Breaking the Wilderness : $b The Story of the Conquest of the Far West, From the Wanderings of Cabeza de Vaca, to the First Descent of the Colorado by Powell, and the Completion of the Union Pacific Railway, With Particular Account of the Exploits of Trappers and TradersDellenbaugh, Frederick Samuel
History
Breaking the Wilderness : $b The Story of the Conquest of the Far West, From the Wanderings of Cabeza de Vaca, to the First Descent of the Colorado by Powell, and the Completion of the Union Pacific Railway, With Particular Account of the Exploits of Trappers and Traders
Dellenbaugh, Frederick Samuel
West (U.S.) -- Description and travel; West (U.S.) -- History
was intimately associated with the Comanche, and there was a strong
similarity in language.
[Illustration: A Puebloan Farmhouse.
Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey.]
[Illustration: Plenty-Horses, a Cheyenne.
Photograph by J. K Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey.]
West of all these ranged the Shoshonean stock from the middle line
of Texas north-westward almost to the State of Washington, west to
the Sierra Nevada, and south-westward like an inverted U around other
stocks in New Mexico and Arizona, sending a slender arm entirely across
California to the sea. This stock occupied a large part of the territory
once claimed by Spain and Mexico, while the Siouan covered the major
part of what was the Louisiana wilderness. Immediately south of the
country of the Shoshonean tribes lay that of some branches of another
numerous people already mentioned, the Athapascan, whose main body was
far to the north, spreading across the whole extreme north-western part
of the continent through Alaska, almost to the coast, which was occupied
by a narrow fringe of Eskimauan people. These southern Athapascans,
known as Apache and Navajo, were thus a long way from any relatives, but
no people on the continent were better able to look out for themselves,
both being warlike from the first, though this tendency was aggravated
by the impositions of the early whites. The Navajo appear to have been
considerably changed by an admixture of other blood, which may be termed
Puebloan,[23] the term in this case being used not to designate people
with similar language, but with similar culture and social organisation.
The Apache, by his swiftness of action, his mobility, and his general
skill as a predatory warrior, kept the more peaceful tribes in a state
of constant turmoil and terror. At the same time he seems originally
to have received the whites fairly well. In some ways he resembled the
Iroquois, yet he had no approach to their masterly organisation.
Below the Athapascan group of the present New Mexico and Arizona was the
Piman, a peaceful agricultural people, whose main range was in Mexico;
and lying between the Piman and the Shoshonean was the northern part
of the Yuman country, their southern range being the peninsula of Lower
California.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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