Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/257

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GODDARD] UTO-AZTECAN 245

able uniformity, a common language, and a common general culture.

It is perhaps permissible to consider this the normal, expected condition. When such correlations do not exist interf erring con- ditions are to be sought. An African race speaking English in North America is certainly unusual enough to require an explana- tion.

If a Siouan language is found near the south Atlantic coast of' North America, one quite naturally speaks of a movement of peoples from the Plains region which carried the language southeastward. It is fairly proper to attempt a reconstruction of the distribution of the population in America on the basis of a correlation of language and physical type bearing in mind however that this correlation does not depend upon a casual relation. One of the main difficulties in such attempts at reconstruction has been the intangibility of the characterizations of the physical strains. Even when to an expe- rienced eye the biological differences in tribes can be recognized, it has been difficult to reduce these observations to a statement or formula. The Eskimo are an exception. Prevailing longheaded- ness also is sufficiently uncommon to differentiate an occasional group.

Particularly interesting has been the differentiation in southern Utah of two types of culture. One of these is known as Cliff- dweller and the other Basket-maker. The former built many- roomed stone houses, and made several varieties of pottery. The latter did not build permanent houses, and made little pottery. That the basket-making peoples did not acquire the house-building, pottery-making habits, was demonstrated when it was observed that basket burials were always associated with the remains of people with unusually long heads which were in no instance de- formed. The stone house-building people practised the flattening of the back of the head. Even if the heads had not been shortened artificially they are prevailingly less long than those of the basket- making people.

Now these basket-making people had certain elements of culture which connect them with the far south. They are in fact the

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