ii 
(Copj'rigtit, 1907, by John Elfreth Watkins.) 
’HAT our popular notions concern¬ 
ing the Indan are largely lament¬ 
able fallacies, disseminated' by 
the novelist, poet and historian, 
was emphasized to me the other 
day in the course of an interview with Proif. 
William Henry Holmes, chief of the bureau 
William. Henry Holmes, chief of the bureau 
of American ethnology. This bureau is 
supported by the government, but adminis¬ 
tered under the guardianship of the Smith¬ 
sonian Institution. Its function is- the 
classification and study of the aboriginal 
tribes o,£ the United States, and the able 
man at its head is a geologist, anthropolo¬ 
gist and archaeologist. He has done scien¬ 
tific work under the Smithsonian for the 
past quarter of. a century; was professor 
in the Chicago University and head curator 
j of anthropology in the National Museum be- 
| fore being appointed to his present position 
! to succeed the late Maj. J. W. Powell. He 
has made archaeological studies in Mexico, 
California and many other parts of the 
country, and in 1S9S he received the Louibet 
| quinquennial prize of $1,000 for the excel- 
! lenee of his archaeologic work. He is cura- 
| tor of , the National Gallery of Art, is a 
well-known watercolor painter, and his 
| works haye occupied places of honor in 
i the.most important art exhibitions of this 
country. 
\ His characteristics which would most im- 
i press an interviewer are his conservatism, 
j, his Intolerance of error and his -indefatlga- 
j bllity in searching fo-r truth, 
j I asked Prof. Holmes to sum up for me 
I in popular language what his bureau had 
learned to date concerning the real Indian— 
how he came here, whence he came and 
| when he came., I asked him also to cor¬ 
rect the most egregious errors concerning 
the Indian which corrupt the popular mind, 
and to speculate as far as he could concern¬ 
ing the future of the fast-vanishing red 
i man. 
Origin of the Indian. 
“Did the Indian probably originate on 
this continent? Was there a cradle of the- 
race here—an American Garden of Eden, 
so to speak?’’ I asked at the outset. 
"The theory that the Indian originated on 
the American continent has been sup¬ 
ported by a number of scientific men,” he 
replied. “Some of them go so far as to 
hold'that the Indian developed on this con¬ 
tinent from some form of ape; but this is 
discounted by the fact that America has no 
existing species of the higher quadrumana, 
and 1 that no fossil remains of apes that could 
have been ancestors of the human race have 
yet been found here. Moreover, the more 
we study the red race the more we note not 
only that they take high rank as compared 
with the races of Asia and Africa, but that 
their physical and mental make-up is so 
nearly identical with that of the higher 
races of the old world that theories o>f sepa¬ 
rate origin seem entirely unreasonable and 
untenable. My opinion, therefore, is that 
they spread to America from the old world.” 
“How did they probably come?” 
“You will see here that nature offered a 
number of bridges, or ferries, rendering a 
. passage from the eastern to the western 
\ continent possible, even to men of primi- 
j tive culture.” 
i Prof. Holmes led me to a large, globe 
‘ which stood by his- desk, and with his linger 
( traced these possible paths, 
j a 
j Bridge From Europe to America. 
! “Evidence has been offered that the northern 
portions of America, here, were once 2,000 
tc 3,000 feet above their present level. This 
supposed uplift of the northern part of our 
■ continent, and of the North Atlantic basin 
is thought to have occurred some time dur¬ 
ing the Glacial Epoch. It must have estab¬ 
lished a continuous land conneet-on betwc.A. 
the arctic regions of the eastern and y-- 
era continent. There is evidence tnat low^ 
animals and plant life crossed this or some 
Other bridge, for the same Species of. lax.a 
snails occur, both in Labrador and Europe 
while distinctly European species of plain.., 
Sre found in Greenland. At the same time 
whue distinctly European species of plants 
are found in Greenland. At the same time 
.a number of species of American mollusks 
are found along the Scandinavian, and even 
the English coasts. This land bridge is 
thought to have connected Europe and North 
America by way of Iceland and Green¬ 
land, and thus separating the Arctic and 
Atlantic oceans. The evidence is that it re¬ 
mained above water at the close of the 
Glacial Epoch, and it is held by some that 
by this time man had taken up his abode 
on our continent. Some hold, however, that 
the ancestors of the Indians came over by 
ice bridges and ferries after this land 
bridge had subsided, and that such a route 
may -have been from Africa or the Canaiy 
islands to South America, You will note 
here on the globs that the distance from 
Africa to South America is less than the 
length of the Mediterranean. Prof. Darnel 
G. Brinton, a great authority, believed that 
man first reached our continent by one of 
these routes from the western coast of the 
Old World.” 
Another Bridge, From Asia. 
“Do you believe also that the Indians en¬ 
tered our continent cn the eastern side?” 
“I see no need of considering these routes 
when we have even now between America 
and Asia a ferry route across which one con¬ 
tinent is visible from the other. This Is Ber¬ 
ing strait, which in modern geologic times 
was probably bridged over by ice, across 
which man may have traveled- I do not deny 
that men may have drifted across by the 
easterly routes from time to time, but I 
hardly believe that they made a successful 
lodgment here by such scanty means. The 
Bering sea route only permitted a free flow 
of humanity from one continent to the 
other. Moreover, the American aborigines 
resemble the Asiatics more -closely than 
races of other points of possible contact. 
By the time these ancestors of the Indians 
had migrated from the central coast of 
Asia to Alaska, even if well advanced 
toward civilization, they were reduced to 
the state of mere hunters and fishers, and 
were not practicing arts beyond those re¬ 
quired as means of subsistence. The rigors 
of the long journey made in gradual steps 
by generations after generations pressing 
gradually northward had stripped them of 
all knowledge of agriculture, of all cattle, 
all knowledge of the metallurgic and other 
higher forms of handicraft. Hence Amer¬ 
ica. did not inherit the cultui’e of the old 
world. Arriving on this continent, the new 
environment must have changed even their 
religion, social customs and form of govern¬ 
ment. Those remaining in the arctic regions 
retained a hunting-fishing culture; those who 
went to the desert became brush people 
and lived upon snakes, rabbits and cactus 
fruit; those pausing where nature had -built 
their houses and done their quarrying for 
them became cave men and cliff dwellers; 
those whose lot fell in the great fertile 
valleys practiced agriculture. And so on. 
Each group developed a new culture not 
only American, but largely local.” 
Came Ten Thousand Tears Ago. 
“When did these ancestors of the Indian 
first arrive on this continent?” 
“It is estimated by some geologists that 
the ice of the glacial epoch receded from the 
northern edge of the United States from eight 
to ten thousand years ago. In some places 
have been found human remains which 
seem to date back to the end of that period. 
man s 
apparently 3^, *£ 'at 
,eaat. EoL* We?|a,eJo»n| 
eyen heyon a 
. .„ . ... _ ....ana i.-CJ ;dfve iUtUt- 
here traces of man going back into and 
even beyond the glacial period, but the evi¬ 
dence is so meager that it seems hardly 
wise to accept it. Some extraordinary dis¬ 
coveries of human remains in California are 
offered as evidence that man occupied this 
continent before glacial times. Among these 
are polished stone implements dug from 
gravels which geologists agree are so old 
that if these implements were reany buried 
there it was by men Who must have passed 
through the savage and well into the bar¬ 
barous stage while ‘Pethecanthropus erect- 
us,’ the hypothetical earliest representation 
of the human race in the old v/orld, was 
still running wild in the forests of Java, a 
half-regenerate ape. Furthermore, accept¬ 
ance of this California testimony . would 
place the presence of man in America far 
back into a period to be reckoned not in 
tens, but in hundreds of thousands of 
years. I should say that we as yet have no 
satisfactory proof that man existed on 
this continent until about the close of the 
glacial period, which might be eight to ten 
thousand years ago, but the figures must 
not to be taken too seriously.” 
‘‘Happy Hunting Ground.” 
“I imagine that the researches of eth¬ 
nologists gnd archeologists are disposing of 
many fallacies regarding the Indian—many 
which formerly had a firm place In popular 
belief.” 
“Yes. Take, for example, the theories as 
to the mound builders and cliff dwellers, 
that they were racially distinct from the 
Indians or that they had reached a supe¬ 
rior degree of culture. The fact is that the 
more thoroughly ; we explore the mounds 
and cliff ruins the more apparent it is that 
the attainments of their builders were as a 
whole not markedly superior to those of 
the later Indian. 
“The Indian’s belief in the ‘happy hunting 
ground’ and in one overruling deity, thef 
Great Spirit, are other popular fallacies in 
point. No tribe was without some idea of 
life after death, but as. to its exact nature 
and whereabouts the Indians’ ideas, differ¬ 
ing in different tribes, were vague. They 
do not seem to have evolved the idea of 
hell or future punishment. And very far 
removed from a conception of one all-pow¬ 
erful deity, the Great Spirit, is their belief 
in a multitude of spirits that dwelt in ani¬ 
mate and inanimate objects. These spirits 
were the source of good fortune, whether 
on the hunting path or war trail, In the 
pursuit of a Wife or in a ball game. If suc- 
ce^ful, he adored the particular spirit ap¬ 
pealed to, offered sacrifices and made val¬ 
uable presents to it. If unsuccessful, he j 
cast his manitou away and offered his faith j 
to more powerful or more friendly deities. 
In this world of spirits the Indian dwelt in 
perpetual fear. He feared to offend' the 
spirits of the mountains, of the dark wood, 
of .the lake, of the prairie. So you see the 
real Indian was a different creature from 
the joyous and untrammeled savage pic¬ 
tured and envied by the poet and philoso¬ 
pher. 
The Indian Medicine Quacks. 
“Quacks with herbs and methods of prac¬ 
tice which they claim to have received 
from noted Indian doctors are largely re¬ 
sponsible for many fallacies concerning the 
red man's practice of medicine. As a mat¬ 
ter of fact, the medical art among all In¬ 
dians was rooted, in sorceryy, and the pre¬ 
vailing idea that diseases were caused by 
evil spirits and could be removed only by 
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