180 Dr John Scouler on the Indian Tribes 



Mountains and the Pacific, contrasted with the few but wide 

 spread dialects, spoken between Hudson's Bay and the Gulf 

 of Mexico. Unwilling to introduce premature generaliza- 

 tions, we have estimated the number of distinct languages at 

 sixteen. Although the number will probably be considerably 

 reduced by subsequent investigations ; the Okanagan may be 

 perhaps united to the Shahaptan and the Haidah, with the 

 Koluschian ; but after all such reductions, the number of dis- 

 tinct languages spoken to the west of the Rocky Mountains, 

 will be far greater, in proportion to the surface of country and 

 population, than it is to the east, between the mountains and 

 the Atlantic. The territory occupied by the Algonquin race 

 alone exceeds the whole extent of the Oregon territory. In 

 the south of the United States, however, we have something 

 analogous to the population of the west coast, for there a 

 great number of small tribes are found speaking distinct lan- 

 guages, and having little affinity with each other. The creeks 

 and the jungles of that part of country appear to have afforded 

 an asylum to tribes expelled from their ancient abodes. On 

 the east of the Rocky Mountains the wide diffusion of parti- 

 cular languages depends in part on the nature of the country. 

 Subsisting almost exclusively by the chase, each tribe re- 

 quired a great extent of country ; few natural barriers existed 

 to prevent dispersion, and the sanguinary nature of Indian 

 warfare left no resource to the vanquished but the alterna- 

 tive of flight or extermination. In the history of the Irri- 

 quois confederacy, we have a picture of this desolating war- 

 fare in which even the harsh mercy of slavery was refused to 

 the vanquished. 



Among the natives of the north-west coast, the features of 

 the country, intersected by mountain ranges, or broken up 

 into islands, rendered the tribes more sedentary ; while, at 

 the same time, it permitted, and even from the diversity of 

 its products required, some degree of commercial intercourse. 

 Under such physical conditions, and where the modes of ob- 

 taining food varied with the character of the country, exten- 

 sive conquests were impossible ; the energetic Haidah of 

 Queen Charlotte's island could not, even if conquerors, abandon 

 at once their mode of life as fishers, and change themselves 



