Note 305 — Chapter VI · —Geographical Area

What is true of states is true also of peoples. The extinction of the retarded "provisional peoples" of the earth progresses more rapidly in small groups than in large, and in small islands more quickly than in continental areas. Of the twenty-one Indian stocks or families which have died out in the United States, fifteen belonged to the small bands once found in the Pacific coast states, and four more were similar fragments found on the lower Mississippi and its bayous.305 [See map page 54.] The native Gaunches of Teneriffe Island disappeared long ago. The last Tasmanian died in 1876. New Zealand, whose area is four times that of Tasmania, and therefore gives some respite before the encroachments of the whites, still harbors 47,835 Maoris, or little over one-third the native population of the island in 1840.306 But these compete for the land with nearly one million English colonists, and in the limited area of the islands they will eventually find no place of retreat before the relentless white advance.