The American Race

The Guachis are classed as belonging to the Guaranis (Tupi stock), and by tradition came from the west (see anté, p. 233). A comparison with the Samucu vocabulary (page 359) seems to me to suggest several resemblances which would be worth further study on more extended material.

The Guatos may be a mixed off-shoot of the Tapuya stock, as has been suggested (anté, p. 318). Of the Caraja, we must await the publication of the abundant material collected by Dr. Paul Ehrenreich.

PATAGONIAN AND FUEGIAN STOCKS

The vocabularies of the Tsoneca, Tehuelhet or Patagonian differ considerably in the various writers. No. 1 is from Von Martius, completed from D’Orbigny’s lists. No. 2 is based on Lt. Muster’s examples, supplemented from the vocabularies in Ramon Lista’s Exploraciones.

The Yahgan and Alikuluf pass for independent stocks. Yet in a number of words they resemble each other, and in a few, for example, those for “eye,” “woman,” “moon,” “man,” there seems more than a chance similarity.

ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS

P. 24. Auriferous Gravels of California. The principal reference is J. D. Whitney, The Auriferous Gravels of the Sierra Nevada of California, pp. 258-288 (Cambridge, Mass., 1879). Professor Whitney believes that the evidence is sufficient to attribute the mortars, pestles, beads, etc., found in the auriferous gravels to late pliocene man. But Dr. Joseph Leidy describes equine skulls, molars, incisors, etc., found in these gravels, thirty-five to forty feet below the surface, “not differing in any respect from those of the modern horse,” and “unchanged in texture” (see ibid., p. 257). Dr. Leidy informs me personally that for such reasons he gravely doubts the antiquity of the formation, and distrusts the great age of the human relics it contains.

P. 27. Palæolithic Implements. Reports of the discovery of very large numbers of supposed palæolithic implements in various parts of the United States have been collected and published by Mr. Thomas Wilson in the Report of the U. S. National Museum, 1887-88, pp. 677-702. These implements, however, are called palæolithic from their form and workmanship only, and not from the stratigraphic relations in which they were found. As palæolithic forms often survived in the riper culture of the neolithic age, the only positive proof of their older origin must be that they are found in undisturbed relation to older strata.

P. 33. Remains of Man in the Equus Beds. What American geologists call the Equus Beds are those which yield in abundance the bones of various species of fossil horse, as E. major, occidentalis, excelsus, barcenæi, fraternus, crenidens, etc., most of which have been determined by Dr. Joseph Leidy and Prof. E. D. Cope. The principal localities of these beds are: 1. The Oregon Desert; 2. The country of the Nueces, in southwestern Texas; and 3. The valley of Mexico. The horizon to which these beds should be referred was considered by Prof. King to be the Upper Pliocene; but by Prof. G. K. Gilbert, Dr. Joseph Leidy, and I think, by Prof. Cope, it is rather held to be pleistocene or early quaternary, probably as old as the great glacial phenomena of the Continent. According to Cope and Gilbert, rude stone implements have undoubtedly been found in place in the Equus beds of Nevada, California and Southwestern Texas. See the American Naturalist, 1889, p. 165; Proc. Acad. Nat. Sciences, Phila., 1883, p. 134, sq.

Pp. 106, 108. Kwakiutl and Nootka Stocks. After the pages referred to had been printed, I received, through the kindness of Mr. Horatio Hale, advance sheets of the Sixth Annual Report of the Committee of the British Association on the tribes of the Northwest Coast, prepared by Dr. Franz Boas, with an introduction by Mr. Hale, and including eighteen vocabularies. Dr. Boas’ researches furnish clear evidence of a connection between the Kwakiutl and the Nootka tongues, and there is little doubt that they are distantly related. An instructive article on the physical characteristics of the Indians of the North Pacific coast is contributed by Dr. Boas to the American Anthropologist for January, 1891. His conclusion is: “Each tribe appears composed of many types, but in each we find a marked prevalence of a certain type.”

P. 123. Supposed Connection of Sonoran Languages with the Maya Stock. In his Etudes Aztèques, published in the Museon, 1890, p. 506, M. W. Baligny endeavors to show a connection between the vocabularies of Sonoran languages and the Maya dialects. His strong points are some of the numerals and the personal pronouns of the first and second person. I have elsewhere given good reasons for not depending on these pronominal analogies in American languages (see Essays of an Americanist, p. 396). And as to the numerals, “dont la ressemblance est évidente” (according to him), when the Sonoran tongues disagree with the Nahuatl, they have almost always clearly borrowed from the Yuma stem, as in “two,” guoca, kuak (see Vocabs., anté, pp. 335, 336).

P. 163. Language of the Ramas. Since my negative observations about the Ramas were in type, I have received a short vocabulary of their language from the Rev. W. Siebärger, Moravian missionary on the Musquito coast. The orthography is German.

My informant writes me that the Ramas are about 250 in number, and are all Christians and able to speak and write English, except a few very old persons. Their language will probably be extinct in a few years. They are confined to their island in Blewfield Lagoon. It is particularly interesting, therefore, to fix their affinities before the opportunity passes. From the above vocabulary I think there is little doubt but that they are a branch of the Changuina or Dorasque stock, described pp. 174, 175. The following words attest this, the Changuina forms being from A. L. Pinart’s Vocabulario Castellano-Dorasque, Dialectos Chumulu, Gualaca y Changuina (Paris, 1890):

The numerals for “two” and “three,” puk sak, pang sak, are doubtless the Cuna pocua, pagua. The Ramas, therefore, belong to the Isthmian tribes, and formed the vanguard of the South American immigration into North America. What time they moved northward and possessed themselves of their small island is unknown, but it was probably after the conquest. Mr. Siebärger writes me: “They were always kept under, even ill-treated, by the Musquito Indians, and are still very submissive and teachable.”

The following errata should be noted:

P. 69, line 3; for Nehaunies read Nahaunies.

Pp. 89, 95, 98 and 101, the numbers of the sections should read 7, 8, 9, 10, instead of 5, 6, 7, 8.

P. 169, line 17, for maternal read paternal.

P. 197, for Morropas read Malabas.

P. 251, line 11, for Wapiana read Woyawoi.

1

For the full development of these principles, I would refer the reader to my work entitled Races and Peoples; Lectures on the Science of Ethnography (David McKay, Philadelphia.)

2

Notably, Adair’s History of the North American Indians, and Lord Kingsborough’s magnificent Mexican Antiquities.

3

For a complete refutation of this venerable hypothesis see an article “L’Atlantide,” by Charles Ploix, in the Revue d’Anthropologie, 1887, p. 291; and de Mortillet, Le Préhistorique Antiquité de l’Homme, p. 124.

4

De Quatrefages, Histoire Générale des Races Humaines, p. 558. He adds the wholly incorrect statement that many Japanese words are found in American languages.

5

The nearest of the Aleutian islands to Kamschatka is 253 miles distant. The explorer Behring found the western Aleutians, those nearest the Asian shore, uninhabited. See W. H. Dall, “Origin of the Innuit,” pp. 96, 97, in Contributions to North American Ethnology, Vol. I. (Washington, 1877).

6

The evidences of a vast ice-sheet once covering the whole of East Cape are plainly visible. See Dr. I. C. Rosse, Medical and Anthropological Notes on Alaska, p. 29. (Washington, 1883.)

7

Joseph Prestwich, Geology, Vol. II, p. 465, (Oxford, 1888). J. D. Dana, Text Book of Geology, pp. 355-359 (New York, 1883). Geo. M. Dawson, in The American Geologist, 1890, p. 153. The last mentioned gives an excellent epitome of the history of the great Pacific glacier.

8

James D. Dana, loc. cit., p. 359.

9

James D. Dana, “Reindeers in Southern New England,” in American Journal of Science, 1875, p. 353.

10

See “On an Ancient Human Footprint from Nicaragua,” by D. G. Brinton, in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 1887, p. 437.

11

J. S. Wilson, in Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of London, Vol. III., p. 163.

12

The finders have been Messrs. H. P. Cresson and W. H. Holmes. From my own examination of them, I think there is room for doubt as to the artificial origin of some of them. Others are clearly due to design.

13

Her account is in the American Naturalist, 1884, p. 594, and a later synopsis in Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1889, p. 333.

14

G. K. Gilbert, in The American Anthropologist, 1889, p. 173.

15

W. J. McGee, “Palæolithic Man in America,” in Popular Science Monthly, November 1888.

16

See G. Frederick Wright, The Ice Age in North America.

17

Dr. Abbott has reported his discoveries in numerous articles, and especially in his work entitled Primitive Industry, chapters 32, 33.

18

De Mortillet, Le Préhistorique Antiquité de l’Homme, p. 132, sq.

19

Mariano de la Barcena, “Fossil Man in Mexico,” in the American Naturalist, Aug., 1885.

20

Florentino Ameghino, La Antiguedad del Hombre en el Plata, passim. (2 vols, Buenos Aires, 1880.)

21

The Descent of Man, p. 155. Dr. Rudolph Hoernes, however, has recently argued that the discovery of such simian forms in the American tertiary as the Anaptomorphus homunculus, Cope, renders it probable that the anthropoid ancestor of man lived in North America. Mittheil der Anthrop. Gesell. in Wien, 1890, § 71. The Anaptomorphus was a lemur rather than a monkey, and had a dentition very human in character.

22

Quoted by G. F. Wright in The Ice Age in America, p. 583.

23

H. Habernicht, Die Recenten Veränderungen der Erdoberfläche, s. 27 (Gotha, 1882). He further shows that at that time both northern Russia and northern Siberia were under water, which would effectually dispose of any assumed migration by way of the latter.

24

J. W. Spencer, in the London Geological Magazine, 1890, p. 208, sqq.

25

James Scroll, Climate and Time, p. 451.

26

G. F. Wright, The Ice Age in North America, pp. 582-3 (New York, 1890). De Mortillet, Le Préhistorique, etc., pp. 186-7. H. Rink, in Proc. of the Amer. Philos. Society, 1885, p. 293.

27

In his excellent work, The Building of the British Isles, (London, 1888), Mr. A. J. Jukes-Browne presents in detail the proofs of these statements, and gives two plates (Nos. XII. and XIII.), showing the outlines of this land connection at the period referred to (pp. 252, 257, etc.).

28

Wright, The Ice Age, p. 504.

29

Gilbert, Sixth An. Rep. of the Com. of the N. Y. State Reservation, p. 84 (Albany, 1890).

30

Races and Peoples, chapter III. (David McKay, Philadelphia.)

31

“Palæolithic Man in America” in Popular Science Monthly, Nov., 1888.

32

“No one could live among the Indians of the Upper Amazon without being struck with their constitutional dislike to heat.” “The impression forced itself upon my mind that the Indian lives as a stranger or immigrant in these hot regions.” H. W. Bates, The Naturalist on the Amazon, Vol. II., pp. 200, 201.

33

See E. F. im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, pp. 189, 190, who speaks strongly of the debility of the tropical Indians.

34

See J. Kollmann, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1884, s. 181 sq. The conclusion of Virchow is “que les caracteres physionomiques des têtes Américaines montrent une divergence si manifeste qu’on doit renoncer definitivement à la construction d’un type universel et commun des Indigènes Américains.” Congrès des Américanistes, 1888, p. 260. This is substantially the conclusion at which Dr. James Aitken Meigs arrived, in his “Observations on the Cranial Forms of the American Aborigines,” in Proc. of the Acad. Nat. Sci. of Phila., 1866.

35

Henry Gilman, Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1885, p. 239. Other perforated skulls from similar graves in the same locality showed indices of, 82, 83, 85.

36

D. G. Brinton, Races and Peoples; Lectures on the Science of Ethnography, p. 20. (David McKay, Philadelphia.)

37

Dr. Washington Matthews, in the American Anthropologist, 1889, p. 337.

38

Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Bd. II., s. 195.

39

Cf. Lucien Carr, in the Eleventh Annual Report of the Peabody Museum, p. 367.

40

Lucien Carr, “Notes on the Crania of New England Indians,” in the Anniversary Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History, 1880; and compare Topinard, Elements d’Anthropologie Générale, p. 628. (Paris, 1885.)

41

H. Fritsch, in Compte-Rendu du Congrès des Américanistes, 1888, p. 276.

42

For instance, some of the Mixes of Mexico have full beards (Herrera, Decadas de las Indias, Dec. IV., Lib. IX., cap. VII.); the Guarayos of Bolivia wear long straight beards, covering both lips and cheeks (D’Orbigny, L’Homme Américain, Vol. I., p. 126); and the Cashibos of the upper Ucayali are bearded (Herndon, Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon, p. 209).

43

“Report on the Blackfeet,” in Trans. Brit. Assoc. Adv. of Science, 1885.

44

“Les Indiens de la Province de Mato Grosso,” in the Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, 1862.

45

The Mexican president Benito Juarez was a full-blood Zapotec; Barrios of Guatemala, a full-blood Cakchiquel.

46

Vues des Cordillères, et Monumens des Peuples Indigènes de l’Amérique, Tome I. p. 51.

47

Ancient Society, by Lewis H. Morgan (New York, 1878); Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines, by the same (Washington, 1881); Bandelier, in the Reports of the Peabody Museum; Dr. Gustav Brühl, Die Culturvölker Alt Amerikas (Cincinnati, 1887); D. G. Brinton, The Myths of the New World, 3d Ed. revised, David McKay (Philadelphia, 1896); American-Hero Myths, by the same (Philadelphia, 1882).

48

The word totem is derived from the Algonkin root od or ot and means that which belongs to a person or “his belongings,” in the widest sense, his village, his people, etc.

49

Among the Brazilian hordes, for instance, Martius, Beiträge zur Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerikas, Bd. I. s. 116 (Leipzig, 1867).

50

Thus the Heiltsuk and Kwakiutl of the northwest coast, though speaking close dialects of the same stock, differ fundamentally in their social organization. That of the former is matriarchal, of the latter patriarchal. Boas, Fifth Report to the Brit. Assoc. Adv. Science, p. 38.

51

Races and Peoples; Lectures on the Science of Ethnography, p. 55 (David McKay, Philadelphia.)

52

Die Entstehung der Arten durch Räumliche Sonderung (Basel, 1889).

53

J. W. Sanborn, Legends, Customs and Social Life of the Seneca Indians, p. 36 (Gowanda, N. Y., 1878).

54

Father Ragueneau tells us that among the Hurons, when a man was killed, thirty gifts were required to condone the offence, but when a woman was the victim, forty were demanded. Relation des Jesuits, 1635.

55

Dr. W. H. Corbusier, in American Antiquarian, Sept., 1886; Dr. Amedée Moure, Les Indiens de Mato Grosso, p. 9 (Paris, 1862).

56

This opinion is defended by Max Schlosser in the Archiv für Anthropologie, 1889, s. 132.

57

The lama was never ridden, nor attached for draft, though the opposite has been stated. See J. J. von Tschudi, “Das Lama,” in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1885, s. 108.

58

See “The Lineal Measures of the Semi-Civilized Nations of Mexico and Central America,” in my Essays of an Americanist, p. 433 (Philadelphia, 1890).

59

The Caribs and some of the Peruvian coast tribes sometimes lifted a large square cloth when running with the wind; but this is not what is meant by a sail.

60

American Hero-Myths (Philadelphia, 1882).

61

Carlos de Gagern, Charakteristik der Indianischen Bevölkerung Mexikos, s. 23 (Wien, 1873.)

62

I have treated this subject at considerable length in opposition to the opinion of Lucien Adam and Friedrich Müller in my Essays of an Americanist, pp. 349-389 (Philadelphia, 1890).

63

Packard, “Notes on the Labrador Eskimo and their former range southward,” in American Naturalist, 1885, p. 471.

64

John Murdoch, in The American Anthropologist, 1888, p. 129; also Dr. Henry Rink, The Eskimo Tribes (London, 1887); Dr. Franz Boas, The Central Eskimo, in the Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology; W. H. Dall, Tribes of the Extreme Northwest (Washington, 1887); Ivan Petroff, in The American Naturalist, 1882, p. 567.

65

Dall is positive that there is no racial distinction between the Innuit and the other American Indians, loc. cit., p. 95. He adds: “The Tartar, Japanese or Chinese origin of these people finds no corroboration in their manners, dress or language.”

66

Commander G. Holm found the East Greenlanders, a pure stock, well marked mesocephalic, with a maximum of 84.2 (Les Grönlandais Orientaux, p. 365, Copenhagen, 1889). Dall gives the range to his measurements of Innuit skulls from 87 to 70 (Contributions to American Ethnology, Vol. I, p. 71).

67

“Unlike the Indian,” writes Mr. F. F. Payne, “the Eskimo is nearly always laughing, and even in times of great distress it is not hard to make them smile.” “The Eskimo at Hudson Strait,” in Proc. Canad. Institute, 1889, p. 128.

68

W. J. Hoffman, “On Indian and Eskimo Pictography,” in Trans. Anthrop. Soc. of Washington, Vol. II, p. 146.

69

See some examples in my Essays of an Americanist, pp. 288-290 (Philadelphia, 1890).

70

G. Holm, Les Grönlandais Orientaux, p. 382 (Copenhagen, 1889).

71

Dr. A. Pfizmaier, Darlegungen Grönländischer Verbalformen (Wien, 1885).

72

On the relative position of the Chukchis, Namollos and Yuit, consult Dall in American Naturalist, 1881, p. 862; J. W. Kelly, in Circular of the U. S. Bureau of Education, No. 2, 1890, p. 8; A. Pfizmaier, Die Sprachen der Aleuten, p. 1 (Vienna, 1884). The Yuits are also known as Tuski. The proper location of the Namollos is on the Arctic Sea, from East Cape to Cape Shelagskoi (Dall).

73

Proceedings of the U. S. National Museum, 1883, p. 427. All of Clement G. Markham’s arguments for the Asiatic origin of the Eskimos have been refuted.

74

Either from the river Olutora and some islands near its mouth (Petroff); or from Eleutes, a tribe in Siberia, whom the Russians thought they resembled (Pinart).

75

Ivan Petroff, in Trans. Amer. Anthrop. Soc., Vol. II, p. 90.

76

Comp. H. Winkler, Ural-Altäische Völker und Sprachen, s. 119, and Dall, Contributions to N. Amer. Ethnology, Vol. I, p. 49, who states that their tongue is distinctly connected with the Innuit of Alaska.

77

Dr. A. Pfizmaier, Die Sprache der Aleuten und Fuchsinseln, s. 4 (Vienna, 1884).

78

Dall, loc. cit., p. 47.

79

Ivan Petroff, loc. cit., p. 91.

80

Mr. A. S. Gatschet has compiled the accessible information about the Beothuk language in two articles in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 1885 and 1886.

81

J. C. E. Buschmann, Der Athapaskische Sprachstamm, 4to., Berlin, 1856, and Die Verwandtschafts-Verhältnisse der Athapaskischen Sprachen, Berlin, 1863.

82

See Mgr. Henry Faraud, Dix-huit Ans chez les Sauvages, pp. 345, etc. (Paris, 1866.) Petitot, Les Déné Dindjié, p. 32.

83

See George M. Dawson, in An. Rep. of the Geol. Survey of Canada, 1887, p. 191, sq.; Washington Matthews and J. G. Bourke, in Jour. of Amer. Folk-Lore, 1890, p. 89, sq.

84

The best blanket-makers, smiths and other artisans among the Navajos are descendants of captives from the Zuñi and other pueblos. John G. Bourke, Journal of American Folk-Lore, 1890, p. 115.

85

A. F. Bandelier, Indians of the Southwestern United States, pp. 175-6 (Boston, 1890).