Then they crossed the Rocky Mountains
and peopled the centre and east of what is now the United States. As
they pushed their way north up the valleys of the great rivers, they
no doubt killed, mingled with, or pushed back the Eskimo. At last
their northernmost extensions reached to the Mackenzie River, the
vicinity of Hudson's Bay, Labrador, and Newfoundland. But in all the
middle, west, and even east of Canada they seem to have been
_relatively recent arrivals_,[1] not to have inhabited the country for
a great many centuries before the white man came, and all their
recorded and legendary movements in North America have been from the
south-west towards the north-east (after they had got across the Rocky
Mountains). The few cultivated plants they had, such as maize (Indian
corn), tobacco, and pumpkins, they brought with them or received from
the south.
[Footnote 1: There may have been an earlier race inhabiting north-east
America which was killed out or driven away by the last Glacial
period.]
The only domestic animal possessed by either Eskimo or Amerindian was
the dog. We are most of us by now familiar with the type of the Eskimo
dog--a large, wolf-like animal with prick ears and a bushy tail curled
over its back. In this carriage of the tail the Eskimo and most other
true dogs differ from wolves, with whom the tail droops between the
hind quarters.
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