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Show i9oo] GREAT PLAINS INDIANS 133 tributed, but chiefly the Siouan, Caddoan or Pawnee, Algonquian, and Kiowan in the order named. It would be impossible to take up the tribes of this area in detail, and the Sioux may serve as a type. In the history of the United States the Sioux have been more noticeable than any other aborigines, with the exception of the Algonquian and Iro-quoian tribes. They are often regarded, too, as the typical native Americans, physically strong and active, hunters and warriors by nature and necessity, shifting from place to place, but always free, always dominant, always significant. In comparison with the Indians of the Pacific coast their facial features are more strongly marked, the nose and the lower jaw being particularly prominent and heavy. The heads are, as a rule, mesocephalic and are not artificially deformed. The skin is dark, with a faint tinge of reddish. With the pressure of civilization and the relatively sedentary life which the Sioux have been forced to adopt of late years, their bodily vigor is not so striking as it once was; but they still remain, with their neighbors of the plains, a fine physical type of the American Indian. In the distribution of the Siouan family, as a glance at the map will show, their main seat at the advent of the whites was the region west of the Mississippi, from the Saskatchewan in the north to the Arkansas in the south, though isolated offshoots appear in Virginia and on the Gulf of Mexico. Lin- |
