The American Race: A Linguistic Classification and Ethnographic Description of the Native Tribes of North and South America.

New York: N. D. C. Hodges, Publishers, 1891. Octavo, olive green cloth (hardcover), gilt letters, xvi + 392 pp. Good+, with speckling and light chipping to tip of spine. From Preface: So far as I know, this is the first attempt at a systematic classification of the whole American race on the basis of language. I do not overlook Dr. Latham’s meritorious effort nearly forty years ago; but the deficiency of material at that time obliged him to depart from the linguistic scheme and accept other guides. While not depreciating the value of physical data, of culture and traditional history, I have constantly placed these subordinate to relationship as indicated by grammar and lexicography. There are well-known examples in the ethnography of other races, where reliance on language alone would lead the investigator astray; but all serious students of the native American tribes are united in the opinion that with them no other clue can compare to it in general results. Consequently the Bureau of Ethnology of the United States and the similar departments in the governments of Canada and Mexico have agreed in adopting officially the linguistic classification for the aboriginal population within their several territories. Wherever the material permitted it, I have ranked the grammatic structure of a language superior to its lexical elements in deciding upon relationship. In this I follow the precepts and example of students of the Aryan and Semitic stocks; although their methods have been rejected by some who have written on American tongues. As for myself, I am abidingly convinced that the morphology of any language whatever is its most permanent and characteristic feature. It has been my effort to pay especial attention to those portions of the continent whose ethnography remains obscure. The publications of official bodies, as well as those of numerous societies and individuals, have cleared up most of the difficulties in that portion of the continent north of Mexico; hence it is to the remainder that I have given greater space. The subject, however, is so vast, and the material so abundant, that I fear the reader may be disappointed by the brevity of the descriptions I have allowed to the several stocks. The outlines of the classification and the general arrangement of material are those which for several years I have adopted in my lecture courses before the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. In fact, this volume may properly be regarded as an expansion of the ninth lecture -- that on “The American Race,” -- in my lectures on general ethnolography, published last year under the title, “Races and Peoples.” In defining the locations of the various tribes, I have encountered many difficulties from their frequent removals. As a rule I have assigned a tribe the location where it was first encountered and identified by the white explorers; though sometimes I have preferred some later location where its activity was longest known...