So far as I know, this is the first attempt at a systematic
classification of the whole American race on the basis of language. I do
not overlook Dr. Latham’s meritorious effort nearly forty years ago; but
the deficiency of material at that time obliged him to depart from the
linguistic scheme and accept other guides.
While not depreciating the value of physical data, of culture and
traditional history, I have constantly placed these subordinate to
relationship as indicated by grammar and lexicography. There are
well-known examples in the ethnography of other races, where reliance
on language alone would lead the investigator astray; but all serious
students of the native American tribes are united in the opinion
that with them no other clue can compare to it in general results.
Consequently the Bureau of Ethnology of the United States and the
similar departments in the governments of Canada and Mexico have agreed
in adopting officially the linguistic classification for the aboriginal
population within their several territories.
Wherever the material permitted it, I have ranked the grammatic structure
of a language superior to its lexical elements in deciding upon
relationship. In this I follow the precepts and examples of students of
the Aryan and Semitic stocks; although their methods have been rejected
by some who have written on American tongues. As for myself, I am
abidingly convinced that the morphology of any language whatever is its
most permanent and characteristic feature.
It has been my effort to pay especial attention to those portions of the
continent whose ethnography remains obscure. The publications of official
bodies, as well as those of numerous societies and individuals, have
cleared up most of the difficulties in that portion of the continent
north of Mexico; hence it is to the remainder that I have given greater
space. The subject, however, is so vast, and the material so abundant,
that I fear the reader may be disappointed by the brevity of the
descriptions I have allowed to the several stocks.
The outlines of the classification and the general arrangement of
the material are those which for several years I have adopted in my
lecture courses before the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia.
In fact, this volume may properly be regarded as an expansion of the
ninth lecture--that on “The American Race,”--in my lectures on general
ethnography, published last year under the title “Races and Peoples.”
In defining the locations of the various tribes, I have encountered many
difficulties from their frequent removals. As a rule I have assigned a
tribe the location where it was first encountered and identified by the
white explorers; though sometimes I have preferred some later location
where its activity was longest known.
The great variety of the orthography of tribal names has led me to follow
the rule of selecting that which is locally the most usual. This variety
has been not a little increased by what seems to me the pedantry of many
learned writers, who insist on spelling every native name they mention
according to some phonetic system of their own devising--thus adding to
the already lamentable orthographic confusion.
I have not thought it advisable to adopt terminations to designate stocks
as distinguished from tribes. The Bureau of Ethnology has adopted for
stocks the termination _an_, as “Algonkian,” “Siouian.” This frequently
gives terms of strange appearance, and is open to some other objections.
It would be desirable to have this question of terminology decided by
the International Congress of Americanists, on some plan applicable to
French, German and Spanish, as well as English, rather than to have it
left to a local body or a single authority.
My thanks are due Mr. H. W. Henshaw, editor of the _American
Anthropologist_, for revising the list of North Pacific Coast Stocks, and
various suggestions.
I regret that I have not been able to avail myself of the unpublished
material in the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington; but access to this
was denied me except under the condition that I should not use in any
published work the information thus obtained; a proviso scarcely so
liberal as I had expected.
_Philadelphia, February, 1891._