The North-Americans of yesterday

THE basis of this volume is eight lectures given before the Lowell Institute in Boston in 1894. They have been expanded by the addition of further matter relating to the various subjects, but even with these additions there is but a brief résumé of the vast store of material extant.

The “Indian” has never seemed to me an abnormal factor, but rather a natural part of our society, for it is now nearly thirty years since I first associated with him in the Far West, and before that the Iroquois were familiar to me as a small boy. When I first went among the Western tribes, it was with the second Colorado River expedition of that gallant explorer and foremost student of Amerindian affairs, John Wesley Powell. His own works and the reports of the United States Bureau of Ethnology, of which he has so long been the head, and where he has gathered together so many eminent ethnologists and archæologists, have furnished me with much material. These reports form a fine library on Amerindian matters, and reflect great honour on Professor Powell who conceived the idea, and on Congress which has ungrudgingly supported it. A great and timely work has become established, which to private enterprise would have been next to impossible. Add to these the invaluable reports of the Smithsonian Institution and the memoirs and reports of the Peabody Museum and American Museum, and the student has before him a large fund of material without seeking farther. Then there are the brilliant works of Parkman, Brinton, Winsor, Bandelier, Putnam, Morgan, Schoolcraft, Prescott, Maudsley, Goodman, Wilson, Keane, and many others, with the huge production of H. H. Bancroft filling an important place. To all of these and to others I owe much, and I have intended in every case to give credit and references. Where these, in some cases, may not have been properly awarded, it is due to oversight and not to intention. My especial thanks are due to the Bureau of Ethnology for copies of all the reports, and for permission to utilise the illustrations contained in them, and to the American Museum, Archæological Institute, Field Columbian Museum, Peabody Museum, and Smithsonian Institution for similar generosity. I take pleasure also in acknowledging favours from Professor Putnam, Professor Powell, Professor Mason, Dr. McGee, Mr. Saville, Professor Seymour, Professor Langley, Mr. Bancroft, Professor Holmes, Dr. Baum, and others, and from Mr. E. H. Harriman the opportunity of visiting Alaska under the most favourable circumstances.

The title, The North Americans of Yesterday, seems to me appropriate, because while there are still some Amerinds extant, and a few are even yet apparently leading the old-time life, nevertheless they are merely remnants of a people whose sun has set, and who therefore properly belong to yesterday. For this reason I have mainly treated them as a bygone race. Between the so-called “Red Indian” of the United States and northern regions and the so-called “Civilised Tribes” of Mexico and southern regions I have made no race differentiation, because the differences, whatever they may be, are discovered to be not of kind, but of degree. Confusion was formerly caused by misconceptions and by romantic ideas which have been dispelled by the more scientific methods of later days. Some confusion has been caused also by the persistent efforts to classify the progress of mankind as a whole into distinct world-epochs or time periods. It seems to me that no such universal epochs of even progress could have existed in past time any more than in present time. Tribes of men are differentiated now, always will be, and, I believe, always have been. Common world-planes of culture in time periods are an impossibility. Such schedules as Morgan’s may apply to tribes and stocks as indicating their special, individual advance, but not to the whole world, except in a very general way. That is, they may be culture but never time classifications. The closer we approach the beginnings of man’s existence, the less marked, perhaps, the differences in tribes, but differences certainly began at the moment when one group of men left another group of men to live apart. The environment and necessities of each group would cause differences and varying rates of progress. One group would gain the bow a thousand years before another.

Long before the beginning of the glacial period, therefore, some groups must have been far ahead of others, and in the manufacture of stone implements some tribes excelled others; some making ruder ones than others, and some perhaps making well-finished, polished tools. There are a good many arrow- and spear-head shapes, and it is possible that each form originated at a different time or in a different locality. And in our present state of knowledge of these matters, no time position can be assigned to many American stone tools, polished or not. They may have been used over and over again by various tribes for centuries, or for a thousand years, or they may have been made by tribes of our own day. Some of these tribes made no smoothed or polished implements, though otherwise of advanced type, and polished implements have been found that may be many thousand years old. This is no indication that tribes do not change, but that development began and continues unevenly, and that tribes existed ten thousand or more years ago that were in advance of some that are extant to-day. Nobody can say whether the stone implements, rough or smooth, that have been found in Chiriqui belong to comparatively modern or to very ancient times. The whole subject of stone implements appears to be in a chaotic state, mummified and petrified by a slavish respect and devotion to European patterns. It is a case of cart before the horse. It will be apparent that I do not consider the finish of stone tools, in the present state of our understanding of them, any guide for a world-classification of peoples in a time-scale, especially in North America. This has been admitted by others back to a certain point, but beyond that point they have continued to play follow-the-leader with their world-classifications of “Paleolithic” and “Neolithic,” two of the most confusing, misleading, and useless terms ever invented. Below the limit of the ice action there is nothing to fix the age of stone tools when found on the surface or near it. “Paleoliths” and “neoliths” might therefore be picked up side by side, and the paleolith might not be as old as the neolith, or both might be of the same age. And if a well-made tool, or one resembling some of to-day, is found in an ancient gravel, it does not necessarily mean an intrusion, but that men lived in that far past who were more skilful than some of their neighbours, and more skilful than we have heretofore been willing to admit. That very ancient men made very rude tools is doubtless true, but that all ancient men made rough tools of the same style down to a certain fixed time, and then all began on an improved or a smoothed type, is undoubtedly wrong.

How the Amerinds came here I explain by a theory that there was before, or perhaps during the early part of the glacial period, a wider distribution of land surfaces on latitudinal lines, which invited latitudinal migrations.[1] These land surfaces may have been no more than groups of larger or smaller islands which have been since wholly submerged or have left only their highest parts above the sea. Before the beginning of the glacial cold, a mild climate extended to the North Pole, facilitating migrations also in that region. Changes in the ocean’s bottom were probably greater in pre-glacial time than now, but they have not altogether ceased. It is little more than fifteen years since a new island appeared off the Aleutian chain, and I think it is doubtful if any of that group existed above water six or eight hundred years ago. I am also of the opinion that no human life was in Alaska or in Northeast Siberia five hundred years back.

Races not being all of an even grade of culture before the beginning of the cold period any more than now, the tribes that found themselves isolated on this continent by changes in the land levels and by the southward extension of the glaciation, were unevenly developed, some being in advance of others in various ways, though none, of course, had passed beyond the use of stone tools, a condition in which they practically continued down to the Discovery. In this respect the term, “Stone Age,” as indicating a condition, is applicable, but it would not be possible to differentiate it into “Paleolithic” and “Neolithic” periods. The cold pushed them all southward, whether they came by northlands or by latitudinal lands, or both, towards the narrow funnel-like part of the continent, and also to the lower levels, as there was no chance for latitudinal expansion as in the Eastern Hemisphere, the most advanced tribes being the most southerly, if not from original position, because they were able to choose. Eventually communication with Asia and Europe by the north was by the glaciation severed completely, as it had previously been latitudinally by the disappearance of favourable land surfaces, and communication by the north remained closed till within three or four hundred years. The most crowded tribes developed most rapidly, because such development was imperative for self-preservation, and their culture filtered through in diminishing ratio, according to distance, to the less crowded regions—that is, to the climatically less favourable regions; but all who were closely crowded into the “funnel” progressed along similar lines and in much the same degree, without regard to relationships, so that we find in the narrow part of the continent, where the largest number found refuge from the cold, many different stocks in almost parallel stages of culture. There were no isolated “areas of characterisation” as in the latitudinally broader lands of the Eastern Hemisphere, though in some cases there were slight barriers tending to produce or maintain slight variations. The long longitudinal chain of the Sierra Nevada abounding in glaciers to a late date, and to a less extent that of the Rocky Mountains, brought about a partial isolation of the stocks in the great north-and-south migrations, maintaining previous differences and originating others, so that now we distinguish differences between what is called the Atlantic and what is called the Pacific group, while they are yet practically the same.[2] The tribes farthest advanced at the beginning of the isolation on this continent would not necessarily continue at the front of progress, for a change of conditions that might cripple such tribes might at the same time be beneficial to others previously inferior. For instance, as the heat gradually returned, the highly developed lowland tribes began to find themselves at a disadvantage, which grew with the intensity of the heat, while others, inured to harsher conditions, found warmth stimulating, and they began to develop germs received from the superior but now declining stocks. “The American Indians,” says Brinton, “cannot bear the heat of the tropics even as well as the European.” The heat, which at first seems to have been intense in the daytime, then caused a decline of the highest stocks, and a corresponding progression of lower stocks existing on, or migrating to, higher levels. The Yucatec tribes declined, while the Nahuatls, at higher altitudes, began to develop. The finest monuments of North American antiquity, for these reasons, are generally found on comparatively low levels and below a certain latitude, where conditions during the greatest cold were most favourable; conditions that may have continued fairly favourable down to within, say, a thousand years.

Long before the dawn of the Columbian era, therefore, the Amerind peoples had become, through the influences indicated, a world-race by themselves, existing in various stages of the same general culture, and with a rising and a declining of tribes and stocks directed by environment and circumstances. The great stocks surviving at the beginning of the Columbian era may be approximately traced by their languages, in layers, from Panama northward, about as they expanded mainly eastward of the Sierra Nevada in response to the gradual relief from the pressure of the cold. The Yucatec tribes had held the region south of the Tehuantepec isthmus, and owing to this slight barrier, and perhaps to another barrier of a strait through the land about on the line of the proposed Nicaragua canal, had developed somewhat differently from tribes to the north, and may also have preserved more of their original character. Thence stretching north far into the United States was the great composite Shoshone, or Uto-Aztecan family, in all its variations, with what appears to be an “island” of Athapascans or Boreal men preserved in its midst by glacial conditions lingering in the high regions near the Mexico-United States line; then follows the Siouan; then the widespread Algonquian stock; next the Athapascan; and finally the Eskimauan, which had always been held against the edge of the glaciers by the back pressure of the southern stocks, and being most remote was less affected by filtration from the development centre, and thus remains to-day a more differentiated stock than any other.[3] The western arm of these stocks was generally farther north than the eastern because the climate was and is milder in the west, the trend of the ice front being now, and apparently always having been, N.W. to S.E. Distribution of skill in pottery follows about the same lines, “petering” out with stocks farthest from the Yucatec centre. The Algonquins crowded the Athapascans off to the N.W., and together they crowded the Eskimo to the limits of human subsistence. In California many stocks found refuge in a climate kept comparatively mild by the ocean currents, where they secured subsistence on fish, and went no farther south. Along the Gulf coast were other tribes resting somewhat aside from the great continental ebb and flow, while in Florida and in the islands of the Caribbean region there was sufficient separation to produce a slight differentiation from the surging continental stocks. Remnants of other stocks were scattered here and there through the regions below the glaciated area. Mingled with all these developments there were probably certain traits and “tinges” derived from earlier ancestry, and these, with the similarity of development of all races under like conditions prevailing wherever human beings can live, fully account for resemblances to other-world tribes and peoples that have caused so much speculation.

There has been an error, I believe, in considering the glacial period as of the remote past. It does not seem to have yet closed. It influences our climate now, and probably a thousand years ago its meteorological effects were marked as far south as Yucatan. The glaciers of the Northern Hemisphere everywhere appear to be slowly disappearing, and not so slowly either, if the Muir can be taken as a gauge, for it has been for twenty years receding at the rate of 500 feet per annum, and probably at the same rate before that. However this may be, it is probably less than 5000 years since the ice front was at Lake Erie. Eminent geologists have estimated it at less than 7000, based on the erosion at Niagara; but as the erosion immediately following the disappearance of the ice is extremely rapid, it seems safe to cut down the estimate. The subtleties of meteorology are far from being understood also, and the theories as to the causes of the cold seem mere guesses. Considerable heat there must have been during the glacial period, or there would have been no glaciers.

On the theory of the ethnic unity of the Amerind people, I have briefly brought together in chapters notes on their chief habits, products, languages, etc., so that the reader may be able to compare. In collecting material that is now obtainable, but which will shortly be gone forever, much remains to be done, and to be done quickly. If this book helps to arouse a deeper public interest in the gathering of this material, and in the general study of the subject, I shall feel it needs no apology.

New York, January 31, 1900.