Mandan Chief in Full Dress. (After Catlin.) I. SOME GENERAL FACTS ABOUT INDIANS. We all know how the native Americans found here by the whites at their first arrival, came to be called _Indians_. Columbus did not realize the greatness of his discovery. He was seeking a route to Asia and supposed that he had found it. Believing that he had really reached the Indies, for which he was looking, it was natural that the people here should be called Indians. The American Indians are often classed as a single type. They are described as being of a coppery or reddish-brown color. They have abundant, long, straight, black hair, and each hair is found to be almost circular when cut across. They have high cheek-bones, unusually prominent, and wide faces. This description will perhaps fit most Indians pretty well, but it would be a great mistake to think that there are no differences between tribes: there are many. There are tribes of tall Indians and tribes of short ones; some that are almost white, and others that are nearly black. There are found among them all shades of brown, some of which are reddish, others yellowish. There are tribes where the eyes appear as oblique or slanting as in the Chinese, and others where they are as straight as among ourselves. Some tribes have heads that are long and narrow; the heads of others are relatively short and wide. A little before the World’s Columbian Exposition thousands of Indians of many different tribes were carefully measured. Dr. Boas, on studying the figures, decided that there were at least four different types in the United States. There are now living many different tribes of Indians. Formerly the number of tribes was still greater. Each tribe has its own language, and several hundred different Indian languages were spoken. These languages sometimes so much resemble each other that they seem to have been derived from one single parent language. Thus, when what is now New York State was first settled, it was largely occupied by five tribes—the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas—called “the Five Nations.” While they were distinct and each had its own language, these were so much alike that all are believed to have grown from one. When languages are so similar that they may be believed to have come from one parent language, they are said to belong to the same _language family_ or _stock_.