The Wolf Point herald. (Wolf Point, Mont.) 1913-1940, 1920-07-29
DID MOMTAMA'S FIGHTING INDIANS COME
FROM ANCIENT, FORGOTTEN ASIAN EMPIRE?

Were the people against whose ra-
pacious incursions China built the
Great Wall, American Indians? Were
the arrow armed hordes hat threat
ened the Oldest civilization in Asia
of the same race as those against
whom Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill and
Custer pitted their force n mill
tary skill? The blood connection be-
tween the American Indian and the
savage ~horse-riding, arrow-shooting
Mongols of northeast Asia offers one
of the most fascinating problems the
present day ethnologists have to
study. Indian" long considered a
misnomer, a nam applied by explor-
ers who mistakenly thought the
North American continent an Asian
mainland, is not so far from the mark
as most people have been led to be-
lieve.
Tremendously important evidence
in the links connecting "Lo" with the
similarly half wild men of the north
Asiatic steppes has been contributed
by the Chippewa tribes of northern
Minnesota, the Indians of the Leetch
Lake and White Earth reservations.
Investigations conducted by DR.. Alec
HardIick. curator of the division of
physical anthropology in the United
States national museum, have thrown
strong light on the Asiatic origin OF
tn Amrican Indian. Come he from
North America or from South, be he
an A~ssinniboine or a savage going
incredibly naked through the SHOWS
of TERRA del Fuego at Cape Horn the
probabilities are that he is not in
digenously American, but an Asiatic.
IL A. TTpsxror cifu nf M5nnacOfa
Professor Albert E. jerks, ethnolo-
gist and anthropologist, expresses his
belief that the Indians of Minnesota
and of all America came in the dis
tant past from Asia.
cone cannot assert positively that
the Indian is a Mongol, for at the
time the Asiatics, who were to be-
come our Indians, crossed into Alaska
from Asia there may have been no
race of Mongols as such. But all
the native peoples of America had
as their distant ancestors the same
people hat were the distant ances-
tors of the modern Tartars and Mon
gols.
probably" said Professor jerks,
''the Asiatic ancestors of the Indians
came to America about 10000 years
ago, or neal the time when the last
glaciers disappeared from this gen.
eral area. This was the last of three
great ice field to slip down ove the
edge of the continent. Some may
even have come before that, for there
is some evidence to support the be-
lief that man lived in North America
during the last of the great glacial
periods"
The principal migration from Asia
to America, ages ago, was probably
by way of what is now Behring strait.
Geology has not yet determined whe-
ther the strait was present as long
ago as that. Possibly there was dry
land for the Asians to cross On. In
any case, but Al miles separate
America from Asia up there, and for
a large part of the year an ice field
many feet in depth makes passage
perfectly dry.
When early French explorers sail
ed UP the st. Lawrence river and
encountered the mighty rapids at
what is now Montreal, they called
them La Chine, now corrupted into
Lachine, "the China rapids" Many
a weary mile still separated them
from the spice fragrant Orient they
would never see. And they were not
interested in %ethnology. Little did
they know that the Indians flocking
to the shore to see them pass we're
descendants of races in the very
China after which they hopefully
named the rapids. But it was so.
They were all wrong; wrong except
in one little thing. And to modern
science that one little thing has be-
come tremendously important.
Theories as to the origin of man
in the New World are almost as
numerous as the nations which have
produced modern students of man
kind and his origin and migrations.
Q%uatrefages, a French scientist, neld
the belief that Polynesians reached
the west coast of America in large
enough numbers to establish the race
and another, Brinton, asserted that
there had anciently been a land con-
nection with Europe across which the
first Americans came by way of
Greenland. Kollman's theory was /
that a race of dwarfs sprang up in
this continent by evolution, to be
followed and annihilated by a super
ior race of invaders.
DR.. Hrdlicka of the national mu-
scum sums up the best recent theory
on mans advent to America, in the
scientific manner, like this: