22 MYTHOLOGY OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
of gravity, but ye cannot tell what gravity is. But savagery has < 
cause and a method for all things; nothing is left unexplained. 
In the lower stages of savagery the cosmos is bounded by the great 
plain of land and sea on which we tread, and the firmament, the azure 
surface above, set with brilliants; and beyond is an abyss of—nothing. 
Within these bounds all things are known, all things are explained; 
there are no mysteries but the whims of the gods. But when the plain 
on which we tread becomes a portion of the surface of a great globe, 
and the domed firmament becomes the heavens, stretching beyond 
Aleyone and Sirius, with this enlargement of the realm of philosophy the 
verity of philosophy is questioned. The savage is a positive man; the 
scientist is a doubting man. 
The opinions of a savage people are childish. Society grows! Some 
say society develops; others that society evolves; but, somehow, I like 
to say it grows. The history of the discovery of growth is a large part 
of the history of human culture. That individuals grow, that the child 
grows to be a man, the colt a horse, the scion a tree, is easily recognized, 
though with unassisted eye the processes of growth are not discovered. 
But that races grow—races of men, races of animals, races of plants, 
races or groups of worlds—is a very late discovery, and yet all of us do 
not grasp so great a thought. Consider that stage of culture where the 
growth of individuals is not fully recognized. That stage is savagery. 
To-day the native races of North America are agitated by discussions 
over that great philosopiec question, ‘“‘ Do the trees grow or were they 
created?” That the grass grows they admit, but the orthodox philoso- 
phers stoutly assert that the forest pines and the great sequoias were 
created as they are. 
Thus in savagery the philosophers dispute over the immediate crea- 
tion or development of individuals—in civilization over the immediate 
creation or development of races. I know of no single fact that better 
illustrates the wide difference between these two stages of culture. But 
let us look for other terms of comparison. The scalping scene is no 
more the true picture of savagery than the bayonet charge of civil- 
ization. Savagery is sylvan life. Contrast Ka-ni-ga with New York. 
Ka-ni-ga is an Indian village in the Rocky Mountains. New York is, 
well—New York. The home in the forest is a shelter of boughs; the 
home in New York is a palace of granite. The dwellers in Ka-ni-ga are 
clothed in the skins of animals, rudely tanned, rudely wrought, and col- 
ored with daubs of clay. For the garments of New York, flocks are 
tended, fields are cultivated, ships sail on the sea, and men dig in the 
mountains for dye-stufis stored in the rocks. The industries of Ka-ni-ga 
employ stone knives, bone awls, and human muscle; the industries of 
New York employ the tools of the trades, the machinery of the manu- 
factories, and the power of the sun—for water-power is but sunshine, 
and the coal mine is but a pot of pickeled sunbeams. 
