The Aboriginal People.

When America was Discovered it was inhabited by a race whome the discoverers called indians. Whence they came or how long they had been in Noth America cannot be defintely stated. It is probable that Aisa and North America, and perhaps even Europe and North America once was joined and that human life whereever it originated, flowedfrom one hemisphere to the other. Human remains , deeply burried in geological strata, are proof that man has existed in America at least 30,000 perhaps much longer .

 

The Indians.

The Aborigines of North America all belong to one ethnic unit ans all reaced about the same degree of culture. None of them were utterly savage, none civillized. Those in the southern part of North America and the western part of South America where in the middle of barbarisim, they had no phonetic alphabet nor any idea of the private ownership of landed property, which marks the beginning of civillization. thanks to indian corn, theyknew a rude put productive agriculture. They still were in that stage of culture in which the family is inferior to the clan or gens as a recognized group. All things being owned by the clan, all members of the clans were united into tribes and some of the more advanced tribes and some of thr more advanced tribes into larger units.

 

The United States Bureau of Ethnology divides the indians of the United States into fifty nine famillies, the most important of which were the Algonquin family,which includedthe Ojibwas,Ottawas, Crees, Algonquins, Micmacs, and Blackfeet, the Iroquoian family, the most important members of which were "The Five Nations" the Muskhogean family, which occupied most of Georgia, the Siouan family, the chief group of which lived west of the upper Mississippi ans the upper Missouri valley the Shoshonean Family, the most important tribes of which were the Comanches and Utes. yet they werer few in total numbers perhaps "half a million", within the limits of the presant United States.

    

Contact with the wites caused the indians to dwindle in the East. Whereever the whites settles, the story is the same. Early uprising were followed by more severe stuggles in which the tribes were broken or driven westward to contend with the tribes already on the land. French neighbors in the north and spanish in the south used the indiands against the english , till the english were so frimly settle that there could be thill outcome to the struggle. through later frontrier wars and indian massacres the whites triuphantly moved westward and the indians were either exterminated or confined to reservations where they lost their independence while the goverment attempted to raise them to civilization by educationand paternal care.

 

Indian and colonial wars.

The three principal nations,the Spanish, the French, and the English, who settled in America, had each its own methods with the indians. The Spaniards  practically enslaved and baptized the indians, the French baptized the indians, tradedand intermarried with them, the English crowded them out of their hunting grounds and avoided them and only now and then a man like John Eloit ,attempted to chhristianze them. The french soon Gained an ascendancy over the indians, who proved invaluable allies in the stern confilict wth  the English.