498 SYSTEMS OF CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY 



fied by its perpetuation in such a number of independent channels, and through 

 such periods of unknown duration as must have elapsed whilst these stock languages 

 and their several dialects were forming. 



And fourth, that the system is, presumptively, coeval with the first appearance 

 of the Ganowanian family upon the North American Continent. 



VI. Where two or more families, constituted independently upon the basis of 

 such a system of relationship, are found in disconnected areas or upon different 

 continents, can their genealogical connection be legitimately inferred from their 

 joint possession of the same system ? 



The question involved in this proposition is of deep importance. It covers the 

 great problem of the Asiatic origin of the Ganowanian family. In the solution of 

 this problem, about to be submitted, the conclusions previously reached must be 

 applied on a more comprehensive scale, and the stability and mode of propagation 

 of the system must be subjected to a severer test than any hitherto employed. This 

 interesting question it is now proposed to consider upon the basis of the identity 

 of the Ganowanian and the Turanian systems of relationship. 



The Asiatic origin of the Ganowanian family is no new hypothesis. It has long 

 been rendered probable from the physical characteristics of the American aborigines, 

 and from philological considerations ; but it is rather a belief than an established 

 proposition. The evidence has not assumed that direct and tangible form which 

 sustains conviction. It has not, at least, been rendered so entirely probable as to 

 leave further evidence undesirable, from whatever source it can be obtained. The 

 question is sufficiently open, as well as important, to insure an impartial conside- 

 ration of any new current of testimony which may be adduced ; and which, if it 

 tends to support the affirmative, will have the advantage of following in the same 

 general direction to which previous evidence has pointed. 



There is another, and independent class of facts, which tend to render probable 

 their Asiatic origin. A careful study of the geographical features of the conti- 

 nent of North America, with reference to its natural lines of migration and to the 

 means of subsistence afforded by its several parts to populations of fishermen and 

 hunters, together with the relations of their languages and systems of relationship 

 all unite, as elsewhere stated, to indicate the valley of the Columbia as the nursery 

 of the Ganowanian family, and the initial point of migration from which both 

 North and South America received their inhabitants. If the outflow of the several 

 branches of this family can be retraced to the valley of the Columbia, of which there 

 can be little doubt, it carries them to a region above all others within the possible 

 reach of adventurers from Asia. The Amoor River stands very much in the same 

 relation to the coasts of Northeastern Asia as the Columbia does to the coasts of 

 Northwestern America. Both are celebrated for their fisheries and both undoubt- 

 edly became, from this fact, centres of population at an early day, and initial points 

 of migration upon each continent. Dependence upon fish for subsistence, which, 

 prior to the pastoral and agricultural periods, was the chief means of subsistence 

 of the human family, begets a knowledge of boat craft. A glance at the map shows 

 the relation which nations of fishermen and hunters established in the valley of the 

 Amoor would sustain to the shores of the sea of Ochotsk and Kamtschatka, and to 



