It will be noticed that the colors representing the several families are usually in single bodies, i.e., that they represent continuous areas, and that with some exceptions the same color is not scattered here and there over the map in small spots.  Yet precisely this last state of things is what would be expected had the tribes representing the families been nomadic to a marked degree.  If nomadic tribes occupied North America, instead of spreading out each from a common center, as the colors show that the tribes composing the several families actually did, they would have been dispersed here and there over the whole face of the country.  That they are not so dispersed is considered proof that in the main they were sedentary.  It has been stated above that more or less extensive migrations of some tribes over the country had taken place prior to European occupancy.  This fact is disclosed by a glance at the present map.  The great Athapascan family, for instance, occupying the larger part of British America, is known from linguistic evidence to have sent off colonies into Oregon (Wilopah, Tlatskanai, Coquille), California (Smith River tribes, Kenesti or Wailakki tribes, Hupa), and Arizona and New Mexico (Apache, Navajo).  How long before European occupancy of this country these migrations took place can not be told, but in the case of most of them it was undoubtedly many years.  By the test of language it is seen that the great Siouan family, which we have come to look upon as almost exclusively western, had one offshoot in Virginia (Tutelo), another in North and South Carolina (Catawba), and a third in Mississippi (Biloxi); and the Algonquian family, so important in the early history of this country, while occupying a nearly continuous area in the north and east, had yet secured a foothold, doubtless in very recent times, in Wyoming and Colorado.  These and other similar facts sufficiently prove the power of individual tribes or gentes to sunder relations with the great body of their kindred and to remove to distant homes.  Tested by linguistic evidence, such instances appear to be exceptional, and the fact remains that in the great majority of cases the tribes composing linguistic families occupy continuous areas, and hence are and have been practically sedentary.  Nor is the bond of a common language, strong and enduring as that bond is usually thought to be, entirely sufficient to explain the phenomenon here pointed out.  When small in number the linguistic tie would undoubtedly aid in binding together the members of a tribe; but as the people speaking a common language increase in number and come to have conflicting interests, the linguistic tie has often proved to be an insufficient bond of union.  In the case of our Indian tribes feuds and internecine conflicts were common between members of the same linguistic family.  In fact, it is probable that a very large number of the dialects into which Indian languages are split originated as the result of internecine strife.  Factions, divided and separated from the parent body, by contact, intermarriage, and incorporation with foreign tribes, developed distinct dialects or languages.