﻿I46 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



assured me about four years ago that whether Indians be supe- 

 rior or inferior to negroes depends on the particular tribe chosen for 

 comparison. He instanced one as composed of " highly civilized 

 men " ; another as very low in the human scale ; and they were not 

 of those usually presented by way of typical extremes, Incas and 

 Fuegians for example. Many tribes, gathered from every quarter, had 

 long been within his jurisdiction, and his acquaintance with their 

 individual members had been uncommonly close and extended. 



If we turn to trained and eminent ethnologists, we find no stronger 

 advocate of Indian unity than Dr. Brinton, author of The American 

 Race ; but who can read his summary of the characteristics of South 

 American tribes, for example, without feeling that his witnesses turn 

 against him? Some of these people, it appears, are nearly white, 

 others nearly black, with a cavalier defiance of latitude and isothermal 

 lines in both cases. Here is a bestial-featured tribe, there a noble 

 one ; here a tall people, there a horde of dwarfs ; and on the borders 

 of humane, ancient, widely extended civilization — or something very 

 near it — a mere debris of human derelicts and incapables. Dr. 

 Brinton proves that too much has been made of the homogeneity of 

 the American Indians. 



As already suggested, the truth seems to be that American Indians, 

 when first encountered, comprised more than a few survivals of earlier 

 rudimentary peoples often partly assimilated, as well as some intru- 

 sive elements, occasionally higher in type and culture and of uncertain 

 origin. Furthermore they had developed heterogeneously in diverse 

 conditions. They still differ among themselves — considering the 

 two American continents together — in many ways. Yet if we were 

 called on to name their most salient and generally characteristic 

 features we should all probably select their cheek-bones, color, hair, 

 and eyes. It is significant that these were noted particularly by the 

 observant Norsemen. That the cheeks are usually prominent rather 

 than broad, the eyes conspicuously keen rather than conspicuously 

 large, and that swarthy is hardly the best word for the peculiar tint 

 of their complexion, are matters of detail, easily variable. Subse- 

 quent transmitters would be likely to make a few careless or poetic 

 changes, if the original narrators did not ; also the visitors were 

 judged by the standard height of the European North, for these Ice- 

 landic observers had perhaps never seen a man who was not of the 

 white race. If the word " short " were used, as in one saga, we have 

 only to suppose that Indians of the Wicomico pattern stood before 

 them ; Micmac visitors might call forth the statement. In all this, 



