30 ■ SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 93 



THE ENVIRONMENTAL SETTING 



Although the foregoing section has presupposed considerable fa- 

 miharity with the surface geography of Nebraska and immediately ad- 

 jacent regions, it seems necessary to proceed somewhat farther in 

 visualizing the area from the standpoint of human ecology. The 

 historic Indian culture of the Great Plains of North America is often 

 cited as a particularly good example of cultural uniformity resulting 

 from a vast but very similar environmental background marked by 

 no important natural barriers to hinder amalgamation. The problem 

 at once arises as to whether this late uniform culture is the result of 

 cultural accidents, such as the acquisition of the horse and the pressure 

 of an alien population from the east, or if its cause might be truly 

 environmental. Lacking any actual historical insight into the prehistory 

 of the Plains, the environmental explanation seems at present to have 

 gained the ascendancy. As archeological research proceeds in this 

 area we can at last begin to check general theory against actual fact. 

 If the prehistoric cultures can be demonstrated as possessing the same 

 general uniformity which the historic Plains tribes shared, late cul- 

 tural factors can be ruled out and the role of the environment as 

 a direct cultural determinant be defined. But if a more complex 

 prehistoric picture is thus presented, it would seem that cultural causes 

 must be sought, not only for the more or less uniform historic pattern 

 but for the varied prehistoric manifestations as well. Thus the Great 

 Plains, as has long been recognized, constitute a unique and splendid 

 laboratory for the study of man in relation to his environment. Few 

 major physiographic areas of the world have received and are receiv- 

 ing such thorough geologic, paleontologic, and geographic study, and 

 of no similar area is so much already on record concerning the native 

 nonindustrialized mode of life characteristic of its aboriginal inhabi- 

 tants. As we trace the human record of the Plains back toward its 

 beginnings, which, incidentally, appear to recede in a remarkable 

 manner as we approach, we deal with a section of human history 

 pregnant with possibilities for distinguishing major trends and de- 

 terminants of human cultural development. Such major correlations 

 and conclusions, however, are for the future. At present, from the 

 anthropological standpoint, we know a great deal about the ethnology 

 of the northern plains, less about that of the southern plains, and 

 practically nothing concerning the prehistory of either section. 



If the territory of some 77,500 square miles comprising the State 

 of Nebraska is considered in relation to the rest of the United States 

 solely on the basis of structure, it falls entirely into one major physical 



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