COOPER] BIBLIOGEAPHY OF TEIBES OF TIEEKA DEL- FUEGO 223 



symposium in Amer. anthr., 1912, n. s. xiv, 1-59), as the Onas are 

 part and parcel of the American race (as Dr. Gallardo recognizes, pp. 

 107-108; see also following section). 



(3) RELATIOXS TO THE AMERICAN RACE IN GENERAL 



A. Somatology 



The Fuegians are " incontestably " (Hyades, c[, 161; cf. also Vir- 

 chow, a, 385) of the American race. Their kinship to the Lagoa- 

 Santa type is additional evidence of the same. 



B. Language 



The Yahgan, the only Fiiegian tongue of which we have adequate 

 morphological data, belongs to the American polysynthetic type (cf. 

 e. g., Hyades, j), 339; q, 334-335; Darapsky, 6, 286). 



C. Culture 



Like other Americans, the Fuegians are reserved, stoical, exter- 

 nally impassive. There is practically nothing un-American m Fue- 

 gian culture, which, on the other hand, contains many elements that, 

 though of not uncommon occurrence on other continents, are of par- 

 ticular frequency in America, such as, for instance, fire signaling, ball 

 game, bark canoe, tonsure, depilation, feather diadem, sling, child's 

 cradle, etc. 



(4) CULTURAL RELATIONS TO CERTAIN OTHER PEOPLES 



Culturally, the Fuegians are on approximately the same low plane 

 as, for instance, the Todas, Veddahs, Negritos and Negrillos, Sakai 

 and Jakun, Australians, and extinct Tasmanians. This poverty of 

 culture among the Fuegians is apparent, not only in the material, 

 but in some respects even more conspicuously in the psychical, that 

 is, the religious, quasi-religious, domestic, moral, economic, political, 

 and esthetic fields. The Fuegians and other very low peoples have 

 a great many cultural elements in common, but of greater interest, 

 perhaps, is their common lack of a still larger number of elements 

 which are of widespread prevalence among peoples a little higher in 

 the cultural scale. 



How should these facts.be explained? Have the Fuegians, under 

 pressure of their untoward environment, degenerated or retrogressed 

 from a higher cultural status possessed by their remote ancestors? 

 Or, granting that the Indo-Oceanic and other peoples of very low 

 culture are themselves in the main not cultural degenerates, are the 

 Fuegians and they backward, comparatively unchanged survivals 

 from a remote common cultural ancestry? And what bearing has 

 the Kulturkreis theory on the two preceding questions ? 



