INDIANS, AMERICAN, the collective name now generally given to the various nations and tribes inhabiting North and South America, at the time of their discovery by the Span iards, and to such of their descendants as survive at the present day. The name of Indians was first given to the natives of America from the mistaken notion of the early voyagers, Columbus himself included, that the newly found continent was in reality a part of India. This was soon shown to be an error; but the name of Indians, thus wrongly applied to the inhabitants, continued to be used in every narrative of voyage and discovery, and has descended even to our own times, only that we now qualify it in some measure by speaking of them as American Indians.
In the classification of Blumenbach the American Indians are treated as a distinct variety of the human race; but in the threefold division of. mankind laid clown by Dr. Latham, they are ranked among the Mongolidu. Other ethnologists also regard them as a branch of the great Mongolian •family, which, at a remote period of the world's history, found its way from Asia to the American continent, and there remained for thousands of. years separate from the rest of mankind, passing meanwhile through various alternations of barbarism and civilization. Morton, however, the distinguished American ethnologist, and his disciples Nott and Gliddon, claim for them a distinct origin, one as indigenous to the continent itself as its fauna and flora. Prichard, whose views generally differ from those of Morton, acknowledges that " on comparing the American tribes together, we find reasons to believe that they must have subsisted as a separate department of nations from the earliest agys of the world. Hence, in attempting to trace relations between them and the rest of mankind, we cannot expect to discover proofs of their therivation from any particular tribe or nation in the old continent. The era of their existence as a distinct and insulated race must probably be dated as far back as that time which sepa rated into nations the inhabitants of the old world, and gave to each branch of the human family its primitive language and individuality." Dr. Robert Brown, in his Races of
Mankind, the latest authority on the subject, attributes to the American race an Asiatic origin. He says: " Not only are the western Indians in appearance very like their nearest neighbors, the north-eastern Asiatics, but in language and tradition, it is confi dently affirmed, there is a blending of the people. The Eskimo, on the American, and the Tchuktchis, on the Asiatic side, understand each other perfectly." In fact, modern anthropologists incline to think that Tapan, the Kuriles, and the neig,hboring regions may be regarded as the original home of greater part of the American race. It is also admitted by anthropologists that between these various tribes, from the Arctic sea to cape Horn, there is greater uniformity of physical structure and personal characteristics than is seen in any other quarter of the globe. The " red men," as they are called, of the United States and Canada, differ in many respects fro the Guranis of Paraguay, and both from the wild tribes of California, but all exhibit the clearest evidence of belonging to the same great branch of the human family. Upon this point the testimony of a writer like Humboldt is very important. " The Indians of New Spain," says Humboldt, " bear a general resemblance to those who inhabit Canada, Florida, Peru, and Brazil . . . We think we perceive them all to be descended from the same stock, notwith standing the prodigious diversity of their languages. In the portrait drawn by Volney of the Canadian Indians, we recognize the tribe scattercd over the savannahs of the 'Apure and the Carony. The same style of features exists in both Americas." The Mongolian cast of features is most marked in the tribes nearest the Mongol coast, i e., on the shores of the Pacific, and gets less noticeable as we go eastward. Their traditions, too, indicate that the tribes on the eastern seaboard came from the w., and the western tribes even came from regions still further west.