56 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bdll. 40 



lutely necessary in order to live fairly comfortably, the comfort of 

 life being generally of secondary importance to the inertia or con- 

 servatism which prevents a people from changing their settled habits, 

 that have become customary to such an extent that they are more 

 or less automatic, and that a change would be felt as something 

 -decidedly unusual. 



Even when a people remain located in the same place, it would 

 seem that historical influences are much stronger than geographical 

 influences. I am inclined, for instance, to explain in this manner the 

 differences between the cultures of the tribes of arctic Asia and of 

 arctic America, and the difference in the habits of the tribes of the 

 southern plateaus of North America when compared with those of 

 the northern plateaus of North America. In the southern regions 

 the influence of the Pueblos has made itself felt, while farther to 

 the north the simpler culture of the Mackenzie basin gives the 

 essential tone to the culture of the people. 



Wliile fully acknowledging the importance of geographical con- 

 ditions upon life, I do not believe that they can be given a place 

 at all comparable to that of culture as handed down, and to that 

 of the historical influence exerted by the cultures of surrounding 

 tribes; and it seems likely that the less direct the influence of the 

 surroundings is, the less also can it be used for accounting for peculiar 

 ethnological traits. 



So far as language is concerned, the influence of geographical sur- 

 roundings and of climate seems to be exceedingly remote; and as 

 long as we are not even. able to prove that the whole organism of 

 man, and with it the articulating organs, are directly influenced 

 by geographical environment, I do not think we are justified in con- 

 sidering this element as an essential trait in the formation or modi- 

 fication of human speech, much less as a cause which can be used 

 to account for the similarities of human speech in neighboring areas. 



Influence of Common Psychic Traits 



Equally uncertain seems to be the resort to the assumption of pecu- 

 liar psychic traits that are common to geographical divisions of the 

 same race. It may be claimed, for instance, that the languages of 

 the Athapascan, Tlingit, and Haida, which were referred to before 

 as similar in certain fundamental morphological traits, are alike, 



