rable divergencies may be noticed among the
various American tribes, as indeed is also the case among the members of
the white race in Europe, and of other races. With regard to culture the
differences have been considerable, although, with two or three apparent
but not real exceptions, there was nothing in pre-Columbian America that
could properly be called civilization; the general condition of the
people ranged all the way from savagery to barbarism of a high type.

[Sidenote: Question as to their origin.]

[Sidenote: Antiquity of man in America.]

Soon after America was proved not to be part of Asia, a puzzling
question arose. Whence came these "Indians," and in what manner did they
find their way to the western hemisphere. Since the beginning of the
present century discoveries in geology have entirely altered our mental
attitude toward this question. It was formerly argued upon the two
assumptions that the geographical relations of land and water had been
always pretty much the same as we now find them, and that all the racial
differences among men have arisen since the date of the "Noachian
Deluge," which was generally placed somewhere between two and three
thousand years before the Christian era. Hence inasmuch as European
tradition knows nothing of any such race as the Indians, it was supposed
that at some time within the historic period they must have moved
eastward from Asia into America; and thus "there was felt to be a sort
of speculative necessity for discovering points of resemblance between
American languages, myths, and social observances and those of the
Oriental world. Now the aborigines of this Continent were made out to
be Kamtchatkans, and now Chinamen, and again they were shown, with
quaint erudition, to be remnants of the ten tribes of Israel. Perhaps
none of these theories have been exactly disproved, but they have all
been superseded and laid on the shelf."[1] The tendency of modern
discovery is indeed toward agreement with the time-honoured tradition
which makes the Old World, and perhaps Asia, the earliest dwelling-place
of mankind. Competition has been far more active in the fauna of the
eastern hemisphere than in that of the western, natural selection has
accordingly resulted in the evolution of higher forms, and it is there
that we find both extinct and surviving species of man's nearest
collateral relatives, those tailless half-human apes, the gorilla,
chimpanzee, orang, and gibbon. It i