224 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bin.L.63 



Several generations of anthropologists may, perhaps, pass away 

 before these three questions can be confidently answered. The fol- 

 lowing pages represent merely an attempt to coordinate those facts 

 and considerations which seem to 'have a bearing on the problem and 

 which may lead up to a provisional or probable solution. 



There is no question here of somatolog'tcal degeneration or affinity. 

 Culture Tnay well migrate across somatological dividing lines, and may 

 stagnate notwithstanding somatological change and differentiation. 



It maybe well, too, to exclude provisionally from our problem the 

 Onas, among whom there is perhaps some ground for suspecting a 

 certain minor cultural retrogression. 



A. Are the canoe-using Fuegians cultural degenerates i 



(a) Archeology and history, as we have seen, have furnished thus 

 far no evidence to this effect, but rather positively indicate stagna- 

 tion for the last 400 years and probably since 'the advent of man to 

 the Magellanic archipelagos. It would follow, therefore, that the 

 adverse Fuegian environment, although it may have checked ad- 

 vancement, has not actively brought about retrogression. 



(b) Yahgan and Alacalufan culture shows no internal evidence of 

 degeneration. Not only in material but in psychical culture as weU, 

 and not only in what they have but also in what they lack, the two 

 tribes are strikingly simple and primitive. Their material culture 

 is characterized by the absence of agricidture and domestication — 

 excepting the dog, which is probably of later introduction — of pottery 

 and weaving, of narcotics and intoxicants, of polished stone imple- 

 ments, of the spear-thrower and shield, of the fishhook, and, among 

 the Yahgans, of the ax and net. Their skin curing, for instance, is 

 of the simplest nature, their harpoons of the most primitive type. 

 Their psychical culture lacks the chieftaincy, hereditary or elective, 

 social classes, secret societies, totemism, mana, or kindred concep- 

 tions, medicines, religious paraphernalia, the arts of design, musical 

 instruments, symbolic dances, gambling, divisions of time, numbers 

 beyond three probably, message sticks or similar means of recording 

 ideas. In political, economic, esthetic, and recreative culture the 

 Fuegian Canoe Indians are on the lowest rung of the ladder. Barter, 

 for instance, is of the nature of an exchange of presents, and there is 

 no mediimi of exchange. Their esthetic culture is perhaps lower 

 than that of any other people on earth. A glance through the sum- 

 mary of culture given in the present work will show that the above 

 list could be greatly extended. 



Most of the above elements which are wanting in Fuegia are of 

 widespread, in fact of almost universal, occurrence among the other 

 ])eoplcs of South America and for that matter of the uncivilized 

 world. 



