Brinton sums the case up admirably:

"As a rule the tribes of the western coast are not connected with
any east of the mountains. What is more singular, although they
differ surprisingly among themselves in language, they have
marked anthropologic similarities, physical and psychical.
Virchow has emphasized the fact that the skulls from the northern
point of Vancouver's Island reveal an unmistakable analogy to
those from the southern coast of California; and this is to a
degree true of many intermediate points. Not that the crania have
the same indices. On the contrary, they present great and
constant differences within the same tribe; but these differences
are analogous one to the other, and on fixed lines.

"There are many other physical similarities which mark the
Pacific Indians and contrast them with those east of the
mountains. The eyes are less oblique, the nose flatter, the lips
fuller, the chin more pointed, the face wider. There is more hair
on the face and in the axilla, and the difference between the
sexes is much more obvious.

"The mental character is also in contrast. The Pacific tribes are
more quiet, submissive, and docile; they have less courage, and
less of that untamable independence which is so constant a
feature in the history of the Algonquins and Iroquois."*

* D. G. Brinton, "The American Race," pp. 103-4.


Although mountains may guide migrations, the plains are the