140 INDIANS OF THE PLAINS. 



Plains of the Siouan, Caddoan, and Shoshonean speak- 

 ing tribes. It is true that many tribes have migration 

 legends some of which are consistent with a few details 

 <>t culture; but as these nearly always take the forms 

 of other myths, they cannot be given much historical 

 weight. The plain fact is that the moment we get 

 beyond the period of exploration in the Plains, historical 

 data fail us. We know where the tribes were win mi 

 discovered and most of their movements since that 

 date, but beyond that we must proceed by inference 

 and the interpretation of anthropological data. 



Not being able to discover how the various tribes 

 came to be in the Plains, we can scarcely expect to tell 

 how long they have been there. The archaeological 

 method may be brought into play here; but as yet we 

 lack data. Mounds and earthworks have been dis- 

 covered in the Dakotas and southward along the Mis- 

 souri, apparently the fringe of the great mound area 

 in the Woodlands to the east. In the open Plains, we 

 have so far neither evidence of long occupation nor 

 of states of culture differing from those we have just 

 described. This is, however, by no means a final 

 statement of the case for future archaeological research 

 will doubtless clear up this point. 



Turning back to culture, we find that so many of the 

 traits enumerated in these pages arc almost entirely 

 peculiar to the area that we are constrained to conclude 

 that they developed within it. This is strengthened 

 by the peculiar adaptation of many of these traits to 

 the geographical conditions, suggest ing that they were 

 invented or discovered by a Plains people. It seems, 



