BULL. 30] 



POPULAR FALLACIES 



285 



Thus, in Indian society, the position of 

 woman was usually subordinate, and the 

 lines of demarcation between the duties 

 of the sexes were everywhere sharply 

 drawn. Nevertheless, the division of la- 

 bor was not so unequal as it might seem 

 to the casual observer, and it is difficult to 

 understand how the line could have been 

 more fairly drawn in a state of society 

 where the military spirit was so domi- 

 nant. Indian communities lived in con- 

 stant danger of attack, and their men, 

 whether in camp or on the march, must 

 ever be ready at a moment's warning to 

 seize their arms and defend their homes 

 and families. 



Where Indian communities adopted 

 settled village life, as did the Pueblo 

 peoples, or where the nature of tribal 

 wealth was such as to enable women to 

 become property holders on a large scale, 

 as among the Navaho, whose women own 

 the sheep, or where slavery was an 

 established institution and extensively 

 practised, as among the N. W. coast 

 tribes, the position of women advanced, 

 and there ensued, among other social 

 changes, a more equal division of labori- 

 ous tasks. {See Labor, Women.) 



Degeneracy of mixed-bloods. — It has long 

 been an adage that the mixed-blood is a 

 moral degenerate, exhibiting few or none 

 of the virtues of either, but all the vices 

 of both of the parent stocks. In various 

 parts of the country there are many 

 mixed-bloods of undoubted ability and 

 of high moral standing, and there is no 

 evidence to prove that the low moral 

 status of the average mixed-bloods of the 

 frontier is a necessary result of mixture 

 of blood, but there is nmch to indicate 

 that it arises chiefly from his unfortunate 

 environment. The mixed-blood often 

 finds little favor with either race, while 

 his superior education and advantages, 

 derived from association with the whites, 

 enable him to outstrip his Indian brother 

 in the pursuit of either good or evil. 

 Absorption into the dominant race is 

 likely to be the fate of the Indian, and 

 there is no reason to fear that when freed 

 from his anomalous environment the 

 mixed-blood will not win an honorable 

 social, industrial, and political place in 

 the national life. ( See Mixed-bloods. ) 



Indian pigmies and gia^ifs.— All times 

 and all peoples have had traditions of 

 pigmies and giants. It is therefore no- 

 wise surprising that such myths were 

 early transplanted to American soil. 

 The story of an ancient race of pigmies 

 in Tennessee, familiar to most archeolo- 

 gists, owes its origin to the discovery, in 

 the early half of the last century, of 

 numerous small stone coffins or cists 

 containing skeletons. The largest, meas- 

 ured by Featherstonhaugh, was 24 in. 

 long by 9 in. deep. The small size of the 



cists was assumed by their discoverers 

 to be proof of the existence of a race of 

 dwarfs, and the belief gained ready cred- 

 ence and exists to the present day in the 

 minds of a few. In many cases the skele- 

 tons of the supposed dwarfs proved to be 

 those of children, while, as jwinted out 

 by Jones and Thomas, the skeletons of 

 the adults found in the cists had been 

 deprived of flesh, a common Indian 

 mortuary custom throughout the mound 

 region, and then disjointed, when the 

 bones of an adult could be packed into 

 very small space. 



A race of dwarfs has also been popu- 

 larly ascribed to the cliff-dweller region 

 of New Mexico and Arizona, partly 

 owing to the finding of shriveled and 

 shrunken mummies of children, too 

 hastily assumed to be those of dwarfs, 

 and partly owing to the discovery of 

 small apartments in the cliff-dwellings, 

 of the nature of cubby-holes for the 

 storage of property, the entrances to 

 which were too small to permit the 

 passage, erect, of an ordinary man ; hence, 

 in the mind of the discoverers, they must 

 have been used by dwarfs. The Pueblo 

 peoples are, indeed, of relatively small 

 stature, but they are as far from being 

 dwarfs as other Indians from being 

 giants. ( For details respecting the dwarfs 

 of Tennessee, see Haywood, Natural and 

 Aboriginal History of Tennessee, 1823; 

 Jones, Antiquities of Tennessee, 10, 1876. ) 



The myth of the discovery of giant 

 skeletons, perennial in newspapers, is 

 revived at times by the finding of huge 

 fossil mammalian remains of ancient 

 epochs, erroneously supposed by the 

 ignorant to be human ; at others by the 

 discovery of buried skeletons the bones 

 of which have in the course of time 

 become separated, so as to give the im- 

 pression of beings of unusual height. 

 There was considerable diversity of stat- 

 ure among Indian tribes, some, as the 

 Pueblos, being of rather small size, while 

 among the tribes of the lower Colorado 

 and the Plains were many men of unusual 

 size. Now and then, too, as among other 

 peoples, a man is found who is a real 

 giant among his kind; a skeleton was 

 exhumed in West Virginia which meas- 

 ured 7j ft in length and 19 in. across the 

 shoulders. {See Anatoiny, Fhysiologij.) 



Mound-builders and Cliff-dwellers. — The 

 belief was formerly held by many that 

 the mound-builders of the IMississippi 

 valley and the cliff-dwellers of the S. W. 

 border were racially distinct from the 

 Indians or had reached a superior degree 

 of culture. The more thoroughly the 

 mounds and cliff ruins have been ex- 

 plored and the more carefully the arti- 

 facts, customs, and culture status of these 

 ancient peoples are studied, the more 

 apparent is it that their attainments 



