L2 INDIANS OPl ill. PLAINS 



coincide with the Limits of the tied.— prairies and plains and thai 

 this culture i- most intensified among tin- tribes Living in the Great 

 Plains, has given rise to the term Plains area. In the same way other 

 parts of the continent appear as the homes of peculiar culture types. 

 Anthropologists generally recognize at least eleven Buch area- whose 

 approximate extents we have indicated In the accompanying map. 

 The types for each of I hese arc illustrated as space permits in t he four 

 halls on the first floor of the Museum. As will !><• exemplified in the 

 text, the lines separating these areas are somewhat arbitrary. A more 

 correct method would be to color the areas and divide them by broad 

 bands in ever changing mixtures of the two colors, but only in a few 

 instances have we sufficient data to do even this accurately. Bence, 

 the approximate line seems the best designation of culture boundaries. 



Reference to a linguistic map of North America will show that there 

 i.s little correspondence between linguistic stocks and culture type, tor 

 while in some cases the two lines on the map coincide, in others, they 

 show no approach whatsoever. Again, while the physical types of 

 the Indians show some tendencies to agree in distribution with cultural 

 traits, they also show marked disagreements. Hence, it is not far 

 wrong to say that if, according to the data now available, we superim- 

 posed cultural, linguistical, and physical type maps, we should find 

 them with few boundaries in common. 



Returning to the consideration of culture areas and referring to the 

 tribal map (p. 14), we see that the tribes of Plains Indians in a central 

 position are the most typical, while their immediate neighbors show 

 tendencies to live like more distant tribes. What we find, then, is a 

 kind of culture center, where the purest types are found, while sur- 

 rounding this center are less pure cultures. Each of the designated 

 culture areas in North America contains such a center where the true 

 type of culture is to be found. 



