The
denizens of these wilds are abject, slovenly, hopelessly savage, "at the
bottom of the scale of humanity in North America," says Dr. Richardson,
and their relatives who have wandered to the more genial climes of the
south are as savage as they, as perversely hostile to a sedentary life,
as gross and narrow in their moral notions. This wide-spread stock,
scattered over forty-five degrees of latitude, covering thousands of
square leagues, reaching from the Arctic Ocean to the confines of the
empire of the Montezumas, presents in all its subdivisions the same
mental physiognomy and linguistic peculiarities.[25-2]
Best known to us of all the Indians are the Algonkins and Iroquois, who,
at the time of the discovery, were the sole possessors of the region now
embraced by Canada and the eastern United States north of the
thirty-fifth parallel. The latter, under the names of the Five Nations,
Hurons, Tuscaroras, Susquehannocks, Nottoways and others, occupied much
of the soil from the St.
Pages:
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56