many distinct groups of American languages. Very often the
language of a tribe is quite unlike that of its nearest neighbors; while
at the same time it may resemble the languages of tribes quite remote.
This fact indicates former segregation of the various groups speaking
the unlike languages and a common ancestry or close association of the
tribes speaking the allied dialects. As examples, I might mention the
Quichua Indians of Peru, whose language is very unlike the languages
spoken by the Arawak and Carib Indians to their northward and, at the
same time, quite distinct from the languages of their Brazilian
neighbors to the eastward. The Aztecs of Mexico spoke a language
differing radically in structure as well as in vocabulary from the Maya
language of their Yucatan neighbors; yet there is unquestionably a
relationship between the Aztecs and a number of very distant tribes,
shown by resemblances of their languages, as in the case of the Shoshone
Indians of the northern United States and the Nuhuatl tribes of Salvador
and Costa Rica. In the same way, the Algonquian dialects, which differ
greatly from those of the Iroquoian, show a close relationship between
very widely scattered tribes in North America, from North Carolina to
Quebec. Such resemblances and radical differences point to a very remote
and long-continued segregation which permitted the independent formation
of distinct linguistic stocks; while the antiquity of man in America,
both north and south of the equator, is further attested by the
development of such a cultivated and highly specialized food staple as
maize, whose ancestral prototype we have sought in vain. Its endless
varieties, fitted for widely diverse conditions of soil and climate,
also point to a long period of cultivation in dissimilar culture-areas,
which enabled them to adapt themselves to conditions very different from
those of the original stock from which they sprang.

All this evidence points to the peopling of this continent at a very
remote time, perhaps as far back as the close of the Glacial Epoch; and
it also indicates that the early progenitors of our Indian tribes had
left their original homes in the Old World before any of the linguistic
Old-World stocks had taken shape; before Sanscrit was Sanscrit; before
the languages of China or any other Asiatic people had become
established; and just as in this hemisphere the natives developed their
own languages from the most primitive ele