OUR HERITAGE FROM THE AMERICAN INDIANS! 
By W. HB. Sarrorp 
[With 12 plates] 
The nature of the arts and industries of primitive tribes is deter- 
mined primarily by their environment. In forested regions the 
materials employed are furnished in large part by the trunks, bark, 
and roots of trees; in the neighborhood of lakes and streams, by 
the reeds that grow along their banks; on the treeless prairies, 
by the grasses and rushes; and in certain cultivated parts of deserts, 
by the shells of gourds and calabashes. 
The dwellings and clothing of people and the character of their 
food are influenced by climate. Similar conditions in regions widely 
separated have brought about parallel developments. In some cases 
there is a resemblance so striking that one is led to believe that a 
relationship exists between races which really have not had any 
means of intercommunication. The natives of Virginia, those of 
Louisiana, those of the northwestern United States, and those who 
lived along the great rivers of South America hollowed out canoes 
from the trunks of large trees by means of fire. The tribes living 
along the shores of the lakes of Nevada and California constructed 
rafts with bundles of reeds or rushes like those of the treeless 
regions of Peru and the shores of Lake Titicaca, situated on the 
elevated plateaus which formed the ancient kingdom of the Incas. 
Certain types of baskets made by the tribes of the west coast. 
of the United States had a remarkable resemblance to some of 
those made in the Old World. Likewise certain kinds of ancient 
Peruvian cloth, woven of cotton or of the wool of llamas and 
alpacas, are almost facsimiles of oriental forms as to both design 
and mode of weaving. These exquisite products of an art developed 
and perfected in the Western Hemisphere are as independent of 
the oriental fabrics which they resemble as are the llamas and 
alpacas of their relatives, the camels, of the Old World. I found 
superb examples of them in the great prehistoric cemetery of Ancén 
on the coast of Peru near Lima. 
There I opened a large number of graves which contained seated 
mummies surrounded by terra cotta jars, in which there were food- 
stuffs still well preserved: Indian corn or maize (Zea mays) ; beans 
1 Translated by permission from Annaes do XX Congresso Internacional de American- 
istas realizado-no Rio de Janeiro, 1922, vol. 1, pp. 178-178, 1924. 
20837—27. 27 405 
