164 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 19()0. 



existinj^ in temperate Asia should be preserved throug-hout the centuries 

 of migration and struggle and appear in California so unchanged as 

 to be identified with a given Asiatic tongue to-day is not to be expected, 

 and it is manifest folly to continue the search for traces of Asiatic arts 

 and industries other than those that may have been transferred in 

 recent times ])y means of modern ships. Every art, save the most 

 elementary, woidd ])e lost or transformed in passing the frigid gate- 

 way. Religion, social institutions, government, industries, all would 

 change with changing conditions and be remodeled in each of the 

 numerous distinctive environments encountered between Tartary and 

 California. Agriculture, pastoral arts, metallurgy, ceramics, and all 

 forms of domestic art would be obliterated, and other activities, such 

 as weaving, stone-shaping, house-building, hunting, and fishing, would 

 be so completely modified that no knowledge of original practices 

 would remain in the mind of any individual or be preserved in any 

 tradition. What is now found, old or new, in the culture of California, 

 is America's own, if not, indeed, fully and absolutely Californian. 

 The incoming populations of the coast had to discover the metals, and 

 could not have developed the arts of using them until ages after reach- 

 ing the temperate zone. Clay existed everywhere in plent}^ but tribes 

 arriving from the far north would be slow to discover its use in the 

 arts and cast aside inherited arctic forms of utensils. It has not yet 

 in any part of the coast usurped the place of skin, bark, and wood in 

 vessel making, although neighboring provinces on the east and south 

 have been potters for many centuries. Before soapstone came into use 

 it had to be found in far out of the way places; and the group of mill- 

 ing arts, now so important a feature in the economy of the people, 

 had no prototypes in the frigid zone, where the diet was exclusively 

 animal. It would be useless even to guess at the time required for the 

 development of the group of arts and industries characterizing the 

 aboriginal culture of California. 



Study of analogies in blood and culture, with the view of establish- 

 ing more than the most general relationships between American and 

 transoceanic nations, has been and no doubt will be quite in vain. 

 The question of a possible very ancient autochthonic people is some- 

 times raised, but as 3"et there is apparently no sufficient basis upon 

 which to discuss the proposition. If there were such people in America 

 they must now be merged fuU}^ into the Asiatic populations of the 

 present period. The same would be true also of the culture. We 

 may well pursue the study of Californian archaeology with practical 

 certainty that, whatever the origin of the people, we are, in the main, 

 elucidating local and sublocal culture. With language it is different. 

 Although changing rapidly with altered conditions, speech has little 

 tendency toward uniformity among distinct nations. Twenty peoples 

 coming from different regions to California, bringing as many distinct 



