i66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Pacific, there are others which agree best with the routes far north. 

 A remarkable piece of evidence pointed out by General Pitt-Rivers is 

 the geographical distribution of the Tartar or composite bow, which 

 in construction is unlike the long-bow, being made of several pieces 

 spliced together, and which is bent backward to string it. This dis- 

 tinctly Asiatic form may be followed across the region of Behring 

 Strait into America among the Esquimaux and northern Indians, so 

 that it can hardly be doubted that its coming into America was by a 

 northern line of migration. This important movement in culture may 

 have taken place in remotely ancient times. 



A brief account may now be given of the present state of informa- 

 tion as to movements of civilization within the double continent of 

 America. Conspicuous among these is what may be called the north- 

 ward drift of civilization, which comes well into view in the evidence 

 of botanists as to cultivated plants. Maize, though allied to, and prob- 

 ably genetically connected with, an Old World graminaceous family, 

 is distinctly American, and is believed by De Candolle to have been 

 brought into cultivation in Peru, whence it was carried from tribe to 

 tribe up into the North. To see how closely the two continents are 

 connected in civilization, one need only look at the distribution on 

 both of maize, tobacco, and cacao. It is admitted as probable that 

 from the Mexican and Central American region agriculture traveled 

 northward, and became established among the native tribes. This 

 direction may be clearly traced in a sketch of their agriculture, such 

 as is given in Mr. Lucien Carr's paper on the " Mounds of the Missis- 

 sippi Valley." The same staple cultivation passed on from place to 

 place — maize, haricots, pumpkins, for food, and tobacco for luxury. 

 Agriculture among the Indians of the Great Lakes is plainly seen to 

 have been an imported craft by the way in which it had spread to 

 some tribes but not to others. The distribution of the potter's art is 

 similarly partial, some tribes making good earthen vessels, while others 

 still boiled meat in its own skin with hot stones, so that it may well be 

 supposed that the arts of growing corn and making the earthen pot to 

 boil the hominy came together from the more civilized nations of the 

 south. With this northward drift of civilization other facts harmonize. 

 The researches of Buschmann, published by the Berlin Academy, show 

 how Aztec words have become imbedded in the languages of Sonora, 

 New Mexico, and up the western side of the continent, which could 

 not have spread there without Mexican intercourse extending far north- 

 west. This, indeed, has left many traces still discernible in the indus- 

 trial and decorative arts of the Pueblo Indians. Along the courses of 

 this northward drift of culture remain two remarkable series of struct- 

 ures probably connected with it. The casas grandes^ the fortified 

 communal barracks (if I may so call them) which provided house-room 

 for hundreds of families, excited the astonishment of the early Spanish 

 explorers, but are only beginning to be thoroughly described now that 



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