southward to Cape Horn {7} we find various branches of
the one American race. First comes the _Athapascan_ stock, whose range
extends from Hudson Bay westward through British America to the Rocky
Mountains. One branch of this family left the dreary regions of almost
perpetual ice and snow, wandered far down toward the south, and became
known as the roaming and fierce Apaches, Navajos, and Lipans of the
burning southwestern plains.

Immediately south of the Athapascans was the most extensive of all the
families, the _Algonquin_. Their territory stretched without
interruption westward from Cape Race, in Newfoundland, to the Rocky
Mountains, on both banks of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. It
extended southward along the Atlantic seaboard as far, perhaps, as the
Savannah River. This family embraced some of the most famous tribes,
such as the Abnakis, Micmacs, Passamaquoddies, Pequots, Narragansetts,
and others in New England; the Mohegans, on the Hudson; the Lenape, on
the Delaware; the Nanticokes, in Maryland; the Powhatans, in Virginia;
the Miamis, Sacs and Foxes, Kickapoos and Chippeways, in the Ohio and
Mississippi Valleys; and the Shawnees, on the Tennessee.

{8} This great family is the one that came most in contact and conflict
with our forefathers. The Indians who figure most frequently on the
bloody pages of our early story were Algonquins. This tribe has produced
intrepid warriors and sagacious leaders.

Its various branches represent a very wide range of culture. Captain
John Smith and Champlain, coasting the shores of New England, found them
closely settled by native tribes living in fixed habitations and
cultivating regular crops of corn, beans, and pumpkins. On the other
hand, the Algonquins along the St. Lawrence, as well as some of the
western tribes, were shiftless and roving, growing no crops and having no
settled abodes, but depending on fish, game, and berries for subsistence,
famished at one time, at another gorged. Probably the highest
representatives of this extensive family were the Shawnees, at its
southernmost limit.

Like an island in the midst of the vast Algonquin territory was the
region occupied by the _Huron-Iroquois_ family. In thrift, intelligence,
skill in fortification, and daring in war, this stock stands preeminent
among all native Americans. It included the Eries and Hurons, in Canada;
{9} the Susquehannocks, on the Susquehanna; and the Conestogas, also in
Pennsy