The Caddoan family comprises three geographic groups, the northern, represented by the Arikara, the middle, embracing the Pawnee Confederacy, once dwelling in Nebraska, and the southern group, including the Caddo, Kichai, and Wichita. Once numerous, this division of the Red Race is now represented by a few hundreds of individuals only, who are settled in Oklahoma and North Dakota. The Caddo tribes were cultivators of the soil as well as hunters, and practised the arts of pottery-making and tanning. They lacked political ability and were loosely confederated. The Shoshoneans The Shoshoneans or 'Snake' family of Nevada, Utah, and Idaho comprise the Root-diggers, Comanches, and {29} other tribes of low culture. These people, it is said, "are probably nearer the brutes than any other portion of the human race on the face of the globe." "Yet these debased creatures speak a related dialect and partake in some measure of the same blood as the famous Aztec race who founded the empire of Anahuac, and raised architectural monuments rivalling the most famous structures of the ancient world."[11] [11] Brinton, _Myths of the New World_. Early Wars with the Whites Numerous minor wars between the Indians and the colonists followed upon the settlement of Virginia, but on the whole the relations between them were peaceable until the general massacre of white women and children on March 22, 1622, while the men of the colony were working in the fields. Three hundred and forty-seven men, women, and children were slain in a single day. This holocaust was the signal for an Indian war which continued intermittently for many years and cost the colonists untold loss in blood and treasure. Inability to comprehend each other's point of view was of course a fertile source of irritation between the races, and even colonists who had ample opportunities for observing and studying the Indians during a long course of years appear to have been incapable of understanding their outlook and true character. The dishonesty of white traders, on the other hand, aroused the Indian to a frenzy of childish indignation. It was a native saying that "One pays for another," and when an Indian was slain his nearest blood-relation considered that he had consummated a righteous revenge by murdering the first white man whom he met or waylaid. Each race accused the other of treachery and unfairness. Probably the colonists, despite their {30} veneer of civilization, were only a little less ignorant than, and as vindictively cruel as, the barbarians with whom they strove. The Indian regarded the colonist as an interloper who had come to despoil him of the land of his fathers, while the Virginian Puritan considered himself the salt of the earth and the Indian as a heathen or 'Ishmaelite' sent by the Powers of Darkness for his discomfiture, whom it was an act of both religion and policy to destroy. Vengeful ferocity was exhibited on both sides. Another