Of course, we know hardly anything of
these Indians during the first two centuries of European
settlement in America. Not until the eighteenth century,
when Russian traders began to frequent the Pacific coast
and the Spanish and English pushed their voyages into
the North Pacific,--the Tlingit of the far north, the
Salish, Tsimshian, Haida, Kwakiutl-Nootka and Kutenai.
It is thought, however, that nearly all the Pacific
Indians belong to one kindred stock. There are, it is
true, many distinct languages between California and
Alaska, but the physical appearance and characteristics
of the natives show a similarity throughout.
The total number of the original Indian population of
the continent can be a matter of conjecture only. There
is every reason, however, to think that it was far less
than the absurdly exaggerated figures given by early
European writers. Whenever the first explorers found a
considerable body of savages they concluded that the
people they saw were only a fraction of some large nation.
The result was that the Spaniards estimated the inhabitants
of Peru at thirty millions. Las Casas, the Spanish
historian, said that Hispaniola, the present Hayti, had
a population of three millions; a more exact estimate,
made about twenty years after the discovery of the island,
brought the population down to fourteen thousand! In the
same way Montezuma was said to have commanded three
million Mexican warriors--an obvious absurdity.
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