INDIANS 



2963 



INDIANS 



lands, were a wild stock from the Amazon 

 regions, dwelling in huts of tropical grasses or 

 palm leaves, wearing little or no clothing, pos- 

 sessing only stone, wooden, and shell imple- 

 ments, and depending largely on fishing for 

 their food. Columbus called them Indians, be- 

 cause he thought he had reached the real India. 

 Farther south on the continent, some of the 

 natives were even less advanced, and those of 

 Tierra del Fuego are to-day in the lowest grade 

 of civilized society. In Peru, however, the 

 Spaniards under Pizarro found the Incas, a 

 people with a highly-organized government, 

 who constructed massive stone buildings and 

 were skilled workers in gold, silver and copper, 

 weavers of beautiful cloth, and farmers who 

 understood irrigation and fertilizing. Their 

 story is interestingly told in Prescott's Con- 

 quest of Peru. The descendants of the six- 

 teenth century Indians form the greatest part 

 of the population of South America. Some 

 have intermarried with the white races, while 

 unnumbered thousands remain in barbarism. 

 In the West Indies the native race has long 

 been practically extinct. 



In Mexico and Central America. As in South 

 America, the early Indians from Panama to 

 the Rio Grande were of many stages of cul- 

 ture. The Mayas of Yucatan and other south- 



ern states of Mexico, as well as of Guatemala 

 and British Honduras, had reached a civiliza- 

 tion higher than that of the Incas, but even 

 before the arrival of the conquering Spaniards 

 their political power had decayed and their 

 noble cities were in ruins. They possessed a 

 practical method of writing on paper, and 

 bound their documents in a form resembling 

 our own books. They had an accurate calen- 

 dar which extends back for a period of twenty 

 centuries, and some knowledge of astronomy. 

 They wove clothing of cotton. The Aztecs, 

 another Mexican people, though not so ad- 

 vanced as the Mayas, attracted more attention 

 from the Spaniards because of their military 

 power. Prescott's Conquest of Mexico tells us 

 what the early Spaniards learned of them, but 

 one who reads the book should know that such 

 titles as king, queen, noble and prince were 

 wrongly applied to the influential natives by 

 the European conquerors, who failed to under- 

 stand the Indian system of government and 

 chieftainship. The writing of the Maya, Aztec 

 and other Mexican races is as yet, except in a 

 few instances, not fully understood. Unfor- 

 tunately, the early Spanish missionaries, who 

 might have learned the secret from the natives, 

 burned most of the native records which came 

 into their hands. 



Indians in the United States and Canada 



Though not greatly differing from each other 

 in degree of civilization, the Indians north of 

 Mexico varied widely in customs, housing, dress 

 and religion. Each of the hundreds of tribes 

 was somewhat influenced by its neighbors, and 

 there were no such sharp differences as be- 

 tween Frenchmen and Spaniards, or English 

 and Scotch. But in a rough way several types 

 can be distinguished. The Woods Indians oc- 

 cupied the area from the Atlantic to the West- 

 ern plains and prairies; they were the growers 

 of corn and tobacco, the hunters and fishers, 

 the wonderful woodsmen whom the English 

 and French first met. The Plains Indians, 

 from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, 

 were wandering and warlike, hunting the buf- 

 falo for food. After the arrival of the white 

 men they became great horsemen. The South- 

 western Indians, of New Mexico and Arizona, 

 included Pueblos, or dwellers in villages of 

 sun-dried adobe (ah-do'bay) brick; cliff dwell- 

 ers; and nomads, or wanderers. In some ways 

 they were the most nearly civilized of the 

 natives north of Mexico. 



The California tribes, separated from the in- 

 fluence of the others by the mountains, were 

 on the whole crude. They were ignorant of 

 agriculture, lived on acorns, seeds and fish, and 

 wore very little clothing. Their neighbors, the 

 Northwest Coast Indians of Washington, Brit- 

 ish Columbia and Southern Alaska, were also 

 unacquainted with farming, but they built 

 large wooden houses, carved totem poles and 

 paddled about in enormous cedar canoes. The 

 Plateau Indians, who dwelt between their kin 

 of the plains and the Pacific coast, but were 

 shut off from them by mountains, were simple 

 people, eating roots and seeds, rabbits and liz- 

 ards, and dwelling in partly underground houses 

 or brush huts. One more group, comprising 

 the Indians of the Mackenzie basin, is the only 

 one which has a common language. Its people 

 hunt the caribou, which furnishes them clothes 

 and tents, as well as food. See also ESKIMO. 



Language. More than half the languages 

 of the world are of American origin. Nearly 

 two hundred languages and fifteen hundred dia- 

 lects are known to have been spoken by the 



