The Red Man's Continent: A Chronicle of Aboriginal AmericaHuntington, Ellsworth
History
The Red Man's Continent: A Chronicle of Aboriginal America
Huntington, Ellsworth
Human geography -- North America; Indians of North America; Physical geography -- North America
In their emphasis on the form of the land both Semple and Brigham follow
the lead of W. M. Davis. In his admirable articles on America and the
United States in "The Encyclopaedia Britannica" (11th edition) and in
The International Geography edited by H. R. Mill (1901), Davis has given
an uncommonly clear and vivid description of the main physical features
of the New World. Living beings, however, play little part in this
description, so that the reader is not led to an understanding of how
physical geography affects human actions.
Other good descriptions of the North American continent are found in
the following books: I. C. Russell's "North America" (1904), Stanford's
"Compendium of Modern Geography and Travel," including the volumes on
Canada, the United States, and Central America, and the great volumes
on America in "The Earth and its Inhabitants" by Elise Reclus, 19 vols.
(1876-1894). Russell's book is largely physiographic but contains some
good chapters on the Indians. In Stanford's "Compendium" the purpose
is to treat man and nature in their relation to one another, but
the relationships are not clearly brought out, and there is too much
emphasis on purely descriptive and encyclopedic matter. So far as
interest is concerned, the famous work by Elise Reclus holds high rank.
It is an encyclopedia of geographical facts arranged and edited in such
a way that it has all the interest of a fine book of travel. Like most
of the other books, however, it fails to bring out relationships.
As sources of information on the Indians, two books stand out with
special prominence. "The American Race," by D. G. Brinton (1891), is
a most scholarly volume devoted largely to a study of the Indians on
a linguistic basis. It contains some general chapters, however, on the
Indians and their environment, and these are most illuminating. The
other book is the "Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico," edited
by F. W. Hodge, and published by the United States Bureau of Ethnology
(Washington, 1897, 1910, 1911). Its two large volumes are arranged in
encyclopedic form. The various articles are written by a large number
of scholars, including practically all the students who were at work on
Indian ethnology at the time of publication. Many of the articles are
the best that have been written and will not only interest the general
reader but will contribute to an understanding of what America was when
the Indians came here and what it still is today.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Red Man's Continent, by Ellsworth Huntington
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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