ASIATIC TRIBES OF NORTH AMERICA. 179 



testify. Such a collection of parallel facts lias rarely been presented 

 for the connection of one or more peoples of unknown deiuvation, and 

 "would be impossible as mere coincidences. The only characteristics 

 in which the Tungus may be said to differ fi'om the Tinneh ai'e the 

 truthfulness of the former and the complaining ways of the latter. 

 But the evidence of Sauer to the first of these is not conchisive as to 

 its characterizing the whole Tungus family,* nor can it be said that all 

 the Tinneh tribes are equally unreliable. In docility the two families 

 agree. The Tungus of Sauer were cheerful, and so are the Tinneh in 

 general, although inveterate grumblers, at least in certain tiibes, as 

 may be the case with some of the Tungus were more known con- 

 cerning them. Certainly, no two families representing the old world 

 and the new present closer affinities in name, vocabulary, grammar, 

 physical appearance, dress, arts, manners and customs than do the 

 Tungus of Asia and the Tinneh of America. 



Before dealing with the Iroquois, who should in geograpliical order 

 next claim our attention, I prefer to take up the origin of the 

 Choctaw-Cherokee family, which shows its Asiatic connections more 

 clearly, and which will tend to illustrate and confirm the Iroquois 

 relationships. The original area of the Cherokee-Choctaw confede- 

 racy extended from Tennessee southward to the Gulf of Mexico. 

 The 'Cherokees and Choctaws are generally regarded as distinct 

 peoples, although their languages have much in common. The tribes 

 included under the generic name Choctaw, are the Choctaws propei-, 

 the Chickasaws, Creeks or Muskogees, Hitchitees and Seminoles, all 

 of whohi are famous in history. They were originally a warlike, 

 encroaching population, of a proud, fierce spirit, differing alike from 

 the reserve of the Algonquin and the childishness and docility of the 

 Athabascan. The character of the Iroquois is that of the Choctaw, 

 and these are the great warrior tribes of ISTorth America who brought 

 into the continent its peculiar arts of warfare as the Tinneh family 

 gave to it its peculiar arts of peace. The Choctaws, we are told by 

 Dr. Latham, Catlin, and others, used to flatten the head, and may 

 thus be supposed to connect with the Salish or Flathead family of 

 Oregon. But for the present we seek to discover their old world 

 relationships rather than those of the new. The northern Asiatic 

 people who flatten the head are the Koriaks, who inhabit the extreme 



'" Wood, in his "Uncivilized Races," characterizes the Tungus as good-natured, but full of 

 deceit. 



