rilANSACTlONS OF fjLCTIO.N Jl. 



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of succepsivo tribes alonj^ this liijrliway, the iniportanco is o1)vious of defiding how 

 old miin is in America, and Iiow ]on<r the coutiiient remained united with Asia, as 

 well as liow these two ditiicult questions are hound up together in their hearing on 

 antbropology. Leaving them to he settled hy more oompeteiit judges, I will only 

 point out that the theory of noi'thern migratinn on dryland is after all only a 

 revival of an old o]nnion which eaine ualuriilly to Acosta in the sixteenth century, 

 because liehriugs Straits were not yet known, and was h(dd ])y Ihiffou in tlie 

 eijriiti.'eiith because the zoological conditions compelled him to suppose that 

 Ik'hring's Straits had not always been there. Such a tht!ory, whatever the ex.ict 

 -hape it may take, seems wanted for the ex])hinatii)n of that most obvious lact 

 f anthropology, tin; analogy of the indigenes of America with Asiatics, and 

 more specifically with East and North Asiatics or Moiig(3loids. 'I'his brdiul 

 .aee-geueralisalion has thrust itself on every observer, and each has an iii- 

 ■tance to mention. My own particular instance is derived from inspection of a 

 Mi'ty of Ik)tocud() Indians lately exiiiljited in Ijoiidcui, who in ])ropcr clothing 

 fuiild liave passed without ijuestionas Tibetans or Siamese. Now when ethnologists 

 like Dr. Pickering remark on the South Asiatic appearance i)f ('alifornian tribes, 

 it is open to them to argue that Jajianese bailors of junks wrecked on the coa.^t 

 aiav have founded families there. But the Holocutlns are far south and on t!ie 

 other side of the, Andes, iiule dwellers in lln.' forests of Brazil, and yet they exhibit 

 ill an e.vtreme form the Mongoloid character which nuikes America to the anthro- 

 pologist part and parcel of Asia. Looked at in tliis light, there is something 

 •uij^'estive in our still giving to the natives of America the name of Indians: t'le 

 idea of ("ohnubus that the Caribs were A>iatios was not so absurd after all. 



It is perhaps hardly needful now ti) ])r(ptest against stretching tlni generalisati n 

 'if American uniformity t«jo far, and taking literally Humboldt's saying that he who 

 iias seen one American has seen all. The common cliaracter of American tribes, 

 from Hudson's Bay to Tierra del Fuego, though mui'e homogeneous than on any other 

 tract of the world of similar extent, admits of wide snhvariation. How io dis- 

 nnirui^li and measure this snhvariation is a problem in which anthropology has 

 iJv reached unsatisfactory results. The bmad distinctions wliich are })laiuly sci n 

 are also those which are readily defined, such as the shape of the nose, curve of the 

 lips, or the projection of the cheek-bones. But all who have com^ ared such American 

 races as Aztecs and Ojibwas must be sensible of cxtrenu? diiilci: ,y in measuring tlie 

 proportions ol'an average facial type. T'he attemjit to give in a s. gle pair of jifirtrails 

 a generalised national type h.isbeen tried — t'or instance, in the ' iti. Petersburg set of 

 models of races at the Exiiihition of I80l'. But done merely by vye, as they were, t hey 

 were not so good as well-chosen individual portraits. It would be most desirable that 

 Mr. Francis txalton's method of photographs, superposed so as to combine a group of 

 individuals into ono generalisetl portrait, should have a thorough trial on grou]>s of 

 Iro((uois, Aztecs, (.'aribs, and other tribes who are so far homogeneous in feature as to 

 lend themselves to form an abstract portrait. A setof American racesthus'galton- 

 iMKl'(if I may coin the term) would very likely be so distinctive as to be accepted in 

 aiitliropology. C'raniological nu'asurenient has been largely applied in America, 

 but unfortunately it was set wrong for yeiirs by the same misleading tendency to 

 find a uniformity not really existent. Thi>.-e who wish to judge .Morton's dictum 

 applied to the Scioto Mound skull, ' the perfect type of Indian conformation, to 

 which the skulls of all the tribes from Cape Horn to Canada more or less approxi- 

 aiite,' will find facts to the contrary set forth in chap. '20 of Wilson's ' Pndnstoric 

 Man,' and in Quatrefages and Ilamy, 'Crania lllhnica.' American crania really 

 iill'er so much that the hyixithesis of successive migrations has been brought into 

 account for the brachycephalic skulls of the mound-builders as compared with living 

 Indians of the district. Among minor race-divisions, as one of the b"st 

 ■tablished may be mentioned that which in this district brings the Algonquin 

 rad Iro((uois together into the dolichoce)ihalic division; yet even here some 

 iivide tlie Algoncjuins into two grou])s by the'r varying breadth of skull. What 

 may be the interpretation of the cranial evidence as hearing on the American 

 problem it woidd be premature to say ; at ]u-es( iit all that cnn be ilone is to syste- 

 matise facts, it is undisjiuted that the lisquimaux in their complexion, haiv, and 



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