The Yakima herald. [volume] (North Yakima, W.T. [Wash.]) 1889-1914, 1897-06-17
LAST OF THE RED-MEN
Interesting Expedition in Search Of the
Indians Originality.
BELIEVED TO HAVE COME FROM ASIA
bicycles not Likely to Become Much
Cheaper-Cong Lewis In
Ills Latest Roie-The Country BOY
and Ilis Stupendous Nerve.

Scientists, and laymen also, will watch
with considerable interest for results to
come from the expedition of DIR. Frank
Boas, the eminent ethnologist of the
| American Museum of National History,
in search of evidence that the American
Indian came originally from Asia and
was of Monaghan stock. SAYS the
San Francisco Bulletin Mr.. Boas has
already reached Seattle on the way to
British Colum bia and Alaska, where the
Indian blood that is left is purest and
where, presumably, the Monaghan con
necton is most apparent in the natural
condition Of the primitive tribes, if It is
to he found at all. The passage of the
red men across Boring straits from North
western Asia, and so down into the great
continent of America, has always been
rather favorite notion in the scientific
mind, and while there is sometimes a
striking facial resemblance between indi
viduals of the Pacific Coast tribes and
individuals of the Chinese and Tartar
nations, there seems little real evidence
to sustain the scientific hypothesis be
yond the admitted fact that passage be-
tween the continents of Asia and North
America across the straits would be easy
Ivy even the most promtive means of
water travel Then, the Chinese have
been navigators since they were first
known to the people OF Europe, and
might well have crossed the Pacific at its
narrowest part, or even stray jnnks might
have been carried across by stress Of
weather in prehistoric, as they have been
known to be carried in historic times.
But the Chinese, the Monogolsns, are OF
the most primitive kind, and il they are
really Monogolians they present the
strange spectacle Of race which has not
only lost its original speech and Its
original customs and traditions, but each
little group of which, forming separate
tribe, has built for itself new speech
made Of sounds in imitation of the cries
Of animals, to which arbitrary meanings
have been attached, each tribe creating
for itself new customs and new traditions
growing ont of its own immediate en-
vironment. The American Indian Ger
tainly had no more tradition of Mongol-
ian origin than of origin in the lost con-
tinent of Atlantic, the hills and rivers
a laL in, "A FOL,
making his world. and the stories hand
ed down in particular tribes OF migration
from land to the westward might mean
| that that tribes came from places ten
miles or ten thousand miles in that di.
rection. Some of the tribes, notably the
| NstChez, had traditions of both eastward
and westward tribal movements, and
although little is known OF this particular
tribe, exterminated very early in the
| history of white occupation Of the CONT
nent, it is known that it differed in Ian
guage, appearance and habits from the
tribes surrounding it. Again, the In
| dams dwelling Cd the islands in the
Santa Barbara channel, also perishing
early, are known to have been a supe
riOr race to that on the mainland from
which the islanders were separated by
less than thirty miles of water, stronger,
of little color, more intelligent and less
sullen.
This strong and strange distinction be-
tween tribes dwelling side by side on
the Americas continent was not at all
unusual, seeming to indicate rather the
progressive development of race sui
generis than the varying decline OF a race
fallen from another and different civil
cation. The Hoquois and Creeks achieved
confederacy and civil government while
Indians all about them were savage, and
the Aztecs and the Peruvians were as
Europeans of their day. II is not, in
deed, an extravagant suppOsition that if
the discovery OF America had been de-
layed five hundred years, Americans
would have discovered Europe-although
there is against it the action of that great
law which seems to impel race move
ments toward the West. The same law
runs, also, against the theory that the
Indians were wave OF Mongolians NOV
ing eastward in search Of new homes
The limitation Of the scientist lies in this
that because Asia was the cradle of our
own race, We conceive it to have been the
cradle OF every other. Is race peculiar
to America as impossible of conception
VIII Cycles Be Cheaper?