A : oe 
ASIATIC TRIBES OF NORTH AMERICA. 179 
testify. Such a collection of parallel facts has rarely been presented 
for the connection of one or more peoples of unknown derivation, and 
would be impossible as mere coincidences. The only characteristics 
in which the Tungus may be said to differ from the Tinneh are the 
truthfulness of the former and the complaining ways of the latter. 
But the evidence of Sauer to the first of these is not conclusive as to 
its characterizing the whole Tungus family,* nor can it be said that all 
the Tinneh tribes are equally unreliable. In docility the two families 
agree. The Tungus of Sauer were cheerful, and so are the Tinneh in 
general, although inveterate grumblers, at least in certain tribes, as 
may be the case with some of the Tungus were more known con- 
cerning them. Certainly, no two families representing the old world 
and the new present closer affinities in name, vocabulary, grammar, 
physical appearance, dress, arts, manners and customs than do the 
Tungus of Asia and the Tinneh of America. ; 
Before dealing with the Iroquois, who should in geographical order 
next claim our attention, I prefer to take up the origin of the 
Choctaw-Cherokee family, which shows its Asiatic connections more 
clearly, and which will tend to illustrate and confirm the Iroquois 
relationships. The original area of the Cherokee-Choctaw confede- 
racy extended from Tennessee southward to the Gulf of Mexico. 
The Cherokees and Choctaws are generally regarded as distinct 
peoples, although their languages have much incommon. The tribes 
included under the generic name Choctaw, are the Choctaws proper, 
the Chickasaws, Creeks or Muskogees, Hitchitees and Seminoles, all 
of whom are famous in history. They were originally a warlike, 
encroaching population, of a proud, fierce spirit, differing alike from 
the reserve of the Algonquin and the childishness and docility of the 
Athabascan. The character of the Iroquois is that of the Choctaw, 
and these are the great warrior tribes of North America who brought 
into the continent its peculiar arts of warfare as the Tinneh family 
gave to it its peculiar arts of peace. The Choctaws, we are told by 
Dr. Latham, Catlin, and others, used to flatten the head, and may 
thus be supposed to connect with the Salish or Flathead family of 
Oregon. But for the present we seek to discover their old world 
relationships rather than those of the new. The northern Asiatic 
people who flatten the head are the Koriaks, who inhabit the extreme 
“Wood, in his “ Uneivilized Races,” characterizes the Tungus as good-natured, but full of 
deceit. 
