APRIL 26, 1912] 
few years—the autocthonous, the European, the 
Asiatic. The protagonist of the theory of the 
autocthonous origin of American man is Professor 
Ameghino, the Argentinian paleontologist, who 
derives him from the higher simians in southern 
South America. Professor G. Sergi, the Italian 
anthropologist, who looks with some favor on 
Ameghino’s views, recognizes—he takes a rather 
polygenetie view of human origins—among his 
separate human races a facies Americana. The 
old view of Boyd Dawkins (resurrected by him, 
in a somewhat modified form) that the Eskimo are 
the representatives or the descendants of European 
cave-man still finds favor in certain quarters, but 
the recognition of the interior origin (in the 
region east of Hudson Bay) of the Eskimo as 
demonstrated by Boas, ete., places this theory 
rather out of court. That the American race is 
simply a Mongolian type, a view once much in 
favor, has lost its standing since the results of 
the Jesup North Pacific Expedition have become 
known. The data acquired concerning the so-called 
‘‘paleo-Asiatic’’? peoples (Chukchee, Konaks, 
Kamchadales, Yukaghir, ete.) of northeastern 
Asia and the peoples of northwestern North 
America, demonstrate that the ‘‘paleo-Asiatic’’ 
people, at least (as the Asiatie Eskimo did later) 
must have crossed from America to Asia long 
subsequent to the arrival of the ancestors of the 
American race from Asia (if they came by way of 
Berihg’s Straits, as now seems reasonable). The 
American Indians may thus be considered as an 
Asiatic people (sprung from the proto-Mongolian 
stock), considerably modified by their New World 
environment. By a refluent wave of migration 
they have ‘‘Americanized,’’ as it were, a large 
section of northeastern Asia. 
The Mourning Ceremony of the Southern Paiutes: 
EDWARD SAPIR. 
The main ceremony of the southern Paiutes of 
Utah, Arizona and Nevada is an annual mourning 
ceremony or ‘‘cry.’’? The expenses of such a 
ceremony, which generally lasts for five days in 
June or July, are borne by two men, one of them 
a close relative of a recently deceased member of 
the tribe. Sometimes neighboring bands are in- 
vited to take part in the ceremony. The place of 
the mourning ceremony varies from year to year 
and is decided upon at a preliminary council 
meeting. The essential elements of the ceremony 
SCIENCE 
673 
are the singing of numerous mourning songs and 
the offering of valuables, such as baskets, articles 
of clothing and horses, in memory of the dead. 
The songs, which are accompanied by rattles 
held by each singer, are to be classified into four 
sharply distinguished types, roan songs, bird songs, 
coyote songs, and mountain sheep songs. Hach of 
these has its characteristic type of melody and 
accompanying movements on the part of the 
singers. There does not seem to be any idea of 
a grouping of the participants of the ceremony 
into four societies singing these different types 
of songs; one may join in the singing of any class 
of songs and leave one group of singers for an- 
other. There is, however, a song leader for each 
type of song. This merely means that certain 
people are proficient in the singing or composing 
of particular classes of songs. The texts of the 
songs are in comparatively few instances in Paiute, 
but belong to a language that is unintelligible to 
the singers. There is reason to believe that the 
types of songs, the actual song-texts, and perhaps 
the whole ceremony are borrowed from the Yuman 
tribes to the west. There is a possibility that the 
song texts consist of an elaborate system of 
burdens. 
At various stages during the singing, which 
forms the major part of the ceremony, ceremonial 
‘‘eries’’ take place which are conducted by a ery 
leader. On the last night of the mourning cere- 
mony, during which it is forbidden to sleep, the 
articles which have been set aside as offerings to 
the dead are burned on a funeral pile; horses are 
shot, valuable articles which have been exposed as 
offerings may be taken by others and replaced by 
objects of less value. It is evident that the 
Paiute mourning ceremony bears considerable re- 
semblance to mourning ceremonies of various Cali- 
fornian tribes. 
Cephalic Type Contours: WiLLIAM C. FARABEE. 
The main object aimed at in all physical meas- 
urements is to find characters that shall be pe- 
culiar to the race or group of people under investi- 
gation. Under the old methods little attention 
was given to actual measurements of characters, 
except in so far as they aided in the determination 
of ratios or indices. The various indices for each 
individual were calculated and the average and 
range determined for the whole group. It was 
believed that these ratios were more constant than 
were the absolute dimensions and hence general 
conclusions were based upon the ratios obtained 
from short series. 
