From the tables it will be seen that the American Indians in some parts of North America are not decreasing, but either holding their own or even increasing; also that thousands of them are now to all intents and purposesPopulation, &c.the equals in wealth, thrift, industry and intelligence of the average white man and citizens with him in the same society. In certain regions of the continent small tribes have been annihilated in the course of wars with other Indians or with the whites, and others have been decimated by disease, famine, &c.; and over large areas the aboriginal population, according to some authorities, has vastly diminished. Thus Morice estimates that the Athabaskan population at present in Canada (about 20,000) is less than one-seventh of what it was a century or more ago; Hill-Tout thinks the Salishan tribes (c.15,000) number not one-fifth of their population a hundred years ago, and equally great reductions are claimed for some other peoples of the North Pacific region; Kroeber thinks probable an Indian population in California of 150,000 before the arrival of the whites, as compared with but 15,000 now; by some the arid regions of the south-west are supposed to have sustained a very large population in earlier times; certain of the Plains tribes are known to have lost much in population since contact with the whites. But under better care and more favourable conditions generally some tribes seem to be taking on a new lease of life and are apparently beginning to thrive again. A considerable portion of the “disappearance” of the Indian is through amalgamation with the whites. Undoubtedly, in some parts of the country, exaggerated ideas prevalent in the early colonial period as to the numbers of the native population have interfered with a correct estimate of the aborigines past and present. Mooney thinks that the Cherokee “are probably about as numerous now as at any period in their history” (Hndb. Amer. Inds., 1907, pt. i. p. 247), and this is perhaps true also of some other tribes east of the Mississippi. Major J. W. Powell was of opinion that the Indian population north of Mexico is as large to-day as it was at the time of the discovery. This, however, is not the view of the majority of authorities. The total number of Indians in Canada (Ann. Rep. Dept. Ind. Aff., 1907) for 1907 is given as 110,345, as compared with 109,394 for the previous year, not including the Micmac in Newfoundland and the Indians and Eskimo in that part of Labrador belonging to Newfoundland. In 1903 the figures were 108,233. The gain may be largely due to more careful enumeration of Indians in the less well-known parts of the country, but there is evidently no marked decrease going on, but rather a slight increase in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, &c. In the United States (exclusive of Alaska, which counts about 30,000) the Indian population (Ann. Rep. Ind. Aff., 1906) is estimated at 197,289, no including the “Five Civilized Tribes,” of whose numbers (94,292) some 65,000 can be reckoned as Indians—a total of 382,000. The figures of 197,289, according to the report, show an increase in population “due mainly to increase in number of Indians reported from California.”
The financial condition of the Indians of the Dominion of Canada for the year ending March 31, 1907, is indicated in the following table:—Total Amountof Real andPersonalProperty.Total Incomefor theYear.Ontario$7,566,125$1,426,690Quebec1,781,330915,783N. Brunswick189,701109,892N. Scotia151,94976,603P. E. I.6,37015,374Manitoba2,102,044348,966B. Columbia7,475,7191,501,456Sask7,721,532548,533Alberta5,154,789211,839Total$30,129,659$5,155,052The total amounts earned during the year were: from agriculture, $1,337,948; wages and miscellaneous industries, $714,125; fishing, $544,487; hunting and trapping, $630,633. Of these hunting and trapping show a decided decrease over 1906. The Indian Trust Fund amounts to $5,157,566.59. The total appropriation in connexion with the Indians of the Dominion for all purposes for the year 1906-1907 was $1,055,010 and the actual expenditure some $114,000 less. The total amount of sales of lands for the benefit of Indian tribes was $422,086.13. The balance to the credit of the Indian savings account for the funding of the annuities and earnings of pupils at industrial schools, together with collections from Indians for purchase of cattle and for ranching expenses, was $51,708.92.According to theReport of the Commissioner of Indian Affairsthe total amount of trust funds held by the United States government for the Indians, in lieu of investment, amounted to $36,352,950.97, yielding for 1906 interest at 4 and 5% of $1,788,237.23. The total incomes of the various tribes from all sources for the year ending June 30, 1906, was $6,557,554.39, including interest on trust funds, treaty agreement and obligations, gratuities, Indian money, proceeds of labour, &c.
The financial condition of the Indians of the Dominion of Canada for the year ending March 31, 1907, is indicated in the following table:—
The total amounts earned during the year were: from agriculture, $1,337,948; wages and miscellaneous industries, $714,125; fishing, $544,487; hunting and trapping, $630,633. Of these hunting and trapping show a decided decrease over 1906. The Indian Trust Fund amounts to $5,157,566.59. The total appropriation in connexion with the Indians of the Dominion for all purposes for the year 1906-1907 was $1,055,010 and the actual expenditure some $114,000 less. The total amount of sales of lands for the benefit of Indian tribes was $422,086.13. The balance to the credit of the Indian savings account for the funding of the annuities and earnings of pupils at industrial schools, together with collections from Indians for purchase of cattle and for ranching expenses, was $51,708.92.
According to theReport of the Commissioner of Indian Affairsthe total amount of trust funds held by the United States government for the Indians, in lieu of investment, amounted to $36,352,950.97, yielding for 1906 interest at 4 and 5% of $1,788,237.23. The total incomes of the various tribes from all sources for the year ending June 30, 1906, was $6,557,554.39, including interest on trust funds, treaty agreement and obligations, gratuities, Indian money, proceeds of labour, &c.
While the general constitution of the American aborigines north of Mexico is such as to justify their designation as one “American race,” whose nearest congener is to be found inthe “Mongolian race” of eastern Asia, &c., there is a widePhysical characteristics.range in variation within the American tribes with respect to particular physical characteristics. Some authorities, like Dr Hrdlička (Handb. Amer. Inds. N. of Mex., 1907, pt. i. p. 53), separate the Eskimo from the “Indians,” regarding them as “a distinct sub-race of the Mongolo-Malay,” but this is hardly necessary if, with Boas (Ann. Archaeol. Rep. Ontario, 1905, p. 85), we “consider the inhabitants of north-eastern Asia and of America as a unit divided into a great many distinct types but belonging to one and the same of the large divisions of mankind.” Upon the basis of differences in stature and general bodily conformation, colour of skin, texture and form of hair, shape of nose, face and head, &c., some twenty-one different physical “types” north of Mexico have been recognized.
Although the variation in stature, from the short people of Harrison Lake (average 1611 mm.) to the tall Sioux (average 1726 mm.), Eastern Chippewa (average 1723 mm.), Iroquois (average 1727 mm.), Omaha and Winnebago (average 1733 mm.) and other tribes of the Plains and the regions farther east, is considerable, the North American Indian, on the whole, may be termed a tall race. The stature of women averages among the tall tribes about 92%, and among the short tribes about 94% of that of the men.
The proportion of statures (adult males) above 1730 mm. in certain Indian tribes (Boas) is as follows: Apache and Navaho, 25.3; Arapaho, 45.9; Arikara, 15.2; British Columbia (coast), 28.8; British Columbia (interior), 16.4; California (south), 32.7; Cherokee (eastern), 21.0; Cherokee (western), 40.7; Cheyenne, 72.2; Chickasaw, 23.8; Chinook, 36.2; Choctaw, 32.6; Coahuila, 14.2; Comanche, 27.1; Cree, 33.4; Creek, 53.6; Crow, 51.3; Delaware, 41.1; Eskimo (Alaska), 5.9; Eskimo (Labrador), 0.0; Flathead, 18.9; Harrison Lake, B.C., 1.0; Hupa, 18.7; Iroquois, 52.1; Kiowa, 41.3; Klamath, 20.0; Kootenay, 26.0; Micmac and Abnaki, 45.7; Ojibwa (eastern), 42.7; Ojibwa (western), 427; Omaha and Winnebago, 54.9; Oregon (south), 5.1; Ottawa and Menominee, 30.6; Paiute, 22.1; Pawnee, 39.0; Puget Sound and Makah, 6.5; Round Valley, Cal., 3.3; Sahaptin, 28.2; Shuswap, 15.9; Sioux, 50.8; Taos, 18.5: Ute, 124; Zuñi and Moqui, 1.9.Very notable is the percentage of tall statures among the Cheyenne, Creek, Crow, Iroquois, &c. The form of the head (skull) varies considerably among the Indian tribes north of Mexico, running from the dolichocephalic eastern Eskimo with a cephalic index of 71.3 on the skull to the brachycephalic Aleuts with 84.8. Several tribes practising deformation of the skull (mound-builders, Klamath, &c.) show much higher brachycephaly.The percentage of cephalic indices above 84 (on the heads of living individuals) among certain Indian tribes (Boas) is as follows: Apache, 87.6; Arapaho, 5.0; Arikara, 24.6; Blackfeet, 6.2; Caddo, 47.2; Cherokee, 20.0; Cheyenne, 10.4; Chickasaw, 14.4; Comanche, 65.3; Cree, 4.9; Creek, 25.0; Crow, 12.0; Delaware 12.0; Eskimo, (Alaska), 10.6; Harrison Lake, B.C., 88.8; Iroquois, 15.4; Kiowa, 25.0; Kootenay, 19.1; Mandan, 4.5; Micmac and Abnaki, 7.0; Mohave, 86.5: Montagnais, 21.7; Moqui, 54.3; Navaho, 49.4; Ojibwa (eastern), 26.6; Ojibwa (western), 10.2; Omaha, 23.0; Oregon (south), 50.9; Osage, 79.1; Ottawa and Menominee, 24.7; Pawnee, 4.8; Pima, 9.6; Round Valley, Cal., 4.8; Sahaptin, 57.4; Shuswap, 59.9; Sioux, 9.6; Taos, 6.0; Ute, 8.9; Wichita, 96.0; Winnebago, 66.8; Zuñi, 41.4.The Apache, Mohave, Navaho, Osage, Sahaptin, Wichita and Winnebago practised skull-deformation, which accounts in part for their high figures. The brachycephalic tendency of the Caddo, Moqui, Shuswap and Zuñi is marked; the Comanche, with an average cephalic index of 84.6 and the Harrison Lake people with one of 88.8, are noteworthy in this respect. As in the case of stature, so in the case of head-form, there seems to have been much mingling of types, especially in the Huron-Algonkian region, the Great Plains and the North Pacific coast.
The proportion of statures (adult males) above 1730 mm. in certain Indian tribes (Boas) is as follows: Apache and Navaho, 25.3; Arapaho, 45.9; Arikara, 15.2; British Columbia (coast), 28.8; British Columbia (interior), 16.4; California (south), 32.7; Cherokee (eastern), 21.0; Cherokee (western), 40.7; Cheyenne, 72.2; Chickasaw, 23.8; Chinook, 36.2; Choctaw, 32.6; Coahuila, 14.2; Comanche, 27.1; Cree, 33.4; Creek, 53.6; Crow, 51.3; Delaware, 41.1; Eskimo (Alaska), 5.9; Eskimo (Labrador), 0.0; Flathead, 18.9; Harrison Lake, B.C., 1.0; Hupa, 18.7; Iroquois, 52.1; Kiowa, 41.3; Klamath, 20.0; Kootenay, 26.0; Micmac and Abnaki, 45.7; Ojibwa (eastern), 42.7; Ojibwa (western), 427; Omaha and Winnebago, 54.9; Oregon (south), 5.1; Ottawa and Menominee, 30.6; Paiute, 22.1; Pawnee, 39.0; Puget Sound and Makah, 6.5; Round Valley, Cal., 3.3; Sahaptin, 28.2; Shuswap, 15.9; Sioux, 50.8; Taos, 18.5: Ute, 124; Zuñi and Moqui, 1.9.
Very notable is the percentage of tall statures among the Cheyenne, Creek, Crow, Iroquois, &c. The form of the head (skull) varies considerably among the Indian tribes north of Mexico, running from the dolichocephalic eastern Eskimo with a cephalic index of 71.3 on the skull to the brachycephalic Aleuts with 84.8. Several tribes practising deformation of the skull (mound-builders, Klamath, &c.) show much higher brachycephaly.
The percentage of cephalic indices above 84 (on the heads of living individuals) among certain Indian tribes (Boas) is as follows: Apache, 87.6; Arapaho, 5.0; Arikara, 24.6; Blackfeet, 6.2; Caddo, 47.2; Cherokee, 20.0; Cheyenne, 10.4; Chickasaw, 14.4; Comanche, 65.3; Cree, 4.9; Creek, 25.0; Crow, 12.0; Delaware 12.0; Eskimo, (Alaska), 10.6; Harrison Lake, B.C., 88.8; Iroquois, 15.4; Kiowa, 25.0; Kootenay, 19.1; Mandan, 4.5; Micmac and Abnaki, 7.0; Mohave, 86.5: Montagnais, 21.7; Moqui, 54.3; Navaho, 49.4; Ojibwa (eastern), 26.6; Ojibwa (western), 10.2; Omaha, 23.0; Oregon (south), 50.9; Osage, 79.1; Ottawa and Menominee, 24.7; Pawnee, 4.8; Pima, 9.6; Round Valley, Cal., 4.8; Sahaptin, 57.4; Shuswap, 59.9; Sioux, 9.6; Taos, 6.0; Ute, 8.9; Wichita, 96.0; Winnebago, 66.8; Zuñi, 41.4.
The Apache, Mohave, Navaho, Osage, Sahaptin, Wichita and Winnebago practised skull-deformation, which accounts in part for their high figures. The brachycephalic tendency of the Caddo, Moqui, Shuswap and Zuñi is marked; the Comanche, with an average cephalic index of 84.6 and the Harrison Lake people with one of 88.8, are noteworthy in this respect. As in the case of stature, so in the case of head-form, there seems to have been much mingling of types, especially in the Huron-Algonkian region, the Great Plains and the North Pacific coast.
The North American Indian may be described in general as brown-skinned (of various shades, with reddish tinge, sometimes dark and chocolate or almost black in colour) with black hair and eyes varying from hazel brown to dark brown. Under good conditions of food, &c., the Indian tends to be tall and mesocephalic as to head-form, and well-proportioned and symmetrical in body. The ideal Indian type can be met with among the youth of several different tribes (Plains Indians, Algonkians, Iroquoians, Muskogians and some of the tribes of the south-western United States). Beauty among the aborigines of America north of Mexico has been the subject of brief studies by Dr R. W. Shufeldt and Dr A. Hrdlička (Boas Anniv. Vol., New York, 1906, pp. 38-42).
The extent to which the red and white races have mixed their blood in various parts of North America is greater than is generally thought. The Eskimo of Greenland have intermarried with the Danes, and their kinsmenRace mixture.of Labrador with the English settlers and “summerers.” The eastern Algonkian Indians in New England and Acadia have now considerable French, English and Scottish blood. Many of the Canadian Iroquois are more than half French, many of the Iroquois of New York half English. The Cherokee, an Iroquoian people of the Carolinas, have some admixture of Scottish and German blood, to which Mooney would attribute some, at least, of their remarkable progress. In the state of Oklahoma, which has absorbed the old “Indian Territory,” the results of race-amalgamation are apparent in the large number of mixed bloods of all shades. In spite of the romance of Pocahontas, the intermarriages of the two races in the Virginian region seem not to have been very common or very important. Nor does there appear to have been much intermarriage between Spaniards and Indians in the south Atlantic region, though in Texas, &c., there was a good deal. In New France, in spite of the efforts of some recent Canadian-French writers to minimize the fact, intermixture between whites, and Indians began early and continued to be extensive. In parts of New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, some of the northern American states and regions of the Canadian north-west, there are Indian villages and white settlements where hardly a single individual of absolutely pure blood can now be found. In the veins of some of the “Iroquois” of Caughnawaga and New York state to-day flows blood of the best colonial stock (Rice, Hill, Williams, Stacey, &c., captives adopted and married within the tribe). In the great Canadian north-west, and to a large extent also in the tier of American states to the south, the blood of the Indian, through the mingling of French, Scottish and English traders, trappers, employees of the great fur companies, pioneer settlers, &c., has entered largely and significantly into the life of the nation, the half-breed element playing a most important rôle in social, commercial and industrial development.
In 1879, besides those whose mixed blood had not been remembered and those who wished to forget it, there were, according to Dr Havard (Rep. Smiths. Inst., 1879), at least 22,000métisin the United States and 18,000 in Canada (i.e.in the north-west in each case). When the province of Manitoba entered the Canadian Confederation it numbered within the borders some 10,000 mixed-bloods, one of whom, John Norquay, afterwards became its premier. In the Columbia river region and British Columbia some intermixture has taken place, originating in the conditions due to the establishment of trading-posts, the circumstances of the early settlement of the country, &c.—this has been both French and English and Scottish. Farther north in Alaska the Russian occupation led to not a little intermixture, both with the Aleuts, &c., and the coast Indians. In some parts of the far north intermixture of the whites with the Athabaskans is just beginning. In Canada no prohibition of marriage between whites and Indians exists, but such unions are forbidden by law in the states of Arizona, Oregon, North Carolina and South Carolina.
A considerable number of the chiefs and able men of the various Indian tribes of certain regions in recent times have had more or less white blood—Iroquois, Algonkian, Siouan, &c.—who have sometimes worked with and sometimes against the whites. In the case of some tribes there have been “pure blood” and “mixed blood” factions. Some tribes have frowned upon miscegenation; even the Pueblos (except Laguna, which is Keresan) have never intermarried with the whites. Both in Canada and the United States strains of Indian blood run in the veins of prominent families. Some of the “first families of Virginia” are proud to descend from Pocahontas, the Algonkian “Princess,” who married the Englishman Rolfe. In Maine may still be discovered perhaps those whose line of life goes back to the Baron de St Casteins and his Abnaki bride, while in Ontario and New York are to be met those who trace their ancestry back to the famous Iroquois Joseph Brant and his half-English wife. In the early history of Pennsylvania and Ohio were noted the Montours, descendants of a French nobleman who about1665 had a son and two daughters by a Huron woman in Canada. In 1817 Captain John S. Pierce, U.S.A., brother of President Franklin Pierce, married the fair Josette la Framboise, who had at least a quarter Indian (Ottawa) blood. In the latter part of the 18th century a young Irish gentleman married Neengai, daughter of the Michigan Ojibwa chief Waubojeeg, and of the daughters born to them one married a Canadian Frenchman of reputation in the early development of the province of Ontario, another the Rev. Mr McMurray, afterwards Episcopal archdeacon of Niagara, and a third Henry R. Schoolcraft, the ethnologist.Several Indians, some full-blood, others with more or less white blood in their veins, have rendered signal service to ethnological science. These deserve special mention: Francis la Flesche, an Omaha, a graduate of the National University Law School. D.C., holding a position in the Office of Indian Affairs; Dr William Jones, a Sac and Fox, in the service of the Field Museum, Chicago, a graduate of Harvard and of Columbia (Ph.D.); and J. N. B. Hewitt, a Tuscarora, ethnologist in the Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, D.C. In some regions considerable intermixture between negroes and Indians (Science, New York, vol. xvii., 1891, pp. 85-90) has occurred,e.g.among the Mashpee and Gay Head Indians of Massachusetts, the remnants of the Pequots in Connecticut, the Shinnecocks and the Montauks, &c., of Long Island; the Pamunkeys, Mattaponies and some other small Virginian and Carolinian tribes. In earlier times some admixture of negro blood took place among the Seminoles, although now the remnants of that people still in Florida are much averse to miscegenation. Of the tribes of the Muskogian stock who kept large numbers of negro slaves the Creeks are said to have about one-third of their number of mixed Indian-negro blood. Sporadic intermixture of this sort is reported from the Shawnee, the Minnesota Chippewa, the Canadian Tuscarora, the Caddo, &c., in the case of the last the admixture may be considerable. It is also thought probable that many of the negroes of the whole lower Atlantic coast and Gulf region may have strains of Indian blood. The mythology and folk-lore of the negroes of this region may have borrowed not a little from the Indian, for as Mooney notes (19th Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol., 1900, pp. 232-234), “in all the southern colonies Indian slaves were bought and sold and kept in servitude and worked in the fields side by side with negroes up to the time of the Revolution.” When Dr John R. Swanton visited the Haida recently the richest man among the Skidegate tribe was a negro. Some of the Plains tribes and some Indians of the far west, however, have taken a dislike to the negro.The leader in the “Boston Massacre” of March 5, 1770, was Crispus Attucks, of Framingham, Mass., the son of a negro father and a Natick Indian mother. The physical anthropology of the white-Indian half-blood has been studied by Dr Franz Boas (Pop. Sci. Monthly, New York, 1894).
A considerable number of the chiefs and able men of the various Indian tribes of certain regions in recent times have had more or less white blood—Iroquois, Algonkian, Siouan, &c.—who have sometimes worked with and sometimes against the whites. In the case of some tribes there have been “pure blood” and “mixed blood” factions. Some tribes have frowned upon miscegenation; even the Pueblos (except Laguna, which is Keresan) have never intermarried with the whites. Both in Canada and the United States strains of Indian blood run in the veins of prominent families. Some of the “first families of Virginia” are proud to descend from Pocahontas, the Algonkian “Princess,” who married the Englishman Rolfe. In Maine may still be discovered perhaps those whose line of life goes back to the Baron de St Casteins and his Abnaki bride, while in Ontario and New York are to be met those who trace their ancestry back to the famous Iroquois Joseph Brant and his half-English wife. In the early history of Pennsylvania and Ohio were noted the Montours, descendants of a French nobleman who about1665 had a son and two daughters by a Huron woman in Canada. In 1817 Captain John S. Pierce, U.S.A., brother of President Franklin Pierce, married the fair Josette la Framboise, who had at least a quarter Indian (Ottawa) blood. In the latter part of the 18th century a young Irish gentleman married Neengai, daughter of the Michigan Ojibwa chief Waubojeeg, and of the daughters born to them one married a Canadian Frenchman of reputation in the early development of the province of Ontario, another the Rev. Mr McMurray, afterwards Episcopal archdeacon of Niagara, and a third Henry R. Schoolcraft, the ethnologist.
Several Indians, some full-blood, others with more or less white blood in their veins, have rendered signal service to ethnological science. These deserve special mention: Francis la Flesche, an Omaha, a graduate of the National University Law School. D.C., holding a position in the Office of Indian Affairs; Dr William Jones, a Sac and Fox, in the service of the Field Museum, Chicago, a graduate of Harvard and of Columbia (Ph.D.); and J. N. B. Hewitt, a Tuscarora, ethnologist in the Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, D.C. In some regions considerable intermixture between negroes and Indians (Science, New York, vol. xvii., 1891, pp. 85-90) has occurred,e.g.among the Mashpee and Gay Head Indians of Massachusetts, the remnants of the Pequots in Connecticut, the Shinnecocks and the Montauks, &c., of Long Island; the Pamunkeys, Mattaponies and some other small Virginian and Carolinian tribes. In earlier times some admixture of negro blood took place among the Seminoles, although now the remnants of that people still in Florida are much averse to miscegenation. Of the tribes of the Muskogian stock who kept large numbers of negro slaves the Creeks are said to have about one-third of their number of mixed Indian-negro blood. Sporadic intermixture of this sort is reported from the Shawnee, the Minnesota Chippewa, the Canadian Tuscarora, the Caddo, &c., in the case of the last the admixture may be considerable. It is also thought probable that many of the negroes of the whole lower Atlantic coast and Gulf region may have strains of Indian blood. The mythology and folk-lore of the negroes of this region may have borrowed not a little from the Indian, for as Mooney notes (19th Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol., 1900, pp. 232-234), “in all the southern colonies Indian slaves were bought and sold and kept in servitude and worked in the fields side by side with negroes up to the time of the Revolution.” When Dr John R. Swanton visited the Haida recently the richest man among the Skidegate tribe was a negro. Some of the Plains tribes and some Indians of the far west, however, have taken a dislike to the negro.
The leader in the “Boston Massacre” of March 5, 1770, was Crispus Attucks, of Framingham, Mass., the son of a negro father and a Natick Indian mother. The physical anthropology of the white-Indian half-blood has been studied by Dr Franz Boas (Pop. Sci. Monthly, New York, 1894).
The culture, arts and industries of the American aborigines exhibit marked correspondence to and dependence upon environment, varying with the natural conditions of land and water, wealth or poverty of the soil, abundanceCulture, arts, industries, &c.or scarcity of plant and animal life subsidiary to human existence, &c. Professor O. T. Mason (Handb. of Amer. Inds. N. of Mexico, 1907, pt. i. pp. 427-430; alsoRep. Smiths. Inst., 1895, andPop. Sci. Monthly, 1902) recognizes north of Mexico twelve “ethnic environments,” in each of which there is “anensembleof qualities that impressed themselves on their inhabitants and differentiated them.”
These twelve “ethnic environments” are:—
(1)Arctic(Eskimo); (2)Yukon-Mackenzie(practicallyAthabaskan); (3)Great Lakes and St Lawrence(Algonkian-Iroquoian); (4)Atlantic Slope(Algonkian,Iroquoian,Siouan, &c.); (5)Gulf Coast, embracing region from Georgia to Texas (Muskogianand a number of smaller stocks); (6)Mississippi Valley(largelyAlgonkianand “mound-builders”); (7)Plains, including the country from the neighbourhood of the Rio Grande to beyond the Saskatchewan on the north, and from the Rocky Mountains to the fertile lands west of the Mississippi (Algonkian,Siouan,Shoshonian,Kiowan,Caddoan); (8)North Pacific Coast, from Mount St Elias to the mouth of the Columbia river (Koluschan,Haidan,Tsimshian,Wakashan,Salishan); (9)Columbia-Fraser region(Salishan,Sahaptian,Chinookan, &c.); (10)Interior Basinbetween Rocky Mountains and Sierras (Shoshonian); (11)California-Oregon(“the Caucasus of North America,” occupied by more than twenty-five linguistic stocks); (12)Pueblos region, basin of Rio Grande, Pecos, San Juan and Colorado (Pueblos-Keresan,Tanoan,Zuñian, &c.; on the outskirts predatoryShoshonian,Athabaskantribes; to the south-west,Yuman, &c.).
In the Arctic environment the Eskimo have conquered a severe and thankless climate by the invention and perfection of the snow-house, the dog-sled, the oil-lamp (creating and sustaining social life and making extensive migrations possible), the harpoon and the kayak or skin-boat (the acme of adaptation of individual skill to environmental demands). In the region of the Mackenzie especially the older and simpler culture of the Athabaskan stock has been much influenced by the European “civilization” of the Hudson’s Bay Company, &c., and elsewhere also by contact with Indian tribes of other stocks, for the Athabaskans everywhere have shown themselves very receptive and ready to adopt foreign elements of culture. The culture-type of the North Pacific coast, besides being unique in some respects, stands in certain relations to the culture of the Palaeo-Asiatic tribes of north-eastern Asia who belong properly with the American race. The culture of the Great Plains, which has been studied by Drs Wissler (Congr. intern. d. Amér., Quebec, 1906, vol. ii. pp. 39-52) and Kroeber (ibid.pp. 53-63), is marked by the presence of a decided uniformity in spite of the existence within this area of several physical types and a number of distinct linguistic stocks. Here thetipiand the camp-circle figure largely in material culture; innumerable ceremonies and religious practices (e.g.the “sun-dance”) occur and many societies and ceremonial organizations exist. The buffalo and later the horse have profoundly influenced the culture of this area, in which Athabaskan (Sarcee), Kitunahan, Algonkian, Siouan, Shoshonian, Kiowan tribes have shared. In some respects the Plains culture is quite recent and the result of “giving and taking” among the various peoples concerned. Some of them merely abandoned an earlier more sedentary life to hunt the buffalo on the great prairies.The culture of the Mississippi valley region (including the Ohio, &c.) is noteworthy in pre-Columbian and immediately post-Columbian times for the development of “mound-building,” with apparently sedentary life to a large extent. In this Algonkian, Iroquoian and Siouan tribes have participated. In the region of the Great Lakes and on the Atlantic slope occurred the greatest development of the Algonkian and Iroquoian stocks, particularly in social and political activities, expressed both generally, as in the leagues and alliances (especially the famous “Iroquois League”), and individually in the appearance of great men like Hiawatha, Tecumseh, &c. The Gulf region is remarkable for the development in the southern United States of the Muskogian stock (Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, &c.), to which belonged the “civilized tribes” now part of the state of Oklahoma. In this area also, toward the west, are to be met religious ideas and institutions (e.g.among the Natchez) suggestive of an early participation in or connexion with the beginnings of a culture common to the Pueblos tribes and perhaps also to the ancestors of the civilized peoples of ancient Mexico. In some other respects the culture of this area is noteworthy. In the east also there are evidences of the influence of Arawakan culture from the West Indies. The Pueblos region has been the scene of the development of sedentary “village” life on the largest scale known in North America north of Mexico, and of arts, industries and religious ideas (rain-cult especially) corresponding, as Professor J. W. Fewkes (Rep. Smiths. Inst., 1895, pp. 683-700) has shown, most remarkably to their environment. The arid interior basin is the characteristic area of the great Shoshonian stock, here seen at its lowest level, but advancing with the Piman and other Sonoran and Nahuatlan tribes till in ancient Mexico it attained the civilization of the Aztecs. The California-Oregon area is remarkable for the multiplicity of its linguistic stocks and also for the development of many local culture-types. Within the limits of California alone Dr Kroeber (Univ. of Calif. Publ. Amer. Arch. and Ethnol.vol. ii., 1904, pp. 81-103) distinguishes at least four types of native culture.On account of climatic conditions, in part at least, the development of agriculture in North America has not reached with many Indian tribes a high state of development, although its diffusion is much greater than is generally believed. In the south-eastern part of the United States beans, squashes, pumpkins and some other gourds and melons, potatoes, Indian corn, tobacco, a variety of the sunflower, &c., were cultivated, the growing of beans, squashes and pumpkins extending as far north as Massachusetts and the Iroquois country, in which latter also tobacco was cultivated, as the tribal name (“Tobacco Nation”) of the Tionontati indicates. The cultivation of Indian corn extended from Florida to beyond 50° N. and from the Atlantic to far beyond the Mississippi, and, to judge from the varieties found in existence, must have been known to the Indians for a very long period. In the arid region of Arizona and New Mexico a special development of agriculture occurred, made possible by the extensive use of irrigation in pre-Columbian and in more recent times. Here Indian corn, melons, beans, cotton, &c., were cultivated before the arrival of the Spaniards. For religious purposes the Zuñi appear to have selectively produced a great variety of colours in the ears of corn. Where women had much to do with agricultural operations they greatly influenced society and religious and mythological ideas. Hunting and fishing, as might be expected in an extensive and varied environment like the North American continent, exhibit a great range from simple individual hand-capture to combined efforts with traps and nets, such as the communal nets of the Eskimo, the buffalo and deer “drives” of the Plains and other Indians, with which were often associatedbrush-fences, corrals, “pounds,” pitfalls, &c., advantage taken of a naturalcul-de-sac, &c. A great variety of traps, snares, &c., was used (see Mason inAmer. Anthrop., 1899) and the dog was also of great service with certain tribes, although no special variety of hunting-dogs (except in a few cases) appears to have been developed. The accessory implements for the chase (spear, bow and arrow, harpoon, club, &c.) underwent great variation and specialization. The throwing-stick appears in the north among the Eskimo and in the south-west among the Pueblos. In the Muskogian area the blow-gun is found, and its use extended also to some of the Iroquoian tribes (Cherokee, &c.). In part of this area vegetable poisons were used to capture fish. In the New England region torch-fishing at night was in vogue. With the tribes of the Great Plains in particular the hunt developed into a great social event, and often into a more or less marked ceremonial or religious institution, with its own appropriate preliminary and subsequential rites, songs, formulae, taboos and fetishes, &c., as seene.g.among certain tribes of the Caddoan stock in very interesting fashion.The art of transportation and navigation among the American aborigines north of Mexico has received special treatment from Mason (Rep. U.S. Nat. Mus., 1894) and Friederici, in his recent monographDie Schiffahrt der Indianer(Stuttgart, 1907). On land some of the Indian tribes made use of the dog-sled and the toboggan in winter, while the dog-travoiswas early met with in the region of the Great Plains. The Eskimo made special use of the dog-sled, but never developed snow-shoes to the same extent as did the Athabaskan and Algonkian tribes; with the last and with the Iroquoian tribes came the perfection of the skin-shoe or moccasin. In the south and south-west appear sandals. In North America the cradle, as pointed out by Professor Mason (Rep. U.S. Nat. Mus., 1894), has undergone great variation in response to environmental suggestion. No wheeled vehicle and no use of an animal other than the dog for means of transportation is known among the aborigines north of Mexico, men, women and children, women especially, having been the chief burden-bearers. Among the types of boats in use are the seal-skinkayakandumiak(woman’s boat) of the Eskimo; the bull-boat or coracle (raw-hide over willow frame) of the Missouri and the buffalo-region; the dug-out of various forms and degrees of ornamentation in divers regions from Florida to the North Pacific coast; bark-canoes (birch, elm, pine, &c.) in the Algonkian, Iroquoian and Athabaskan areas, reaching a high development in the region of the Great Lakes; the peculiar bark-canoe of the Beothuks in the form of two half ellipses; the bark-canoe of the Kootenay (a similar type occurs on the Amur in north-eastern Asia), noteworthy as having both ends pointed under water; the plank-canoes of the Santa Barbara region; the basketry-boats (coritas) of the lower Colorado and in south central California; thebalsasof tule rushes, &c., in use on the lakes and streams of California and Nevada. In various parts of the country log-rafts of a more or less crude sort were in use. No regular sail is reported from North America, although from time to time skins, blankets, &c., were used by several tribes for such purposes.Since the appearance of Morgan’s monograph on theHouses and House-life of the American Aborigines(Washington, 1881) our knowledge of the subject has been materially increased by the studies and researches of Boas, Fewkes, Mindeleff, Dorsey, Matthews, Murdoch, Willoughby and others. The dwellings in use among the aborigines north of Mexico varied from the rude brush huts of the primitive Shoshonian tribes, and the still earlier caves, to the communal dwellings of the Iroquois and the Pueblos stocks of New Mexico and Arizona. The principal types are as follows:Crude brush shelters and huts of the lowest Shoshonian tribes, the Apache (more elaborate), &c.; thehoganor earth-lodge of the Navaho, and the earth-lodges of certain Caddoan and Siouan tribes farther north, with similar structures even among the Aleuts of Alaska; the grass-lodge of the Caddoan tribes, still in use among the Wichita; the semi-subterranean earth-covered lodges of parts of California, &c.; the roofed pits of various styles in use in the colder north, &c.; the Eskimo snow-house and woodenkarmak; the elaborately carved and painted wooden houses of Pacific coast region (Tlingit, Haida, Nootka, &c.), some of which were originally built on platforms and entered by log-ladders; the simple wooden house of northern California; the dome-shaped bark wigwams of the Winnebago and the conical ones of many of the Algonkian tribes; the skin tents or tipis of many of the Plains peoples; the mat tents of the Nez Percé, Kootenay, &c., and the mat houses of the South Atlantic region; the circular wigwam of bark or mats banked up at the base, of the Ohio-Mississippi valley; the palmetto-house of certain Louisiana Indians; the pile-dwellings of the ancient Floridians. Communal houses of divers types were found among the Mohegans, Iroquois, &c., but are especially illustrated by the so-calledpueblosof the south-western United States, out of which grew probably the elaborate structures of ancient Mexico. Some tribes appear to have had simple and ruder summer dwellings and more elaborate or better constructed winter houses. The Eskimo have sometimes temporary hunting-lodges; the Comanches brush-shelters for summer and lodges of buffalo-skin for winter; with some tribes temporary dwellings were erected for the use of those cultivating the land. Many tribes had their “village-houses” for social purposes, like thekashimof the Eskimo. Special tipis or houses for shamans, “medicine-men,” &c., were common in many parts of North America. Secret societies had their own lodges and the so-called “men’s-house.” The houses of the North American Indians are the subject of a monograph by E. Sarfert (Arch. f. Anthr., 1908, pp. 119-215).The art of fire-making was known to all the aborigines north of Mexico, two methods being widespread, that with flint and pyrites and that by reciprocating motion of wood on wood. For the latter several varieties of apparatus were in use, the simple two-stick apparatus was very common; the Eskimo have a four-part fire-drill and the Iroquois a weighted drill with spindle whorl. The skill displayed in fire-making by some Indians is very great, and the individual parts of the apparatus have in certain regions been highly specialized. The subject of fire-making apparatus and the kindred topic of illumination have been specially treated by Dr Walter Hough (Rep. U.S. Nat. Mus., 1890, pp. 531-587;Rep. Smiths. Inst., 1901-1902). The camp-fire, the torch and the Eskimo lamp represent the employment of fire for artificial light among the aborigines. Fire and smoke were used for signalling by the Plains tribes, &c., and fire-ceremonies form an important part (“new-fire,” “fire-dance”) of the ritual observances of not a few peoples, especially in the region from Florida to the Rio Grande. In metal-working there is up to the present no convincing evidence of the use of fire (heat only being employed to facilitate the cold-hammering processes by which the metals, copper, silver, gold and iron were manufactured into weapons, implements and ornaments) in metallurgy north of Mexico. The tools used were few and the processes simple, as Cushing (Amer. Anthrop., vol. vii., 1894) has proved by actual experiment. The only metal actually mined in large quantities was copper in the region of Lake Superior, whence came most of that employed in the east and south. In Alaska was a source of copper for the North Pacific coast. No special process of hardening copper other than by hammering was known to the Indians. The gold objects of most interest come from mounds in Florida and a few also from those in the Ohio valley. Galena was used to make simple ceremonial objects by the Indians of the Mississippi valley and the “mound-builders.”The art of sculpture in wood, stone, bone and ivory is best represented by the wooden masks, utensils, house-carvings and totem-poles of the Indians of the North Pacific coast, the stone pipes, ornaments and images of various sorts of the “mound-builders” and other Indians of the Mississippi valley, the carvings of the people of the Floridian pile-dwellings, and the remarkable ivory carvings, sometimes minute, of the Eskimo. Noteworthy also are the slate-sculpture of the Haida, and the work in bone, ivory and deer and mountain goat horn of the British Columbian Indians. The Indians of the region south of the Great Lakes were expert in the manufacture of tobacco-pipes of great variety, among the most interesting being the Catlinite pipes of the Sioux of Minnesota, &c. Soapstone served some of the Eskimo to make lamps and some Indian tribes for other purposes. Pottery appears to have been unknown in certain regions, but flourished remarkably in the Mississippi valley and the Pueblos region of the south-west, where specialization in form and decoration occurred, and ceramic objects of all sorts were manufactured in abundance. The pottery of the Iroquoian and Algonkian tribes of the north-east was, as a rule, rather crude and undeveloped. In many places the relation of ceramic art to basketry is in evidence. Basketry, of which Professor O. T. Mason has recently made a detailed study in hisAboriginal American Basketry(Washington and New York, 1902, 1904), and related arts were carried on (especially by women) with great variety of form, decoration, material, &c., over a large portion of the continent. In North America basketry is “theprimitive art,” and here “the Indian women have left the best witness of what they could do in handiwork and expression.” The most exquisite and artistic basketry in the world comes from an utterly uncivilized tribe in California. The relation of basketry to symbolism and religion is best observable among the Hopi or Moqui of Arizona. The appreciation of white men for the products of Indian skill and genius in basketry finds full expression in G. W. James’sIndian Basketry(1900). Weaving is exemplified in the goat’s hair blanket of the Chilkat Indians (Koluschan) of Alaska, and similar products; also in the manufactures of buffalo-hair, &c., of the Indians of the Great Plains and Mississippi valley and the textile art of a higher type known to the Pueblos tribes and by some of them taught to the Navaho. Famous are the “Navaho blankets,” less so the “Chilkat.”Feather-work and the utilization of bird-skins and feathers for dresses, hats, ornaments, &c., are known from many parts of the continent. In the Arctic regions bird-skins with the feathers on were used to make dresses; the Algonkian tribes of Virginia, &c., had their bird-skin “blankets” and “turkey robes”; the tribes of the North Pacific coast used feathers for decorative purposes of many kinds, as did Indians in other regions also; feather head-dresses and ornaments were much in use among the Plains tribes, &c.; with the Pueblos Indians eagle and turkey feathers were important in ritual and ceremony; some of the tribes of the south-east made fans of turkey feathers. Beads made from various sorts of shell, rolled copper (“mound-builders,” &c.), seeds, ivory (Eskimo) and the teeth of various animals are pre-Columbian, like the turquoise-beads of the Pueblos, and they were put to a great varietyof uses. Wampum was manufactured by many Algonkian and Iroquoian tribes, who also later produced fine specimens of work with the glass beads introduced by the whites. These glass beads made their way over most of the continent, soon driving out in many sections the older art in shell, &c. European-made wampum-beads affected native art in the 17th century. In the regions where the porcupine abounded its quills were used for purposes of ornamentation on articles of dress, objects of bark, &c., some of the Algonkian and Iroquoian tribes producing beautiful work of this sort.Besides face and body painting, employed for various purposes and widespread over the continent, particularly in ceremonial observances, during war-time, in courting, mourning, &c., painting found expression among the North American aborigines most fully in the products of the wood art of the Indians of the North Pacific coast (masks, utensils, houses, totem-poles, furniture, &c.), in the more or less ceremonial and symbolic paintings on skins, tipi-covers and the like of some of the Plains tribes (e.g.Kiowa, Sioux) and in ceramic art, notably in the remarkable polychrome pottery of the Pueblos tribes. Among several Pueblos tribes of Arizona and New Mexico (also the Navaho and Apache and of a ruder sort among some of the Plains tribes,e.g.Cheyenne, Arapaho, Blackfeet) “dry-painting,” most highly developed in the sacred ceremonies of the Navaho, is practised and is evidently of great antiquity. The pictures of deities, natural phenomena, animals and plants are made of powdered sandstone of various colours, &c.Pictography among the aborigines north of Mexico varied from the rude petroglyphs of some of the Shoshonian tribes to the incised work on ivory, &c., of the Eskimo and the paintings on buffalo and other animal skins by some of the Plains tribes, the work of the Pueblos Indians, &c., the nearest approach to hieroglyphics in North America outside of Mexico. Some Indian tribes (e.g.the Kootenay) seem not at all given to pictography, while many others have practised it to an almost limitless extent. The pictography and picture-writing of the North American Indians have been the subject of two detailed monographs by Mallery (4th Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol., 1882-1883, pp. 3-256;10th Rep., 1888-1889, pp. 1-1290), and the graphic art of the Eskimo has received special treatment by Hoffman (Rep. U.S. Nat. Mus., 1895). Some have argued that this ivory pictography of the Eskimo is of recent origin and due practically to the introduction of iron by the whites, but Boas thinks such a theory refuted by the resemblance of the Eskimo graphic art in question to the birch-bark art of the neighbouring Indian tribes. No real “hieroglyphs,” much less any system of writing of an alphabetic nature, have been discovered north of Mexico; the alleged specimens of such, turning up from time to time, are frauds of one sort or another.The music and song of the American Indians north of Mexico have been studied since the time of Baker (Über die Musik der Nordamerikanischen Wilden, Leipzig, 1882) by Boas, Fillmore, Curtis, Fletcher, Stumpf, Cringan (Ann. Arch. Rep. Ont., 1902, 1905), &c. According to Miss Fletcher (Indian Story and Song, 1900; alsoPubl. Peab. Mus., 1893), “among the Indians music envelops like an atmosphere every religious tribal and social ceremony, as well as every personal experience,” and “there is not a phase of life that does not find expression in song”; music, too, is “the medium through which man holds communion with his soul and with the unseen powers which control his destiny.” Music, in fact, “is coextensive with tribal life,” and “every public ceremony as well as each important act in the career of an individual has its accompaniment of song.” Moreover, “The music of each ceremony has its peculiar rhythm, so also have the classes of songs which pertain to individual acts: fasting and prayer, setting of traps, hunting, courtship, playing of games, facing and defying death.” In structure the Indian song “follows the outline of the form which obtains in our own music,” and “the compass of songs varies from 1 to 3 octaves.” Among some of the tribes with highly developed ceremonial observances “men and women, having clear resonant voices and good musical intonation, compose the choirs which lead the singing in ceremonies and are paid for the services.” A peculiar development of music among the Eskimo is seen in the “nith-songs,” by which controversies are settled, the parties to the dispute “singing at” each other till the public laughter, &c., proclaim one the victor. Among the American Indians songs belonging to individuals, societies, clans, &c., are met with, which have to be purchased by others from the owners, and even slight mistakes in the rendition of singing, dancing, &c., are heavily penalized. Musical contests were also known (e.g.among the Indians of the Pacific coast). The development of the “tribal song” among the Iroquoian peoples is seen in Hale’sIroquois Book of Rites(1881). Songs having no words, but merely changeless vocables, are common. As Dr Boas has pointed out, the genius of the American Indian has been devoted more to the production of songs than to the invention of musical instruments. The musical instruments known to the aborigines north of Mexico, before contact with the whites, according to Miss Fletcher (Handb. of Amer. Inds., 1907, pt. i. p. 960), were drums of great variety in size and form, from the plank or box of some of the tribes of the North Pacific coast to the shaman’s drums of the Algonkian and Iroquoian peoples; whistles of bone, wood, pottery, &c. (often employed in ceremonies to imitate the voices of birds, animals and spirits); flageolet or flute (widely distributed and used by young men in courtship among the Siouan tribes); the musical bow (found among the Maidu of California and important in religion and sorcery). Rattles of gourd, skin, shell, wood, &., are universal, and among some of the tribes of the south-west “notched sticks are rasped together or on gourds, bones or baskets to accentuate rhythm.” From the rattle in the Pueblos region developed a sort of ball of clay or metal.
In the Arctic environment the Eskimo have conquered a severe and thankless climate by the invention and perfection of the snow-house, the dog-sled, the oil-lamp (creating and sustaining social life and making extensive migrations possible), the harpoon and the kayak or skin-boat (the acme of adaptation of individual skill to environmental demands). In the region of the Mackenzie especially the older and simpler culture of the Athabaskan stock has been much influenced by the European “civilization” of the Hudson’s Bay Company, &c., and elsewhere also by contact with Indian tribes of other stocks, for the Athabaskans everywhere have shown themselves very receptive and ready to adopt foreign elements of culture. The culture-type of the North Pacific coast, besides being unique in some respects, stands in certain relations to the culture of the Palaeo-Asiatic tribes of north-eastern Asia who belong properly with the American race. The culture of the Great Plains, which has been studied by Drs Wissler (Congr. intern. d. Amér., Quebec, 1906, vol. ii. pp. 39-52) and Kroeber (ibid.pp. 53-63), is marked by the presence of a decided uniformity in spite of the existence within this area of several physical types and a number of distinct linguistic stocks. Here thetipiand the camp-circle figure largely in material culture; innumerable ceremonies and religious practices (e.g.the “sun-dance”) occur and many societies and ceremonial organizations exist. The buffalo and later the horse have profoundly influenced the culture of this area, in which Athabaskan (Sarcee), Kitunahan, Algonkian, Siouan, Shoshonian, Kiowan tribes have shared. In some respects the Plains culture is quite recent and the result of “giving and taking” among the various peoples concerned. Some of them merely abandoned an earlier more sedentary life to hunt the buffalo on the great prairies.
The culture of the Mississippi valley region (including the Ohio, &c.) is noteworthy in pre-Columbian and immediately post-Columbian times for the development of “mound-building,” with apparently sedentary life to a large extent. In this Algonkian, Iroquoian and Siouan tribes have participated. In the region of the Great Lakes and on the Atlantic slope occurred the greatest development of the Algonkian and Iroquoian stocks, particularly in social and political activities, expressed both generally, as in the leagues and alliances (especially the famous “Iroquois League”), and individually in the appearance of great men like Hiawatha, Tecumseh, &c. The Gulf region is remarkable for the development in the southern United States of the Muskogian stock (Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, &c.), to which belonged the “civilized tribes” now part of the state of Oklahoma. In this area also, toward the west, are to be met religious ideas and institutions (e.g.among the Natchez) suggestive of an early participation in or connexion with the beginnings of a culture common to the Pueblos tribes and perhaps also to the ancestors of the civilized peoples of ancient Mexico. In some other respects the culture of this area is noteworthy. In the east also there are evidences of the influence of Arawakan culture from the West Indies. The Pueblos region has been the scene of the development of sedentary “village” life on the largest scale known in North America north of Mexico, and of arts, industries and religious ideas (rain-cult especially) corresponding, as Professor J. W. Fewkes (Rep. Smiths. Inst., 1895, pp. 683-700) has shown, most remarkably to their environment. The arid interior basin is the characteristic area of the great Shoshonian stock, here seen at its lowest level, but advancing with the Piman and other Sonoran and Nahuatlan tribes till in ancient Mexico it attained the civilization of the Aztecs. The California-Oregon area is remarkable for the multiplicity of its linguistic stocks and also for the development of many local culture-types. Within the limits of California alone Dr Kroeber (Univ. of Calif. Publ. Amer. Arch. and Ethnol.vol. ii., 1904, pp. 81-103) distinguishes at least four types of native culture.
On account of climatic conditions, in part at least, the development of agriculture in North America has not reached with many Indian tribes a high state of development, although its diffusion is much greater than is generally believed. In the south-eastern part of the United States beans, squashes, pumpkins and some other gourds and melons, potatoes, Indian corn, tobacco, a variety of the sunflower, &c., were cultivated, the growing of beans, squashes and pumpkins extending as far north as Massachusetts and the Iroquois country, in which latter also tobacco was cultivated, as the tribal name (“Tobacco Nation”) of the Tionontati indicates. The cultivation of Indian corn extended from Florida to beyond 50° N. and from the Atlantic to far beyond the Mississippi, and, to judge from the varieties found in existence, must have been known to the Indians for a very long period. In the arid region of Arizona and New Mexico a special development of agriculture occurred, made possible by the extensive use of irrigation in pre-Columbian and in more recent times. Here Indian corn, melons, beans, cotton, &c., were cultivated before the arrival of the Spaniards. For religious purposes the Zuñi appear to have selectively produced a great variety of colours in the ears of corn. Where women had much to do with agricultural operations they greatly influenced society and religious and mythological ideas. Hunting and fishing, as might be expected in an extensive and varied environment like the North American continent, exhibit a great range from simple individual hand-capture to combined efforts with traps and nets, such as the communal nets of the Eskimo, the buffalo and deer “drives” of the Plains and other Indians, with which were often associatedbrush-fences, corrals, “pounds,” pitfalls, &c., advantage taken of a naturalcul-de-sac, &c. A great variety of traps, snares, &c., was used (see Mason inAmer. Anthrop., 1899) and the dog was also of great service with certain tribes, although no special variety of hunting-dogs (except in a few cases) appears to have been developed. The accessory implements for the chase (spear, bow and arrow, harpoon, club, &c.) underwent great variation and specialization. The throwing-stick appears in the north among the Eskimo and in the south-west among the Pueblos. In the Muskogian area the blow-gun is found, and its use extended also to some of the Iroquoian tribes (Cherokee, &c.). In part of this area vegetable poisons were used to capture fish. In the New England region torch-fishing at night was in vogue. With the tribes of the Great Plains in particular the hunt developed into a great social event, and often into a more or less marked ceremonial or religious institution, with its own appropriate preliminary and subsequential rites, songs, formulae, taboos and fetishes, &c., as seene.g.among certain tribes of the Caddoan stock in very interesting fashion.
The art of transportation and navigation among the American aborigines north of Mexico has received special treatment from Mason (Rep. U.S. Nat. Mus., 1894) and Friederici, in his recent monographDie Schiffahrt der Indianer(Stuttgart, 1907). On land some of the Indian tribes made use of the dog-sled and the toboggan in winter, while the dog-travoiswas early met with in the region of the Great Plains. The Eskimo made special use of the dog-sled, but never developed snow-shoes to the same extent as did the Athabaskan and Algonkian tribes; with the last and with the Iroquoian tribes came the perfection of the skin-shoe or moccasin. In the south and south-west appear sandals. In North America the cradle, as pointed out by Professor Mason (Rep. U.S. Nat. Mus., 1894), has undergone great variation in response to environmental suggestion. No wheeled vehicle and no use of an animal other than the dog for means of transportation is known among the aborigines north of Mexico, men, women and children, women especially, having been the chief burden-bearers. Among the types of boats in use are the seal-skinkayakandumiak(woman’s boat) of the Eskimo; the bull-boat or coracle (raw-hide over willow frame) of the Missouri and the buffalo-region; the dug-out of various forms and degrees of ornamentation in divers regions from Florida to the North Pacific coast; bark-canoes (birch, elm, pine, &c.) in the Algonkian, Iroquoian and Athabaskan areas, reaching a high development in the region of the Great Lakes; the peculiar bark-canoe of the Beothuks in the form of two half ellipses; the bark-canoe of the Kootenay (a similar type occurs on the Amur in north-eastern Asia), noteworthy as having both ends pointed under water; the plank-canoes of the Santa Barbara region; the basketry-boats (coritas) of the lower Colorado and in south central California; thebalsasof tule rushes, &c., in use on the lakes and streams of California and Nevada. In various parts of the country log-rafts of a more or less crude sort were in use. No regular sail is reported from North America, although from time to time skins, blankets, &c., were used by several tribes for such purposes.
Since the appearance of Morgan’s monograph on theHouses and House-life of the American Aborigines(Washington, 1881) our knowledge of the subject has been materially increased by the studies and researches of Boas, Fewkes, Mindeleff, Dorsey, Matthews, Murdoch, Willoughby and others. The dwellings in use among the aborigines north of Mexico varied from the rude brush huts of the primitive Shoshonian tribes, and the still earlier caves, to the communal dwellings of the Iroquois and the Pueblos stocks of New Mexico and Arizona. The principal types are as follows:
Crude brush shelters and huts of the lowest Shoshonian tribes, the Apache (more elaborate), &c.; thehoganor earth-lodge of the Navaho, and the earth-lodges of certain Caddoan and Siouan tribes farther north, with similar structures even among the Aleuts of Alaska; the grass-lodge of the Caddoan tribes, still in use among the Wichita; the semi-subterranean earth-covered lodges of parts of California, &c.; the roofed pits of various styles in use in the colder north, &c.; the Eskimo snow-house and woodenkarmak; the elaborately carved and painted wooden houses of Pacific coast region (Tlingit, Haida, Nootka, &c.), some of which were originally built on platforms and entered by log-ladders; the simple wooden house of northern California; the dome-shaped bark wigwams of the Winnebago and the conical ones of many of the Algonkian tribes; the skin tents or tipis of many of the Plains peoples; the mat tents of the Nez Percé, Kootenay, &c., and the mat houses of the South Atlantic region; the circular wigwam of bark or mats banked up at the base, of the Ohio-Mississippi valley; the palmetto-house of certain Louisiana Indians; the pile-dwellings of the ancient Floridians. Communal houses of divers types were found among the Mohegans, Iroquois, &c., but are especially illustrated by the so-calledpueblosof the south-western United States, out of which grew probably the elaborate structures of ancient Mexico. Some tribes appear to have had simple and ruder summer dwellings and more elaborate or better constructed winter houses. The Eskimo have sometimes temporary hunting-lodges; the Comanches brush-shelters for summer and lodges of buffalo-skin for winter; with some tribes temporary dwellings were erected for the use of those cultivating the land. Many tribes had their “village-houses” for social purposes, like thekashimof the Eskimo. Special tipis or houses for shamans, “medicine-men,” &c., were common in many parts of North America. Secret societies had their own lodges and the so-called “men’s-house.” The houses of the North American Indians are the subject of a monograph by E. Sarfert (Arch. f. Anthr., 1908, pp. 119-215).
The art of fire-making was known to all the aborigines north of Mexico, two methods being widespread, that with flint and pyrites and that by reciprocating motion of wood on wood. For the latter several varieties of apparatus were in use, the simple two-stick apparatus was very common; the Eskimo have a four-part fire-drill and the Iroquois a weighted drill with spindle whorl. The skill displayed in fire-making by some Indians is very great, and the individual parts of the apparatus have in certain regions been highly specialized. The subject of fire-making apparatus and the kindred topic of illumination have been specially treated by Dr Walter Hough (Rep. U.S. Nat. Mus., 1890, pp. 531-587;Rep. Smiths. Inst., 1901-1902). The camp-fire, the torch and the Eskimo lamp represent the employment of fire for artificial light among the aborigines. Fire and smoke were used for signalling by the Plains tribes, &c., and fire-ceremonies form an important part (“new-fire,” “fire-dance”) of the ritual observances of not a few peoples, especially in the region from Florida to the Rio Grande. In metal-working there is up to the present no convincing evidence of the use of fire (heat only being employed to facilitate the cold-hammering processes by which the metals, copper, silver, gold and iron were manufactured into weapons, implements and ornaments) in metallurgy north of Mexico. The tools used were few and the processes simple, as Cushing (Amer. Anthrop., vol. vii., 1894) has proved by actual experiment. The only metal actually mined in large quantities was copper in the region of Lake Superior, whence came most of that employed in the east and south. In Alaska was a source of copper for the North Pacific coast. No special process of hardening copper other than by hammering was known to the Indians. The gold objects of most interest come from mounds in Florida and a few also from those in the Ohio valley. Galena was used to make simple ceremonial objects by the Indians of the Mississippi valley and the “mound-builders.”
The art of sculpture in wood, stone, bone and ivory is best represented by the wooden masks, utensils, house-carvings and totem-poles of the Indians of the North Pacific coast, the stone pipes, ornaments and images of various sorts of the “mound-builders” and other Indians of the Mississippi valley, the carvings of the people of the Floridian pile-dwellings, and the remarkable ivory carvings, sometimes minute, of the Eskimo. Noteworthy also are the slate-sculpture of the Haida, and the work in bone, ivory and deer and mountain goat horn of the British Columbian Indians. The Indians of the region south of the Great Lakes were expert in the manufacture of tobacco-pipes of great variety, among the most interesting being the Catlinite pipes of the Sioux of Minnesota, &c. Soapstone served some of the Eskimo to make lamps and some Indian tribes for other purposes. Pottery appears to have been unknown in certain regions, but flourished remarkably in the Mississippi valley and the Pueblos region of the south-west, where specialization in form and decoration occurred, and ceramic objects of all sorts were manufactured in abundance. The pottery of the Iroquoian and Algonkian tribes of the north-east was, as a rule, rather crude and undeveloped. In many places the relation of ceramic art to basketry is in evidence. Basketry, of which Professor O. T. Mason has recently made a detailed study in hisAboriginal American Basketry(Washington and New York, 1902, 1904), and related arts were carried on (especially by women) with great variety of form, decoration, material, &c., over a large portion of the continent. In North America basketry is “theprimitive art,” and here “the Indian women have left the best witness of what they could do in handiwork and expression.” The most exquisite and artistic basketry in the world comes from an utterly uncivilized tribe in California. The relation of basketry to symbolism and religion is best observable among the Hopi or Moqui of Arizona. The appreciation of white men for the products of Indian skill and genius in basketry finds full expression in G. W. James’sIndian Basketry(1900). Weaving is exemplified in the goat’s hair blanket of the Chilkat Indians (Koluschan) of Alaska, and similar products; also in the manufactures of buffalo-hair, &c., of the Indians of the Great Plains and Mississippi valley and the textile art of a higher type known to the Pueblos tribes and by some of them taught to the Navaho. Famous are the “Navaho blankets,” less so the “Chilkat.”
Feather-work and the utilization of bird-skins and feathers for dresses, hats, ornaments, &c., are known from many parts of the continent. In the Arctic regions bird-skins with the feathers on were used to make dresses; the Algonkian tribes of Virginia, &c., had their bird-skin “blankets” and “turkey robes”; the tribes of the North Pacific coast used feathers for decorative purposes of many kinds, as did Indians in other regions also; feather head-dresses and ornaments were much in use among the Plains tribes, &c.; with the Pueblos Indians eagle and turkey feathers were important in ritual and ceremony; some of the tribes of the south-east made fans of turkey feathers. Beads made from various sorts of shell, rolled copper (“mound-builders,” &c.), seeds, ivory (Eskimo) and the teeth of various animals are pre-Columbian, like the turquoise-beads of the Pueblos, and they were put to a great varietyof uses. Wampum was manufactured by many Algonkian and Iroquoian tribes, who also later produced fine specimens of work with the glass beads introduced by the whites. These glass beads made their way over most of the continent, soon driving out in many sections the older art in shell, &c. European-made wampum-beads affected native art in the 17th century. In the regions where the porcupine abounded its quills were used for purposes of ornamentation on articles of dress, objects of bark, &c., some of the Algonkian and Iroquoian tribes producing beautiful work of this sort.
Besides face and body painting, employed for various purposes and widespread over the continent, particularly in ceremonial observances, during war-time, in courting, mourning, &c., painting found expression among the North American aborigines most fully in the products of the wood art of the Indians of the North Pacific coast (masks, utensils, houses, totem-poles, furniture, &c.), in the more or less ceremonial and symbolic paintings on skins, tipi-covers and the like of some of the Plains tribes (e.g.Kiowa, Sioux) and in ceramic art, notably in the remarkable polychrome pottery of the Pueblos tribes. Among several Pueblos tribes of Arizona and New Mexico (also the Navaho and Apache and of a ruder sort among some of the Plains tribes,e.g.Cheyenne, Arapaho, Blackfeet) “dry-painting,” most highly developed in the sacred ceremonies of the Navaho, is practised and is evidently of great antiquity. The pictures of deities, natural phenomena, animals and plants are made of powdered sandstone of various colours, &c.
Pictography among the aborigines north of Mexico varied from the rude petroglyphs of some of the Shoshonian tribes to the incised work on ivory, &c., of the Eskimo and the paintings on buffalo and other animal skins by some of the Plains tribes, the work of the Pueblos Indians, &c., the nearest approach to hieroglyphics in North America outside of Mexico. Some Indian tribes (e.g.the Kootenay) seem not at all given to pictography, while many others have practised it to an almost limitless extent. The pictography and picture-writing of the North American Indians have been the subject of two detailed monographs by Mallery (4th Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol., 1882-1883, pp. 3-256;10th Rep., 1888-1889, pp. 1-1290), and the graphic art of the Eskimo has received special treatment by Hoffman (Rep. U.S. Nat. Mus., 1895). Some have argued that this ivory pictography of the Eskimo is of recent origin and due practically to the introduction of iron by the whites, but Boas thinks such a theory refuted by the resemblance of the Eskimo graphic art in question to the birch-bark art of the neighbouring Indian tribes. No real “hieroglyphs,” much less any system of writing of an alphabetic nature, have been discovered north of Mexico; the alleged specimens of such, turning up from time to time, are frauds of one sort or another.
The music and song of the American Indians north of Mexico have been studied since the time of Baker (Über die Musik der Nordamerikanischen Wilden, Leipzig, 1882) by Boas, Fillmore, Curtis, Fletcher, Stumpf, Cringan (Ann. Arch. Rep. Ont., 1902, 1905), &c. According to Miss Fletcher (Indian Story and Song, 1900; alsoPubl. Peab. Mus., 1893), “among the Indians music envelops like an atmosphere every religious tribal and social ceremony, as well as every personal experience,” and “there is not a phase of life that does not find expression in song”; music, too, is “the medium through which man holds communion with his soul and with the unseen powers which control his destiny.” Music, in fact, “is coextensive with tribal life,” and “every public ceremony as well as each important act in the career of an individual has its accompaniment of song.” Moreover, “The music of each ceremony has its peculiar rhythm, so also have the classes of songs which pertain to individual acts: fasting and prayer, setting of traps, hunting, courtship, playing of games, facing and defying death.” In structure the Indian song “follows the outline of the form which obtains in our own music,” and “the compass of songs varies from 1 to 3 octaves.” Among some of the tribes with highly developed ceremonial observances “men and women, having clear resonant voices and good musical intonation, compose the choirs which lead the singing in ceremonies and are paid for the services.” A peculiar development of music among the Eskimo is seen in the “nith-songs,” by which controversies are settled, the parties to the dispute “singing at” each other till the public laughter, &c., proclaim one the victor. Among the American Indians songs belonging to individuals, societies, clans, &c., are met with, which have to be purchased by others from the owners, and even slight mistakes in the rendition of singing, dancing, &c., are heavily penalized. Musical contests were also known (e.g.among the Indians of the Pacific coast). The development of the “tribal song” among the Iroquoian peoples is seen in Hale’sIroquois Book of Rites(1881). Songs having no words, but merely changeless vocables, are common. As Dr Boas has pointed out, the genius of the American Indian has been devoted more to the production of songs than to the invention of musical instruments. The musical instruments known to the aborigines north of Mexico, before contact with the whites, according to Miss Fletcher (Handb. of Amer. Inds., 1907, pt. i. p. 960), were drums of great variety in size and form, from the plank or box of some of the tribes of the North Pacific coast to the shaman’s drums of the Algonkian and Iroquoian peoples; whistles of bone, wood, pottery, &c. (often employed in ceremonies to imitate the voices of birds, animals and spirits); flageolet or flute (widely distributed and used by young men in courtship among the Siouan tribes); the musical bow (found among the Maidu of California and important in religion and sorcery). Rattles of gourd, skin, shell, wood, &., are universal, and among some of the tribes of the south-west “notched sticks are rasped together or on gourds, bones or baskets to accentuate rhythm.” From the rattle in the Pueblos region developed a sort of ball of clay or metal.
So far as is known, the primitive culture of the aborigines of North America is fundamentally indigenous, being the reactions of the Indian to his environment, added to whatever rude equipment of body and of mind wasCulture of Indians essentially indigenous.possessed by the human beings who at some remote epoch reached the new world from the old, if, indeed, America was not, as Ameghino, on the basis of the discoveries of fossil anthropoids and fossil man in southern South America, maintains, the scene of origin of man himself.
Professor A. H. Keane (Internat. Monthly, vol. v., 1902, pp. 338-357), Stewart Culin (Proc. Amer. Assoc. Adv. Sci.vol. lii., 1903, pp. 495-500) and Dr Richard Andree (Stzgsb. d. anthrop. Ges. in Wien, 1906, pp. 87-98) all agree as to the general autochthony of aboriginal American culture. The day of the argument for borrowing on the ground of mere resemblances in beliefs, institutions, implements, inventions, &c., is past. An admirable instance of the results of exact scientific research in this respect is to be found in Dr Franz Boas’s discussion (Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus., 1908, pp. 321-344) of the needle-cases of the Alaskan Eskimo, which were at first supposed to be of foreign (Polynesian) origin. Other examples occur in Mr Culin’s study of American Indian games, where, for the first time, the relation of certain of them in their origin and development, and sometimes also in their degeneration and decay, is made clear. The independent origin in America of many things which other races have again and again invented and re-invented in other parts of the world must now be conceded.
The extreme north-western region of North America has recently been shown to be of great importance to the ethnologists. The investigations in this part of America and among the more or less primitive peoples of north-eastern Asia, carried on by the Jesup North Pacific expedition in 1897-1902, have resulted in showing that within what may be called the “Bering Sea culture-area” transmissions of culture have taken place from north-eastern Siberia to north-western America and vice versa. The only known example, however, of the migration of any people one way or the other is the case of the Asiatic Eskimo, who are undoubtedly of American origin, and it seems probable, in the language of Dr Boas, the organizer of the Jesup expedition and the editor of its publications, that “the Chukchee, Koryak, Kamchadal and Yukaghir must be classed with the American race rather than with the Asiatic race,” and possibly also some of the other isolated Siberian tribes; also that, “in a broad classification of languages, the languages of north-eastern Siberia should be classed with the languages of America” (Proc. Intern. Congr. Amer., New York, 1902, pp. 91-102). It appears, further, that the arrival of the Eskimo on the Pacific coast (this, although not recent, is comparatively late) from their home in the interior, near or east of the Mackenzie, “interrupted at an early period the communication between the Siberian and Indian tribes, which left its trace in many cultural traits common to the peoples on both sides of the Bering Sea.”This establishment of the essential unity of the culture-type (language, mythology, certain arts, customs, beliefs, &c.) of the “Palaeo-Asiatic” peoples of north-eastern Siberia and that of the American Indians of the North Pacific coast, as demonstrated especially by the investigations of Jochelson, Bogoras, &c., is one of the most notable results of recent organized ethnological research. No such clear proof has been afforded of the theory of Polynesian influence farther south on the Pacific coast of America, believed in, more or less, by certain ethnologists (Ratzel, Mason, &c.). This theory rests largely upon resemblances in arts (clubs, masks and the like in particular), tattooing, mythicmotifs, &c. But several things here involved, if not really American in origin, are so recent that they may perhaps be accounted for by such Hawaiian and other Polynesian contact as resulted from the establishment of the whale and seal-fisheries in the 18th century.Between the Indians of North America and those of South America few instances of contact and intercommunication, or even of transference of material products and ideas, have been substantiated. It is by way of the Antilles and the Bahamas that such contact as actually occurred took place. In 1894 (Amer. Anthrop.vol. vii. p. 71-79) Professor W. H. Holmes pointed out traces of Caribbean influences in the ceramic art of the Florida-Georgia region belonging to the period just before the Columbian discovery.The decorative designs in question, paddle-stamp patterns, &c., akin to the motives on the wooden and stone stools from the Caribbean areas in the West Indies, have been found as far north as 36° in North Carolina and as far west as 84° in Tennessee and 89° in south-eastern Alabama. But the evidence does not prove the existence of Carib colonies at any time in any part of this region, but simply the migration from the West Indies to the North American coast of certain art features adopted by the Indians of the Timuquan and Muskogian Indians and (later) in part by the Cherokee. More recently (1907) Dr F. G. Speck, in a discussion of the aboriginal culture of the south-eastern states (Amer. Anthrop.vol. ix., n.s., pp. 287-295), cites as proof of Antillean or Caribbean influence in addition to that indicated by Holmes, the following: employment of the blow-gun in hunting, use of hammock as baby-cradle, peculiar storage-scaffold in one corner of house, plastering houses with clay, poisoning fish with vegetable juices. It is possible also that the North American coast may have been visited from time to time by small bodies of natives from the West Indies in search of the mythic fountain of youth (Bimini), the position of which had shifted from the Bahamas to Florida in its movement westward. Indeed, just about the time of the advent of the Europeans in this part of the world a number of Indians from Cuba, on such a quest, landed on the south-western shore of Florida, where they were captured by the Calusas, among whom they seem to have maintained a separate existence down to 1570 or later. This Arawakan colony, indicated on the map of linguistic stocks of American Indians north of Mexico, published by the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1907, is the only one demonstrated to have existed, but there may have been others of a more temporary character. In the languages of this region there are to be detected perhaps a few loan-words from Arawakan or Cariban dialects. The exaggerated ideas entertained by some authorities concerning the “mound-builders” of the valley of the Ohio and Mississippi and their alleged “civilization” have led them to assume, without adequate proof, long-continued relations of the tribes inhabiting this part of the country in the past with the ancient peoples of Yucatan and Mexico, or even an origin of their culture from beyond the Gulf. But since these mounds were in all probability wholly the work of the modern Indians of this area or their immediate ancestors, and the greater part, if not all, of the art and industry represented therein lies easily within the capacity of the aborigines of North America, the “Mexican” theory in this form appears unnecessary to explain the facts. In its support stress has been laid upon the nature of some of the copper implements and ornaments, particularly the types of elaborate repoussé work from Etowah, Georgia, &c. That the repoussé work was not beyond the skill of the Indian was shown by Cushing in his study of “Primitive Copper Working” (Amer. Anthrop.vol. vii. pp. 93-117), who did not consider the resemblance of these mound-specimens to the art of Mexico proof of extra-North American origin. Holmes (Handb. of Inds. N. of Mex., 1907, pt. i. p. 343) points out that the great mass of the copper of mounds came from the region of Lake Superior, and that had extensive intercourse between Mexico or Central America and the mound-country existed, or colonies from those southern parts been present in the area in question, artifacts of undoubtedly Mexican origin would have been found in the mounds in considerable abundance, and methods of manipulation peculiar to the south would have been much in evidence. The facts indicate at most some exotic influence from Mexico, &c., but nothing far-reaching in its effects.In the lower Mississippi valley the culture of certain peoples has been thought to contain elements (e.g.the temples and other religious institutions of the Natchez) suggestive of Mexican or Central American origin, either by inheritance from a common ancient source or by later borrowings. When one reaches the Pueblos region, with its present and its extinct “village culture,” there is considerable evidence of contact and inter-influence, if not perhaps of common origin, of culture-factors. Dr J. Walter Fewkes, a chief authority on the ethnic history of Arizona, New Mexico and the outlying areas of “Pueblos culture,” especially in its ceremonial aspects, has expressed the opinion (Amer. Anthrop.vol. vii. p. 51) that “it is not improbable that both Mexican and Pueblos cultures originated in a region in northern Mexico, developing as environment permitted in its northern and southern homes.” Unfavourable milieu in the north prevented the culture of the Pueblos Indians and the Cliff-dwellers, their ancestors, reaching the height attained in Mexico and Central America, represented by temple-architecture, ornamentation of buildings, hieroglyphs, &c. Strong evidence of Pueblos-Mexican relationship Dr Fewkes sees (Proc. Wash. Acad. Sci., 1900) in the great serpent cult of Tusayan, the “New Fire” and other Pueblos ceremonials of importance; also in the mosaic objects (gorgets, ear-pendants, breast-ornaments, &c.) from Pueblos ruins in Arizona, some of the workmanship of which equals that of similar character in old Mexico. The arid region of the south-western United States and part of northern Mexico may well have been a centre for the dispersion of such primitive, institutions and ideas as reached their acme in the country of the Aztecs. But of the Pueblos languages, the Moqui or Hopi of north-eastern Arizona is the only one showing undoubted, though not intimate, relationship with the Nahuatl of ancient Mexico. The Shoshonian family, represented in the United States by the Shoshonees, Utes, Comanches and other tribes, besides the Moqui, includes also the numerous Sonoran tribes of north-western Mexico, as well as the Nahuatl-speaking peoples farther south, some of the outliers having wandered even to Costa Rica (and perhaps to Panama). This linguistic unity of the civilized Aztecs with the rude Utes and Shoshones of the north is one of the most interesting ethnological facts in primitive America. Change of environment may have had much to do with this higher development in the south. Besides the Shoshonian, the Coahuiltecan and the Athabaskan are or have been represented in northern Mexico, the last by the Apaches and Tobosos. From the period of the Spanish colonization of New Mexico down to about the last quarter of the 19th century (and sporadically later,e.g.the attack in 1900 on the Mormon settlement in Chihuahua), these Indians have hovered around the Mexican border, &c., their predatory expeditions extending at one time as far south as Jalisco. In the far west the Yuman family of languages belongs on both sides of the border.
The extreme north-western region of North America has recently been shown to be of great importance to the ethnologists. The investigations in this part of America and among the more or less primitive peoples of north-eastern Asia, carried on by the Jesup North Pacific expedition in 1897-1902, have resulted in showing that within what may be called the “Bering Sea culture-area” transmissions of culture have taken place from north-eastern Siberia to north-western America and vice versa. The only known example, however, of the migration of any people one way or the other is the case of the Asiatic Eskimo, who are undoubtedly of American origin, and it seems probable, in the language of Dr Boas, the organizer of the Jesup expedition and the editor of its publications, that “the Chukchee, Koryak, Kamchadal and Yukaghir must be classed with the American race rather than with the Asiatic race,” and possibly also some of the other isolated Siberian tribes; also that, “in a broad classification of languages, the languages of north-eastern Siberia should be classed with the languages of America” (Proc. Intern. Congr. Amer., New York, 1902, pp. 91-102). It appears, further, that the arrival of the Eskimo on the Pacific coast (this, although not recent, is comparatively late) from their home in the interior, near or east of the Mackenzie, “interrupted at an early period the communication between the Siberian and Indian tribes, which left its trace in many cultural traits common to the peoples on both sides of the Bering Sea.”
This establishment of the essential unity of the culture-type (language, mythology, certain arts, customs, beliefs, &c.) of the “Palaeo-Asiatic” peoples of north-eastern Siberia and that of the American Indians of the North Pacific coast, as demonstrated especially by the investigations of Jochelson, Bogoras, &c., is one of the most notable results of recent organized ethnological research. No such clear proof has been afforded of the theory of Polynesian influence farther south on the Pacific coast of America, believed in, more or less, by certain ethnologists (Ratzel, Mason, &c.). This theory rests largely upon resemblances in arts (clubs, masks and the like in particular), tattooing, mythicmotifs, &c. But several things here involved, if not really American in origin, are so recent that they may perhaps be accounted for by such Hawaiian and other Polynesian contact as resulted from the establishment of the whale and seal-fisheries in the 18th century.
Between the Indians of North America and those of South America few instances of contact and intercommunication, or even of transference of material products and ideas, have been substantiated. It is by way of the Antilles and the Bahamas that such contact as actually occurred took place. In 1894 (Amer. Anthrop.vol. vii. p. 71-79) Professor W. H. Holmes pointed out traces of Caribbean influences in the ceramic art of the Florida-Georgia region belonging to the period just before the Columbian discovery.The decorative designs in question, paddle-stamp patterns, &c., akin to the motives on the wooden and stone stools from the Caribbean areas in the West Indies, have been found as far north as 36° in North Carolina and as far west as 84° in Tennessee and 89° in south-eastern Alabama. But the evidence does not prove the existence of Carib colonies at any time in any part of this region, but simply the migration from the West Indies to the North American coast of certain art features adopted by the Indians of the Timuquan and Muskogian Indians and (later) in part by the Cherokee. More recently (1907) Dr F. G. Speck, in a discussion of the aboriginal culture of the south-eastern states (Amer. Anthrop.vol. ix., n.s., pp. 287-295), cites as proof of Antillean or Caribbean influence in addition to that indicated by Holmes, the following: employment of the blow-gun in hunting, use of hammock as baby-cradle, peculiar storage-scaffold in one corner of house, plastering houses with clay, poisoning fish with vegetable juices. It is possible also that the North American coast may have been visited from time to time by small bodies of natives from the West Indies in search of the mythic fountain of youth (Bimini), the position of which had shifted from the Bahamas to Florida in its movement westward. Indeed, just about the time of the advent of the Europeans in this part of the world a number of Indians from Cuba, on such a quest, landed on the south-western shore of Florida, where they were captured by the Calusas, among whom they seem to have maintained a separate existence down to 1570 or later. This Arawakan colony, indicated on the map of linguistic stocks of American Indians north of Mexico, published by the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1907, is the only one demonstrated to have existed, but there may have been others of a more temporary character. In the languages of this region there are to be detected perhaps a few loan-words from Arawakan or Cariban dialects. The exaggerated ideas entertained by some authorities concerning the “mound-builders” of the valley of the Ohio and Mississippi and their alleged “civilization” have led them to assume, without adequate proof, long-continued relations of the tribes inhabiting this part of the country in the past with the ancient peoples of Yucatan and Mexico, or even an origin of their culture from beyond the Gulf. But since these mounds were in all probability wholly the work of the modern Indians of this area or their immediate ancestors, and the greater part, if not all, of the art and industry represented therein lies easily within the capacity of the aborigines of North America, the “Mexican” theory in this form appears unnecessary to explain the facts. In its support stress has been laid upon the nature of some of the copper implements and ornaments, particularly the types of elaborate repoussé work from Etowah, Georgia, &c. That the repoussé work was not beyond the skill of the Indian was shown by Cushing in his study of “Primitive Copper Working” (Amer. Anthrop.vol. vii. pp. 93-117), who did not consider the resemblance of these mound-specimens to the art of Mexico proof of extra-North American origin. Holmes (Handb. of Inds. N. of Mex., 1907, pt. i. p. 343) points out that the great mass of the copper of mounds came from the region of Lake Superior, and that had extensive intercourse between Mexico or Central America and the mound-country existed, or colonies from those southern parts been present in the area in question, artifacts of undoubtedly Mexican origin would have been found in the mounds in considerable abundance, and methods of manipulation peculiar to the south would have been much in evidence. The facts indicate at most some exotic influence from Mexico, &c., but nothing far-reaching in its effects.
In the lower Mississippi valley the culture of certain peoples has been thought to contain elements (e.g.the temples and other religious institutions of the Natchez) suggestive of Mexican or Central American origin, either by inheritance from a common ancient source or by later borrowings. When one reaches the Pueblos region, with its present and its extinct “village culture,” there is considerable evidence of contact and inter-influence, if not perhaps of common origin, of culture-factors. Dr J. Walter Fewkes, a chief authority on the ethnic history of Arizona, New Mexico and the outlying areas of “Pueblos culture,” especially in its ceremonial aspects, has expressed the opinion (Amer. Anthrop.vol. vii. p. 51) that “it is not improbable that both Mexican and Pueblos cultures originated in a region in northern Mexico, developing as environment permitted in its northern and southern homes.” Unfavourable milieu in the north prevented the culture of the Pueblos Indians and the Cliff-dwellers, their ancestors, reaching the height attained in Mexico and Central America, represented by temple-architecture, ornamentation of buildings, hieroglyphs, &c. Strong evidence of Pueblos-Mexican relationship Dr Fewkes sees (Proc. Wash. Acad. Sci., 1900) in the great serpent cult of Tusayan, the “New Fire” and other Pueblos ceremonials of importance; also in the mosaic objects (gorgets, ear-pendants, breast-ornaments, &c.) from Pueblos ruins in Arizona, some of the workmanship of which equals that of similar character in old Mexico. The arid region of the south-western United States and part of northern Mexico may well have been a centre for the dispersion of such primitive, institutions and ideas as reached their acme in the country of the Aztecs. But of the Pueblos languages, the Moqui or Hopi of north-eastern Arizona is the only one showing undoubted, though not intimate, relationship with the Nahuatl of ancient Mexico. The Shoshonian family, represented in the United States by the Shoshonees, Utes, Comanches and other tribes, besides the Moqui, includes also the numerous Sonoran tribes of north-western Mexico, as well as the Nahuatl-speaking peoples farther south, some of the outliers having wandered even to Costa Rica (and perhaps to Panama). This linguistic unity of the civilized Aztecs with the rude Utes and Shoshones of the north is one of the most interesting ethnological facts in primitive America. Change of environment may have had much to do with this higher development in the south. Besides the Shoshonian, the Coahuiltecan and the Athabaskan are or have been represented in northern Mexico, the last by the Apaches and Tobosos. From the period of the Spanish colonization of New Mexico down to about the last quarter of the 19th century (and sporadically later,e.g.the attack in 1900 on the Mormon settlement in Chihuahua), these Indians have hovered around the Mexican border, &c., their predatory expeditions extending at one time as far south as Jalisco. In the far west the Yuman family of languages belongs on both sides of the border.
In the popular mind the religion of the North American Indian consists practically of belief in the “Great Spirit” and the “Happy Hunting Grounds.” But while some tribes,e.g.of the Iroquoian and Caddoan stocksReligion, Mythology, &c.appear to have come reasonably near a pantheistic conception tending toward monism and monotheism, not a little of present Indian beliefs as to the “Great Spirit,” “God” and “Devil,” “Good Spirit” and “Evil Spirit,” &c., as well as concerning moral distinctions in the hereafter, can reasonably be considered the result of missionary and other influences coming directly or indirectly from the whites. The central idea in the religion and mythology of the aborigines north of Mexico is what Hewitt (Amer. Anthrop., 1902) has proposed to termorenda, from “the Iroquois name of the fictive force, principle or magic power which was assumed by the inchoate reasoning of primitive man to be inherent in every body and being of nature and in every personified attribute, property or activity belonging to each of these and conceived to be the active cause or force or dynamic energy involved in every operation or phenomenon of nature, in any manner affecting or controlling the welfare of man.” Theorendasof the innumerable beings and objects, real and imagined, in the universe differed immensely in action, function, power, &c., and in like manner varied were the efforts of man by prayers, offerings and sacrifices, ceremonies and rites of a propitiatory or sympathetic nature to influence for his own welfare the possessor of this or thatorenda, from the “high gods” to the least of all beings. Corresponding to the Iroquoianorendais thewakandaof the Siouan tribes, some aspects of which have been admirably treated by Miss Fletcher in her “Notes on Certain Beliefs concerning Will Power among the Siouan Tribes” (Science, vol. v., n.s., 1897). Other parallels oforendaare Algonkianmanito, Shoshonianpokunt, Athabaskancæn. As Hewitt points out, these Indian terms are not to be simply translated into English by such expressions as “mystery,” “magic,” “immortal,” “sorcery,” “wonderful,” &c. Man, indeed, “may sometimes possess weapons whoseorendais superior to that possessed by some of the primal beings of his cosmology.”
The main topics of the mythology of the American Indians north of Mexico have been treated by Powell in his “Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians” (First Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol., 1879-1880), and Brinton in hisAmerican Hero Myths(1876),Myths of the New World(1896) andReligions of Primitive Peoples(1900). Widespread is the idea of a culture-hero or demi-god (sometimes one of twins or even quadruplets) who is born of a human virgin, often by divine secret fecundation, and, growing up, frees the earth from monsters and evil beings, or re-fashions it in various ways, improves the breed and perfects the institutions of mankind, then retires to watch over the world from some remote resting-place, or, angered at the wickedness of men and women, leaves them, promising to return at some future time. He often figures in the great deluge legend as the friend, helper and regenerator of the human race. A typical example of these culture-heroes is the Algonkian character who appears as Nanabozho among the Ojibwa, Wisaketchak among the Cree, Napiw among the Blackfeet, Wisaka among the Sacs and Foxes, Glooscap (Kuloskap) among the Micmac,&c. (seeJourn. Amer. Folk-Lore, 1891, andHandbook of Amer. Inds., 1907), whose brother is sometimes represented as being after death the ruler of the spirit world. The Iroquoian correspondent of Nanabozho is Tehoronhiawakhon; the Siouan, in many respects, Ictinike. Among many tribes of the North Pacific coast region the culture-hero appears as the “transformer,” demi-god, human or animal in form (coyote, blue-jay, raven, &c.), the last often being tricksters and dupers of mankind and the rest of creation as well. This trickster and buffoon (also liar) element appears also in the Iroquoian and Algonkian culture-heroes and has received special treatment by Brinton (Essays of an Americanist, 1890). On the whole, the Algonkian and Iroquoian culture-hero is mainly actuated by altruistic motives, while the “transformer” of the Indians of the North Pacific coast region is often credited with producing or shaping the world, mankind and their activities as they now exist for purely egotistic purposes. Other noteworthy heroes, “reformers,” &c., among the North American Indians are the subject of legends, like the Iroquoian “Good Mind and Bad Mind,” the Algonkian (Musquaki) “Hot Hand and Cold Hand,” the Zuñian “Right Hand and Left Hand”; and numerous others, including such conceptions as the antagonism and opposition of land and water (dry and wet), summer and winter, day and night, food and famine, giants and pigmies, &c. In the matter of the personification of natural phenomena, &c., there is considerable variation, even among tribes of approximately the same state of culture. Thus,e.g.as Hewitt notes (Handbook of Amer. Inds., 1907, pt. i. p. 970), while with the Iroquoian and eastern Algonkian tribes “the Thunder people, human in form and mind and usually four in number, are most important and staunch friends of man”; in the region of the Great Lakes and westward “this conception is replaced by that of the Thunder bird.”