so as to suggest, though probably without reason, a
kinship with Oriental peoples.

The Athapascans stood low in the scale of civilization.
Most of them lived in a prairie country where a luxuriant
soil, not encumbered with trees, would have responded to
the slightest labour. But the Athapascans, in Canada at
least, knew nothing of agriculture. With alternations of
starvation and rude plenty, they lived upon the unaided
bounty of tribes of the far north, degraded by want and
indolence, were often addicted to cannibalism.

The Indians beyond the mountains, between the Rockies
and the sea, were for the most part quite distinct from
those of the plains. Some tribes of the Athapascans, as
we have seen, penetrated into British Columbia, but the
greater part of the natives in that region were of wholly
different races. Of course, we know hardly anything of
these Indians during the first two centuries of European
settlement in America. Not until the eighteenth century,
when Russian traders began to frequent the Pacific coast
and the Spanish and English pushed their voyages into
the North Pacific,--the Tlingit of the far north, the
Salish, Tsimshian, Haida, Kwakiutl-Nootka and Kutenai.
It is thought, however, that nearly all the Pacific
Indians belong to one kindred stock. There are, it is
true, many distinct languages between California and
Alaska, but the physical appearance and characteristics
of the natives show a similarity throughout.