356 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



to follow the game or visit the favourite root-gathering spots ac- 

 cording to season, again militates against the formation of large and 

 complexly organized social units. 



The economic basis of a people is of course not in every case 

 simply determined by the character of the country inhabited, for, 

 with the increase of culture, means are evolved whereby the diffi- 

 culties of an unfavourable environment are largely conquered. We 

 need only point out that the limitations enforced by the semi-arid 

 country referred to on the present inhabitants of the region are vastly 

 different from those enforced on the Shoshonean tribes who preceded 

 them. There are, indeed, numerous analogous cases among the In- 

 dians themselves. Thus, the Pueblo tribes of New Mexico and 

 Arizona, while occupying the same general region as their neighbours 

 the Navaho, differ vastly in social organization from these. While 

 the Navaho are a nomadic sheep-raising people forced by their manner 

 of life to cover a vast territory and to split up into a large number of 

 small groups, which form into larger bodies only at the ritual per- 

 formances that bring the people together from time to time, the 

 Pueblos are enabled by their intensive system of agriculture to form 

 into perfectly coherent well-knit communities that are housed in 

 permanent villages comparable in many ways to our own towns. 

 Here the conditions are evidently favourable for the development of 

 authority vested in certain individuals and of a number of complex 

 social inter-relations. Similarly, it seems not improbable that the 

 more intensive pursuit of agriculture by the Iroquoian tribes than by 

 their Algonkian neighbours, among whom hunting occupied a rela- 

 tively more important place economically, was fundamentally re- 

 sponsible for the greater social and political elaboration characteristic 

 of the former. 



I do not, of course, mean to urge that a type of social organi- 

 zation is directly dependent on economic factors to the exclusion of 

 everything else. As a matter of fact, it is perfectly clear that many 

 historic causes may bring about social developments in no way con- 

 nected with the economic status of the community. For one thing, 

 no group of people is ever entirely isolated and free to develop entirely 

 from within and as influenced by purely environmental causes. The 

 influence exerted by neighbouring peoples must always be borne in 

 mind, and frequently enough in America we find that much in the 

 social constitution of certain tribes remains unintelligible until we 

 take into consideration the stimulus of contact with neighbour- 

 ing tribes. Thus, there is no doubt that the so-called Wabanaki 

 Confederacy of certain Eastern Algonkian tribes was brought 

 into being largely by the suggestive influence of the powerful 



