12 INDIANS OF THE PLAINS. 



in more or less complete associal ion La taken as indicat ing the geographi- 

 cal extent of a type of culture. The facl that these boundaries almost 

 coincide writh the limits of the treeless prairies and plain- and that 

 this culture is mosl intensified among the tribes Living in the Great 

 Plains, lias 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 leasl eleven such areas whose 

 approximate extents we have indicated in the accompanying map. 

 The types for each of these arc illustrated as space permits in the four 

 halls on the first floor of the Museum. As will be 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. Hence, 

 the approximate line seems the best designation of culture boundaries. 

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

 is little correspondence between linguistic stock and culture type, for 

 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, linguistieal, and physical type maps, we should find 

 them with few boundaries in common. 



