SECTION II., 1883. iL eis) |] Trans. Roy. Soc. CANADA. 
Pre-Aryan American Man, 
By DANIEL Witson, LL.D., F.RS.E., President of University College, Toronto. 
(Read May 23, 1883.) 
The department of Archæology which forms one special branch of the work of this Sec- 
tion of the Royal Society is ample enough with all its included subjects to occupy our 
whole energies ; and it is still to a very large extent a virgin field. It may be legitimately 
held to include anthropology, ethnology, and comparative philology; and with such 
subjects inviting our study there is an urgent demand for immediate action. While there 
is time much more is required than has yet been done by Canada to rescue from oblivion 
the materials for ethnical study, in which our vast domain is so rich. On all hands we see 
ancient nations passing away. The Crees, the Blackfeet, and other prairie tribes: and still 
more interesting ones beyond the Rocky Mountains, including the various Flathead Tribes, 
the Nass, Chimpseyans, Sebassas, Stekini, and the ingenious and in some respects unique 
Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands: are all diminishing in numbers, while some of them 
are destined to inevitable and speedy extinction. With all of them their inherited languages 
and customs are undergoing important modifications by their intercourse with the immi- 
grant whites; a large influx of Chinese also threatens a further complication of the 
ethnological problem; and it should no longer be left to the mere efforts of individuals, 
carried on without concert, and on no comprehensive or systematic plan, to rescue for 
future study the invaluable materials of Canadian ethnology. To the native languages 
especially must the inquirer into some of the curious problems involved in the peopling of 
this continent look for a true key to the mystery. The Government of Canada can thus 
far refer with some pride to the treatment of its native tribes ; but the enlightened 
example of that of the United States in relation to the ethnology, no less than to the geology 
and natural history, of the wide domain embraced within their Federation, is well calcu- 
lated to stimulate us to emulate them. This Section may possibly be the means of accom- 
plishing something towards so desirable a result; but if it is to be carried out on any 
adequate scale it must be in concert with the Indian Department ; and with the Geological 
and Natural History Survey of the Dominion. 
In the present paper I propose to invite the attention of the Section to some considera- 
tion of the condition and relative status of the Aborigines of this continent, north of the 
Gulf of Mexico, not only as studied by means of the knowledge of the native tribes, 
acquired since the discovery of America in 1493, but in so far as we can determine their 
earlier condition with the aid of archeological evidence. The student of the history of the 
Canadian and North American nations cannot indeed altogether overlook the undoubted fact 
that Columbus was not the first of European voyagers within the Christian era to explore 
and colonize the new world. It is a well established fact that not only did the Northmen 
settle Greenland in the tenth century ; but that before its close they appear to have landed 
