206 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



In the Indian countries little or no distinction is made as 

 to blood relationships. The distinctions arise from the 

 great contrasts among the people in wealth and social 

 position, and are very sharply drawn. To find statistics 

 on the "Indios" or "Mestizos" does not mean Indians 

 or mixed bloods but merely those of the lowest and next 

 lowest rank, those without wealth and social position. 

 Anyone with sufficient leisure, who can maintain his 

 family without work, belongs to the white class. Possi- 

 bilities of change from one class to another are rare, as 

 opportunities foT the accumulation of wealth by the poor 

 are few. A class division, therefore, may be made, into 

 one with opportunities and into one without hope. 

 The latter group for want of a better name may be called 

 Indian. 



Mixing of bloods has gone on without any sentiment 

 against it ever since the time of the "Conquistadores", 

 so that there are, very probably, few native whites with- 

 out some strain of Indian blood, and likewise few Indians, 

 except in some of the undeveloped sections, that are free 

 from admixtures. The number of pure blood Indians in 

 the plateau countries is much greater than pure blood 

 whites. The Bolivian census for 1900 gives the Indian 

 population as 48.42 per cent of the total and the white as 

 14.64 per cent, the rest being mestizos. These figures 

 representing classes may be fairly correct, but the abso- 

 lutely pure white population is probably less than two 

 per cent of the total. The figures show, however, the 

 dominance of the Indian blood in the life of the Republic. 



If there is such a thing as cultural evolution con- 

 trolled or modified, at least largely, by the environment, 

 then there should be such a thing as regional cultures 

 brought about by regional activities, — in other words, a 

 regional geography of the American Indian. South 

 America has been divided into four major cultural areas 

 on the assumption that the activities based on the getting 

 of food are the most fundamental. These culture groups 

 are as follows: (1) the Chibcha in Colombia, agricul- 

 turists of the upland type; (2) the Manioc in the Amazon 

 basin, agriculturists whose main food was the roots of 

 the mandioca; (3) the Guanaco, in the Pampas of Argen- 



