3 8 4 The Smithsonian Institution 



thought * is essentially distinct from that characteristic of the 

 stage of writing ; that few civilized men have learned to grasp 

 primitive thought ; and that no primitive man grasps civilized 

 thought save at the end of a civilizing process. Indeed it 

 would appear that it is this diversity in mode of thought 

 rather than differences in arts, industries, institutions, and 

 beliefs, more indeed than all other things combined, that 

 separates primitive man from civilized. 



Practically all the American tribes were in the domiciliary 

 stage when the continent was discovered ; and, while most 

 of them occupied temporary or portable habitations, some 

 resided in permanent villages, sometimes dominated by 

 temples, council-houses, and barbaric palaces. The vari- 

 ous types of structure have been investigated ; the Iroquois 

 long-house and the Siouan camp circle products and ex- 

 ponents of social law have been studied in detail ; Casa 

 Grande, the stateliest and best preserved prehistoric house in 

 the United States, has been described and illustrated, 2 and 

 means have been adopted for its preservation ; the skin 

 lodges of the plains, the bark-thatched wigwams of the east- 

 ern forests, the snow houses of the Arctic, the earth lodges 

 of the northern interior, the brush tipis of the Cordilleran 

 valleys, the cactus-protected grass houses of the Southwest, 

 have been examined ; the cliff houses of the western canons, 

 the cavate dwellings of the mesas, and the stone-walled or 

 adobe villages of the arid region, have been made known and 

 classified as to type and function ; while the great mounds and 

 extensive earthworks of the Mississippi valley and other 

 portions of the continent have been subjected to survey in 

 the field and comparative study in the office. A noteworthy 

 report of the bureau is the memoir on American houses and 



1 Defined in the Thirteenth Annual Re- 2 Casa Grande Ruin," in Thirteenth An- 

 port of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1896, pages nual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 

 22-24. 1896, pages 289-319. 



