The upper basin of the Canadian branch of the Arkansas River was the home of the _Kioways_. At the middle of this century they were estimated to be over three thousand, all given to a wild hunting life over the great plains on which they lived. In close proximity to the Comanches and other tribes of Shoshonian lineage, their language presents many affinities to the Shoshonian stock, but not sufficient in the opinion of those who have examined both to justify classing them together as from a common source. The Kioways are light in color, broad shouldered and strong armed, and for generations were the Arabs of the Great American Desert, depending on hunting and robbery for a subsistence. Their homes were light skin lodges, which they spread on poles about twelve feet long. With plenty of ponies and without fixed habitations, it was easy for them to move rapidly over the Plains. According to their traditions they came originally from the North, from some cold country, where they had to walk on snow shoes, definitely located near the Black Hills, Dakota, where they were associated with the Apaches. They were idol worshippers, their priesthood consisting of ten medicine-men. The dead were buried in deep graves. At present they have been reduced to about one thousand souls.[117] II. THE NORTH PACIFIC GROUP. 1. THE NORTHWEST COAST AND CALIFORNIAN TRIBES. The lofty chains of the Rocky Mountains extend from north to south, leaving a narrow coast line seamed with deep and fertile valleys along the Pacific from Mt. St. Elias to the Gulf of California. In spite of its great extent in latitude--from the 30th to the 60th degree--there is less difference in climate than one would suppose from analogy in any other part of the world. The warm ocean current which bathes the northern coast mitigates the cold of the winter to such an extent that the isothermal lines on the Pacific are fifteen degrees of latitude more northerly than on the Atlantic border of the continent. A few of the eastern stocks, the Athabascan and the Shoshonian, have sent out colonies who have settled on the banks of the Pacific; but as a rule the tribes of the western coast are not connected with any east of the mountains. What is more singular, although they differ surprisingly among themselves in language, they have marked anthropologic similarities, physical and psychical. Virchow[118] has emphasized the fact that the skulls from the northern point of Vancouver’s Island reveal an unmistakable analogy to those from the southern coast of California; and this is to a degree true of many intermediate points. Not that the crania have the same indices. On the contrary, they present great and constant differences within the same tribe;[119] but these differences are analogous one to the other, and on fixed lines.