[17%] , 
ASIATIC TRIBES IN NORTH 
AMERICA. 
- 
BY JOHN CAMPBELL, M. A. 
Professor in the Presbyterian College, Montreat. 
In a former paper on the Algonquins I directed attention to the 
difference between the grammatical forms of that people and those 
of the nations by which they are surrounded, or whose territory 
borders on the Algonquin area. I also indicated that the Algonquin 
dialects exhibit traces of Turanian influence, which I referred to 
the proximity of tribes speaking languages whose structure is largely 
Turanian. This Asiatic influence appears, even more strikingly, in 
the arts and exercises, dress, manners and customs of the Algon- 
quins. The birch-bark canoe and wigwam, the modes of warfare 
and hunting, the skin dress and lodge, the snowshoe, ornamentation 
with porcupine quills, the calumet, are not in any sense Polynesian- 
Neither are they aboriginal, or adaptations made first upon this con- 
tinent to the necessities of the country. They existed, as in a 
measure they still exist, in northern Europe and Asia, before the 
time of Herodotus, when the Scythian took the scalp of his slain 
enemy. The Malay Algonquin adopted the implements, dress and 
customs of the people who occupied the country at the period of his 
immigration ; but retained his soft, liquid speech, with much of his 
oceanic construction of language, and most of the traits of the 
Polynesian character. His quiet reserve is as unlike the manners of 
the rude, boisterous and fun-loving Athabascan as is the silent dig- 
nity of the Malay compared with the noisy childish ways of the 
Papuan. By nature indolent and caring little for power obtained by 
bloodshed, he fell before the restless and warlike Iroquois. That the 
Algonquins held their own, and did not become incorporated with 
tribes of Asiatic origin, is doubtless owing to the large numbers 
that at one period must have established themselves upon this con- 
tinent. This adaptation of an oceanic population to continental 
modes of life, with all- the differences of climate and productions, 
and the preservation of their identity for many ages, is one of the 
most remarkable phenomena known to ethnological science. 
