Book Description

Excerpt from Contributions to North American Ethnology, Vol. 3 Sir: I have the honor to transmit herewith volume III of the Contributions to North American Ethnology, being a Report on the Tribes of California, by Mr. Stephen Powers, with vocabularies collected by various persons and edited by myself. A map will be found with the volume showing the geographic distribution of the several linguistic stocks of which the report treats, and of others that will receive attention in a subsequent volume - these latter being found only in part within the territory embraced in the map. The opinion which Mr. Powers expresses concerning the former Indian population does not seem to me to be well sustained It cannot be doubted that Eastern California and Oregon were, at the advent of the white man, more densely populated than any other portion of the United States, and that the peculiar conditions under which the settlement of the region was made resulted in the destruction of a great number of its former inhabitants. In fact, I am of the opinion that more Indians were destroyed in this part of the country than in the remaining portion of the United States, and yet I believe that Mr. Powers overestimates the population. Believing this, I wrote him, asking him for some modification of his statements, and gave my reasons therefor, and further enforced my views by giving him the opinions of others who had made careful examination of the question of the former population of the Indians of this country, and I expressed the opinion that he would subject himself to unfavorable criticism unless his statements were modified. In reply to my letter the following was received. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.