222 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



country east of the Mississippi, according to one of these renditions, was 

 marked by the friendship and later by the hostility of the Talamatan. 



It remains to notice one more interpretation of this tradition, that 

 of the late Dr. D. G. Brinton. On a previous page has been given the 

 arrangement which Dr. Brinton presents of the tribes of the Algon- 

 quian, having the Cree dialect, which is that characteristic of the 

 region of northern Minnesota and thence northward to Hudson Bay, 

 at the head of the list. Dr. Brinton remarks of this: 



The dialects of all these were related and evidently at some distant day 

 had been derived from the same primitive tongue. Which of them had pre- 

 served the ancient forms most ciosely, it may be premature to decide posi- 

 tively, but the tendency of modern studies has been to assign that place to 

 the Cree, the northernmost of all. 



Accepting this indication for what it may be worth, it certainly 

 points to the Cree, or Kilistino, as being not only more nearly con- 

 nected geographically with the primitive habitat of the Algonquian, 

 but also as representing their ancestors' tongue more nearly than any 

 other dialect of the Algonquian stock. This will allow the post-glacial 

 migration of that stock from the southwest, as has been supposed, per- 

 haps from Colorado and Wyoming, where they seem still to have a 

 representative in the Arapahoe. The Cheyenne who are now associated 

 with the Arapahoe are later comers, having joined the Arapahoe from 

 the northeast within the historic period. On this supposition, the 

 dialect of the Arapahoe would prove, on close comparison, to be more 

 archaic than all other Algonquian dialects, holding for that stock the 

 same position as that held for the Siouan stock by the Catawba dialect 

 in South Carolina, and the late researches of Kroeber bear out this 

 presumption. 



As to the tradition itself, it should be premised that Dr. Brinton, 

 along with Horatio Hale, had a belief that the American aborigines 

 had all migrated from the Atlantic coast westward, having reached 

 America from Europe, derived perhaps from some obscure people in 

 the northern part of Spain. Mr. Hale, who seems to be the chief sup- 

 porter of this view, in referring to migrations of the Indians quotes 

 only historic movements, which certainly have been largely westward, 

 due probably to the encroachments of the whites since the Columbian 

 discovery. It is simply a geographical and historical accident that we 

 are more familiar with the migrations of the eastern Indians than we 

 are with the western. Under the influence of this preconceived idea, 

 which, according to Mr. W. M. Beauchamp, was based on simply a 

 linguistic " likeness " to one or more of the Indian tongues, Dr. Brin- 

 ton has taken, it seems to me, great liberties with this tradition, inso- 



