386 The Smithsonian Institution 



it was found desirable to transfer that branch of technology 

 relating to primitive implements and weapons from a specu- 

 lative to an observational basis. The work in this direction 

 shaped the later operations of the bureau, and laid the foun- 

 dation for most of the researches in archaeology. Notable 

 contributions to the scientific study of native American tech- 

 nology have been made by Professor Holmes, Doctor Thomas, 

 and Mr. Gushing. Through the researches of these and other 

 investigators it has been shown that native American art is 

 essentially a unit, and that while more or less distinct phases 

 sometimes overlap, the chronologic differences are no greater 

 than the geographic differences found in passing from one 

 portion of the continent to another. In brief, the researches 

 indicate that at the time of the discovery the American peo- 

 ple were in the stone age, though approaching the non-smelt- 

 ing age of metal ; and that this age was indivisible, each of 

 the known tribes making and using both crude and finished 

 stone tools. 



Incidentally it has been shown that study of the handicraft 

 of primitive people affords the only key to prehistoric art, 

 and that foreign inferences as to culture stages are inappli- 

 cable to the western hemisphere. 



The native domestic wares have received much attention. 

 The Stevensons, the Mindeleff brothers, and other collabo- 

 rators made extensive collections of pottery, particularly in 

 the Southwest, and these have been supplemented by the un- 

 precedentedly rich collections of prehistoric ware made by 

 Doctor Fewkes ; and the collections have been successfully 

 studied by Professor Holmes,^ who has thereby traced the 

 development of decoration, and by Doctor Fewkes, who has 

 traced the growth of the mythic symbolism of the pue- 



1 Professor Holmes' investigations are Bureau of Ethnology, pages 3-152, and on 

 summarized in memoirs on aboriginal stone aboriginal pottery, accomjianying the Six- 

 art, in the Fifteenth Annual Report of the teenlh Annual Report (in press). 



