233 
CHAPTER XVT 
WHO ARE THE INDIANS? 
The archaeological remains we have just considered carry us 
back only a short distance into the history of the occupation of 
Canada. They tell us neither who the Indians are, where they came 
from, nor how long they have been in possession of the country. 
The solutions of these problems cannot, in fact, be found in Canada 
alone, nor even in North America, because they are inseparably 
bound up with the history of man throughout the whole of the 
western hemisphere. In the ebb and flow of tribal movements dur- 
ing the long centuries before Columbus, few if any of our aborigines 
occupied exactly the same territories as they occupy to-day, and 
some of them, like the Iroquoians, undoubtedly reached Canada 
from the south. 
Our present problem leads us into a realm of pure theories, 
which, however well founded on established facts and on the infer- 
ences that flow logically from them, are liable, nevertheless, to com- 
plete or partial overthrow from some fresh discovery in eitlier the 
Old World or the New. There are really three problems that we 
should unravel. First, are the Indians autochthonous, and, if not, 
where did they come from? Second, how long have they occupied 
this hemisphere? And, third, if they were not autochthonous, what 
route or routes did they take in travelling hither? 
Let us consider the first problem. If the Indians were autoch- 
thonous, we should expect to find in this hemisphere traces of earlier 
types, both in the human and in the simian world, from which they 
have developed or branched off. But nowhere have we discovered 
a more primitive type of man than the Indians who inhabit it to-day. 
no remains that would correspond to Piltdown or Neanderthal man 
in Europe, Rhodesian man in South Africa, Sinanthropus in China, 
or the ape-man of Java, Pithecanthropus erectus. America, again, 
has known none of the higher anthropoid apes,’ our nearest of kin 
1 One must view with suspicion, until it is vciifietl beyontl doubt, tlie peculiar ape reported to 
exist in (he Rio de Oro region o: Venezuela l>y Montandon, George: “ Decouvertc d’uu singe d'appar- 
anci? antliropoide en Amerirpie du and”; Journal de la Societe dcs AniericanL-itcs de Paris, nouvelle 
serie, tome xxi, pp. 183 ff (Paris, 1929). 
86959 — 16.1 
