re found in North America, from the Arctic to
Mexico, some fifty-five groups of languages still existing or recently
extinct. Throughout these we may trace the same affinities and
relationships that run through the languages of Europe and Asia. We can
also easily connect the speech of the natives of North America with
that of natives of Central and of South America. Even if we had not the
similarities of physical appearance, of tribal customs, and of general
manners to argue from, we should be able to say with certainty that the
various families of American Indians all belonged to one race. The
Eskimos of Northern Canada are not Indians, and are perhaps an
exception; it is possible that a connection may be traced between them
and the prehistoric cave-men of Northern Europe. But the Indians belong
to one great race, and show no connection in language or customs with
the outside world. They belong to the American continent, it has been
said, as strictly as its opossums and its armadillos, its maize and its
golden rod, or any other of its aboriginal animals and plants.

But, here again, we must not conclude too much from the fact that the
languages of America have no relation to those of Europe and Asia. This
does not show that men originated separately on this continent. For
even in Europe and Asia, where no one supposes that different races
sprung from wholly separate beginnings, we find languages isolated in
the same way. The speech of the Basques in the Pyrenees has nothing in
common with the European families of languages.

We may, however, regard the natives of America as an aboriginal race,
if any portion of mankind can be viewed as such. So far as we know,
they are not an offshoot, or a migration, from any people of what is
called the Old World, although they are, like the people of the other
continents, the descendants of a primitive human stock.

We may turn to geology to find how long mankind has lived on this
continent. In a number of places in North and South America are found
traces of human beings and their work so old that in comparison the
beginning of the world's written history becomes a thing of yesterday.
Perhaps there were men in Canada long before the shores of its lakes
had assumed their present form; long before nature had begun to hollow
out the great gorge of the Niagara river or to lay down the outline of
the present Lake Ontario. Let us look at some of the notable evidence
in respect to the a