X.] THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 391 



round like those of Ehrenreich's Bakairi and other Brazilian 

 Caribs (Index 79 to So ) 1 . 



But the Timuquanans themselves, if they were round-heads of 

 Carib stock, must have been preceded by a still Pr i m i t ive 

 more ancient long-headed race possibly dating from Man in 

 the Stone Ages. " The oldest perfect skull known 

 from Florida is extremely dolichocephalic and entirely different 

 from the mound type ; it was found by Wyman at the bottom of 

 the great shell-heap near Hawkingsville on the St Johns. This 

 heap was so old that its lower layers of the shells had become 

 decomposed and transformed into a limestone in which this 

 skull and other bones of the skeleton are firmly imbedded. We 

 naturally question if this skeleton is not that of a survivor of 

 the earlier people who were on the peninsula before the short- 

 heads came 2 ." 



Next to the Athapascans and Algonquians, the most wide- 

 spread North American nation were the Siouans 3 , 



*Tpl^ 



whose territory is now known to have been even siouans. 

 more extensive than it was lately supposed to be. 

 So far from being confined to the plains west of the Mississippi, 

 which they were supposed to have reached from the Pacific 

 seaboard, they ranged south to the Gulf of Mexico and east to 

 the Atlantic, and occupied wide tracts in Virginia and the 

 Carolinas, where in fact is now sought their primeval home. 

 When the English began the settlement of Virginia, a term at 

 that time of much wider meaning than now, the whole region 

 between the Appalachians and the coast was occupied by a large 

 number of heterogeneous groups in a state of extreme instability, 

 and so great was the ethnical confusion that their descendants 

 have only now succeeded in clearing it up. 



Besides the Powhatan (Algonquian) confederates, there were 

 numerous Iroquoian and Muskhogean tribes, together with the 



1 Urbeivohner Brasiliens, pp. 120-2 7. 



2 F. W. Putnam, Science, Feb. 7, 1896 (Reprint, p. 4). 



3 Siouan is the form adopted by Mr Powell for the whole family, of which 

 the Dakotas ("Allies") are the chief division. It is an extension of Sioux, a 

 French corruption of " Nadowe-ssi-wag" (Snakes or Enemies), an abusive term 

 applied by the Algonquins to some of the northern members of the family. 



