French Pathfinders in North America | Page 3

climate like that of Greenland. The lamented {6} Dr. John Fiske puts
the case thus strongly: "The stone arrow-heads, the sewing-needles, the

necklaces and amulets of cut teeth, and the daggers made from antler,
used by the Eskimos, resemble so minutely the implements of the
Cave-men, that if recent Eskimo remains were to be put into the
Pleistocene caves of France and England, they would be
indistinguishable in appearance from the remains of the Cave-men
which are now found there."
Further, these ancient men had an astonishing talent for delineating
animals and hunting scenes. In the caves of France have been found
carvings on bone and ivory, probably many tens of thousands of years
old, which represent in the most life-like manner mammoths,
cave-bears, and other animals now extinct. Strangely enough, of all
existing savage peoples the Eskimo alone possess the same faculty.
These circumstances make it probable that they are a remnant of the
otherwise extinct Cave-men. If this is so, their ancestors probably
passed over to this continent by a land-connection then existing
between Northern Europe and Northern America, of which Greenland
is a survival.
From the Eskimo southward to Cape Horn {7} we find various
branches of the one American race. First comes the Athapascan stock,
whose range extends from Hudson Bay westward through British
America to the Rocky Mountains. One branch of this family left the
dreary regions of almost perpetual ice and snow, wandered far down
toward the south, and became known as the roaming and fierce
Apaches, Navajos, and Lipans of the burning southwestern plains.
Immediately south of the Athapascans was the most extensive of all the
families, the Algonquin. Their territory stretched without interruption
westward from Cape Race, in Newfoundland, to the Rocky Mountains,
on both banks of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. It extended
southward along the Atlantic seaboard as far, perhaps, as the Savannah
River. This family embraced some of the most famous tribes, such as
the Abnakis, Micmacs, Passamaquoddies, Pequots, Narragansetts, and
others in New England; the Mohegans, on the Hudson; the Lenape, on
the Delaware; the Nanticokes, in Maryland; the Powhatans, in Virginia;
the Miamis, Sacs and Foxes, Kickapoos and Chippeways, in the Ohio

and Mississippi Valleys; and the Shawnees, on the Tennessee.
{8} This great family is the one that came most in contact and conflict
with our forefathers. The Indians who figure most frequently on the
bloody pages of our early story were Algonquins. This tribe has
produced intrepid warriors and sagacious leaders.
Its various branches represent a very wide range of culture. Captain
John Smith and Champlain, coasting the shores of New England, found
them closely settled by native tribes living in fixed habitations and
cultivating regular crops of corn, beans, and pumpkins. On the other
hand, the Algonquins along the St. Lawrence, as well as some of the
western tribes, were shiftless and roving, growing no crops and having
no settled abodes, but depending on fish, game, and berries for
subsistence, famished at one time, at another gorged. Probably the
highest representatives of this extensive family were the Shawnees, at
its southernmost limit.
Like an island in the midst of the vast Algonquin territory was the
region occupied by the Huron-Iroquois family. In thrift, intelligence,
skill in fortification, and daring in war, this stock stands preëminent
among all native Americans. It included the Eries and Hurons, in
Canada; {9} the Susquehannocks, on the Susquehanna; and the
Conestogas, also in Pennsylvania. But by far the most important branch
was the renowned confederacy called the Five Nations. This included
the Senecas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Oneidas, and Mohawks. These five
tribes occupied territory in a strip extending through the lake region of
New York. At a later date a kindred people, the Tuscaroras, who had
drifted down into Carolina, returned northward and rejoined the league,
which thereafter was known as the Six Nations. This confederacy was
by far the most formidable aggregation of Indians within the territory
of the present United States. It waged merciless war upon other native
peoples and had become so dreaded, says Dr. Fiske, that at the cry "A
Mohawk!" the Indians of New England fled like sheep. It was
especially hostile to some alien branches of its own kindred, the Hurons
and Eries in particular.
South of the Algonquins was the Maskoki group of Indians, of a

decidedly high class, comprising the Creeks, or Muskhogees, the
Choctaws, the Chickasaws, and, later, the Seminoles. They occupied
the area of the Gulf States, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River.
The {10} building of the Ohio earthworks is by many students
attributed to the ancestors of these southern tribes, and it was they who
heroically fought the Spanish invaders.
The powerful Dakota family, also called Sioux, ranged over territory
extending from Lake Michigan to the Rocky Mountains