Sebt. 4, i 



NA TURE 



453 



Peruvians become possessed of bronze ? Seeing how imperfectly 

 it had established itself, not even dispossessing the stone imple- 

 ments, I have long believed it to be an Asiatic importation of 

 no great antiquity, and it is with great satisfaction that I find 

 such an authority on prehistoric archaeology as Prof. Worsaae 

 comparing the bronze implements in China and Japan with 

 those of Mexico and Peru, and declaring emphatically his 

 opinion that bronze was a modern novelty introduced into 

 America. While these items of Asiatic culture in America are 

 so localised as to agree best with the hypothesis of communica- 

 tion far south across the Pacific, there are others which agree 

 best with the routes far north. A remarkable piece of evidence 

 pointed out by General Pitt-Rivers is the geographical distribu- 

 tion of the Tatar or composite bow, which in construction is un- 

 like the long-bow, being made of several pieces spliced together, 

 and which is bent backwards to string it. This distinctly Asiatic 

 form may be followed across the region of Behring's Straits into 

 America among the Esquimaux and northern Indians, so that it 

 can hardly be doubted that its coming into America was by a 

 northern line of migration. This important movement in culture 

 may have taken place in remotely ancient times. 



A brief account may now be given of the present state of in- 

 formation as to movements of civilisation within the double 

 continent of America. Conspicuous among these is what may 

 be called the northward drift of civilisation which comes well 

 into view in the evidence of botanists as to cultivated plants. 

 Maize, though allied to, and probably genetically connected 

 with, an Old World graminaceous family, is distinctly American, 

 and is believed by De Candolle to have been brought into culti- 

 vation in Peru, whence it was carried from tribe to tribe up into 

 the north. To see how closely the two continents are connected 

 in civilisation, one need only look at the distribution on both of 

 maize, tobacco, and cacao. It is admitted as probable that from 

 the Mexican and Central American region agriculture travelled 

 northward, and became established among the native tribes. 

 This direction may be clearly traced in a sketch of their agri- 

 culture, such as is given in Mr. Lucien Can's paper on the 

 " Mounds of the Mississippi Valley." The same staple cultiva- 

 tion passed on from place to place, maize, haricots, pumpkins, 

 for food, and tobacco for luxury. Agriculture among the Indians 

 of the great lakes is plainly seen to have been an imported craft 

 by the way in which it had spread to some tribes but not to 

 others. The distribution of the potter's art is similarly partial, 

 some tribes making good earthen vessels, while others still boiled 

 meat in its own skin with hot stones, so that it may well be 

 supposed that the arts of growing corn and making the earthen 

 pot to boil the hominy came together from the more civilised 

 nations of the south. With this northward drift of civilisation 

 other facts harmonise. The researches of Buschmann, published 

 by the Berlin Academy, show how Aztec words have become 

 embedded in the languages of Sonora, New Mexico, and up the 

 western side of the continent, which could not have spread there 

 without Mexican intercourse extending far north-west. This 

 indeed has left many traces still discernible in the industrial and 

 decorative arts of the Pueblo Indians. Along the courses of 

 this northward drift of culture remain two remarkable series 

 of structures probably connected with it. The Casas Grandes, 

 the fortified communal barracks (if I may so call them) 

 which provided house-room for hundreds of families, excited 

 the astonishment of the early Spanish explorers, but are only 

 beginning to be thoroughly described now that such districts 

 as the Taos Valley have come within reach by the rail- 

 roads across to the Pacific. The accounts of these village-forts 

 and their inhabitants, drawn up by Major J. W. Powell, of the 

 Bureau of Ethnology, and Mr. Putnam of the Peabody Museum, 

 disclose the old communistic society surviving in modern times, in 

 instructive comment on the philosophers who are seeking to return 

 to it. It would be premature in the present state of informa- 

 tion to decide whether Mr. J. L. Morgan, in his work on the 

 " Houses and House-life of the American Aborigines," has 

 realised the conditions of the problem. It is plausible to sup- 

 pose with him a connection between the communal dwellings of 

 the American Indians, such as the Iroquois long-house with its 

 many family hearths, with the more solid buildings inhabited on 

 a similar social principle by tribes such as the Zunis of New 

 Mexico. Morgan was so much a man of genius, that his specu- 

 lations, even when at variance with the general view of the 

 facts, are always suggestive. This is the case with his attempt 

 to account for the organisation of the Aztec State as a highly- 

 developed Indian tribal community, and even to explain' the 

 many-roomed stone palaces, as they are called, of Central 



America, as being huge communal dwellings like those of the 

 Pueblo Indians. I will not go further into the subject here, 

 hoping that it may be debated in the Section by those far better 

 acquainted with the evidence. I need not, for the same reason, 

 do much more than mention the mound-builders, nor enter 

 largely on the literature which has grown up about them since 

 the publication of the works of Squier and Davis. Now that 

 the idea of their being a separate race of high antiquity has died 

 out, and their earthworks with the implements and ornaments 

 found among them are brought into comparison with those of 

 other tribes of the country, they have settled into representa- 

 tives of one of the most notable stages of the northward drift 

 of culture among the indigenes of America. 



Concluding this long survey, we come to the practical ques- 

 tion how the stimulus of the present meeting may be used to 

 promote anthropology in Canada. It is not as if the work were 

 new here ; indeed some of its best evidence has been gathered 

 on this ground from the days of the French missionaries of the 

 seventeenth century. Naturally, in this part of the country, the 

 rudimentary stages of thought then to be found among the 

 Indians have mostly disappeared. For instance, in the native 

 conceptions of souls and spirits the crudest animistic ideas were 

 in full force. Dreams were looked on as real events, and the 

 phantom of a living or a dead man seen in a dream was con- 

 sidered to be that man's personality and life, that is, his soul. 

 Beyond this, by logical extension of the same train of thought, 

 every animal or plant or object, inasmuch as its phantom could 

 be seen away from its material body in dreams or visions, was 

 held to have a soul. No one ever found this primitive concep- 

 tion in more perfect form than Father Lailemant, who describes, 

 in the " Relations des Jesuites " (1626), how, when the Indians 

 hurried kettles and furs with the dead, the bodies of these things 

 remained, but the souls of them went to the dead men who used 

 them. So Father Le Jeune describes the souls, not only of men 

 and animals, but of hatchets and kettles, crossing the water to 

 the Great Village out in the sunset. The genuineness of this 

 idea of object-souls is proved by other independent explorers 

 finding them elsewhere in the world. Two of the accounts mi 1st 

 closely tallying with the American come from the Rev. Dr. 

 Mason, in Burmah, and the Rev. J. Williams, in Fiji. That is 

 to say, the most characteristic development of early animism 

 belongs to the same region as the most characteristic develop- 

 ment of matriarchal society, extending from South-East Asia 

 into Melanesia and Polynesia, and North and South America. 

 Every one who studies the history of human thought must see 

 the value of such facts as these, and the importance of gathering 

 them up among the rude tribes who preserve them, before they 

 pass into a new stage of culture. All who have read Mr. Hale's 

 studies on the Hiawatha legend and other Indian folk-lore, must 

 admit that the native traditions, with their fragments of real 

 history, and their incidental touches of native religion, ought 

 never to be left to die out unrecorded. In the Dominion, espe- 

 cially in its outlying districts toward the Arctic region and over 

 the Rocky Mountains, there is an enormous mass of anthropo- 

 logical material of high value to be collected, but this collection 

 must be done within the next generation, or there will be little 

 left to collect. The small group of Canadian anthropologists, 

 able and energetic as they are, can manage and control this work, 

 but cannot do it all themselves. What is wanted is a Canadian 

 Anthropological Society with a stronger organisation than yet 

 exists, able to arrange explorations in promising districts, to 

 circulate questions and requirements among the proper people 

 in the proper places, and to lay a new burden on the shoulders 

 of the already hard-worked professional men and other educated 

 settlers through the newly-opened country, by making them inves- 

 tigati us of local anthropology. The Canadian Government, which 

 has well deserved the high reputation it holds throughout the 

 world for wisdom and liberality in dealing with the native tribes, 

 may reasonably be asked to support more thorough exploration, 

 and collection and publication of the results, in friendly rivalry 

 with the United States Government, which has in this way fully 

 acknowledged the obligation of making the colonisation of new 

 lands not only promotive of national wealth but serviceable to 

 science. It is not for me to do more here, and now, than to 

 suggest practical steps towards this end. My laying before the 

 Section so diffusive a sketch of the problems of anthropology 

 as they present themselves in the Dominion has been with the 

 underlying intention of calling public notice to the important 

 scientific work now standing ready to Canadian hands ; the un- 

 dertaking of which it is to be hoped will be one outcome of this 

 visit of the British Association to Montreal. 



