the shores of the Gulf of California. No wonder they
deserted their fatherland and forgot it altogether, for it is a very
_terra damnata_, whose wretched inhabitants are cut off alike from the
harvest of the sea and the harvest of the soil. The profitable culture of
maize does not extend beyond the fiftieth parallel of latitude, and less
than seven degrees farther north the mean annual temperature everywhere
east of the mountains sinks below the freezing point.[25-1] Agriculture
is impossible, and the only chance for life lies in the uncertain
fortunes of the chase and the penurious gifts of an arctic flora. The
denizens of these wilds are abject, slovenly, hopelessly savage, "at the
bottom of the scale of humanity in North America," says Dr. Richardson,
and their relatives who have wandered to the more genial climes of the
south are as savage as they, as perversely hostile to a sedentary life,
as gross and narrow in their moral notions. This wide-spread stock,
scattered over forty-five degrees of latitude, covering thousands of
square leagues, reaching from the Arctic Ocean to the confines of the
empire of the Montezumas, presents in all its subdivisions the same
mental physiognomy and linguistic peculiarities.[25-2]

Best known to us of all the Indians are the Algonkins and Iroquois, who,
at the time of the discovery, were the sole possessors of the region now
embraced by Canada and the eastern United States north of the
thirty-fifth parallel. The latter, under the names of the Five Nations,
Hurons, Tuscaroras, Susquehannocks, Nottoways and others, occupied much
of the soil from the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario to the Roanoke, and
perhaps the Cherokees, whose homes were in the secluded vales of East
Tennessee, were one of their early offshoots.[25-3] They were a race of
warriors, courageous, cruel, unimaginative, but of rare political
sagacity. They are more like ancient Romans than Indians, and are leading
figures in the colonial wars.

The Algonkins surrounded them on every side, occupying the rest of the
region mentioned and running westward to the base of the Rocky
Mountains, where one of their famous bands, the Blackfeet, still hunts
over the valley of the Saskatchewan. They were more genial than the
Iroquois, of milder manners and more vivid fancy, and were regarded by
these with a curious mixture of respect and contempt. Some writer has
connected this difference with their preference for the open prairie
cou