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Show 44 INDIAN LINGUISTIC FAMILIES. to which is much less precise, and the doubt and confusion respecting tribal boundary lines correspondingly greater than in the country east of that river. Under the above circumstances, it will be readily understood that to determine tribal boundaries within accurately drawn lines is in the vast majority of cases quite impossible. Imperfect and defective as the terms of the treaties frequently are as regards the definition of tribal boundaries, they are by far the most accurate and important of the means at our command for fixing boundary lines upon the present map. By their aid the territorial possessions of a considerable number of tribes have been determined with desirable precision, and such areas definitely established have served as checks upon the boundaries of other tribes, concerning the location and extent of whose possessions little is known. For establishing the boundaries of such tribes as are not mentioned in treaties, and of those whose territorial possessions are not given with'sufficient minuteness, early historical accounts are all important. Such accounts, of course, rarely indicate the territorial possessions of the tribes with great precision. In many cases, however, the sites of villages are accurately given. In others the source of information concerning a tribe is contained in a general statement of the occupancy of certain valleys or mountain ranges or areas at the heads of certain rivers, no limiting lines whatever being assigned. In others, still, the notice of a tribe is limited to a brief mention of the presence in a certain locality of hunting or war parties. Data of this loose character would of course be worthless in an attempt to fix boundary lines in accordance with the ideas of the modern surveyor. The relative positions of the families and the relative size of the areas occupied by them, however, and not their exact boundaries, are the chief concern in a linguistic map, and for the purpose of establishing these, and, in a rough way, the boundaries of the territory held by the tribes composing them, these data are very important, and when compared with one another and corrected by more definite data, when such are at hand, they have usually been found to be sufficient for the purpose. SUMMARY OP DEDUCTIONS. In conclusion, the more important deductions derivable from the data upon which the linguistic map is based, or that are suggested by it, may be summarized as follows: First, the North American Indian tribes, instead of speaking related dialects, originating in a single parent language, in reality speak many languages belonging to distinct families, which have no apparent unity of origin. Second, the Indian population of North America was greatly exaggerated by early writers, and instead of being large was in reality small as compared with the vast territory occupied and the |