THE HUMAN SPECIES. 271 



severe than at present. More than twenty tribes of Indians, 

 of the present territory of the United States and Canada, 

 record their migration either from the north, or from beyond 

 the Rocky Mountains. Many of these nations have therefore 

 occupied a high northern latitude on the west coast ; regions 

 now mostly in the hands of Esquimaux tribes, who, as they 

 have replaced them, have evidently arrived after their depart- 

 ure : the former tribes, not emphatically fish-eaters, but hunt- 

 ers, when, from single families, or from a race mixed with the 

 indigenous Flatheads, they had increased to tribes; and when 

 in that little productive region, where game is rare, they could 

 no longer remain stationary, must have sought subsistence in 

 and beyond the mountain chain ; for to the east only, with 

 the exception of the valleys of California, could they find the 

 Bison, the Elk, the white mountain Goat, the Ahzata, Argali, 

 prong-horned Antelope, and the wapiti Stag. In pursuit of 

 game, they must have come upon the sources and feeders of 

 the great rivers that run to the south-east, and fall into the 

 Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic. They would naturally follow 

 their course, or crossing the Ohio and Mississippi to richer 

 woody regions beyond the Alleghanies, occupy the eastern prov- 

 inces of the present United States and Canada. Other tribes 

 of the west, probably immigrants of later periods, and pos- 

 sessed of higher attainments, even with a remnant of nautical 

 means, descended between the islands and the coast, till they 

 reached the rivers now significantly denominated de los Mar- 

 tires, and de los Piramides ; and thence, crossing the Colorado, 

 rested for some ages in the valley of the Gila. 1 * Here they 

 gradually multiplied, advanced in civilization, and raised those 

 structural monuments which are still to be seen in their ruins ; 

 thence, in successive waves, ascending the plateau of the An- 

 des, they made their appearance in Anahuac, to seize new and 



* Surely these point out two or more of the Astecan halting places. 



