BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



[BILL. 60 



status of the aborigines, we may think of the Landing of Cohmibus 

 as ending the prehistoric and beginning the historic period. It is 

 customary to speak of the historic period in America as thus limited, 

 and of the prehistoric as covering all previous time (fig. 1), but 

 this is an unscientific classification. The Columbian discovery did 

 not reveal the American aborigines or make known their place in 

 history, save in the most limited way. The race and its culture con- 

 tinued for a long time practically within the realm of the prehistoric 

 (the unknown and unwritten), somewhat as indicated in figure 2. 

 The actual separation, the scientific separation, is between the written 

 and the unwritten. As commonly expressed, the prehistoric phase of 



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Fig. 1. False rclalion of tlie historic (written) 

 to the prehistoric (unwritten). 



Fig. 2. True relation of the historic (written) to 

 the prehistoric (unwritten). 



the history of a particular people or ethnic group would end and the 

 histoi-ic phase begin with the first written record of that people. 

 Thus the pi-ehistoric status of the Peruvians would end and the his- 

 toric begin with the arrival of Pizarro, of the New Mexicans with 

 the arrival of Fray Miircos de Niza, and of the Virginians with the 

 landing of the Eoanoke colony. The prehistoric (unwritten) ]ieriod 

 of the valley of the " Piver of Doubt '' would end and the historic 

 would begin when Roosevelt made his much-challenged report; the 

 ])revious history of the valley, being outside of the range of history- 

 recording peoples, is prehistoric — that is, without designed record, 

 and so it largely remains. 



Although the first wiitten i-ecord of a people may be regarded as 

 marking the beginning of the period of written history of that 

 people, the separation of the two fields is not thus correctly indi- 



