not improbable that long sojourns at way stations on the cold,
Alaskan route from central Asia may have weeded out certain types
of minds. Perhaps that is why the Indian, though brave, stoical,
and hardy, does not possess the alert, nervous temperament which
leads to invention and progress.

The ancestors of the red man unwittingly chose the easiest path
to America and so entered the continent first, but this was their
misfortune. They could not inherit the land because they chose a
path whose unfavorable influence, exerted throughout centuries,
left them unable to cope with later arrivals from other
directions. The parts of America most favorable for the Indian
are also best for the white man and Negro. There the alerter
minds of the Europeans who migrated in the other direction have
quickly eliminated the Indian. His long northern sojourn may be
the reason why farther south in tropical lands he is even now at
a disadvantage compared with the Negro or with the coolie from
the East Indies. In Central America, for instance, it is
generally recognized that Negroes stand the heat and moisture of
the lowlands better than Indians. According to a competent
authority: "The American Indians cannot bear the heat of the
tropics even as well as the European, not to speak of the African
race. They perspire little, their skin becomes hot, and they are
easily prostrated by exertion in an elevated temperature. They
are peculiarly subject to diseases of hot climates, as hepatic
disorders, showing none of the immunity of the African.
Furthermore, the finest physical specimens of the race are found
in the colder regions of the temperate zones, the Pampas and
Patagonian Indians in the south, the Iroquois and Algonkins in
the north; whereas, in the tropics they are generally undersized,