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Rh inequality of difference renders any classification more or less arbitrary. So long as the tongues of two or more groups do not diverge beyond the possibility of communication, they are usually considered as dialects, though the degrees of mutual intelligibility connoted by that term may vary greatly. When mutually unintelligible tongues are found to possess consistent similarities in vocabulary or grammatical structure, particularly the latter, they are said to be of the same family, or stock. Thus, all the languages of the New World may be placed in stock groups, the conception of a stock being a group of related languages with their dialetic subdivisions.

The determination of these stocks for the native tribes of the United States was initiated by Gallatin in 1826 and brought to a definite form in 1891 by J. W. Powell, who organized the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington. Powell is credited with the system of nomenclature now used for all the languages of the New World, which is to take some native unit name and give it the adjective termination an. Thus, Siouan stock is from the term Sioux, Caddoan from Caddo, etc. In the main, this system is still followed, though the clumsiness of the termination in some instances has led to modification.

Powell confined his classification to the tribes of the United States and Canada, which he grouped under fifty or more stocks and prepared a map showing their distribution. It is not too much to say that this classification and map is the very foundation of American anthropology. The work was so well done that very few changes have been made and as it was, in the main, based upon mere vocabularies, its excellence stands as a worthy memorial to Powell and his able associates. (See map, Fig. 85, and list of stocks for United States and Canada, pp. 369-378.)

The general value of this classification arose from the fact that it was then the only classification of native tribes based upon scientific principles and, therefore, afforded the point of departure for the investigation of culture and racial anatomy. Thus, its importance arises from historical conditions, for it has very little to contribute to the problems of culture and anatomy aside from the practical matter of tribal designation.