"The present book deals with one of the most important questions of human welfare, the weal and woe of a whole great race, underestimated and persecuted by the whites, and addresses itself as a good advocate of this race to the insight of all educated people. Whoever reads over the names of the Indian tribes of North America known to us, can easily find himself deterred from the attempt to describe them by the sheer number of them. Their number amounts to far more than four hundred. Indeed, such an attempt would be an undertaking of immense extent and partly insurmountable difficulties, if one wanted to extend the investigation to the racial characteristics, the tribal and linguistic affinities, the history and the migrations, the external and internal life of these peoples in their entire scope." [...] The ethnologist Theodor Waitz presents in the present volume e.