s studied first. In botany, the trees
and the conspicuous flowering plants of garden, field, and plain were
first known, and then all other plants were vaguely grouped as weeds;
but, since the most conspicuous phenogamous plants were first studied,
what vast numbers of new orders, new genera, and new species have been
discovered, in the progress of research, to the lowest cryptogams!

In the study of ethnology we first recognized the more civilized races.
The Aryan, Hamites, Shemites, and Chinese, and the rest were the weeds
of humanity--the barbarian and savage, sometimes called Turanians. But,
when we come carefully to study these lower people, what numbers of
races are discovered! In North America alone we have more than
seventy-five--seventy-five stocks of people speaking seventy-five stocks
of language, and some single stocks embracing many distinct languages
and dialects. The languages of the Algonkian family are as diverse as
the Indo-European tongues. So are the languages of the Dakotans, the
Shoshonians, the Tinneans, and others; so that in North America we have
more than five hundred languages spoken to-day. Each linguistic stock is
found to have a philosophy of its own, and each stock as many branches
of philosophy as it has languages and dialects. North America presents a
magnificent field for the study of savage and barbaric philosophies.

This vast region of thought has been explored only by a few adventurous
travelers in the world of science. No thorough survey of any part has
been made. Yet the general outlines of North American philosophy are
known, but the exact positions, the details, are all yet to be filled
in--as the geography of the general outline of North America is known by
exploration, but the exact positions and details of topography are yet
to be filled in as the result of careful survey. Myths of the Algonkian
stock are found in many a volume of _Americana_, the best of which were
recorded by the early missionaries who came from Europe, though we find
some of them, mixed with turbid speculations, in the writings of
Schoolcraft. Many of the myths of the Indians of the south, in that
region stretching back from the great Gulf, are known; some collected by
travelers, others by educated Indians.

Many of the myths of the Iroquois are known. The best of these are in
the writings of Morgan, America's greatest anthropologist. Missionaries,
travelers, and linguists have given us a great store of t