( Ihapter VII. 

 THE CHRONOLOGY OF PLAINS CULTURE. 



So FAR we have sought to sketch the outline for a 

 mental picture of what Plains Indian life was like 

 a half century ago. We have giveD no considera- 

 tion to what it was before 1 the 1 discovery of the New 

 World, how these people worked out their food prob- 

 lems, whence they came, the ideas that led to their most 

 characteristic inventions; in short, the course of their 

 culture history. The data for a history of any culture 

 come from three sources, direct observation of the liv- 

 ing people, written records, and archaeological remains. 

 So far we have depended almost entirely upon observa- 

 tions made upon the living, that is, we have carefully 

 sifted and compiled the facts reported by contemporary 

 writers. Since the Plains Indians had no native system 

 of writing there are no records of the past and so nothing 

 is to be expected from that source. Thus the only addi- 

 tional aid we may expect would come from archaeology, 

 or the study of objects and traces of culture preserved in 

 the ground. This limitation to the information avail- 

 able for a history of Plains culture divides our subject 

 into two periods: the historic period and the prehistoric. 

 These terms are, however, not the best because the 

 historic period for the Plains Indian opens about 1540, 

 while we think of history as beginning a few thousand 

 years before Christ. It is therefore less confusing to 

 speak of the prehistoric period of the American Indians 

 as pre-( Jolumbian. So from the information at hand we 



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