ction or
intercourse between aboriginal America and Asia within any such period
as the last twenty thousand years, except in so far as there may perhaps
now and then have been slight surges of Eskimo tribes back and forth
across Bering strait.

[Sidenote: There is one great American "red" race.]

The Indians must surely be regarded as an entirely different stock from
the Eskimos. On the other hand, the most competent American ethnologists
are now pretty thoroughly agreed that all the aborigines south of the
Eskimo region, all the way from Hudson's Bay to Cape Horn, belong to
one and the same race. It was formerly supposed that the higher culture
of the Aztecs, Mayas, and Peruvians must indicate that they were of
different race from the more barbarous Algonquins and Dakotas; and a
speculative necessity was felt for proving that, whatever may have been
the case with the other American peoples, this higher culture at any
rate must have been introduced within the historic period from the Old
World.[19] This feeling was caused partly by the fact that, owing to
crude and loosely-framed conceptions of the real points of difference
between civilization and barbarism, this Central American culture was
absurdly exaggerated. As the further study of the uncivilized parts of
the world has led to more accurate and precise conceptions, this kind of
speculative necessity has ceased to be felt. There is an increasing
disposition among scholars to agree that the warrior of Anahuac and the
shepherd of the Andes were just simply Indians, and that their culture
was no less indigenous than that of the Cherokees or Mohawks.

[Footnote 19: Illustrations may be found in plenty in the
learned works of Brasseur de Bourbourg:--_Histoire des nations
civilisees du Mexique et de l'Amerique centrale_, 4 vols.,
Paris, 1857-58; _Popol Vuh_, Paris, 1861; _Quatre lettres sur
le Mexique_, Paris, 1868; _Le manuscrit Troano_, Paris, 1870,
etc.]

[Sidenote: Different senses in which the word "race" is used.]

To prevent any possible misconception of my meaning, a further word of
explanation may be needed at this point. The word "race" is used in such
widely different senses that there is apt to be more or less vagueness
about it. The difference is mainly in what logicians call extension;
sometimes the word covers very little ground, sometimes a great deal. We
say that the people of England, of the Uni