THE attempt to crystallize within the space of a single chapter even the most salient facts concerning the aboriginal woman of America is one foredoomed to failure. It is true that even in the present advanced state of ethnology there is comparatively little knowledge of the conditions which have obtained, and even of those which do obtain, among the red people of our continent; we can indeed see and record the outer results, but the inner causes are still in great measure hidden from us. The American Indian is a peculiar people in the strictest sense of the words; and is not to be judged by the standards that we apply to those races with whose history we are more familiar, nor is he to be measured by their heights or depths. In many ways he is, and always has been, a law unto himself; and although this state of things is passing away beneath the influence of a steadily advancing civilization, it has been conquered rather than modified, and the Indian remains beneath the surface the same enigma, the same unique individuality, that he has ever been. Moreover, there is a peculiar difficulty in dealing with this division of our subject. One is forced to speak almost entirely in generalities, this compulsion existing both because of spatial limitations and because of the dearth of exact knowledge that still exists concerning the conditions of the Amerind in the far past. Yet enough is known to assure us that only the broadest generalities are inclusively true. The custom which was a rule of life among the Hurons of the North may have been entirely unknown among the Seminoles of the South; the cult which was of deep foundation among the Delawares of the Lakes may never have come to the knowledge of the Navajos of the great plains or the Tehamas who dwelt on the shores of the Pacific. For it is a fact which has never received sufficient recognition that the Amerind--to adopt a convenient, though not entirely defensible, nomenclature--had as many national divisions as have the inhabitants of Europe or Asia. We speak of the "tribes" of American Indians, and in so doing we are entirely correct; yet we thus blind ourselves to the significance of the divisions which have always existed, because we are accustomed to give to the word "tribe" a limited meaning which is not strictly its possession. The settlers of our country came far nearer to truth of expression when they spoke of "the Five Nations"; for nations many of these tribes really were, and nations radically differing in all but physical characteristics, and not infrequently, where there existed great divergence of climatic conditions, in physical characteristics also. It is true that the bounds of nationality were not so sharply drawn as they were, for example, between the Gaul and the Teuton, the Slav and the Briton; but they existed, and were discernible in many important matters. Thus the wide divergence of custom and conditions which