CHAPTER XV.

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.

THE general characteristics of the North American Indians, or the Red Men,

have been made familiar to us through the writings of travellers, and the
picturesque romances of Fenimore Cooper, the American novelist; though of the
latter it may be said, perhaps, that he has used bright colours too uniformly, and
introduced into his sketches too little shadow. The name by which they are
popularly known is, of course, ethnologically incorrect. Just as, in speaking of
the great Western Continent, our forefathers employed the expression “the West
Indies,” or the “Great Indies,” from a mistaken conception of its geographical
position, so they christened by the term “Indians” all its aboriginal races; and the
term has survived in our common speech owing to its convenience.

Says De Maury: From the North Pole to Tierra del Fuego almost every shade of
human colouring, from black to yellow, finds its representatives. According to
their tribe, the Aborigines are of a brown-olive, a dark brown, bronze, pale
yellow, copper yellow, red, brown, and so on. Nor do they differ less in stature.
Between the dwarf-like proportions of the Changos, and the tall stature of the
Patagonians, we meet with a great number of intermediary “sizes.” The contours
of the body present the same diversity. Some peoples, like those of the Pampas,
are very long in the bust; others, like the inhabitants of the Peruvian Andes, are
short and broad. So, too, with the shape and size of the head. Yet we recognize
between the various American populations an air of kinship, or certain
predominant and general features which distinguish them from the races of the
old world. As, for example, the pyramidal form of the head and the narrowness
of the forehead, characteristics of great antiquity among the American
populations, having been found in skulls discovered by Mr. Lund in the caves of
Brazil, in association with the bones of animals now extinct.

In spite of this variety of type, we may divide the Aborigines of America into
two great races, of which one, at least, the Red Skins, is remarkable for its