GROWTH AND DECLINE OF CULTURE. 185 



they liave ever been, or if they have come down from a condi- 

 tion approaching that of the Bechuanas, the process of degra- 

 tion must indeed have been a long one. 



Tribes who are known to have once been higher in the scale 

 of culture than they are now, are to be met with in Asia. Some 

 of the coast Tunguz live by fishing, though they are still called 

 Orochi, which is equivalent to the term " Reindeer Tunguz." 

 No doubt the tradition is true of the Goldi that, though they 

 have no reindeer now, they once had, like the Tunguz tribes north 

 of the Amur.^ There are Kalmucks north of the Caspian who 

 have lost their herds of cattle and degenerated into fishermen. 

 The richest of them has still a couple of cows. They look upon 

 horses, camels, and sheep as strange and wondrous creatures 

 when foreigners bring them into their country. They listen 

 with wonder to their old men's stories of life in the steppes, of 

 the great herds and the ceaseless wanderings over the vast 

 plains, while they themselves dwell in huts of reeds, and carry 

 their household goods on their backs when they have to move 

 to a new fishing-place.^ The miserable " Digger Indians " of 

 North America are in part Shoshonees or Snake Indians, who 

 were brought down to their present state by their enemies the 

 Blackfeet, who got guns from the Hudson's Bay Company, and 

 thus conquered the Snakes, and took away their hunting- 

 grounds. They lead a wandering life, lurking among hills and 

 crags, slinking from the sight of whites and Indians, and subsist- 

 ing chiefly on wild roots and fish, and such game as so helpless a 

 race is able to get. They are lean and abject-looking creatures, 

 deserving the name of gens de pitie given them by the French 

 trappers, and they have been driven to abandon arts which 

 they possessed in their more fortunate days, such as riding, 

 and apparently even hut-building ; but how far their degrada- 

 tion has brought with it decline in other parts of their former 

 culture, it is not easy to say.^ 



Here, then, we have cases of material evidence which, as 

 we happen to have other means of knowing, ought to be treated 



' Eavenstein, p. 318. - Klemm, C. Gr., vol. iii. p. 4. 



■• Buschmann, 'Spuren der Aztekischen Sprache im nordlichen Mexico,' etc. 

 etc. (Abh. der K. A. v. W., 1854) ; Berlin, 1859, p. 633, etc. 



