But linguistic evidence alone need not be relied upon to prove that the North American Indian was not nomadic.

Corroborative proof of the sedentary character of our Indian tribes is to be found in the curious form of kinship system, with mother-right as its chief factor, which prevails.  This, as has been pointed out in another place, is not adapted to the necessities of nomadic tribes, which need to be governed by a patriarchal system, and, as well, to be possessed of flocks and herds.

There is also an abundance of historical evidence to show that, when first discovered by Europeans, the Indians of the eastern United States were found living in fixed habitations.  This does not necessarily imply that the entire year was spent in one place.  Agriculture not being practiced to an extent sufficient to supply the Indian with full subsistence, he was compelled to make occasional changes from his permanent home to the more or less distant waters and forests to procure supplies of food.  When furnished with food and skins for clothing, the hunting parties returned to the village which constituted their true home.  At longer periods, for several reasons—­among which probably the chief were the hostility of stronger tribes, the failure of the fuel supply near the village, and the compulsion exercised by the ever lively superstitious fancies of the Indians—­the villages were abandoned and new ones formed to constitute new homes, new focal points from which to set out on their annual hunts and to which to return when these were completed.  The tribes of the eastern United States had fixed and definitely bounded habitats, and their wanderings were in the nature of temporary excursions to established points resorted to from time immemorial.  As, however, they had not yet entered completely into the agricultural condition, to which they were fast progressing from the hunter state, they may be said to have been nomadic to a very limited extent.  The method of life thus sketched was substantially the one which the Indians were found practicing throughout the eastern part of the United States, as also, though to a less degree, in the Pacific States.  Upon the Pacific coast proper the tribes were even more sedentary than upon the Atlantic, as the mild climate and the great abundance and permanent supply of fish and shellfish left no cause for a seasonal change of abode.

When, however, the interior portions of the country were first visited by Europeans, a different state of affairs was found to prevail.  There the acquisition of the horse and the possession of firearms had wrought very great changes in aboriginal habits.  The acquisition of the former enabled the Indian of the treeless plains to travel distances with ease and celerity which before were practically impossible, and the possession of firearms stimulated tribal aggressiveness to the utmost pitch.  Firearms were everywhere doubly effective in producing changes in tribal habitats, since the