372 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Still, the making of our text-books and new histories has been going 

 on with the Atlantic States marking the beginnings and the Pacific 

 domain introduced as a product of the present century, with a mere 

 reference to its three hundred years of romantic past. For any notices 

 of that we must go to books about Mexico, to find very little of it 

 there. Some of the earliest and most interesting developments of the 

 history of the country as we now know it were worked out on the Pa- 

 cific coast ; but their story was hidden in masses of documents and 

 loose records that were inaccessible to ordinary historians till Mr. 

 Hubert H. Bancroft unearthed them for presentation in solid form in 

 his " History of the Pacific States of North America." 



This history, when completed, will fill thirty-nine volumes, of 

 which eighteen have now been published. It consists of two series, 

 of which the first series, published ten years ago in five volumes, gives 

 all that was known at that time of the native races. As there has 

 been some discussion, and it is growing more lively, about the theories 

 of these races, and the author's position in the matter has been brought 

 into question, it is proper to say here that he disavows having anything 

 to do with theories or the solution of disputed questions. His purpose 

 has simply been to collect all the material that is worthy of notice, 

 and put it where it will be accessible, making only such critical ob- 

 servations as suggest themselves in course, leaving closer special in- 

 vestigations to future students. The richness of the material he has 

 provided and put here, in the hands of such investigators, can not fail 

 to be of great help to them. Without it they might have to work for 

 years to secure a position of knowledge available for comparative 

 research, where they now find themselves at the start. 



The first two of the volumes on the native races are devoted to the 

 ethnographical description of the tribes ; the third to their myths and 

 language ; the fourth to their antiquities ; and the fifth to their primi- 

 tive history. The tribes are classified, for convenience of treatment 

 rather than to conform to a scientifically accurate standard, into geo- 

 graphical groups, as Hyperboreans, those natives whose territory lies 

 north of the fifty-fifth parallel ; Columbians, between the fifty-fifth 

 and forty-second parallels, and mainly in the valley of the Columbia 

 and its tributaries ; Californians and the inhabitants of the Great 

 Basin, New Mexicans, Wild Tribes of Mexico, Wild Tribes of Central 

 America, and Civilized Natives of Mexico and Central America, the 

 last having a volume to themselves. In these descriptions the author 

 aims to portray such customs and characteristics as were peculiar to 

 each people at the time of its first intercourse with European strangers, 

 leaving scientific inquirers to make their own deductions. Much of 

 the ground covered by the accounts has been gone over in later years 

 by the new school of American ethnologists, whose observations have 

 been fully published by the Government bureaus and various archf3o- 

 logical societies, and have added considerably to what Mr. Bancroft 



