LITMIR.BIZ

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seeking to acquire and hold a new area; preserving at first, and as long as possible, a connection with the mother tribe. By these successive movements they sought to expand their joint possessions, and afterward to resist the intrusion of alien people within their limits. It is a noticeable fact that Indian tribes speaking dialects of the same stock language have usually been found in territorial continuity, however extended their common area. The same has, in the main, been true of all the tribes of mankind linguistically united. It is because the people, spreading from some geographical centre, and maintaining an arduous struggle for subsistence, and for the possession of their new territories, have preserved their connection with the mother land as a means of succor in times of danger, and as a place of refuge in calamity.

      It required special advantages in the means of subsistence to render any area an initial point of migration through the gradual development of a surplus population. These natural centres were few in number in North America. There are but three. First among them is the Valley of the Columbia, the most extraordinary region on the face of the earth in the variety and amount of subsistence it afforded, prior to the cultivation of maize and plants;79 second, the peninsula between Lakes Superior, Huron and Michigan, the seat of the Ojibwas, and the nursery land of many Indian tribes; and third, the lake region in Minnesota, the nursery ground of the present Dakota tribes. These are the only regions in North America that can be called natural centres of subsistence, and natural sources of surplus numbers. There are reasons for believing that Minnesota was a part of the Algonkin area before it was occupied by the Dakotas. When the cultivation of maize and plants came in, it tended to localize the people and support them in smaller areas, as well as to increase their numbers; but it failed to transfer the control of the continent to the most advanced tribes of Village Indians, who subsisted almost entirely by cultivation. Horticulture spread among the principal tribes in the Lower Status of barbarism and greatly improved their condition. They held, with the non-horticultural tribes, the great areas of North America when it was discovered, and from their ranks the continent was being replenished with inhabitants.80

      The multiplication of tribes and dialects has been the fruitful source of the incessant warfare of the aborigines upon each other. As a rule the most persistent warfare has been waged between tribes speaking different stock languages; as, for example, between the Iroquois and Algonkin tribes, and between the Dakota tribes and the same. On the contrary the Algonkin and Dakota tribes severally have, in general, lived at peace among themselves. Had it been otherwise they would not have been found in the occupation of continuous areas. The worst exception were the Iroquois, who pursued a war of extermination against their kindred tribes, the Eries, the Neutral Nation, the Hurons and the Susquehannocks. Tribes speaking dialects of the same stock language are able to communicate orally and thus compose their differences. They also learned, in virtue of their common descent, to depend upon each other as natural allies.

      Numbers within a given area were limited by the amount of subsistence it afforded. When fish and game were the main reliance for food, it required an immense area to maintain a small tribe. After farinaceous food was superadded to fish and game, the area occupied by a tribe was still a large one in proportion to the number of the people. New York, with its forty-seven thousand square miles, never contained at any time more than twenty-five thousand Indians, including with the Iroquois the Algonkins on the east side of the Hudson and upon Long Island, and the Eries and Neutral Nation in the western section of the state. A personal government founded upon gentes was incapable of developing sufficient central power to follow and control the increasing numbers of the people, unless they remained within a reasonable distance from each other.

      Among the Village Indians of New Mexico, Mexico, and Central America an increase of numbers in a small area did not arrest the process of disintegration. Each pueblo was usually an independent self-governing community. Where several pueblos were seated near each other on the same stream, the people were usually of common descent, and either under a tribal or confederate government. There are some seven stock languages in New Mexico alone, each spoken in several dialects. At the time of Coronado’s expedition, 1540–1542, the villages found were numerous but small. There were seven each of Cibola, Tucayan, Quivira, and Hemez, and twelve of Tiguex;81 and other groups indicating a linguistic connection of their members. Whether or not each group was confederated we are not informed. The seven Moqui Pueblos (the Tucayan Villages of Coronado’s expedition), are said to be confederated at the present time, and probably were at the time of their discovery.

      The process of subdivision, illustrated by the foregoing examples, has been operating among the American aborigines for thousands of years, until upwards of forty stock languages, as near as is known, have been developed in North America alone; each spoken in a number of dialects, by an equal number of independent tribes. Their experience, probably, was but a repetition of that of the tribes of Asia, Europe and Africa, when they were in corresponding conditions.

      From the preceding observations, it is apparent that an American Indian tribe is a very simple as well as humble organization. It required but a few hundreds, and, at most, a few thousand people to form a tribe, and place it in a respectable position in the Ganowánian family.

      It remains to present the functions and attributes of an Indian tribe, which may be discussed under the following propositions:

I.	The possession of a territory and a name.
II.	The exclusive possession of a dialect.
III.	The right to invest sachems and chiefs elected by the gentes.
IV.	The right to depose these sachems and chiefs.
V.	The possession of a religious faith and worship.
VI.	A supreme government consisting of a council of chiefs.
VII.	A head-chief of the tribe in some instances.

      It will be sufficient to make a brief reference to each of these several attributes of a tribe.

      I. The possession of a territory and a name.

      Their territory consisted of the area of their actual settlements, and so much of the surrounding region as the tribe ranged over in hunting and fishing, and were able to defend against the encroachments of other tribes. Without this area was a wide margin of neutral grounds, separating them from their nearest frontegers if they spoke a different language, and claimed by neither; but less wide, and less clearly marked, when they spoke dialects of the same language. The country thus imperfectly defined, whether large or small, was the domain of the tribe, recognized as such by other tribes, and defended as such by themselves.

      In due time the tribe became individualized by a name, which, from their usual character, must have been in many cases accidental rather than deliberate. Thus, the Senecas styled themselves the “Great Hill People” (Nun-da′-wä-o-no), the Tuscaroras, “Shirt-wearing People” (Dus-ga′-o-weh-o-no′), the Sissetons, “Village of the Marsh” (Sis-se′-to-wän), the Ogalallas, “Camp Movers” (O-ga-lal′-lä), the Omahas, “Upstream People” (O-mä′-hä), the Iowas, “Dusty Noses” (Pa-ho′-cha), the Minnitarees, “People from Afar” (E-năt′-zä), the Cherokees, “Great People” (Tsä-lo′-kee), the Shawnees, “Southerners” (Sä-wan-wä-kee′), the Mohegans, “Sea-side People” (Mo-he-kun-e-uk), the Slave Lake Indians, “People of the Lowlands” (A-cha′-o-tin-ne). Among the Village Indians of Mexico, the Sochimilcos styled themselves “Nation of the Seeds of Flowers,” the Chalcans, “People of Mouths,” the Tepanecans, “People of the Bridge,” the Tezcucans or Culhuas, “A Crooked People,” and the Tlascalans, “Men of Bread.”82 When European colonization began in the northern part of America, the names of Indian tribes were obtained, not usually from the tribe direct, but from other tribes who had bestowed names upon them different from their own. As a consequence, a number of tribes are now known in history under

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