HUMAN CULTURE. 34i 



The Muskliogean area. 



If the reader will examine Merriam's temperature charts in relation 

 to zoological distribution, he will note that the color symbol of the 

 southern states of the Union extends far to the westward. He will not 

 be surprised to find that the Kocky mountains lowered their drawbridges 

 in times past for the migration of ideas. The Muskhogean tribes built 

 pyramidal mounds. They were sedentary. The men were tall and 

 mentally vigorous. Their descendants, now in the Indian Territory, 

 were capable of great enterprises. The women were skilful farmers, 

 weavers and potters. The gulf province was bi-sexual. 



The south Atlantic area. 



Southeastward from the Muskhogean area lie the Antilles, the 

 Orinoco basin, the Amazon basin, the Mato Grosso and the Pampas. 

 In them men had little to do save to hunt and fish, to fight and to 

 sleep in their hammocks. They were zootechnic, passing into phy- 

 totechnic. No great man was ever bred in such a school. The women 

 were farmers, potters, tapa-makers, spinners and hammock-knitters, 

 and there is ground for believing that in several portions of the area 

 there were settlements made up wholly of women, or Amazons (Payne, 

 Hist, of Amer., II, p. 11). 



The men in the northern portion were also water craftsmen, and 

 that evoked and trained their hand, their skill and their wits. The 

 Caribs are said to have been the only American people who colonized 

 by sea voyages. In art, men were carvers in wood and stone, attaining 

 creditable skill in Puerto Pico and Guadeloupe. However, as in other 

 areas, there was absence of solidarity. The women on the Orinoco, the 

 Amazon and the Xingu made exquisite basketry and featherwork, and 

 jewelry of teeth and seeds. They cultivated cassava and other plants, 

 and their cabins were thronged with birds of gay plumage. So lacking 

 was industrial stone in all this lowland that shell and teeth were the 

 only materials, on which account Von den Steinen humorously proposes 

 to speak of a bone and shell age of man. 



The tribes of the pampas, before the coming of the horse, had a 

 meager life. It is true that the guanaco and the rhea were at hand 

 plentifully. But the men in association with such environment were 

 not much more than clever panthers with long and sharp teeth called 

 arrows and spears. 



The women were much more cultivated, being excellent tanners and 

 making rude pottery. Their houses were only shelters of skin and 

 their art was limited to painting geometric patterns on robes. The two 

 sexes were equally non-progressive, but being amply fed they grew in 

 stature and were among the tallest Americans. 



