Viewed in every age, the existing tribes have exhibited such a fixity and peculiarity of character, as to have rendered them at once a paradox and a bye-word. The Turk has not been more inflexible; nor the Jew shown more individuality. We have hardly begun systematically to examine this subject. If the ancient builders were nomads--mere hunters of the bear, the deer, and the bison, who were too happy in the Parthian attainments of the bow and arrow to need towns and temples--certainly no such development arose in these more northern latitudes. And yet, if we make some peculiar exceptions, it appears difficult to suppose that the entire race, viewed in its generic and ethnological aspect, did not present a unity. While the very amplitude of the continent, and the variety of its soil, climate and productions, would lead, inevitably, to divisions and sub-divisions of tribes and languages, there are characteristics so deeply seated in their organization and habits, physical and mental, as to mark them as a peculiar family of the Red Type of man. Adopting this idea of unity as a basis of study, there are, at least, fewer obstacles in grouping the phenomena from which our deductions are to be drawn. The proof of negation is not the strongest proof, but it is something to assert that they are neither of Japhetic or Hamitic origin. In the traditions of one of the most celebrated North American tribes, namely, the Iroquois, the continent or "island," as it is termed, is called Aonio,[8] and we may hence denominate the race Aonic, and the individuals Aonites. If we do not advance by this term in the origin of the people, we at least advance in the precision of discussion. [8] Notes on the Iroquois. But where shall we find a basis, on which to rest their Chronology? Must we run back to the epoch of the original dispersion of man, or can we rest at a subsequent point? Has the era of christianity any definite relation to their migration? Was the migration designed, or accidental? Did it consist of one tribe, or twenty tribes? Did it happen at one epoch, or many epochs? Have they wandered here eighteen centuries, or double that period? These are some of the inquiries that naturally occur.