes were destroyed between 1714 and 1740. To-day very few Amerinds exist in the United States east of the Mississippi. Those who were not destroyed, or who are not still living on lands reserved for them, are mostly west of the Mississippi, either on lands belonging to them in the Indian Territory, or on scattered reservations. Tribes in Indian Territory have long conducted a sort of civilised government, but some of them are now on the eve of selling their lands and purchasing broader tracts with the funds obtained, in Mexico. The Navajos are in possession of an enormous area lying across the line of Arizona and New Mexico, and their vast herds of sheep, cattle, and horses require extensive grazing, so that it will be impossible to reduce the area allotted to them, especially as the tribe is steadily increasing in numbers. Schools of mechanic arts should speedily be established among them, in order that when they eventually are obliged to look to other avenues of support than stock-raising, they can do work that will command a price. It makes not the slightest difference whether or not they are able to read English, if they have wares to sell that white people need and want, and the Navajo is capable of great development on the mechanical side. They will learn English when necessity requires it. The Mokis have a reservation adjoining the Navajos, and it is ample for them for all time, as they are not increasing, and their herds of sheep are small.

In the West the history of the Amerind is linked mainly with that of but two other races, the Spanish and the Anglo-Saxon, while in the East it is intimately bound up with the wars and history of the Dutch and French as well. All the struggles of these European races for supremacy affected the Amerind, and in the East he is found sometimes on one side, sometimes on another.[402] He did not for some time discover that his doom was in the European regardless of kind. At first, too, the Amerind extended the law of hospitality to the newcomers, and the Europeans would have starved to death in some instances had it not been for the timely aid of the race in possession of the soil, and whose reward was subsequent destruction. The Amerinds at last tried to combine, as in the conspiracy of Pontiac, against their increasing foe, and had they been able to throw aside some of their peculiar regulations and form a wide-spreading and close confederacy, they could have compelled the Europeans to halt on the Atlantic slopes of the Appalachian chain for a long period. “In our ignorance,” says Simon Pokagon, chief of the Pokagon Pottawatomies, “we did not comprehend the mighty ocean of humanity that lay back of the advance waves of pioneer settlement. But being fired by as noble patriotism as ever burned in the hearts of mortals, we tried to beat back the reckless white man who dared to settle within our borders—and vast armies were sent out to punish us. We fought most heroically against overpowering numbers for home and native land; sometimes victory was ours, as when, during the last decade of the eighteenth century, after having many warriors killed, and our villages burned to the ground, our fathers arose in their might, putting to flight the alien armies of Generals Harmer and St. Clair, hurling them in disorder from the wilderness across our borders into their own ill-gotten domain.”[403] But the whites who had already come to America, however much they might have desired to leave the Amerinds alone, were powerless to prevent other whites, in search of better fortunes, from dispossessing them, and so impelled by the pressure of European population, numbers came and numbers came again and again, and yet still others behind them. The result, the final result, was inevitable. The Amerind was doomed when Columbus first saw the Western land, and nothing that the Amerind could have done would have greatly changed the final course of events. Tecumseh made an heroic effort to unite his people in a stubborn stand against the enemy, but the difficulty was that there were not enough Tecumsehs. The powerful league of the Iroquois, that once promised to dominate the whole continent, began its decline with the very first intercourse with the Europeans, so that in 1750 they were about half their former number. The league was probably formed about the middle of the sixteenth century, and in these two hundred years they reached their highest power and were on the wane. As it must have taken them some time to reach the point where they could form such a body as the league, they must have been a powerful and progressive people at least a hundred years before, so that their main existence as a progressive people probably covered a period of some three hundred years if not more. Had they not been wrecked by contact with Europeans, it is safe to assume that they would have advanced to double their power, at least, in another century. They destroyed the Siouan tribes of the East, held the Lenapé in subjection, and terrorised the Algonquins as far as the banks of the Mississippi.

King Philip, Red Jacket, Pontiac, Black Hawk, and many other Amerinds distinguished themselves as men of wide capacity, and in our later day may be mentioned the famous Sitting Bull, whose sagacity, intelligence, and military skill were of an extremely high order. He gave us much trouble, to be sure, but if all is fair in war, Sitting Bull deserves great praise for his ability.

In war the Amerinds were given to killing all they could, but as this is the business of war, and as white armies use weapons that are also meant to kill, and seem to try to do killing in battle, we cannot be too hard on the Amerind warrior if he did not always do his killing exactly in the way we do it. “Murder as a fine art” was not one of his studies. He killed and we kill; where is the difference? Wars may be necessary; I think they sometimes are; so did the Amerind.

Long before any permanent settlers pushed to the wilderness, adventurous traders penetrated to remote regions with the whisky keg, and as they seldom expected to go to the same place twice, they usually swindled the native outrageously. Many of these were Frenchmen, and they were given the name of Coureurs du Bois. There were also always certain outlaws who found safety in putting a great distance between themselves and the law. These classes were more apt to stir the native up against the European than to render intercourse easy, and often, in early times as well as in our day, they incited the Amerinds to war for the sake of their own gains. But it was the coming of actual settlers which caused the greatest trouble. They appropriated the soil, killed the game, and otherwise interfered with rights which the tribe concerned had for centuries, perhaps, regarded as theirs alone. In the case of the Hudson Bay Company, it being well understood that they occupied certain points merely for trade, no trouble was ever experienced. For two hundred years this company traded all over the northern part of the continent without a serious rupture with any tribe! Each tribe held its own lands as before, so far as the company was concerned, hence there was no clashing; but with settlers taking up choice places it becomes another matter.

The stories of Cabeza de Vaca, Soto, Cortes, Coronado, John Smith, La Salle, Tonti, Joliet, Lewis and Clark, Fremont, and many others are valuable, not only for the adventures contained in them and the descriptions of new country, but because of the descriptions of Amerinds as they existed in the beginning. Our understanding of the routes of some of these explorers is not always strictly accurate, and the accuracy of the route has much to do with our properly placing geographically the Amerinds named therein. There are grave discrepancies in the tracing of that of Coronado, for example. In another place I have presented my views on this subject.[404]

As there were outlaws among the whites, so too there were outlaws among the Amerinds. These were men from various tribes who had committed crimes and escaped the punishment they should have received according to the law of their people, and coming together they sometimes formed a band by themselves in some strong and isolated position. A good example of such a band of renegades was that of one Patnish in south-eastern Utah near the Navajo mountain. It was composed of outlaws from the surrounding tribes, chiefly Utes and Navajos, and was the terror of the country, though in 1872, when I first knew of it, nothing in the way of serious depredation had been attempted for several years. The Mormons of southern Utah looked upon Patnish as a dangerous man, yet he sometimes came to their frontier villages in a peaceful way. He had three or four stalwart sons who usually accompanied him in his travels, and they were always ready for emergencies. The band wore the Navajo dress and, I understood, preferred to be considered Navajos. Beckwourth mentions a renegade band of this sort in his time, a village “composed of outlaws from all the surrounding tribes, who were expelled from their various communities for sundry infractions of their rude criminal code; they had acquired a hard name for their cruelties and excesses, and many white traders were known to have been killed by them.... The village numbered three hundred lodges, and could bring from twelve to fifteen hundred warriors into the field.... We called it the City of Refuge.”[405] He speaks of them as Cheyennes, but I suppose they were Cheyennes in the same way that Patnish’s band were Navajos; because they preferred to be called so.

These outlaws often caused trouble between the better class of Amerinds and the whites, because, especially in the earlier days, an “Indian” was an “Indian” always and everywhere, and a crime of the outlaws or others was revenged upon the first “Indian” that was met with. There never was any inquiry to find out if he committed the crime; he was generally shot on sight. Innocence was a quality never thought of in dealing with “Indians.” By reason of their birth, they were all guilty of any crime perpetrated.

But I have already exceeded the limits prescribed for this book. In concluding, I would say that it seems from all the evidence available that this continent was peopled at a period so remote that other races had not yet developed their present characteristics. This was probably before the glacial epoch began, while the Northern climate was mild, and while land surfaces were distributed more on latitudinal lines, separated by narrower waters. Afterwards there was a rearrangement by the forces of nature, which, together with the extreme cold of the North, effectually separated the Amerinds from other peoples, and caused them to mingle and react on each other till even the affinities which had before developed in different localities and had produced some differentiation of types were almost rubbed out and remain to-day only as tinges of the earlier qualities. The other world tribes, subjected to other influences, have developed other differences and have diverged from their original stocks. It is also probable that in the redistribution of land surfaces and rearrangement of land levels, many stocks, some highly developed, were obliterated. Slight modifications may have occurred through later accidental intrusions from the Eastern Hemisphere, but if there had been any considerable intercourse within a recent period between outside peoples and the Amerinds we should have found distinct traces of it in the writings of early days. People as different and extraordinary as the Amerinds were would have produced a vivid impression on any who might have seen them and contrariwise a European, for example, would have left a lasting impression. On the extreme North-west coast there seems to be a type resemblance to Asiatics, but this is more likely due to an extremely early colouring which was preserved by special isolation on this continent, rather than to any considerable infusion of Asiatic blood in recent time. As before remarked, I am of the opinion that the Alaska and North-west coast tribes reached those regions from the South and South-east in comparatively late times.[406] Taking a broad view of the question, it seems to be an inevitable conclusion that the Amerind race, or rather the various races of which it was originally composed, were early cut off on this hemisphere from intercourse with the remainder of the world, and held in isolation by a change in land distribution and by the continued glaciation of the northern portions of the continent which in a measure endures to this day. The climate of North-eastern Siberia was also glacial and prevented migrations from milder regions. Many eminent archæologists agree that the Amerind was here before the great cold moved down, although the evidence of implements and remains as we now understand them is, perhaps, insufficient. Languages, traits, customs, and arts are also to be considered, and they seem all to favour, as outlined above, the theory of an exceedingly remote peopling of this continent from various directions. But this slight attempt to outline vast movements must be brought to a close. To sum briefly up, then, it seems that the Amerindian race, while originally composed of different elements, was, as a body, separated from the other peoples of the world, at a remote epoch, and by peculiar climatic and geographic influences, welded into an ethnic unity, which was unimpressed by outside influences till modern times.