Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 10 (North American).djvu/352

 CHAPTER X THE PACIFIC COAST, WEST

I. THE CALIFORNIA-OREGON TRIBES

GLANCE at the linguistic map of aboriginal North America will reveal the fact that more than half of the radical languages of the continent north of Mexico — nearly sixty in all — are spoken in the narrow strip of territory extending from the Sierras, Cascades, and western Rockies to the sea, and longitudinally from the arid regions of southern California to the Alaskan angle. In this region, nowhere extending inland more than five degrees of longitude, are, or were, spoken some thirty languages bearing no relation to one another, and the great majority of them having no kindred tongue. The exceptional cases, where representatives of the great continental stocks have penetrated to the coast, comprise the Yuman and Shoshonean tribes occupying southern California, where the plateau region declines openly to the sea; small groups of Athapascans on the coasts of California and Oregon; and the numerous Salishan units on the Oregon-Washington coast and about Puget Sound.

It is this latter intrusion, the Salishan, which divides the Coast Region into two parts, physiographically and ethnically distinct. From Alaska to Mexico the Pacific Coast is walled off from the continental interior by high and difficult mountain ranges. There are, in the whole extent, only two regions in which the natural access is easy. In the south, where the Sierra Nevada range subsides into the Mohave Desert, the great Southern Trail enters California; and here we find the aborigines of the desert interior pressing to the sea. The