474 A PKOBLEM IN AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGY. 



prolific writer, and an able critic of anthropological pii])lications the 

 world over. Doing little as a field archaeologist himself, he kept 

 informed of what was done b}^ others through extensive travels and 

 visits to museums. By his death American anthropology has suffered 

 a serious loss, and a great scholar and earnest worker has l)een taken 

 from our association. 



In the 3^ear 1857 this association met for the first time ))eyoiid the 

 borders of the United States, thus establishing its claim to the name 

 "American " in the broadest sense. Already a nuMuber of a year's 

 standing, it was with feelings of youthful pride that I recorded my 

 name and entered the meeting in the hospitable city of Montreal; and 

 it was on this occasion that my mind was awakened to nc^w interests 

 which in after years led me from the study of animals to that of man. 



On Sunday, August 16, while strolling along the side of Mount 

 Royal, I noticed the point of a bivalve shell protruding from roots of 

 grass. Wondering wh}'^ such a shell should be there and reaching to 

 pick it up, I noticed, on detaching the grass roots aliout it, that there 

 were many other whole and broken valves in close proximity — too 

 man}', I thought, and too near together to have been lirought by ])irds, 

 and too far away from water to be the renniants of a nmskrat\s dinner. 

 Scratching awa}^ the grass and poking among the shells, 1 found a few 

 bones of birds and fishes and small fi-agments of Indian pottery. Then 

 it dawned upon m(> that here had been an Indian home in ancient times, 

 and that these odds and ends were the refuse of the people — my first 

 shell heap or kitchen midden, as I was to learn later. At the time 

 this was to me simply the evidence of Indian occupation of the place 

 in former times, as convincing as was the palisaded town of old Hoch- 

 elaga to Cartier when he stood upon this same mountain side more 

 than three centuries ago. 



At that meeting of the association several papers were read, which, 

 had there been a section of anthropology, would have led to discus- 

 sions similar to those that have occurred during our recent meetings. 

 Forty-two years later we are still disputing the evidence, furnished 

 by craniology, by social institutions, and by language, in relation to 

 the unity or diversity of the existing American tril)e,s and their prede- 

 cessors on this continent. 



Those were the days when the theory of the unity of all American 

 peoples, except the Eskimo, as set forth l)y Morton in his Crania 

 Americana (1839), was discussed by naturalists. The volumes" by Nott 

 and Gliddon, Types of Mankind (1854), and Indigenous Races of the 

 Earth (1857), which contains Meigs's learned and instructive disser- 

 tation, "The cranial characteristics of the races of men," were the 

 works that stirred equally the minds of naturalists and of theologians 

 regarding the unity or diversity of man — a ([uestion that could not 



