48 BULLETIN 15 6, UaSTITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



ing, according to Swanton, far into northern Mexico and reaching 

 from the Gulf of Mexico to the headwaters of the Snake River in 

 northwestern United States. 



The possibility of contact between the culture of the Southeast and that 

 of Mexico has been artificially enhanced by confounding and identifying the 

 area of ancient Mexican civilization with the territory of the modern Kepul)lic. 

 But, while the latter stretches northeast as far as the Rio Grande, the Aztec 

 or Mexican State proper was more than 400 miles southwest of that river in 

 a direct line. There were other of the so-called civilized tribes less distant, 

 but the nearest of these, the Huastec, were still more than 200 miles south 

 of the Rio Grande. The intervening territory was occupied by numerous 

 small tribes without any pretensions to an advanced culture and so difficult 

 to subdue that, although the Huastec were conquered by Cortez early in the 

 sixteenth century, these wild peoples did not succumb until well along in the 

 eighteenth. Populations of an identical character and status extended beyond 

 them as far as the Caddo — the Coahuiltecan tribes, the Tonkawa, and the 

 Karankawa — described tersely on the maps as wandering and cannibal people, 

 and pictured by Cabeza de Vaca, the companions of La Salle, and later explor- 

 ers of all nationalities as exceedingly crude and barbarous. To find the like 

 in North America we should have to go to the cold northern interior, or the 

 arid districts of the Great Interior Basin and Lower California. And this 

 cultural " sink," to borrow a geological term, extended considerably over 600 

 miles in a direct line from the Huastec boundaries to the neai-est Caddo towns. 

 Measuring along the coast, which might be thought by some a more natural 

 line of movement, it would be 50 or 100 miles farther to Vermillion Bay. 

 The nearest points between these two cultures were thus as far apart as 

 Washington and Chicago or Columbus and Kansas City. If any Southeastern 

 cultural features came by this route, they must, therefore, have been trans- 

 ported for this immense distance before establishing themselves again, sa 

 that even in the case of single cultural elements, with which we are now 

 concerned, the problem must be recognized as a serious one." 



Thus we have, first, an eastern pottery area bounded by the Gulf 

 of Mexico on the south, the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Labrador 

 and the sub-boreal regions of northern Canada on the north, and 

 the plains area and adjoining Rocky Mountain region on the west; 

 second, a middle American area, which extends all the way from the 

 Isthmus northward to the headwaters of the Colorado River, form- 

 ing a wedge of middle American culture extended northward by 

 pueblo building and allied tribes. 



Tribes of the Pacific coast territory north of central California, 

 also of the basin of the Columbia River and tributary streams, the 

 forested, island-studded coast of British Columbia and of southeast- 

 ern Alaska, also of the entire Canadian sub-boreal region unsuitable 

 for the production of maize, did not develop the manufacture of 

 aboriginal pottery, although the western tribes occupying the area 

 reached a remarkable degree of attainment in other primitive indus- 

 tries, notably in basketry, and in the carving of stone and wood. 



^ Swanton, J. R., Southern Contacts of the Indians North of the Gulf of Mexico, 20tb 

 Ann. Congr. Int. Americanists, pp. 53-59, Rio de Janeiro, 1924. 



