1042 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1895. 



number of individuals, it follows that they occupied a restricted 

 locality. This particular locality may have been ou the east coast or 

 on the west coast, may have been north or south. The North Ameri- 

 can Indian has been on this hemisphere such a leugth of time that, 

 branchiug' out from this little colony in a single locality by ordinary 

 procreation, he has so increased in numbers that at the time of the dis- 

 covery by Columbus, it is estimated that there were from five to eleven 

 millions. 



From the single locality which the small colony originally inhabited, 

 it had also extended itself territorially, and had populated pretty equally 

 the hemisphere from the Arctic Circle on the north to Terra del Fuego 

 on the south, and from the Atlantic Ocean on the east to the Pacific 

 Ocean on the west. 



The first point is, that this increase in number, and this extension in 

 territory, required a long period of time, and are proofs of the antiquity 

 of the race. 



The confusion of tongues and increase in the number of languages 

 among the Indians is another evidence of their antiquity. When the 

 first colony of Indians appeared, whether by evolution or migration, tliey 

 could have spoken practically but one language. Suppose, in case ot 

 migration, thatthey spoke many languages pi-ior to their coming together 

 on these, to them, foreign shores, after their arrival they would inevitably 

 si)eak but one language. They Avould invent a common language it 

 none existed. This would not be difiicult for a colony small in numbers. 

 With this for a starting point, we may see what they have done. They 

 spread themselves up and down the valleys, across the rivers, and over 

 the mountains. While at first they may have retained their communi- 

 cation with the parent colony and kept up their original language, it 

 continued only while those relations were maintained. When the off- 

 spring got so far distant that they did not visit the parent colony and 

 had no relation with its members, they invented their own languages, 

 different from those of their ancestors, and this continued until they 

 became a parent colony, sending forth younger colonies, which, in their 

 turn, cut off their relations and invented new languages. So they went 

 from east to west, north to south. This continued for such a great 

 length of time that, not only had they come at the time of the discov- 

 ery to occupy the entire hemisphere, but had also established (according 

 to the investigations of the Bureau of Ethnology) not less than two 

 hundred separate languages, fifty-two of which belonged to North 

 America alone, with dialects and variations innumerable. If we accept 

 these facts (and it appears as though we must), the corollary of the 

 immensity of the time is inevitable. 



The different cultures among the aborigines or Indians of the West- 

 ern Hemisphere in different localities or portions of the country point 

 to the same general conclusion. Over all Canada and the United 

 States, except the extreme southwest, the culture, or rather the sav- 



