728 MOUND EXPLOEATIONS. 



witb oiir Pacific division. This arrangement, as he admits, is not one 

 of convenience only, as he attaches certain ethnographic importance to 

 it, " There is," he continues, " a distinct resemblance between the two 

 Atlantic groups, and an equally distinct contrast between them and 

 the Pacific groups, extending to temperament, culture, and physical 

 traits. Each of the g-roups has mingled extensively within its own 

 limits and but slightly outside of them." ' Elsewhere he remarks that 

 " a few of the eastern stocks, the Athabascan and the Shoshoniau, 

 have sent out colonies who have settled on the banks of the Pacific ; 

 but as a rule the tribes of the western coast are not connected with any 

 east of the mountains. What is more singular, although they difi'er 

 surprisingly among themselves in language, they have marked anthro- 

 pological similarities, i)hysical and psychical. Virchow has empha- 

 sized the fact that the skulls from the northern point of Vancouver 

 Island reveal an unmistakable analogy to those of southern California. 

 * * * There are many other physical similarities which mark 

 the Pacific Indians and contrast them with those east of the moun- 

 tains." '^ 



In his "Races and Peoples" Brinton emphasizes this eastern and 

 western division still more pointedly: "All the higher civilizations are 

 contained in the Pacific group, the Mexican really belonging to it by 

 derivation and original location. Between the members of the Pacific 

 and Atlantic groups there was very little communication at any period, 

 the high Sierras walling them apart."' This view, which is based on 

 abundant linguistic, archa'ologic, and custom data, and seems to be sup- 

 ported by the mass of evidence, is, howevei', at variance with Dr. Brin- 

 ton's theory in regard to the original populating of the continent, as 

 advanced in his "American Race." 



As this separation is shown to have existed as far back as we are 

 able to trace customs by the archeological indications, is there not 

 in this fact a valid reason for believing that the original peopling of 

 the continent was from two difl'erent sections? Not necessarily from 

 the distant shores of the opposite oceans, for the characteristics of the 

 race, taken as a whole, as remarked by Nadaillac, and, we may add, as 

 shown by the archeologic remains, point toward affinities with people 

 belonging to the Pacific region rather than with those bordering the 

 ojiposite coasts of the Atlantic basin. 



But to pursue this Hue of tlumght would carry us fai'ther into the 

 field of speculation than is consistent with the object of this work. Our 

 only object in view in touching upon the subject was to show that, tak- 

 ing the more comprehensive view of the ethnology of North America, 

 we reach the same couclusion as that arrived at by a study of the 

 archeologic details, viz, that the supposed relation between the mound- 

 builders and the civilized nations of Mexico and Central America is not 



' American Race, p. 58. 'Op. cit., pp. 103, 104. »P. 248. 



