short-lived, of inferior muscular force and with slight tolerance
of disease."* "No one," adds another observer, "could live among
the Indians of the Upper Amazon without being struck with their
constitutional dislike to heat. The impression forced itself upon
my mind that the Indian lives as a stranger or immigrant in these
hot regions."** Thus when compared with the other inhabitants of
America, from every point of view the Indian seems to be at a
disadvantage, much of which may be due to the path which he took
from the Old World to the New.

* D. G. Brinton, "The American Race," pp. 34, 35.

** H. W. Bates, "The Naturalist on the River Amazons." vol.II,
pp. 200, 201.


Before the red man lost his American heritage, he must have
enjoyed it for thousands upon thousands of years. Otherwise he
never could have become so different from his nearest relative,
the Mongol. The two are as truly distinct races as are the white
man and the Malay. Nor could the Indians themselves have become
so extraordinarily diverse except during the lapse of thousands
of years. The Quichua of the cold highlands of Peru is as
different from the Maya of Yucatan or the Huron of southern
Canada as the Swede is from the Armenian or the Jew. The
separation of one stock from another has gone so far that almost
countless languages have been developed. In the United States
alone the Indians have fifty-five "families" of languages and in
the whole of America there are nearly two hundred such groups.
These comprise over one thousand distinct languages which are