PREFACE.
The study and research given to the preparation of the contents of this volume have occupied much of the time of the writer for more than ten years. Portions of it, under titles indicated by those of its chapters, were the substance of a course of Lectures delivered between February 18 and March 28, 1879, before the Lowell Institute of Boston.
I have been disinclined to present, in such a number and array of foot-notes as would have been necessary, all the sources of information, the authorityfor statements, or the grounds for opinions and conclusions on which I have relied. To have done this would have required something but little short of a complete bibliography of the copious and multiform literature relating to our aborigines. What may be classed as the Public Documents illustrative of it are very voluminous, and are of course of the highest authority and value. General and local histories have from time to time given sometimes thorough, but often only superficial, attention to the
