[225] As far as I can ascertain, the pheasant is not a native of America. Yarrell speaks of it as Asiatic, and that it has been domesticated "in all parts of the _old_ continent." So also Gould. Of the American writers, _neither_ Wilson, Audubon, Bonaparte, Nuttall, Richardson, or Jameson include the pheasant. Mr Catlin, however, says, p. 44: "From the translation of their name, already mentioned (Nu-mah-ká-kee, pheasants), an important inference may be drawn in support of the probability of their having formerly lived much farther to the south, as that bird does not exist on the prairies of the Upper Missouri, and is not to be met with short of the hoary forests of Ohio and Indiana, eighteen hundred miles south of the last residence of the Mandans. In their familiar name of Mandan, which is not an Indian word, there are equally singular and important features. In the first place, that they knew nothing of the name or how they got it; and next, that the word Mandan in the Welsh language [Mr C.'s theory is that they are the survivors of Prince Madoc's expedition from Wales in the fourteenth century] means red dye, of which further mention will be made." On the legend of the Welsh expedition, _vide_ Warburton's "Conquest of Canada," ii., Appendix iv. [226] "The Indians resemble the people of north-eastern Asia in form and feature more than any other of the human race; their population is most dense along the districts nearest to Asia; and among the Mexicans, whose records of the past deserve credence, there is a constant tradition that their Aztec and Toltec chiefs came from the north-west."--Warburton's "Conquest of Canada," i. 195. Brace ("Manual of Ethnology," p. 115) says, after noting that whereas the prominence in the head "is anterior in the Chinese rather than lateral, as in the American Indians and the Tangusic tribes," adds, "The peculiar distinguishing characteristics are the smallness of the eyes and the obliquity of the eyelids. The nose is usually small and depressed, though sometimes, in favourable physical conditions, natives are found with a slightly aquiline nose, _giving the face a close resemblance to that of the American Indians or New Zealanders_." Refer to argument at p. 70, with reference to the Mozca Indians. To the peculiarity of name, and resemblance of feature, I shall now proceed to add the evidence of some traces of their peculiar customs, or at least of some trace of the tradition out of which they arose.