1896.J '*<J * rBrinton. 



Mayas at Yucatan. We know therefore that commerce between 

 them once existed ; and no doubt many elements of culture passed over 

 from Yucatan to the western portion of Cuba. We cannot trace it now 

 on account of the total destruction of the Cubans at an early period ; 

 and also because investigations have not been carefully made there for 

 archaeological purposes ; but we know the facts ; we know that the 

 Mayas did extend to Cuba, though they had no permanent settlements 

 there. The native languages in Florida — there are really only two so 

 far as the original names are concerned — were the Choctaw and the 

 Timuquanan. In the Antilles, in the Bahamas, and in the whole coast 

 of South America from the mouth of the Orinoco eastward to the mouth 

 of the Amazon, the country was covered exclusively by Arawak vil- 

 lages. They migrated from the south to the north. We can trace 

 them back to the highlands of Bolivia, where their ancestral stock still 

 remains. Their historj^ can be followed linguistically and culturallj' 

 from the central crestline of South America coming northward. They 

 reached the West India Islands, probably, at no great time anterior to 

 their discovery. It might have been 500 years, or 1000. We have not 

 found on these islands any signs of culture, other than distinctly Arawak 

 or Antillean in character. 



It would appear, therefore, from these various lines of argument — his- 

 toric, cultural and linguistic — that we can discern a distinct develop- 

 ment, local in character, ethnic in its traits, of a North American cul- 

 ture. There are, to be sure, many strange points of similarity between 

 that and the Central American and South American culture ; but, as has 

 been said by an eminent American archfeologist, "Wherever j-ou find 

 the American Indian, you find him tarred with the same stick." He is 

 always developing under ethnic conditions towards a culture which is 

 similar everywhere. That is shown in many instances where we come 

 to study out an J' Indian development. Take this one of masks ; if we 

 compare the general character of those masks with those which we find 

 elsewhere (still preserved in actual use) we find a similarity in the 

 traits of them all. American culture is in one sense everywhere the 

 same. It is everywhere the same in its origin and in its lines of develop- 

 ment, although they are deeply influenced by ethnic and local pecu- 

 liarities. 



I do not think the culture which has been exhibited here to-night — 

 strange and remarkable and most instructive as it is — has any pecu- 

 liarities which are in themselves broadly distinct from those in the 

 Choctaw district of northern Georgia and in the mounds there. Her- 

 nando de Soto, when about 1540 he made that exploration, found an 

 extremely high state of native civilization throughout northern 

 Georgia. He passed through that region where we find now the 

 Etowah mounds ; he found people there who knew something about the 

 use of gold and silver and who were in what we might call a copper 

 age ; and he encountered a people so highly developed that the his- 

 torians who accompanied him all expressed their admiration at it. The 



