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Show BASIS OP AMERICAN HISTORY [ 1500 others are confined to a few square miles and are spoken by a handful of survivors. The Bureau of Ethnology1 in Washington has determined fifty- nine independent linguistic families north of Mexico, and with certain slight modifications we may accept this as the best classification at our disposal. The distribution of these stocks when first met by Europeans is shown in the accompanying map reproduced from a report of the bureau. To avoid confusion, the termination " an" or " ian" has been given to the family name to distinguish it from a merely tribal designation; but wherever possible the name for the family has been derived from that of one of its tribes, a convenient method though it gives rise to some unwieldy terms. It must also be remembered that most of the tribes and stocks have been described in literature under many different names, and as a consequence the common designation is often very different from the technical. These discrepancies will so far as possible be made clear in subsequent chapters. The stocks with their most important constituent tribes, according to the classification of the Bureau of Ethnology, are as follows: Algonquian family.- Principal tribes: Abnaki, Al-gonkih, AfapahO,' Theyennel Conoy, Cree, Delaware ( Lenape), Pox, Illinois, Kickapoo, Massachuset, Menominee, Miami, Micmac, Mohegan, Montagnais, 1 Powell," Indian Linguistic Families " ( Bureau of Ethnology, Seventh Annual Report, 1891). |