536 MIGRATION AND THE FOOD QUEST. 



fbe redskins next to the yellow races of Asia, and in liis general 

 scheme the redskins folloAY the Polynesians.^ 



VII. — THE PROBLEMS OF SOCIOLOGY. 



All the tribes in America except the Eskimo were found living under 

 a peculiar system of relationship. Each tribe was eudogamous, but it 

 was split into gentes that were exogamous. Connected with this was 

 a system of classific relationship, descent in the female line, and other 

 social and political regulations that were new to the explorers. Mor- 

 gan found that each great ethnic group had its own marital and polit- 

 ical system, and these he has classified in his monumental work. He 

 says: ''The system of the Seneca-Iroquois Indians of New York is 

 identical, not only in radical characteristics, but also in the greater 

 portion of its minute details, with that of the Tamil people of south 

 India." It is not to be supposed that the Tamil and the Iroquois are 

 for that reason brothers. But they are in possession of a common 

 social expression that came to them botli from a common source. 



VIII. — AMERICAN AND ASIATIC LANGUAGES. 



Linguistically speaking, the Bering Strait is not the dividing line of 

 two continents, since the Eskimo extend also into Asia, having, accord- 

 ing to some, gone over from America. Contiguous to the Eskimo in 

 America are the Athapascan family on the west and the Algonquin 

 family on the east. Contiguous to the Eskimo in Asia are the Chukchis, 

 and these are joined to other unclassed peoples. Now, the Chukchi 

 language and the Athapascan language and the other Asiatic and 

 American languages are noted for their lexical and grammatical differ- 

 ences and not for relationshiiis. 



But there were one hundred and twenty separate famihes of languages 

 in America. The peculiar family .system of the American aborigines, 

 restricting marriage in the tribe, was more conducive to the rapid mul- 

 tiplication of languages than any other that could be devised. In that 

 dispersive, centrifugal period of human history Avhich preceded the 

 invention of a written language changes must have gone on rapidly. 

 Furthermore, philologists have not had the material upon which to 

 work in forming a solid theory of linguistic relationships, and the latest 

 researches do not justify the assertion that the American languages 

 stand alone in morphology. 



While it is true that identity of language is a good proof of the kin- 

 ship of peoples, in the present state of knowledge the lack of j)roof of 

 identity is no disproof of relationship or acquaintance in times remote, 

 or proof of nonrelationship by consanguinity or contact. 



'For a resume of modern schemes of mankind, see the author's ''Accounts of 

 Progress," in Smithsonian Annual Reports, 1885 to 1893. The writer does not now 

 discuss the pristine home of. the human species. 



