Then they crossed the Rocky Mountains and peopled the centre and east of what is now the United States.

As they pushed their way north up the valleys of the great rivers, they no doubt killed, mingled with, or pushed back the Eskimo.

At last their northernmost extensions reached to the Mackenzie River, the vicinity of Hudson's Bay, Labrador, and Newfoundland.

But in all the middle, west, and even east of Canada they seem to have been _relatively recent arrivals_,[1] not to have inhabited the country for a great many centuries before the white man came, and all their recorded and legendary movements in North America have been from the south-west towards the north-east (after they had got across the Rocky Mountains).

The few cultivated plants they had, such as maize (Indian corn), tobacco, and pumpkins, they brought with them or received from the south.
[Footnote 1: There may have been an earlier race inhabiting north-east America which was killed out or driven away by the last Glacial period.] The only domestic animal possessed by either Eskimo or Amerindian was the dog.