Februakt 21, 1908] 



SCIENCE, 



285 



narrow limits which are imposed upon 

 environmental effect by culture and his- 

 tory. On Tulare lake, in the southern part 

 of the great interior valley of California, 

 live the Tachi and Tokuts tribes. On 

 Clear Lake, in the northern Coast Range, 

 are the eastern and southeastern Pomo. 

 On the Klamath and adjacent lakes, in 

 northeastern California and in Oregon, are 

 the Klamath Lake and Modoc people. All 

 three groups of people have developed cer- 

 tain aspects of their material culture in a 

 very similar direction through the use of 

 a material furnished by their lake environ- 

 ment, the tule or bulrush. Not only 

 houses, mats and boats, but clothing, foot- 

 wear, cradles, baskets and games are made 

 of this abundant and useful material. A 

 glance at a museum collection from the 

 three regions not only seems to reveal a 

 practical identity of culture, but would 

 make it appear that the eastern Pomo and 

 Tachi Tokuts were culturally more nearly 

 akin to each other than to their respective 

 Pomo and Tokuts neighbors and kinsmen. 

 But the moment the social and religious 

 institutions of these people are considered, 

 the resemblances in industries and arts are 

 counterbalanced and as it were niillified. 

 In ceremonies and habits and customs the 

 eastern Pomo are as distinctively Pomo as 

 any other branch of the family; and so 

 the Tachi are as good Tokuts in religion, 

 in beliefs and in social organization, as 

 they are in language. Even on the ma- 

 terial side of life environment is not the 

 only causal factor. The Modoc twines his 

 tule basket, the Tachi coils it, because those 

 are the characteristic textile processes of 

 the culture region in which each lives. 



Of course even social life and religion 

 will be colored by environment, and their 

 development can extend only within a cer- 

 tain compass given by environment. But 

 this is self-evident. No one, whether 

 anthropologist or historian, has denied the 



significance of physical nature as a cviltural 

 condition; but the attempt has too often 

 been made, sometimes expressly, more fre- 

 quently by implication, to derive and ex- 

 plain a culture entirely from geogi-aphy 

 and climate; and nothing is more un- 

 founded. For the sake of argument it 

 may be granted to those who so wish, that 

 in the ultimate analysis everything his- 

 torical and everything human is the effect 

 of physical nature. But, on the other 

 hand, too strong a protest can not be made 

 against the assumption which is often un- 

 warrantably and illogically made from this 

 view, that the actual immediate specific 

 causes which have shaped the life of any 

 given people can be sought and found in 

 their particular environment. A body of 

 people, neither at present nor at any time 

 in their history, are ever a clean fresh slate 

 ready to be inscribed by nature. No 

 matter how rude their civilization, it h£is 

 always a long historical background and is 

 deeply rooted; and it is only upon this 

 complex institutional life that a particular 

 environment can begin to act. In time, no 

 doubt, environment will partially modify 

 all the institutions with which it is brought 

 in contact. But institutions have a life of 

 their own, influence each other, and under- 

 go their own developments and histories. 

 They must be always affected but can never 

 be controlled by nature. Change of en- 

 vironment can destroy an institution by 

 making it unnecessary or impossible, or can 

 be the stimulus which develops a new in- 

 stitution ; but in either case something cul- 

 tural, an existing body of institutions, is 

 present and is acted upon by the stimulus; 

 and this body of culture is in turn de- 

 pendent upon previous factors that are 

 both cultural and environmental. To look 

 to physical environment for the explana- 

 tion of cultures is to mistake condition for 

 cause. 



The three regions of generally distinct 



