MORGAN.) ETHNIC OR CULTURE PERIODS. 43 
The weapons, arts, usages, and customs, inventions, architecture, insti- 
tutions, and form of government of all alike bear the impress of a common 
mind, and reveal, in their wide range, the successive stages of development 
of the same original conceptions. Our first mistake consisted in overrating 
the degree of advancement of the Village Indians, in comparison with that 
of the other tribes; our second in underrating that of the latter; from which 
resulted a third, that of separating one from the other, and regarding them 
as different races. The evidence of their unity of origin has now accumu- 
lated to such a degree as to leave no reasonable doubt upon the question. 
The first two classes of tribes always held the preponderating power, at 
least in North America, and furnished the migrating bands which replen- 
ished the ranks of the Village Indians, as well as the continent, with inhabit- 
ants. It remained for the Village Indians to invent the process of smelting 
iron ore to attain to the Upper Status of barbarism, and, beyond that, to 
invent a phonetic alphabet to reach the first stage of civilization. One 
entire ethnical period intervened between the highest class of Indians and 
the beginning of civilization.* 
It seems singular that the Village Indians, who first became possessed 
of maize, the great American cereal, and of the art of cultivation, did not 
rise to supremacy over the continent. With their increased numbers and 
more stable subsistence they might have been expected to extend their 
*PROPOSED ETHNIC OR CULTURE PERIODS. 
PERIOD OF SAVAGERY. PERIOD OF BARBARISM. 
Subperiods. Conditions. Subperiods. Conditions. 
(QM PURI cee Bae eaene oma Dba CaaS Lower Status. Older) Period =.= a=ccence =e sncn sees Lower Status. 
Middle Period....-.-.-...--..----. Middle Status. Middle Period........-...--.------ Middle Status. 
EOP iP envio. 3-2-1500 == === == Upper Status. JOG PIATO = 045. acinS Code cmon s Coec Upper Status. 
PERIOD OF CIVILIZATION. 
RECAPITULATION. 
OLDER PERIOD OF SAVAGERY.—Lrom the infancy of the human race to the knowledge of fire and the 
acquisition of a fish subsistence. . 
MippLe Perrop.—lrom the acquisition of a fish subsistence to the invention of the bow and arrow. 
Later Pertop.—lrom the invention of the bow and arrow to the invention of the art of pottery. 
OLDER PERIOD OF BARBARISM.—Irom a knowledge of pottery to the domestication of animals in the 
eastern hemisphere, and in the western to the cultivation of maize and plants by irrigation. 
MIDDLE PrRTOD.—From the domestication of animals, §c., to the invention of the process of smelting 
iron ore. ; 
LATER Prriop.—Ilrom the knowledge of iron to the invention of a phonetic alphabet, or to the use of 
hieroglyphs upon stone as an equivalent. 
Crv1LizaTION.—From the invention of a phonetic alphabet and the use of letters in literary composition 
to the present time. 
