242 SYSTEMS OF CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY. 



are unequalled in any part of the earth, in the quantity and quality of fish annu- 

 ally supplied. They enter this river in myriads, and penetrate its several branches, 

 even into the mountain elevations. The natives were expert fishermen, taking 

 them in immense numbers in baskets, in weirs, and with the spear. In the peculiar 

 climate of this region, it was only necessary to split them open and hang them up 

 in the sun to dry, to secure an ample supply of palatable and nutritious food. 

 These natural advantages gave to the valley of the Columbia a permanent and 

 controlling influence over all other parts of North America, and, I think it can be 

 shown, over South America as well. Wherever the Indian family commenced its 

 spread it would sooner or later come into possession of this region ; and from that 

 time onward it would become the seed land of the family, and the initial point of 

 successive streams of migration to all parts of the continent. The abundance of 

 subsistence in the valley of the Columbia, tending constantly to a surplus of inhabit- 

 ants, determined for this region a species of supremacy over both North and South 

 America, as the predominant centre of population, and the source from which per- 

 petual streams of inhabitants would flow, so long as the family remained in its 

 primitive condition. Until its superior advantages were controlled and neutralized 

 by the establishment of other centres of population, founded upon greater resources 

 for subsistence, it would maintain its ascendency under the steady operation of 

 physical causes. How far the Village Indians, who became such through the dis- 

 covery and cultivation of corn, created a surplus of numbers upon the basis of 

 agricultural subsistence, and sent them forth as migrants to possess the continent ; 

 and whether they were sufiicient in numbers and intelligence to overmaster and 

 arrest the flow of inhabitants from the valley of the Columbia, are questions to be 

 investigated and determined before the first proposition will become established. 

 As these several topics will be considered in another connection, it will be sufficient 

 here to remark that the evidence fails to show that the Village Indians ever carried 

 agriculture far enough to obtain any sensible control over the numbers or great 

 movements of the Indian family. So far from this, it appears to be the actual fact, 

 that they were unable to stem the tide of influence and power which seems always 

 to have remained with the Roving, as distinguished from the stationary Village 

 Indians. All the great stems of the Ganowanian family, fovmd upon the North 

 American continent, point their roots to the valley of the Columbia. This conclu- 

 sion becomes demonstrated by a comparison of the means of subsistence and centres 

 of population of the several parts of the continent, of the natural lines of migration 

 furnished by its rivers and mountain chains, of the barrier to a free communication 

 between the Pacific and Atlantic sides of the continent interposed by the great 

 central prairies, by the relations and geographical positions of the several stock 

 languages and their respective dialects, and by the traditions and systems of rela- 

 tionship of all of these nations collectively. The sum of the evidence from these 

 several sources appears to be convincing and conclusive that the valley or the 

 Columbia was the nursery of the Ganowanian family, and the source from which 

 both the northern and southern divisions of the continent mediately or immediately 

 were being replenished Avith inhabitants, down to the epoch of their discovery ; and it 

 is my intention to present and discuss elsewhere, if space permits, both the physical 



