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Show 6 ORIGIN AND HISTORY LEADING FACTS OF NEW MEXICAN HISTORY and surveys reported on the tribes and monuments encountered in the west; the Hayden survey of the territories examined and described many of the cliff-dwellings and pueblos, and published papers on the tribes of the Mississippi valley, and Major Powell, chief of the survey of the Rocky mountain region, accomplished much portant work among the tribes of the Rio Colorado drainage in He connection with his geological and geographical researches. began the publication, under government auspices, of a series of monographs known as Contributions to North American Ethnology. Prior to this period the Smithsonian Institution had also taken a very active part in the publication of the results of researches undertaken The first volume of its Contributions to Knowledge by students. is the Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, by Squier and Davis, and, up to the founding of the Bureau of Ethnology in 1879, the Institution had issued upwards of six hundred papers on ethThese early researches took a wide range, nology and archeology. but in a way somewhat unsystematic, and it was not until Spencer F. Baird, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, recognizing the great value of Major John W. Powell’s services in initiating researches among the western tribes, selected him as the person best qualified to organize and conduct the work of the Bureau of Ethnology, which congress had put under the supervision of the Smithsonian Institution, that a proper classification of the work was begun. There were numerous subjects of a practical nature that required attention, and these were so involved with the more strictly scientific questions that the two could not be considered separately. The government, ever since its formation, has had before it problems which have arisen from the presence within the public domain of upwards of three hundred thousand aborigines. Many difficulties have presented themselves on this account, and the solution of the Indian problem has always been one of most serious nature. Within the public domain there were spoken, at one time, over five hundred different Indian languages, as distinct from one another as French is from English. These languages were grouped in more than fifty linguistic families. In addition to the differences in language there were many other distinctions. The investigations by the Bureau demonstrated that tribes allied in language were also often allied in capacity, PEP dad POPP ec EO thaliana eine ee ee Pets° habits, - Pe POP oP died bl " Pd ni tastes, + a * oe | social organization, ek) iieding 7 sae OPH a Seer awe be late tte religion, rar ere a hd arts, and in- OF FIRST INHABITANTS 7 dustries. The researches by the Bureau generally have been of the greatest value. They are especially instructive in the study of the former inhabitants of New Mexico. In this way much progress has been made in understanding the inner life and character of the Indian, as known in post-Spanish times, and also of their ancestors and primitive peoples generally. The results of these researches have been given to the world and are available to the people of all civilized nations. In New Mexico and the southwest the study of the Indian was greatly restricted until the building of the great railway lines to the Pacific coast. Railway construction in New Mexico and Arizona are contemporaneous with the organization of the Bureau of Ethnology. Ever since the crossing of the continent by Alvar Nufiez Cabeza de Vaca and his companions, at various periods and intervals explorers and students, in a more or less unscientific manner, have recorded the characteristics, habits, and customs of the Indians within the areas how comprising New Mexico and Arizona, but it is only since the advent of the railroads that the obscure characteristics of the present and former dwellers of this region have been scientifically investigated, so that at this time the full significance of many of the relics of the ancient inhabitants is fairly well understood. The study of implements and domestic utensils brought about the investigation of the industrial arts as practised by the Indian in every locality. Special attention has been given to linguistic researches, and in this way it has been ascertained that language is the most certain index of tribal and family relationship. When the spirit of conquest induced the Romans to lead their legions beyond the Alps, New Mexico had been for centuries preceding the pathway of migratory ORIGIN OF THE FIRST peoples. The races which submitted INHABITANTS OF NEW MEXICO to the Roman arms were more bar- baric than those which inhabited the table-lands and valleys of New Mexico during the first centuries of 1 Bancroft, H. H., Native Races, vol. i, p. 21: ‘‘All writers agree in giving to the nations of America a remote antiquity; all admit that there exists a greater uniformity between them than is to be found in the Old World; many deny that all are one race. Traditions, ruins, moral and physical peculiarities, all denote for Americans a remote antiquity. The action of a climate peculiar to America, and of natural surroundings common to all the people of the continent, could not fail to produce in time a similarity of physiological structure.’’ |