12 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 60 



The loss to history through this policy of destruction is beyond 

 compute. Tlie thought of preserving a record of the native people 

 and the strange cultures which they had developed seems to have 

 entered the minds of but few until 300 years h*ad passed, and even 

 then it was only when (juestions of the geoh:)gical antiquity of man 

 came to the front in Europe that it was deemed worth while to in- 

 quire into the present or the past of the aborigines of America as 

 scientific problems. The work of sifting the truth from the liter- 

 ature of this period is a task surpassed in difficulty only by that of 

 the explorer who essays to dig his data from the ground. 



