Maech 8, 1918] 



SCIENCE 



243 



proved to be essentially an arrangement in 

 space also, in practically every instance. The 

 factor of distribution became as inescapable 

 as in biology, and was recognized as far more 

 momentous than had hitherto been the case 

 in the depiction of non-literary peoples. From 

 distributions to diffusions was only a step that 

 forced itself on the attention ; in technical 

 language, the " culture area " began to be 

 replaced by the " culture center " as a work- 

 ing tool. And any diilusion already sets us 

 in time as well as space; with the results that 

 ethnology is beginning to be back at the 

 sequences with which it commenced — but now 

 painstakingly arrived at and laboriously solid- 

 ified instead of speculatively leaped at. 



An example is the present volume on " So- 

 cieties of the Plains Indians." The older 

 ethnologist vaulted the gap between a tribe 

 in Mexico and one in Alaska, or slipped be- 

 tween the beginning and end of a sentence 

 from ancient Greece to modern Australia as 

 if his bridge of fancy were one of traveled 

 fact; and his next colleague — there were no 

 collaborators — rambled or flew where he listed. 

 The student of to-day begins by associating 

 himself with colleagues. They plan an in- 

 quiry, not into a universal phase of human 

 activity, nor of the American Indian, but of 

 the formal religious associations of one group 

 only of North Americans, the closely similar 

 tribes of the Plains. They are nine years se- 

 curing their material and four presenting and 

 analyzing it ; and it bulks to a thousand pages. 

 This may seem a rioting welter of technicality. 

 The laymen would prefer a handy pocket 

 volume that told him incisively who the In- 

 dian was, whence and how he came, the con- 

 sistent scheme of his society, the nature of 

 his religion, and how both originated. There 

 is no answer, nor attempt to answer, even one 

 of these quesetions in the present work. Its 

 thirteen parts describe the associational or- 

 ganization of the religion of sixteen tribes, or, 

 with those on which adequate information 

 happened previously to be extant, all of any 

 importance within the cultural limits of the 

 Plains. The type of each tribal religion is 

 defined; interrelations elucidated; and the 



two concluding comparative sections by Drs. 

 Wissler and Lowie finally settle into pure 

 history in the most rigid sense of the term. 



Thus, in his " General Discussion of Sham- 

 anistic and Dancing Societies," Dr. Wissler 

 gives a family tree of the Iruska ceremony 

 and associations connected with it. He suc- 

 ceeds in tracing this to a Dakota rite known 

 as the Heyoka, which, with the addition of 

 certain Omaha features, was taken by the 

 Pawnee and worked into the Iruska proper. 

 This traveled back to the Omaha and from 

 them to the Dakota, who, by adding a new 

 and vigorous scries of songs, popularized the 

 ceremony as the Grass Dance, and gave it to 

 a long array of tribes. One of these, the 

 Potawotomi, some twenty years later, added 

 still farther to the religious " complex," and, 

 as the Dream Dance, passed it on to another 

 group of tribes. These were marginal or ex- 

 terior to the Plains, distinct in their religious 

 assumptions from the Plains tribes proper, 

 and obviously took up the made over form of 

 the ceremony because it was made over. A 

 number of peoples accepted the " Iruska Trait- 

 Complex," as the author calls it, twice in 

 their and its careers; the Iowa even received 

 and followed it three times, as Iruska proper, 

 Grass Dance, and Dream Dance. It is of 

 interest that as a rule the natives were well 

 aware of the filial relationship between an 

 earlier and later form of the cult. 



It is clear that what we have here is his- 

 tory as historical as any following out of the 

 origins and growth of Christianity or the 

 Papacy or Parliamentary government, but re- 

 constructed by circumstantial evidence de- 

 rived from materials furnished by a group of 

 peoples without annals, docimients, or a scrap 

 of writing. It is also evident, while the world 

 will never be deeply moved by the Iruska 

 cult or by the activities of the Pawnee in the 

 nineteenth century, that studies such as this 

 are uncovering principles of broad applica- 

 bility — principles of a psychology that is 

 truly social, and that in a greater or less 

 degree must ultimately be met and recognized 

 by every historian or analyst of human civili- 

 zation. 



