No primitive man on earth ever fired the imaginations of European writers and thinkers to such a degree as did the American Indian. The noble savage dwelling in freedom in his Utopia, as pictured in the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau, was derived in large part from the accounts of Indians which were ubiquitous in Europe by that time. Later the romantic novels of James Fenimore Cooper portrayed the redman as an athlete, skilled hunter, statesman, orator, warrior, relentless enemy, and staunch friend, able to endure great hardships such as hunger, cold, and torture to the death without flinching. Although Cooper's novels are regarded today as over-idealized, there is no denying that the personalities they describe have at least been approximated by actual historical figures.

Today, when our knowledge of Indians is much more extensive, we speak not of a single stereotype but of many kinds of Indians, each type with its faults as well as its virtues. There was probably more variation in personality type and customs in aboriginal North America than in all of Europe in 1492, and much more variation in language. Even physical type, as viewed by the critical eye of the contemporary physical anthropologist, shows considerable variation. In other words, there are Indians and Indians, and a statement about the race, language, or culture of one variety does not necessarily hold good for another variety.

No one knows how many times America has been discovered by peoples from the Old World. There was an unknown number of migrations or infiltrations of Indians from Siberia across the Bering Strait to Alaska long before Europeans set foot on American soil. Probably 99 per cent of New World population came by this route. These peoples dispersed themselves over both North and South America thousands of years before the Christian Era. South America also seems to have been reached at a later date by small numbers of people of Asiatic origin who occupied the Pacific Islands. No one knows how many times these argonauts of the South Pacific discovered South America, but the evidence from domesticated plants alone (elaborated on in the chapter on Farming) is sufficient to establish the historical validity of these contacts. From the same evidence, it seems almost certain that voyagers from South America sailed west to Polynesia. No human being ever invented a plant. Man can only select and modify the plants offered him by nature. Therefore, when the same genus or species of a plant, so highly domesticated that it cannot survive without the aid of man, is found on both sides of the Pacific, its distribution can be explained only in terms of man's migrations.

America was discovered by Europeans several times before Columbus in A.D. 1492. Because Columbus' discovery had practical results in a continuing wave of exploration and conquest, history accords him the credit. His discovery certainly changed the history of man to a greater degree than any of the previous discoveries, and the changes it precipitated are still going on to this day.

Every anthropologist agrees that man's biological evolution took place in the Old World, and that all varieties of man which migrated to the New World were Homo sapiens like ourselves. The evidence on which this judgment is based is comparatively direct.

To begin with, man's nearest animal relatives, the anthropoid apes, are all found only in the Old World. Secondly, all species of fossil apes and men, which are regarded as steps along the evolutionary road to man, are likewise to be found only in the Old World. Thirdly, the datable remains of man, both his bones and his handiwork, are of much greater antiquity in the Old than in the New World.

Exactly how long ago the first human immigrants reached America is subject to dispute. One anthropologist-geographer believes that they arrived during the third interglacial period, the era between the third and fourth glaciations. Almost all anthropologists, however, believe man first entered the New World in a declining phase of the fourth glaciation, perhaps 20,000 years ago. Back to about 10,000 years ago the record is fairly satisfactory, thanks to Carbon 14 dating, which has given us a number of reliable dates for this period. Earlier than 10,000 years ago, evidence is fragmentary or frankly speculative. However, a mammoth tusk found in Sandia Cave, New Mexico, has been dated by its Carbon 14 radiation at about 20,000 years ago, which makes it the oldest specimen associated with North American Indians as of this writing. That it was placed in the cave by man seems likely because no other mammoth remains have been found there and the cave is too small to have been entered by a mammoth. What is not known, however, is where man got the tusk. Did he kill the mammoth, or was the tusk already 10,000 years old when he found it and carried it into the cave? Nobody knows.

The earliest immigrants to the New World did not come in a definite migration comparable to the historic migrations of the Old World. These non-literate early men were familiar with only the most localized geography and history and, without knowledge of what lay beyond, they had no reason to move in large numbers in one direction. Their conquest of the new land was more like an infiltration, with single families or small bands roaming farther afield to hunt and ultimately shifting their home base a little.

The most characteristic objects associated with the period from about 10,000 to 7,000 years ago were chipped stone spear points. Such points have been found in most of the states of the United States, as well as Canada, Alaska, and Mexico. Spear points continued to appear in large quantities in many archaeological sites down to A.D. 500 and in smaller numbers into the historic period. Around 7,000 years ago, the first milling stones appear in the archaeological record, more specifically, in the southwestern United States. These prove that man was gathering, grinding, and eating wild seeds by then. Such milling stones have persisted in the Southwest down into the historic period, and those in Nevada and Utah have changed very little from their ancestral types.

The earliest evidence of farming comes from Bat Cave, New Mexico, where large quantities of an early form of corn, which was both a pod corn and a pop corn, have been found. The date of the earliest levels is about 2500 B.C. Another more recent find of corn in Tamaulipas, Mexico, has been dated at 3000 B.C. Because the corn plant was probably first domesticated at least as far south as Guatemala, the origin of the domestication of corn must have been earlier than the date of its first appearance in Tamaulipas or New Mexico. Farming provided a potentially more reliable food supply and made possible a more sedentary form of life and a greater concentration of population. From this superior economic base, culture growth proceeded at an accelerated rate in some areas. By the beginning of the Christian Era, cities and nations had arisen in Mexico and Peru.

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