138 Transactions of the Royal Canadian Institute [vol. x. 



ethnologists or historians, among whom we must name H. H. Ban- 

 croft,^ would fain do away with the whole difficulty by eliminating all 

 its elements, and pretend that the American Indians are simply auto- 

 chthonous. But to my mind such a sweeping assertion raises such momen- 

 tous questions that I prefer to pass it by with the only remark that it 

 could lay claim to greater consideration had not Pasteur's experi- 

 ments with regard to spontaneous generation ever been made — unless, 

 of course, we should regard the American continent as the cradle of the 

 human race, an hypothesis which is scarcely more tenable than that 

 of the autochthonousness of our Indians. 



I, for one, cannot bring myself to entertain such opinions, and must 

 regard the original inhabitants of this continent as emigrants from an 

 older world. Yet it is not my purpose to show in them relatives, or 

 descendants, of any particular race or nation existing under other 

 climes. I merely wish to compare some of the families into which they 

 are divided, especially the Denes of British North America, with whom 

 I have passed the twenty-four happiest years of my life, with the present 

 inhabitants of northeastern Asia, their neighbours, as it were, and see 

 whether there are between them any points of resemblance which 

 would warrant an ethnological argument. 



I am well aware that even such an unpretentious task is fraught 

 with difficulties. The fact that so many wild theories have clamoured 

 for recognition and the very excesses of their promoters cannot but 

 work against all attempts at even mere comparisons. But my purpose 

 is more to state facts than to theorize. 



II. 



"We may fairly conclude that America was peopled from the north- 

 east part of Asia", writes John Mcintosh on page 81 of his book on the 

 "Origin of the North American Indians ".^ He relies on philology to 

 help him prove this assertion. Unfortunately such a resource has been 

 tried by others without much avail. For, as I wrote myself fifteen 

 years ago, "philology is a double-edged weapon, inasmuch as, in the 

 hands of an injudicious enquirer, it may bring forth nothing but futile 

 and imaginary results".^ 



Mcintosh gives, indeed, three full pages of words from Algonquin, 

 Sioux and other American languages which would seem to corroborate 

 his opinion. But I repeat that philological comparisons at the hands 



1 "The Native Races", Vol. V, p. 129; San Francisco, 1883. 



2 New York, 1853. 



'"The Use and Abuse of Philology" (Transactions of the Canadian Institute, 

 Vol. VI, p. 85; Toronto, 1899). 



