The circle banner. [volume] (Circle, Mont.) 1914-1939, 1920-07-30
DID M0NTANA'S FlGHTl
FROM ANCIENT, FORGOT

Were the people against whose ra-
pacious incursions China built the
Great Wall, American Indians? Were
the arrow armed hordes that threat
ened the oldest civilization in Asia
of the same race as those against
whom Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill and
Custer pitted their force and mill
tary skill? The blood connection be-
tween the American Indian and the
savage, horse-riding, arrow-shoot1ng
(. Mongols of northeast Asia offers one
of the most fascinating. problems the
present day ethnologists have to
study. Indian" long considered
,misnomer, name applied by explpr-
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 'fLo" 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
Hardlick, curator of the division of
physical anthropology in the United
States national museum, have thrown
strong light on the Asiatic origin of
tn American Indian. Come he from
North America or from South, be he
an Assinniboine or 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.
At the University of Minnesota,
Professor Albert e. jerks, ethnolo-
gfst and anthropologist, expresses his
belief that the Indians of Minnesota
and of all America came in the dis
tant past from Asia.
Zone 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 that were the distant ances-
tors of the modern Tartars and Mon
gols. :. i
Probably" said Professor jerks,
1.-The Asiatic ancestors of the Indians
came to America about 10000 years
ago, or near the time when the last
glaciers disappeared from this gen. i
eral area. This was the last of three ,
great ice field to slip down over the
edge of the continent. Some may f
even have come before that, for there ]
is some evidence to support the be- 7
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-
Their 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
4 large part of the year an ice field
many feet in depth makes passage
perfectly dry.
When early French explorers sail
I'd up the st. Lawrence river and
the mighty rapids at
What is now Montreal, they called
hem La Chine, now corrupted into
Iachine, "the China rapids" Many
! weary mile still separated them
rom the spice fragrant Orient they
would never see. And they were not
in ethnology. Little did
hey know that the Indians flocking |
o the shore to see them pass we're
of races in the very
Jhina after which they hopefully
famed the rapids. But it was so.
hey were all wrong; wrong except
n one little thing. And to modern
cience that one little thing has be-
ONE tremendously important.
Theories as to the origin of man
n the New World are almost as
numerous as the nations which havei
reduced modern students of man
ind and his origin and migrations. -
luatrefages, French scientist, held in
he belief that Polynesians reached of
be west coast of America in large is
nough numbers to establish the race br
nd another, Brinton, asserted that an
here had anciently been land con- A,
ectien with Europe across which the an
rst Americans came by way of ca
reen1and. Kollman's theory was AFT
nat a race of dwarfs sprang up in hi
lis continent by evolution, to be an
ollowed and annihilated by super tic
,r race of invaders. alb
DR.. Hrd1icka of the national mu- ed
cum sums up the best recent theory FRI
q mans advent to America, in the fo,
hi