AMERICAN INDIAN EXHIBITS—EWERS 521 
geographical environments so that the contrasts in material traits 
among tribes of the same language stock were greater than those 
between neighboring tribes speaking quite different languages. 
Thus the Shoshonean-speaking Hopi resembled the other Pueblo 
tribes of the southwestern desert who spoke different languages. 
much more closely in their way of life than they did the Shoshonean- 
speaking Comanche buffalo hunters of the Great Plains. 
Mason compared the distribution of traits of Indian material 
culture with Dr. C. Hart Merriam’s biogeographic map of North 
America published by the Department of Agriculture and found 
that the distribution of artifacts corresponded much more closely 
with it than with Powell’s linguistic map. He concluded that “the 
materialistic activities were controlled by the environment.” 
So in the exhibit at Chicago Otis T. Mason organized the exhibits 
around this new principle—the influence of environment upon 
American Indian life, grouping the exhibits by what he termed 
“culture areas.” In briefly describing this display in the Annual 
Report of the U.S. National Museum for 1893 Mason wrote: 
Enough was displayed ... to bring into prominence the statement that the 
earth, with its climate and natural resources, has much to say about the 
material and the form of human industries. Blood and language and social 
life and religion have their say also in the arts of life, but their influence is 
superadded, and not fundamental. (Ann. Rep. U.S. Nat. Mus., 1893, pp. 127-129.) 
In a popular lecture at the Smithsonian on May 2, 1896, entitled 
“Influence of Environment upon Human Industries or Arts,” Otis 
T. Mason grouped the historic American Indians and Eskimos into 
18 culture areas on the basis of common environments providing 
common plant and animal resources for the use of Indians for food, 
clothing, shelter, arts and crafts, implements and utensils, and means 
of travel. He proceeded to outline the basic natural resources and 
typical artifacts made and used by the Indians of each of these 
culture areas. (Mason, 1896.) 
By 1897 Mason was busy rearranging a portion of the American 
Indian exhibits in the Arts and Industries Building in accordance with 
his new principle of “culture areas.” In 1901 Mason’s colleague at the 
Smithsonian, William H. Holmes, in a closely reasoned paper on 
“Classification and Arrangement of the Exhibits of an Anthropologi- 
cal Museum,” published a map of North American Indian culture 
areas and advocated a culture-area organization for the arrangement 
of exhibits in museums of anthropology. (Holmes, 1903, p. 267.) 
Today the concept of “culture areas” is generally accepted by 
ethnologists as a basis for classifying the ways of life of primitive 
peoples. Yet very few anthropologists are aware that this important 
classificatory tool of their profession was discovered by Otis T. Mason 
during his experience in planning the Smithsonian’s exhibits for the 
