d is not to be judged by the standards that we apply to those
races with whose history we are more familiar, nor is he to be measured
by their heights or depths. In many ways he is, and always has been, a
law unto himself; and although this state of things is passing away
beneath the influence of a steadily advancing civilization, it has been
conquered rather than modified, and the Indian remains beneath the
surface the same enigma, the same unique individuality, that he has ever
been.

Moreover, there is a peculiar difficulty in dealing with this division
of our subject. One is forced to speak almost entirely in generalities,
this compulsion existing both because of spatial limitations and because
of the dearth of exact knowledge that still exists concerning the
conditions of the Amerind in the far past. Yet enough is known to assure
us that only the broadest generalities are inclusively true. The custom
which was a rule of life among the Hurons of the North may have been
entirely unknown among the Seminoles of the South; the cult which was of
deep foundation among the Delawares of the Lakes may never have come to
the knowledge of the Navajos of the great plains or the Tehamas who
dwelt on the shores of the Pacific. For it is a fact which has never
received sufficient recognition that the Amerind--to adopt a convenient,
though not entirely defensible, nomenclature--had as many national
divisions as have the inhabitants of Europe or Asia. We speak of the
"tribes" of American Indians, and in so doing we are entirely correct;
yet we thus blind ourselves to the significance of the divisions which
have always existed, because we are accustomed to give to the word
"tribe" a limited meaning which is not strictly its possession. The
settlers of our country came far nearer to truth of expression when they
spoke of "the Five Nations"; for nations many of these tribes really
were, and nations radically differing in all but physical
characteristics, and not infrequently, where there existed great
divergence of climatic conditions, in physical characteristics also. It
is true that the bounds of nationality were not so sharply drawn as they
were, for example, between the Gaul and the Teuton, the Slav and the
Briton; but they existed, and were discernible in many important
matters. Thus the wide divergence of custom and conditions which
frequently appears in our study of the Amerind was not mere accident,
but was the product of a var