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
including women, would deliberately sail thither. There is equally
little probability that they walked to the island on the ice, for the
sea is never frozen across the whole width. Nevertheless the climate may
at that time have been colder than now. There is also a chance that a
party of savages may have been blown across to the island in a storm.
Suppose that they succeeded in reaching Bering Island, as the most
Asiatic of the Aleutians is called, the next step to Copper Island would
be easy. Then, however, there comes a stretch of more than two hundred
miles. The chances that a family would ever cross this waste of ocean
are much smaller than in the first case. Still another possibility
remains. Was there once a bridge of land from Asia to America in this
region? There is no evidence of such a link between the two continents,
for a few raised beaches indicate that during recent geological times
the Aleutian Islands have been uplifted rather than depressed.
The passage from Asia to America at Bering Strait, on the other hand,
is comparatively easy. The Strait itself is fifty-six miles wide, but
in the middle there are two small islands so that the longest stretch
of water is only about thirty-five miles. Moreover the Strait is usually
full of ice, which frequently becomes a solid mass from shore to shore.
Therefore it would be no strange thing if some primitive savages, in
hunting for seals or polar bears, crossed the Strait, even though they
had no boats. Today the people on both sides of the Strait belong to
the American race. They still retain traditions of a time when their
ancestors crossed this narrow strip of water. The Thilanottines have
a legend that two giants once fought fiercely on the Arctic Ocean. One
would have been defeated had not a man whom he had befriended cut the
tendon of his adversary's leg. The wounded giant fell into Bering Strait
and formed a bridge across which the reindeer entered America. Later
came a strange woman bringing iron and copper. She repeated her visits
until the natives insulted her, whereupon she went underground with her
fire-made treasures and came back no more. Whatever may have been the
circumstances that led the earliest families to cross from Asia to
America, they little recked that they had found a new continent and that
they were the first of the red race.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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