[171] 



ASIATIC TEIBES IN NOKTH 

 AMEEICA. 



BY JOHN CAMPBELL, M. A. 

 Professor in the Prtsbyterian College, Montreal. 



In a former paper on tlie Algonquins I directed attention to the 

 difference between tlie grammatical forms of that people and those 

 of the nations by which they are surrounded, or whose territory 

 borders on the Algonquin area. I also indicated that the Algonquin 

 dialects exhibit traces of Turanian influence, which I referred to 

 the proximity of tribes speaking languages whose structure is largely 

 Turanian. This Asiatic influence appears, even more strikingly, in 

 the arts and exercises, dress, manners and customs of the Algon- 

 quins. The birch-bark canoe and wigwam, the modes of warfare 

 and hunting, the skin dress and lodge, the snowshoe, ornamentation 

 with porcupine quills, the calumet, are not in any sense Polynesian. 

 Neither are they aboriginal, or adaptations made first upon this con- 

 tinent to the necessities of the country. They existed, as in a 

 measure they still exist, in northern Europe and Asia, before the 

 time of Herodotus, when the Scythian took the scalp of his slain 

 enemy. The Malay Algonquin adopted the implements, dress and 

 customs of the people who occupied the country at the period of his 

 immigration ; but retained his soft, liquid speech, with much of his 

 oceanic construction of language, and most of the traits of the 

 Polynesian character. His quiet reserve is as unlike the manners of 

 the rude, boisterous and fun-loving Athabascan as is the silent dig- 

 nity of the Malay compared with the noisy childish • ways of the 

 Papuan. By nature indolent and caring little for power obtained by 

 bloodshed, he fell before the restless and warlike Iroquois. That the 

 AJgohquins held their own, and did not become incorporated with 

 tribes of Asiatic origin, is doubtless owing to the large numbers 

 that at one period must have established themselves upon this con- 

 tinent. This adaptation of an oceanic population to continental 

 modes of life, with all the differences of climate and productions, 

 and the preservation of their .identity for many ages, is one of the 

 most remarkable phenomena known to ethnological science. 



