6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



Bay of Fundy, and there is nothing whatever that looks like an 

 Eskimo extension southward, except a tool or so and one or two very 

 doubtful river names, reported by Thalbitzer, 1 all on the northern 

 border of New Brunswick, which, if really Innuit in origin, would 

 be sufficiently accounted for by occasional southward explorations 

 or harryings. That any Eskimo ever left the St. Lawrence basin to 

 dwell in a more southerly region is an assumption based on no 

 evidence whatever. Their long established habits would oppose any 

 considerable return toward warmth and away from snow-banks, 

 whales, and seals. 



For predecessors of the Algonquian tribes we have equally no data ; 

 nor do we know when the latter first arrived on the Atlantic shore. 

 Most investigators agree in placing their origin north of the St. 

 Lawrence River. They seem to be an ancient people. Very likely 

 they worked down from that valley by way of the lesser rivers the 

 Hudson, Connecticut, Housatonic, Kennebec, Penobscot, and St. John. 

 There seems to be nothing to make such a migration before 1000 

 A. D. at all improbable, though it might be incomplete. 



The year 1000, however, for America, seems very far back in 

 antiquity. Perhaps we hardly realize how much of what we consider 

 ancient \vas then yet in the future. The Mayas no doubt were 

 established in some cities of the Usumacinta Valley and Honduras, 

 though hardly anywhere in Yucatan ; the Inca conquests may have 

 begun, but can hardly have been pressed very far ; the Aztecs perhaps 

 had not yet even heard of the Valley of Mexico. Since there is so 

 much to be learned about the origin of these higher cultures, it is 

 small wonder that we are in the dark or twilight as to ruder tribes, 

 which have left neither records nor monuments. It is not probable 

 that we have even a pictograph on the Atlantic coast which has en 

 dured for nine hundred years, and if one could be found it would per 

 haps represent no more than some passing caprice of the Indian mind. 



From this point of view we can only say that Algonquian tribes 

 were in possession as far back as we know and that the burdgn of 

 proof must be on those who suggest any others a fortiori, the milder 

 burden of presenting at least some modicum of evidence tending to 

 show either predecessors or temporary displacement and supplanting. 



1 The Eskimo Language, p. 20. 



2 Morley : The Correlation of Maya and Christian Chronology. Amer. Journ. 

 Archeol. (1910), p. 193. 



