Henry Gannett

“ The Red Mountains are in the southern part, their culminating peak being Mount Sheridan, 10,385 feet in height. In this part of the Park the plateau is more elevated and broken, and just beyond its southern limits it rises into a confused maze of mountains.
The Park has an abundant rainfall, and its streams are numerous and bold. It contains many beautiful lakes and ponds. Within its area are the sources of the Yellowstone and the Madison, which go to make up the Missouri, and of the Snake, one of the forks of the Columbia. ”

“ If man was evolved originally from several centres, America assuredly included one at least; if he sprang from a single pair, then we can even conceive that pair to have been first established in the New World, and the arguments brought forward in support of an Asiatic origin of the American would not lose their point if adduced in favour of an American origin of the Asiatic peoples. ”

“ Such being the history of the negroes in ante-bellum days, when they were property, and when every consideration of self-interest prompted their owners to watch over their health, to encourage child-bearing, and to protect and preserve the children, is it to be supposed for a moment that this careless, improvident, ignorant race, thrown suddenly upon its own resources, should at once, or within a generation, take on a rate of increase more rapid than before emancipation? ”

“ Nevertheless language forms on the whole perhaps the most convenient basis of classification, and without its aid it would have been impossible to determine the affinities of many wide-spread races, such, for instance, as that of the Arizona Apaches with the Canadian Chippewyans, or on the other hand to separate nations apparently closely related, like the Iroquois from their Algonquin neighbours, or the Araucanians from the Peruvians. The true relations of many tribes are, on the other hand, still doubtful, because of uncertainty regarding the languages they speak. ”

“ These springs have deposited so freely as to build up a hill 200 feet in height, from the top of which the springs boil out. The slopes of this mound have been built in the form of a succession of basins rising one above another, and the water from the springs overflows from one into another, growing gradually cooler as it descends. Upon the bank of Yellowstone river, between the falls and the lake, there was, when the region was first explored, a geyser which at intervals of about 4 hours threw up a column of mud to a height of 40 or 50 feet. ”

“ OF all the physical features of the earth, the courses of rivers are among the most unchangeable. Once outlined, they are adhered to with a wonderful tenacity. Only a general change in the slope of their basins will usually suffice to divert them from their original courses. Mountains and plateaus may rise across their paths, but, like a saw, the river cuts its way through the obstacle. ”

“ The Moquis are a semi-civilized people living in seven towns on the plateau in northern Arizona. Our first accounts of them date from the expedition of Coronado in 1540. Their history is similar to that of the town-building Indians of New Mexico, except that after a successful revolt against the Spaniards, in 1680, they have remained independent. They are kind-hearted and hospitable, cultivate the soil, raising grain and vegetables, and possessing large flocks of sheep and goats. They weave very fine blankets, an art which they have taught several neighbouring tribes. ”

“ YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, an area situated mainly in north-western Wyoming, United States, which has been withdrawn from settlement by the United States Government and dedicated to the purposes of a public park. It is a region of hot springs and geysers, mountains and canons, lakes and waterfalls. ”

“ These crevices have been utilized by these people, when hard pressed by their enemies, as strongholds. They built walls across the whole fronts, leaving only little holes for egress and ingress, light and air. Thus walled in, their position was absolutely impregnable from above or below. It is astonishing in what a limited space these beings contrived to exist; some of these cave-dwellings are scarcely large enough for a man to crawl into.
More pretentious than these are the cliff-houses, which are built in similar situations, differing only in the height of the crevices. ”

“ On the other hand, it has been greatly depreciated and even brought into contempt by the vagaries of certain etymologists, who discover affinities where there is nothing but the vaguest verbal resemblance. [1] Science has demonstrated beyond all cavil that, while differing widely among themselves, the American languages not only betray no affinity to any other tongues, but belong to an absolutely distinct order of speech. They are neither isolating or monosyllabic like the Indo-Chinese group, agglutinating like the Ural-Altaic, Bantu, or Dravidian, nor inflexional like the Semitic and Aryan. ”

“ DURING the past few months the presence of the negro in the United States, his future, and his possible influence upon our social and political fabric, have become a fertile subject of discussion. Thus far the argument has tended entirely in one direction, all writers seeming to be agreed that the country is rapidly getting into a bad way, by reason of its millions of black laborers. ”

“ The name Pueblo (city) is used to designate a number of tribes of town-building Indians in New Mexico. They resemble one another very closely in their surroundings, and in their manners and customs; and their history has been the same. Subdued by Coronado in 1540, they made a successful revolt two years later, but were subdued again in 1586. In 1680 they made another unsuccessful revolt. When the country was ceded to the United States in 1848, these Indians were recognized as citizens, and have since remained so. Their houses are communal, generally but one structure for the whole village. ”

“ The increase of whites in the South received a most effectual check during the four years of war, in which every male capable of bearing arms was in the field, and in which fully half a million laid down their lives. Since the war the white race has taken up a rate of increase equal to, if not greater than, that of the country at large, a greater rate than that of the colored people within its borders, and there is no apparent reason why they should not maintain it. ”

“ Driven westward by the Dakotas, they were found by early explorers at the eastern base of the Black Hills, in Dakota. Subsequently part of them moved south, and allied themselves with the Arapahoes. Within a few years they have all been collected on a reservation in the western part of the Indian Territory. Their whole history has been a series of wars against their red neighbours and the whites. They are a large, powerful, athletic race, mentally superior to most of the other tribes. Their occupations are war and hunting. Thus far they have made little or no progress in civilization. ”

“ When an elevation commences gradually across the course of a river, its first effect is to lessen the rapidity of the current above the crest of the elevation and to increase it below that point. The erosive power of a stream is proportional, other things being equal, to the rapidity of its current. Erosion is therefore more rapid below the crest. But this erosion not only deepens the bed of the stream below the crest, but also pares away the crest, from down-stream upward, so that the point where the velocity of the stream changes is constantly tending up-stream. ”

“ Pacific Coast Indians.—The Indians upon and near the Pacific coast are divided into a great number of small tribes. Speaking generally, they are lower in the scale of humanity, both physically and mentally, than those of the interior. In northern California, Oregon, and Washington, their principal subsistence was, before the Government undertook their support, the salmon, which in spring crowded the rivers. They are mostly of a mild, peaceful disposition. The Indians of southern California were early taken in charge by the Jesuit missionaries, who Christianized and partly civilized them. ”

“ We know that at some time, far back in the dim past, a great people lived in the Mississippi Valley; that they built there enormous structures, mere traces of which remain, scarcely enough to mock at the seeker after their history. Whence they came, and whither they went, we know not. In the Southwestern Territories we find these structures of a semi-civilized people—whether the same as the mound-builders, no one can tell. ”

“ The language of the Chiquitos, of whom there are endless subdivisions, is one of the richest and most widely diffused in South America, serving, like the Tupi in the east, as a sort of lingua franca jn the Bolivian lowlands and the northern parts of Gran Chaco. The numerous tribes of this latter region seem to form an ethnical group related to the Chiquitos peoples, and like them speaking a great variety of distinct languages. ”

“ If the rate of rise be greater than the erosive power at first, it forms a temporary dam, and a lake is produced above the obstacle, which increases in depth until a sufficient fall is given to the stream to enable it to cut at the same rate at which the range rises. Then equilibrium is established, and the cutting goes on at the same rate as the range increases in elevation. When the rise ceases, the lake is gradually drained in whole or in part, as the river gradually cuts away the dam by moving its crest up-stream. ”

“ West of this singular strip of forest the country assumes the appearance of the "Great Plains,"—that long incline which stretches eastward from the base of the Rocky Mountains. The surface is a monotonous, rolling, treeless expanse. ”

“ During the late civil war they were divided, part adhering to the Union and part joining the Confederacy. At present they number about 14,000.
The Dakota or Sioux nation is at present the most powerful of the Indian tribes in North America. Its warriors possess fine physique, great personal courage, and great skill in warfare. Though backward in adopting civilization, their intellectual powers contrast very favourably with those of most other tribes. The nation numbers 30,000 to 35,000 souls, divided into twenty-one bands or subtribes more or less independent of one another. ”

“ As the negro becomes numerically the stronger, and, through education, appreciates more fully his present position, he will commence a struggle for the mastery, and then the days of the Ku-klux will be eclipsed in blood and slaughter. Such is the condition to which these ill-fated States are hurrying. ”

“ The Dominion has always fulfilled the conditions of its treaties, and has always administered punishment promptly and severely when the necessity arose. The United States have broken treaty after treaty, or have neglected to fulfil their obligations to such an extent that most tribes no longer have confidence in the promises of the Government. In cases of outrages by Indians, it has, as a rule, been very slow and dilatory in punishment. ”

“ In some of the cliff-houses, the stones had to be carried for hundreds of feet, up precipitous walls, where the only footing was by holes which they had cut in the rock. All the stone used in the enormous buildings at Aztec Spring was brought from the foot of a cliff fully a mile away, and this without the aid of beasts of burden.
Fragments of pottery are found everywhere. Indeed, it is slight exaggeration to say that the plateaus are paved with them. One may ride for miles with the constant accompaniment of the ring of the horse's hoof against the relics of the ancients. ”