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Show AUTHOR'S PREFACE NT* HE present work is an attempt to describe, as I fully as the limits of the book will permit, those features of North America and its native inhabitants which have been of greatest significance in the history of the United States. For the physical features of the continent, numerous trustworthy works are available; for the fauna and flora there are various general treatises of value; while for the aborigines there is not a single comprehensive book of a satisfactory character. This lack has long been 9 source of embarrassment to students of American ethnology, and for that reason the chief emphasis in the following pages is laid uponthe distribution and the culture of the Indians. The difficulties to be overcome in the preparation of a general descriptive account of the Indian tribes are not caused by lack of material. ^ The systematic researches of the Bureau of American Ethnology in Washington, and of such institutions as the Peabody Museum of Harvard, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the Field- Columbian Museum of Chicago, added to the accumulated products of individual writers, afford an enormous xvii |