n this
way, there follows an attempt to get rid of it entirely, and establish
connection between these unlike peoples, by talking of "Semi-Village
Indians." But the hypothesis used in this case is not well warranted by
facts. Such "Semi-Village Indians" as are supposed, really standing half
way between the savages and the Pueblos, and being actually savages half
developed into Pueblos, have never had a clearly defined and
unquestionable existence here since the continent became known to
Europeans. In the border region between the northern wild Indians and
the old Mexican race there are exceptional communities formed by
association or mixture, but we can not reasonably give them the
significance claimed for the supposed "Semi-Village Indians." Moreover,
these exceptional communities are usually Pueblos whose habits have been
changed and their civilization lessened by association with wild
Indians, or in some other way. The Navajos began their present condition
by fleeing to the mountains from the Spaniards. The Mound-Builders, who
must have been, still more than the Pueblos, unlike the barbarous
Indians, can not be explained by any reference whatever to such
communities. If they were of the same race, they were far from being the
same people.

Some ethnologists, whose suggestions are entitled to respectful
attention whether accepted or rejected, specify considerations which
they believe forbid us to regard the ancient Mexicans and the northern
wild Indians as identical in race. They point to the well known fact
that the fauna of the American continent below the northern frontier of
Mexico is remarkably different from that between this line and the
Arctic Sea. At the north, America abounds in species similar to those of
Europe and Asia, with some admixture of forms wholly American, while at
the south the old-world forms disappear, and the fauna of the whole
region between Mexico and Cape Horn becomes "as peculiar as that of
Australia."

The explanation given is, that during the glacial period the larger
part of North America, like Northern Asia and Europe, was covered with
ice and partly submerged, and that the fauna found in this part of North
America was introduced after the glacial period by immigration from Asia
and Europe over connecting lands or islands at the northwest and the
northeast, and perhaps by some migration from the south; the fauna at
the south meanwhile remaining very much as it was before, with very