anthropology]
AMERICA
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the religion of tribes in their several culture provinces, it away by whalers and exploring expeditions. Two facts must be understood: (1) That the form of belief called are established—namely, that the Eskimo lived formerly animism by Tylor (more correctly speaking, personeity), farther south on the Atlantic coast, and that, aboriginally, was universal; everything was somebody, alive, sentient, they were not specially adept in carving and etching. thoughtful, wilful. This personeity lifts the majority of The old apparatus of hunting and fishing is quite primiearthly phenomena out of the merely physical world and tive. The Dene province in Alaska and North-western places them in the spirit world. Theology and science Canada yields nothing to the spade. Algonkin-Iroquois are one. All is supernatural, wahan. (2) That there Canada, thanks to the Geological Survey and the Departexisted more than one self or soul or shade in any one of ment of Education in Ontario, has revealed old Indian these personalities, and these shades had the power not camps, mounds, and earthworks along the northern drainage only to go away, but to transform their bodily tenements of Lakes Erie and Ontario, and pottery in a curved line at will; a bird, by raising its head, could become a man; from Montreal to Lake of the Woods. Throughout Eastern the latter, by going on all fours, could become a deer. United States shell-heaps, quarries, workshops, and camp (3) That the regulative side of the spirit world was the sites are in abundance. The Sioux and the Muskhogee natural outcome of the clan social system and the tribal province is the mound area, which extends also into Canada government in each tribe. Even one’s personal name had along the Red river. The forms of these are earth-heaps, reference to the world of ghosts. The affirmation that conical mounds, walls of earth, rectangular pyramids, and American aborigines believed in an all-pervading, omni- effigies. Thomas sums up the work of the Bureau of potent Spirit is entirely inconsistent with the very nature Ethnology upon the structure, contents, and distribution of the case. (4) Worship was everywhere dramatic. Only of these earth monuments, over a vast area from which here and there among the higher tribes were bloody sacri- adobe, building stone, and stone-working material were absent. No writings have been recovered, the artizans fices in vogue, and prayers were in pantomime. In the culture areas the environment gave specific shaping small objects in stone were specially gifted, the characters to the religion. In the Arctic province the potters in only a few places approached those of the overpowering influence pf meteorological phenomena mani- Pueblos, the fine art was poor, and relics found in the fested itself both in the doctrine of shades and in their mounds do not indicate in their makers a grade of culture shamanistic practices. The raven created the world. above that of the Indian tribes near by. The archaeology The Dene myths resembled those of the Eskimo, and all of the Pacific slope, from the Aleutian Islands, is written the hunting tribes of Eastern Canada and United States in shell-heaps, village sites, caves, and burial-places. The and the Mississippi Valley have a mythology based upon relics of bone, antler, stone, shell, and copper are of yestertheir zootechny and their totemism. The religious con- day. Even the Calaveras man is no exception, since his ceptions of the fishing tribes on the Pacific coast between skull and his polished conical pestle, the latter made of Mount St Elias and the Columbia river are worked out stone more recent than the auriferous gravels, show him to by Boas; the transformation from the hunting to the have been of Digger Indian type. In Utah begin the ruins agricultural mode of life was accompanied by changes in of the Pueblo culture. These cover Arizona and New belief and worship quite as radical. These have been Mexico, with extensions into Colorado on the north and carefully studied by Cushing, Stevenson, and Fewkes. Mexico on the south. The reports of work done in this The pompous ceremonials of the civilized tribes of Mexico province for several years past form a library of text and and the Cordilleras in South America, when analysed, illustration. Cliff dwellings, cavate houses, pueblos, and reveal only a higher grade of the prevailing idea. Im casas are all brought into a series without a break by Thurn says of the Carib: “All objects, animate and Bandelier, Cushing, Fewkes, Holmes, Mindeleff, Nordeninanimate, seem exactly of the same nature, except that skiold, Powell, and Stevenson. From Casa Grande, in they differ in the accident of bodily form.” These mytho- Chihuahua, to Quemada, in Zacatecas, Lumholtz found logical ideas and symbols of the American aborigines survivals of the cliff dwellers. Between Quemada and were woven in their textiles, painted on their robes and Copan, in Honduras, is an unbroken series of mural furniture, burned into their pottery, drawn in sand mosaics structures. The traditions agree with the monuments, on deserts, and perpetuated in the only sculptures worthy whatever may be objected to assigning any one ruin to of the name, in wood and stone. They are inseparable the Toltec, the Chichimec, or the Nahuatl, that there are from industry; language, social organization, and custom distinct varieties in ground - plan, motives, stone-craft, wait upon them : they explain the universe in the savage wall decorations, and sculptures. Among these splendours in stone the following recent explorers must be the mind. . The archaeology of the western hemisphere should be student’s guide:—Charnay, Forstemann, Goodman, Gordon, divided as follows : (1) that of Indian activities ; (2) the Holmes, Maudslay, Mercer, Sapper, Saville, Seler, Thomas, question of man’s existence in a prior geological Thompson. A list of the ruins, printed in the handbook Archaeo= peiq0(p There is no dividing line between first- on Mexico published by the Department of State in losy ' contact ethnology and pre-contact archaeology. Washington, covers several pages. The special characterHistorians of this time, both north and south of Panama, istics of each are to be seen partly in the skill and genius described tools and products of activities similar to those of their makers, and partly in the exigencies of the site taken from beneath the soil near by. The archaeologist and the available materials. A fascinating study in this recovers his specimens from waste places, cave deposits, connexion is that of the water-supply. The cenotes or abandoned villages, caches, shell-heaps, refuse heaps, en- underground reservoirs were the important factors in closures, mounds, hut rings, earthworks, garden beds, locating the ruins of Northern Yucatan. From Honduras quarries and workshops, petroglyphs, trails, graves and to Panama the urn burials, the pottery, the rude carved cemeteries, cliff and cavate dwellings, ancient pueblos, images, and, above all, the grotesque jewellery, absorb archaeologist’s attention. ruined stone dwellings, forts and temples, canals or theBeyond Chiriqui southward is El Dorado. Here also reservoirs. The relics found in these places are material bewildering products of ancient metallurgy tax the imaginarecords of language, industries, fine arts, social life, lore, as to the processes involved, and questions of acculand religion. . , ,, tion turation also interfere with true scientific results. The Here and there in the Arctic province remains of old village sites have been examined, and collections brought fact remains, however, that the curious metal craft of the
