Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 73.djvu/216

212 years ago from the vicinity of the falls of St. Anthony. It required, maybe, two thousand years more for the passage over the state of that uninhabitable belt already mentioned.

7. The people along the gulf coast and on the ocean shores would not have been quick to follow up the retiring cold of a glacial winter. They would not readily leave the warm lowlands, where food was abundant, to penetrate the wastes of a country that was still swept by cold winds and whose wide-spreading waters were chilled by the dissolution of the northern ice.

8. The occurrence, however, of an opportunity for migration was equivalent to the creation of an impulse, and after a time the southern tribes moved into the regenerated new country.

It is the purpose of this paper to give a glimpse of some of the movements of this migration, and to show how it affected Minnesota. The time within which these migrations occurred, for reasons already stated, can not therefore exceed five or six thousand years.

It will be reasonable to assume that wherever the chance for hopeful migration first presented itself there the first movement took place. Some weaker tribe was expelled by war, or, the people being crowded, some tribe sought more room and better quarters to expand in. This change must have begun in the southwest, perhaps no further south than Utah or Colorado, or perhaps some tribe of Mexico began the great migration. The same impulse toward northward migration was felt all along the gulf coast and on the Atlantic seaboard. Sometimes whole tribes abandoned their ancient seats and sometimes only a discontented portion of a tribe parted from their kindred. There must have been many conflicts and counter migrations and movements in all directions; but those who started first probably continued to move in the van as they were again pressed by those in the rear.

When there came finally a condition comparatively fixed, it must be allowed that the tribes had settled where their environment was best suited to their needs, subject, of course, to the dominance of more powerful tribes. It may be reasonably accepted that on attaining a condition of comparative quiet, the geographical situation of the linguistic stocks was approximately as represented on the linguistic map of Powell, barring, of course, such later changes of habitat as can be shown to have taken place either within historic time or by consistent application of tradition. A general sketch of the Powell linguistic map has already been given.

It is now necessary to examine it a little more closely and to note some of the more remarkable features. It is a most notable fact that the southern parts of the United States are thickly dotted over with small areas that denote the locations of numerous distinct aboriginal stocks, while the broad interior is occupied by a few widely spread