SAVAGISIf AND CIVILIZATION. 195 



SAYAGISM AND CIVILIZATION/ 



By HUBERT 11. BANCEOFT. 



rrillE terms savage and civilized, as applied to races of men, are 

 -L relative and not absolute terms. At best these words mark only- 

 broad shifting stages in human progress ; the one near the point of 

 departure, the other farther on toward the unattainable end. This 

 progress is one and universal, though of varying rapidity and extent ; 

 there are degrees in savagism, and there are degi*ees in civilization; 

 indeed, though placed in opposition, the one is but a degree of the 

 other. The Haidah, whom we call savage, is as much superior to the 

 Shoshone, the lowest of Americans, as the Aztec is superior to the 

 Haidah, or the European to the Aztec. Looking back some thousands 

 of ages, we of to-day are civilized ; looking forward through the same 

 duration of time, we are savages. 



Nor is it, in the absence of fixed conditions, and amid the many 

 shades of difference presented by the nations along our Western sea- 

 board, an easy matter to tell where even comparative savagism ends 

 and civilization begins. In the common acceptation of these terms, 

 we may safely call the Central Californians savage, and the Quiches 

 of Guatemala civilized ; but between these two extremes are hun- 

 dreds of peoj^les, each of v*^hich presents some claim for both distinc- 

 tions. Thus, if the domestication of ruminants, or some knowledge of 

 arts and metals, constitutes civilization, then are the ingenious but half- 

 torpid hyperboreans civilized, for the Esquimaux tame reindeer, and the 

 Thlinkeets are skillful carvers and make use of copper ; if the cultiva- 

 tion of the soil, the building of substantial houses of adobe, wood, and 

 stone, with the manufacture of cloth and pottery, denote an exodus 

 from savagism, then are the Pueblos of New Mexico no longer sav- 

 ages ; yet in both these instances enough may be seen, either of stu- 

 pidity or brutishness, to forbid our ranking them with the more ad- 

 vanced Aztecs, Mayas, and Quiches. 



We know what savages are ; how, like wild animals, they depend 

 for food and raiment upon the spontaneous products of Nature, mi- 

 grating with the beasts and birds and fishes, burrowing beneath the 

 ground, hiding in caves, or throwing over themselves a shelter of bark, 

 or skins, or branches, or boards, eating or starving as food is abundant 

 or scarce ; nevertheless, all of them have made some advancement from 

 their original naked, helpless condition, and have acquired some aids 

 in the procurement of their poor necessities. Primeval man, the only 

 real point of departure, and hence the only true savage, nowhere ex- 

 ists on the globe to-day. Be the animal man ever so low lower in 

 skill and wisdom than the brute, less active in obtaining food, less in- 

 genious in building his den the first step out of his houseless, com- 

 ' From vol. ii. of " Xative Races of the Pacific States." 



