fiOAs] HANDBOOK OF AMERICAN INDIAN LANGUAGES 55 



the fundamental traits of culture. If this were not true, the peculiar 

 facts of distribution of inventions, of beliefs, of habits, and of other 

 ethnological phenomena, would be unintelligible. 



For instance, the use of the underground house is distributed, in 

 America and Asia, over the northern parts of the plateaus to parts of 

 the Great Plains, northward into the arctic region; and crossing 

 Bering strait we find it in use along the Pacific coast of Asia and 

 as far south as northern Japan, not to speak of the subterranean 

 dwellings of Europe and North Africa. The climate of this district 

 shows very considerable differences, and the climatic necessity for 

 underground habitations does not exist by any means in many parts 

 of the area where they occur. 



In a similar area we find the custom of increasing the elasticity of 

 the bow by overlaying it with sinew. While this procedure may be 

 quite necessary in the arctic regions, where no elastic wood is avail- 

 able, it is certainly not necessary in the more southern parts of the 

 Rocky mountains, or along the east coast of Asia, where a great many 

 varieties of strong elastic wood are available. Nevertheless the use- 

 fulness of the invention seems to have led to its general application 

 over an extended district. 



We might also give numerous examples which would illustrate 

 that the adaptation of a people to their surroundings is not by any 

 means perfect. How, for instance, can we explain the fact that the 

 Eskimo, notwithstanding their inventiveness, have never thought 

 of domesticating the caribou, while the Chukchee have acquired 

 large reindeer-herds? Why, on the other hand, should the Chukchee, 

 who are compelled to travel about with their reindeer-herds, use a 

 tent which is so cumbersome that a train of many sledges is required 

 to move it, while the Eskimo have reduced the frame of their tents 

 to such a degree that a single sledge can be used for conveying it 

 from place to place? 



Other examples of a similar kind are the difference in the habita- 

 tions of the arctic Athapascan tribes and those of the Eskimo. Not- 

 withstanding the rigor of the climate, the former live in light skin 

 tents, while the Eskimo have succeeded in protecting themselves 

 efficiently against the gales and the snows of winter. 



What actually seems to take place in the movements of peoples 

 is, that a people who settle in a new environment will first of all 

 cling to their old habits and only modify them as much as is abso- 



