Every school boy knows that at the time of its discovery North America
was the Red Man’s continent. He knows that white people, equipped with
the weapons and knowledge of an advanced civilization, took this land by
persuasion or by force. For most of us our knowledge of the American
Indian begins and ends with the brief interval in time where these two
races were involved in a bitter struggle.
Our knowledge is limited because until recently no one really knew the
answers to such questions as “Where did the Indian come from?” Many
thought that he had been preceded by another race of superior
intelligence, the “Mound Builders”; and in general our information about
him had rested on a great deal of ingenious speculation with very little
actual knowledge to back it up. The people most actively interested in
the problem are the archeologists. They have been studying it
intensively for about 75 years; and, while their work was at first
mostly descriptive, the last 25 years have seen tremendous strides in
both the techniques of their research and the soundness of their
interpretations. Now we know a good deal about the Indian and have
traced his career on this continent back to a time when our own past
becomes almost equally dim and shadowy. But this information is still
mostly to be found in big books, or in special studies that are hard to
obtain; so it may be helpful to outline briefly here what we know today
of the origins and early career of this particular branch of the human
race.
In the Old World, human history has been traced to its beginnings
through fossil remains suggesting a stage of development earlier than
man. In the Western Hemisphere, however, no such remains have been
found, which indicates that the American Indian must have immigrated
here from another continent. In searching for his closest relatives,
therefore, scientists are now agreed that certain physical peculiarities
show the modern as well as the prehistoric Indian to be most closely
linked to the peoples of eastern Asia.
[Illustration: Museum exhibit panel. Arrangement of cultural features
idealized.]