While the time is not yet ripe for making final answer to these inquiries,
it is not premature to suggest a relation between a peculiar development
of the aboriginal stocks and a peculiar geographic conformation: In
general the coastward stocks are small, indicating a provincial shoreland
habit, yet their population and area commonly increase toward those shores
indented by deep bays, along which maritime and inland industries
naturally blend; so (confining attention to eastern United States) the
extensive Muskhogean stock stretches inland from the deep-bayed eastern
Gulf coast; and so, too, three of the largest stocks on the continent
(Algonquian, Iroquoian, Siouan) stretch far into the interior from the
still more deeply indented Atlantic coast. In two of these cases
(Iroquoian and Siouan) history and tradition indicate expansion and
migration from the land of bays between Cape Lookout and Cape May, while
in the third there are similar (though perhaps less definite) indications
of an inland drift from the northern Atlantic bays and along the
Laurentian river and lakes.
HISTORY(53)
DAKOTA-ASINIBOIN
The Dakota are mentioned in the Jesuit Relations as early as 1639-40; the
tradition is noted that the Ojibwa, on arriving at the Great Lakes in an
early migration from the Atlantic coast, encountered representatives of
the great confederacy of the plains. In 1641 the French voyageurs met the
Potawatomi Indians flying from a nation called Nadawessi (enemies); and
the Frenchmen adopted the alien name for the warlike prairie tribes.
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