1044 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1895. 



continued for such a length of time as that, they have not only main- 

 tained a state of brutal savagery peculiar to themselves, but they have 

 made a distinct physical or somotological change, amounting not simply 

 to a different tribe, but almost to a different race, in that they are the 

 tallest people in the hemisphere, and, possibly, in the world. 



Yet with all these differences, physical, technological, and sociological, 

 the aborigines of the hemisphere have retained their original character- 

 istics so as to stamp them all of one race— blood relations — all belonging 

 to the same stock and derived from the same ancestry. With all these 

 differences, the principal implements and objects employed by the 

 various tribes or peoples in all or any of the countries in the hemi- 

 sphere, whether in North or South America, were practically the same, 

 thus continuing the evidence of their relationship and early commu- 

 nication. The hammerstones, polished stone hatchets, the scrapers, 

 spindle whorls, and the great mass of aboriginal implements of stone 

 made by chipping or flaking, comprising arrow and spear heads, knives, 

 daggers, and poniards, are all so much alike as to show their rela- 

 tionship and, consequently, the relationship of the tribes or peoples 

 who made them. This being accepted, these immense differences are 

 accounted for only by the separation and isolation of certain of the 

 tribes of the red men, and this is evidence of their great antiquity and 

 long-continued occupation of the country. 



Again, the fixedness of type and the persistence of animal character- 

 istics among the red Indians are further evidence. It is an accepted 

 anthropological and ethnological fact that the older a race is the more 

 deeply seated and permanently fixed become the traits of character in 

 its people. This carries with it the correlative proposition that the 

 more permanent the characteristics of a race, the better the evidence 

 of its antiquity. Applying this rule to the American Indians, we find 

 that, with all the diversity claimed, their characteristics are persistent, 

 even more than those of the white, the yellow, or the black races, and 

 that this includes the physical as well as the mental, moral, and socio- 

 logical traits. That the wild Indian is harder to tame than any other 

 human animal can only be accounted for on one of two theories — either 

 he has greater natural and original individuality, independence, and 

 self-reliance, a higher desire for liberty, and a determination to over- 

 come all obstacles in the way of maintaining that liberty, or else it is 

 the result of persistence through many generations in the condition of 

 savagery. Possibly it may be a combination of the two, and the latter 

 has produced the former. But in any event the fact remains that the 

 American Indian has greater fixity of type and of characteristics than 

 have other races, and this indicates, if it does not prove, the long- 

 continued and persistent exercise of the comlitions which produced 

 these characteristics and, consequently, his high antiquity. 



