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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



the periphery. As he mentally contin- 

 ued to descend the pyramid, he was 

 simultaneously retrogressing in time, 

 descending in the scale of culture, and 

 spreading geographically; which is but 

 another way of representing the same 

 thing that I have been trying to picture 

 in terms of space alone. 



We can then accurately speak of the 

 center and chief origin of our generic 

 Southwestern Indian culture as being 

 located among these four Pueblo 

 groups. Even within the narrow 

 Pueblo region it is practically certain 

 that at some time in the past, perhaps 

 a thousand years ago, the intensest 

 focus or acme of the culture was in the 

 San Juan drainage district, Avhere 

 there are no Pueblos at all now ; and at 

 some later time, but still before the dis- 

 covery of America, this nourishing 

 hearth had shifted eastward and be- 

 come located among the Tewa on the 

 upper Eio Grande, wdiere its develop- 

 ment was arrested by the arrival of the 

 disturbing Spaniard. 



Just as agriculture and pottery have 

 spread out from the original great Cen- 

 tral American center, and then spread 

 afresh farther north from the minor 

 Ptieblo center, so undoubtedly many 

 other elements of civilization have been 

 diffused. Some day, for instance, Ave 

 may be able to prove that the South- 

 western clan system and type of reli- 

 gion have also in the main been shaped 

 among some of the four Pueblo tribes 

 or their ancestors; and that these in 

 turn derived at least the rudiments or 

 suffffestions of these institutions from 

 Mexico and Central America. 



To designate Southwestern native 

 culture as being outright Mexican 

 would be slovenly, because it is plain 

 that merely its basis or stimulus was 

 derived from Mexico, and the great 

 bulk of its content was reshaped on the 

 spot. Just so the Mohave or Luiseiio 

 at the fringe of the Southwestern area 

 undoubtedly got their cultural start 

 from the Pueblos through the Pima or 



Apache, but are far from Ijeing mere 

 dependents, Ijecause they have thor- 

 oughly worked over their cultural heri- 

 tage from the Pueblos into something 

 that is distinctively their own. They 

 represent subcenters of development of 

 civilization that stand in exactly the 

 same relation to the Pueblo center as 

 this stands to the Mexican super- 

 center; and the relation holds equally 

 in space, in time, and in cause. 



I l)elieve that on the strength of this 

 illustration I can claim that we anthro- 

 pologists are working out some recon- 

 struction of what happened. ^Ye are 

 tracing back the history of man, not on 

 the physiological or climatic side, l)ut 

 culturally; and showing, in some de- 

 gree, how the civilization of the Ameri- 

 can Indian came to be. We have not 

 gone so very far, it is true; but solid 

 progress is not made by attempting to 

 solve at one fell swoop all the problems 

 that confront one. 



There is one respect in which the cul- 

 ture of the Southwest is peculiar. It 

 is constituted of two elements that are 

 almost polar or opposites. We have the 

 strictly agricultural Pueblos in their 

 towns : and we have also the nomads 

 that separate and surround them and 

 show the same basic culture in a differ- 

 ent form. The ^avaho and Apache 

 live scattered in small groups in tem- 

 porary villages. Acoma and Zuhi were 

 inhaljited as permanent cities when the 

 Spaniard first marched into the land. 

 The difference jjctween these two types 

 of Southwestern natives is striking : and 

 the two dwell sandwiched in between 

 each other. In no other part of North 

 America does there appear to be any 

 such extreme contrast in so small an 

 area. Ordinarily we find such differ- 

 ences only among tribes that are far 

 apart, and we must travel hundreds of 

 miles before we encounter like changes. 

 The differences are apparently greater 

 than those in mediaeval Europe, and 

 even there the case is not quite paral- 

 lel, for the French noble and l)urgher 



