Gushing.] 4UO [Xov. 6, 



whom- we investigated. It is simply au indication, I tliinli, that they 

 derived it from like sea-dwelling people — very probably related to such 

 key dwellers, and who possibly had their home farther up the Gulf. 

 Not only are thei'e at present other keys extending, interruptedly, from 

 Tampa to the northwestern extremity of Florida, but between that 

 point and the Delta of the Mississippi is also another very considerable 

 group of islets which I regard as keys — ^judged by their distribution on 

 the map. Whether they are actual shell keys, or not, remains to be 

 determined. But the formations of tlie lower Mississippi are late Quater- 

 nary. Thus, in comparatively recent times, geologically speaking, we 

 may assume that the area they cover was a northwardly extension of 

 the Gulf, and that for ages later, conditions like those presented by 

 the southern marshy shorelands into which the key dwellers seem to have 

 ultimately penetrated must have prevailed, even unto comparatively 

 recent times, authropologicallj^ or historically speaking. The coast 

 farther down was shoal, and fringed with islets — some, possibly, artificial. 

 Thus the whole region was still suited to such modes of life as I have 

 referred to, even well on toward modern times. And so, from this point 

 of view, the Gulf shore and its borderlands to the north and the north- 

 east, no less than farther down, seems to have been as much an area of 

 cJiaracterization as that of the keys we examined certainly was — of the 

 southern and farther northern mound-builder culture. Therefore my 

 claim is, that the best and most primitive, that is, originative illustra- 

 tion of this that we have, is to be found in these key-dweller remains. 

 I must not be understood, however, as claiming that the mound- 

 builder phase of culture pertained wholly to descendants of the key 

 dwellers or even of sea peoples like them. Cultures belong less, prima- 

 rily, to distinct peoples than to distinct environments. An environment 

 and the essential conditions of human existence therein, makes indeed, 

 not only a culture, but goes far toward making a race ; that is, toward 

 moulding or unifying, racial traits, in whatever kind of man or kinds 

 of men come into it and there remain for a sufficient length of time.* 



I believe the relationship of the key dwellers to other Southern 

 Indians and to the more ancient mound builders, both in the South and 

 in the farther North, may, however, be regarded, as indicating more 

 than merely parallel development; that this relationship maybe consid- 

 ered as having been actual, and accultural, as well as primarily environ- 

 mental ; for the whole region of the mounds, Miiich generally corre- 

 sponded to the great flood-plain regions of the Mississippi and its mighty 

 tributaries — and in this was not unlike the shorelands of the Gulf — 



* If one but glimpse at the natives of like low sea-lands, of let us say, Borneo, Papua, 

 Southeastern Asia and certain Polynesian regions, he will see how close a parallelism 

 in arts— and probably, too, even in institutions and religion— obtains between the key 

 dwellers as indicated by their art remains, and these peoples not in any wise related to 

 them. He will see that merely by a similar condition of natural surroundings, these 

 parallelisms have lieen wrought to a point that is, in many details of the products of 

 these wide-sundered peoples, no less than astounding. 



