The North-Americans of Yesterday

The “Indian” has never seemed to me an abnormal factor, but rather a natural part of our society, for it is now nearly thirty years since I first associated with him in the Far West, and before that the Iroquois were familiar to me as a small boy. When I first went among the Western tribes, it was with the second Colorado River expedition of that gallant explorer and foremost student of Amerindian affairs, John Wesley Powell. His own works and the reports of the United States Bureau of Ethnology, of which he has so long been the head, and where he has gathered together so many eminent ethnologists and archæologists, have furnished me with much material. These reports form a fine library on Amerindian matters, and reflect great honour on Professor Powell who conceived the idea, and on Congress which has ungrudgingly supported it. A great and timely work has become established, which to private enterprise would have been next to impossible. Add to these the invaluable reports of the Smithsonian Institution and the memoirs and reports of the Peabody Museum and American Museum, and the student has before him a large fund of material without seeking farther. Then there are the brilliant works of Parkman, Brinton, Winsor, Bandelier, Putnam, Morgan, Schoolcraft, Prescott, Maudsley, Goodman, Wilson, Keane, and many others, with the huge production of H. H. Bancroft filling an important place. To all of these and to others I owe much, and I have intended in every case to give credit and references. Where these, in some cases, may not have been properly awarded, it is due to oversight and not to intention. My especial thanks are due to the Bureau of Ethnology for copies of all the reports, and for permission to utilise the illustrations contained in them, and to the American Museum, Archæological Institute, Field Columbian Museum, Peabody Museum, and Smithsonian Institution for similar generosity. I take pleasure also in acknowledging favours from Professor Putnam, Professor Powell, Professor Mason, Dr. McGee, Mr. Saville, Professor Seymour, Professor Langley, Mr. Bancroft, Professor Holmes, Dr. Baum, and others, and from Mr. E. H. Harriman the opportunity of visiting Alaska under the most favourable circumstances.

The title, The North Americans of Yesterday, seems to me appropriate, because while there are still some Amerinds extant, and a few are even yet apparently leading the old-time life, nevertheless they are merely remnants of a people whose sun has set, and who therefore properly belong to yesterday. For this reason I have mainly treated them as a bygone race. Between the so-called “Red Indian” of the United States and northern regions and the so-called “Civilised Tribes” of Mexico and southern regions I have made no race differentiation, because the differences, whatever they may be, are discovered to be not of kind, but of degree. Confusion was formerly caused by misconceptions and by romantic ideas which have been dispelled by the more scientific methods of later days. Some confusion has been caused also by the persistent efforts to classify the progress of mankind as a whole into distinct world-epochs or time periods. It seems to me that no such universal epochs of even progress could have existed in past time any more than in present time. Tribes of men are differentiated now, always will be, and, I believe, always have been. Common world-planes of culture in time periods are an impossibility. Such schedules as Morgan’s may apply to tribes and stocks as indicating their special, individual advance, but not to the whole world, except in a very general way. That is, they may be culture but never time classifications. The closer we approach the beginnings of man’s existence, the less marked, perhaps, the differences in tribes, but differences certainly began at the moment when one group of men left another group of men to live apart. The environment and necessities of each group would cause differences and varying rates of progress. One group would gain the bow a thousand years before another.